Debra Jan Bibel;
Science Tech Publishers;
Madison, Wisc., and
Springer-Verlag, London;
330 pages; $35
“When a science is making rapid and giant strides forward, as has been the case in immunology these past 25 years, there is little time to reminisce,”writes immunologist Arthur Silverstein in the introduction to this book. He laments that “most of [the young immunologists act (and write the introductions to their scientific papers) as though the entire history of the field were completely contained in the last five years’ issues of the principal journals.” To remedy this, Debra Jan Bibel has selected 76 excerpts from what she considers breakthrough papers ranging from 1798 (Jenner) to 1975 (Kiessling et al. and Kohler and Milstein). Bibel provides an introduction to each paper describing its context, and she includes extensive references. The author is trained as an immunologist herself. She studies the microbial ecology of human skin at the ...
