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The study of epidemic models is one of the central topics of mathematical biology. There has been a great deal of work in the mathematical theory of epidemics. The authors made a contribution to draw together in one volume mathematical theory which, until now, has existed only in a large number of papers scattered among many journals. The book presents the mathematical theory developed to analyze the dynamical behavior of certain types of epidemic models. The main model discussed in this book is the so-called spatial deterministic epidemic in which infected individuals are not allowed to again become susceptible, and the infection is spread by means of contact distributions. The main results obtained cover the existence of traveling wave solutions (Chapter 4), the asymptotic speed of propagation (Chapter 5), and the spatial final size (Chapter 3). A central result for radially symmetric contact distributions is that the speed of propagation is the minimum wave speed. Further results are obtained using a saddle point method (Chapter 7), suggesting that this result also holds for more general situations. Methodology, used to extend the analysis from one-type to multi-type models, is likely to prove useful when analyzing other multi-type systems in mathematical biology. This methodology is applied to two other areas in the monograph, namely epidemics with return to the susceptible state (Chapter 8), and contact branching processes (Chapter 9). This book presents an elegant theory that has been developed over the past quarter century. In the reviewer's opinion, the book is very useful to the researchers and graduate students working in mathematical biology, especially in epidemiology and will be a good source of techniques, results, and questions of interest.