Includes bibliographical references (page 317) and index.

Introduction -- Part 1 Meet your immune system. What is the immune system? ; What is there to defend? ; What are your cells? ; The empires and kingdoms of the immune system -- Part 2 Catastrophic damage. Meet your enemies ; The desert kingdom of the skin ; The cut ; The soldiers of the innate immune system: macrophages and neutrophils ; Inflammation: playing with fire ; Naked, blind, and afraid: how do cells know where to go? ; Smelling the building blocks of life ; The invisible killer army: the complement system ; Cell intelligence: the dendritic cell ; Superhighways and megacities ; An aside: The spleen and the tonsils--super-lymph node best friends ; The arrival of the superweapons ; The largest library in the universe ; Cooking tasty receptor recipes ; The murder university of the thymus ; Presenting information on a gold platter: antigen presentation ; Awakening the adaptive immune system: T cells ; Weapon factories and the sniper rifles: B cells and antibodies ; The dance of the T and the B ; Antibodies ; An aside: The four classes of antibodies -- Part 3 Hostile takeover. The swamp kingdom of the mucosa ; The weird and special immune system of your gut ; What is a virus? ; The flu--the "harmless" virus you don't respect enough ; Chemical warfare: interferons, interfere! ; An aside: The difference between the flu and the common cold ; The window into the soul of cells ; The murder specialists--killer T cells ; Natural killers ; How a viral infection is eradicated ; An aside: Why don't we have better medication against viruses? ; Shutting the immune system down ; Immune--how your immune system remembers an enemy forever ; An aside: What doesn't kill you doesn't make you stronger: measles and memory cells ; Vaccines and artificial immunization -- Part 4 Rebellion and civil war. When your immune system is too weak: HIV and AIDS ; When the immune system is too aggressive: allergies ; Parasites and how your immune system might miss them ; Autoimmune disease ; An aside: Anergy ; The hygiene hypothesis and old friends ; How to boost your immune system ; Stress and the immune system ; Cancer and the immune system ; An aside: Smoking and immune system ; The coronavirus pandemic ; A final word.