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In contrast to the various more specialized phage books, this book integrates the historical phage story with the technicalities of phage research and little-known details about their widespread therapeutic applications in various times and places. Within this general framework, the book also presents basic information about phage biology, phage ecology and genomics, the roles of phages in bacterial evolution, the molecular mechanisms of phage interactions with bacteria and what such studies have taught us about general biological principles, and phage applications in a variety of fields. Thus, our goal has been to focus on integrating the various threads of basic and applied phage research, with the help of colleagues from a range of fields, and to help students and new investigators discover their primary areas of interest and exploration. With this latter objective in mind, we have included an Appendix that details the classical and modern techniques for studying phagesprobably the first such compendium since the Adams’s book, complementing the more detailed methods described by Carlson and Miller (1994) in The Molecular Biology of Bacteriophage T4. Phage research is a field where researchers at all levels can potentially make significant contributions to the body of knowledge. It is relatively easy and inexpensive to isolate and initially characterize phages from a variety of environmental sources; thus, phages are powerful teaching tools for guiding both beginning and advanced students into understanding complex biological systems and their interactions, and they provide many fertile areas for collaborations that may result in exciting and potentially very important practical applications. For example, a joint project between high schools and a leading phage lab that added greatly to our understanding of mycobacterial phages was recently featured on the cover of Cell (Pedulla et al., 2003). We hope that this book will help scientists from a variety of backgrounds to better understand the history and excitement of phage research, access the prodigious literature in the field, and explore new applications of phages-the “good viruses” (Radetsky, 1996) that are the most abundant living entities on Earth.