Understanding the processes by which we ourselves are born is arguably one of the greatest current challenges in clinical medicine. The prevention of preterm delivery, the cause of 70-80% of neonatal morbidity, has become a key area of research. ‚The Endocrinology of Parturition‘ provides an encyclopedia of human parturition which charts the progress of this goal. * In nineteen chapters of authoritative writing this volume covers a wide range of topics from the comparative endocrinology of mammalian parturition and the socio-economic impact of preterm delivery to the relative merits of current tocolytics. Hormonal actions involved in the process of parturition and the role of different hormones are discussed in detail. Several new approaches like the concept of parturition as a variant of inflammatory response or the role of the wide spectrum of known cytokines are introduced. This timely book in a highly dynamic research area is of special interest to birth-clinical obstetricians, endocrinologists and reproductive biologists as well as general practitioners involved in obstetrics.