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by John Keesey, MD, $49.95, 113 pp, Los Angelas, Calif, Myasthenia Gravis Foundation of America, 2002.

Arch Neurol. 2003;60:1487-1488.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

Keesey has compiled the seminal events in the history of what is perhaps the best understood autoimmune disorder. He does so with reproductions of illustrations from the seminal publications that advanced the understanding of myasthenia gravis, neuromuscular transmission, and the disorder's autoimmune pathogenesis. Brief discussions put these discoveries into historical context. The visual presentation is particularly striking, which has led other reviewers of the text to describe it as a "coffee-table" book. A personal touch is added by including photographs of the physicians and scientists. I found particularly enjoyable the photographs of Daniel Drachman (standing with a statue of a human-sized cobra) (page 67) and John Newsom-Davis (page 71), demonstrating that they have also discovered antiaging factors in their respective Baltimore and Oxford laboratories.

Would a non-"myasthenologist" be interested in this book? My biased answer is "yes," and I would argue that every neurology department library should have this book. . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Henry J. Kaminski, MD
Cleveland, Ohio