Madness and Social Representations. Living with the Mad in One French Community

and helpfully illustrated, this volume provides an introductory overview of the thymus at a single short reading. The immunological biases of the authors, however, pervade the text. Of the book's six chapters, Ritter and Crispe devote only one to a truly developmental biological discussion. The remaining chapters focus on T-cell ontogeny, from the viewpoints of "Thymocyte populations and dynamics," "The T cell repertoire," and "The thymic microenvironment." Even in the initial introductory chapter, Ritter and Crispe already begin to discuss the mechanisms of major histocompatability (MHC)-mediated T-cell restriction, and, in a final chapter on "unresolved issues," they focus on purely immunological problems, such as the regulation of the T-cell receptor. If they mention non-thymocyte cells or thymic morphology, they consider these aspects only in terms of contributing to T-cell development. Although the authors appropriately pay much attention to T-cell paradigms, which have provided substantial impetus to thymic research, they unfortunately dismiss other areas of interest. In addition, Ritter and Crispe's discussions offer little critical insight into their subject. Even though some sections describe detailed experiments and developmental models, the text remains curiously distant, never engaging the material. For instance, during a discussion of double-negative thymocytes, they address previous conflicting findings regarding the cell surface expression of the IL-2 receptor peptide p55, but do not mention more than these unexplained experimental observations. Rather than try to make sense of these confusing findings, they merely write, "The function of IL-2R p55 on these cells is not understood." Apparently, the book's breadth has compromised its detail to the unfortunate extent that otherwise clearly written discussions simply summarize previous experiments, conflicting or not. Consequently, The Thymus may disappoint readers who seek a more thoughtful, critical review of thymus knowledge. Although it provides a straightforward introduction to immunologic aspects of the thymus, the book stops short of a broader discussion of the development, characteristics, and functions of non-immune thymic cells. For the reader interested in general biology, this volume limits its discussion too narrowly, and, for the immunologist, it spreads its albeit timely topic too thinly. Ritter and Crispe's book represents an admirable attempt to summarize the vast, confusing knowledge of the thymus, and the book's deficiencies perhaps simply reflect the difficulty of the subject. Denise Jodelet's Madness and Social Representations comprises the final edition in the University of California Press' five-volume series "Medicine and Society," edited by Andrew Scull. Designed to "examine the development …