This book updates Volume 42 (1998) – also on cotton, in Springer's Agriculture and Forestry Biotechnology series. It draws its inspiration, examples and half its authors from India. And why not? With the explosion of biotech Bt cotton in India since 2002, India now has the world's largest GM cotton area and second largest cotton production (after China) and is the only country to have commercialized GM cottons in hybrids rather than varieties, with major impacts, for good and ill, on breeding requirements. The well-chosen panel of internationally renowned authors give us chapters on cotton's history; breeding systems; genomics; transformation; breeding for fibre and yield enhancement, nematode resistance; the use of single and multiple action abiotic stress genes from antioxidants to ubiquitins and explanations of DNA markers, QTL mapping, genome wide introgression, etc, with excellent and up-to-date references. Almost half the book, though, deals with insect-resistant (Bt) cotton and particularly in the Indian context – its history, efficacy, regulation, economic impact, risk of resistance development, etc. A fascinating story, but the world's other major current GM trait in cotton – herbicide tolerance – (which is not commercialized in India) rates barely a page. This is a readable and thorough guide for those who wish to understand the history, development and future prospects for advanced breeding in cotton globally (and not only of transgenic cotton). It is not a handbook of practical biotechnological techniques. It would, however, have benefitted from much tougher editing, with language, grammar and spelling errors (even in Latin names) on most pages, and multiple repetition of information across chapters.