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Manipulating the Mouse Embryo: A Laboratory Manual by B. Hogan, F. Constantini and E. Lacy, Cold Spring Havi~ Laboratmy, 1986. $60.00 (332 pages) ISBN 0 87969 175 1 These are heady days for developmental biologists. Prob- lems that have puzzled scientists for centuries seem to be moving tom the realm of abstract philosophy towards practical solo ution. The power of recombinant DNA technology fuels this opti- mism; at last genes can be engineered, inserted, located, monitored, neutralized and their impact on development asses- sed. The prospect of interfering positively, rather than randomly, with the genetic basis for development is real. The prac- tical basis for this optimism, as recorded in this manual, is clearly well founded. It is impressive that so much pro- gress in the genetic manipulation of the mouse has been made so rapidly. Here are recorded the tech- niques for preparing, inserting and analysing DNA sequences, for retroviral infection of em- bryos, for production and use of EC and EK cells as vehicles for engineered sequences and for nuclear transplantation - all this against a background of the basic procedures required for pro- ducing and handling the em- bryos. If there is one critidsm, it is that the format and content of manual do reveal a fashionable, but perhaps a rather narrow, belief that it is by gene injection (or variants of it) alone that the problem of development will be solved. One might expect a laboratory manual entitled Manilmlating the Mouse Embryo to inform about more general practical aspects of mouse em- bryology than are contained here