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This is a concisely written treatise (just less than 100 pages), which may be rapidly read by the reader, who will then find that he or she is well informed not only on the clinical and treatment aspects of warts, but also on the rapidly burgeoning field of papillomavirus molecular biology. The author takes the reader through ancient Greco-Roman times with fables and wart lexicography, into the initial discoveries of wart etiology in the early 20th century, and then through the development of discoveries leading to the understanding of the remarkable plurality of the papillomaviruses, each virus having an association with a particular type of wart. She describes the potential oncogenesis of some of these viruses, and the cloning techniques that have circumvented the failure of tissue culture systems, allowing enough DNA to be produced for appropriate studies. She discusses clearly the contagion, microscopic features, and immunology of warts, and