The various contributions have been provided by those at the forefront of respective areas of study. The standard of contributions is uniformly high; the level of presentation is postgraduate to postdoctoral. However, there appears to be nothing to be gained from reading chapters in the order that they are presented, any more than the ordering of contributions to a research journal is indicative of progressive development. To this extent, the responsibility of editors of multi-author volumes in this regard is raised by the present volume. Evidence of editorial guidance is hard to find. There is not a single instance in the book in which the writer(s) of one chapter make reference to the content of (or even the existence of) another. The complete freedom seems to have been enjoyed by the respective authors, for instance to introduce ad hoc nomenclature such as 'active cell death': 'programmed cell death', which was used in the first volume Apoptosis 1, and mentioned on the back cover of Apoptosis 11, does not find a place in the index of this later volume. In short, Apoptosis 11 is a useful contribution to the monograph literature of this rapidly developing field, but more careful planning could be given when compiling Apoptosis 111.