This book is the definitive guide on the subject. It comprehensively covers common polygenic and rare monogenic disorders and emphasizes the new advances which have been made in bone cell biology and in human skeletal disease, particularly as a result of molecular medicine. This accessible and well-illustrated book is written for postgraduates and clinicians who find disorders of the skeleton mysterious, and for whom an understandable explanation has been hard to find. It will be of particular interest to those who look after patients with a wide variety of metabolic bone diseases, including general physicians, rheumatologists, endocrinologists and orthopaedic surgeons, and contains new information of interest to paediatricians and geneticists.