Proceedings of the First National Symposium on Sickle Cell Disease

profitably for its correlative features. The nature of the subject makes it impossible to scan the book rapidly or to read it through like a novel, but it is nevertheless highly readable throughout. Klein does not hesitate to review critically the data he has assembled, and his detailed salvos at several hypotheses (such as immunological surveillance) make it clear that he is opinionated in the best sense of the word, having appraised his information rather than simply collecting and presenting it. His writing is vigorous and provocative, so that the reader often feels like entering into a dialogue with the author, such as writing a letter beginning, "How dare you assail X's beautiful concepts?" If it is impossible to provide a reasonable summary of discrepant results, Klein does not do so, but where one group of investigators may have used suboptimal techniques, Klein points that out and indicates the results most likely to be accurate. The blandness of books written by a corporation of authors is nowhere in evidence here. In summary, as an investigator in a branch of immunology I now realize to be a close neighbor of immunogenetics, I recommend this book to others in the same position (namely, all other immunologists) and to immunogeneticists, who can, like Klein, help to link their subspecialty to areas now ready to use its information and approaches.