MacDonald (epidemiology, U. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) provides public health students and practitioners with a guide to conducting outbreak investigations. Contributed by public health specialists from the US, the 16 chapters are based on articles from issues of the periodical Focus on Field Epidemiology and MacDonald's online graduate course on the topic, as well as other U. of North Carolina Center for Public Health Preparedness training materials. They cover the process of investigation, including surveillance, assembling a team, hypothesis generation and descriptive epidemiology, epidemiological studies, hypothesis-testing interviews, data analysis, and writing a report. Also discussed are forensic epidemiology, contact tracing, and environmental investigations, as well as resources such as public health laboratories, the incident command system, and geographic information systems. Some knowledge of terminology from medicine, public health, and epidemiology is assumed. Annotation ©2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)