Book reviewsPerspectives on GENETICS: Anecdotal, historical and critical commentaries ^1987^1998. Edited by James F. Crow andWilliam F. Dove, University of WisconsinPress, Madison, 2000. ISBN 0-299-16604-X, paperback. Pages: xii � 723. PriceUSD19.95

Perspectives. (Concise Oxford Dictionary. De¢nition number 3): A mental view ofthe relative importance of things.

Butler, the philosopher, said that each thing is what it is and not some other thing.This book is a collection of short essays, not other things, providing perspectiveson genetics, the ¢eld of endeavour itself, in the 20th century. The editors of thesecommentaries are a duo of towering ¢gures in contemporary genetics. Their authorswere invited to write short articles for the journal (Genetics); and in each case theyare authoritative persons.

This book is both a phenomenal bargain and an intellectual feast. At ¢rst glance,to some of us, the book may appear uninteresting because many of the articles focuson hindsight and on milestones in the 20th-century journey of genetics. However,history is the echoes of the past that resonate in the present; accordingly, contem-porary geneticists can bene¢t from knowing what came before their own stellar con-tributions were/are being/will be made! This book is a very easy way to discover thepast. Whereas the past was then and this is now and we have too little time for then,not to know how we arrived where we are now is to endanger our future.

Crow and Dove, the perceptive editors, explain the origins of their book. The greatmajority of articles were commissioned originally for the section of the journal(Genetics) designated Perspectives. The initiative was launched at the request ofthe Senior Editor of the day, John Drake. Crow and Dove then took on the assign-ment with delight; they did so in keeping with their own respect for the multipleperspectives that are natural in the discipline of genetics. They believe that ``byreprinting this 12-year series of Perspective Articles, we have made available a `bird'seye' view of the subject of genetics during a time of spectacular advances''. Thisreviewer agrees wholeheartedly.

Here is a partial listing of what a reader will encounter: Crow on Sewall Wrightand Physiological Genetics (page 3); Dove on Paradox Found (page 5) whichincludes Hershey's wonderful comment ``There's nothing like technical progress!Ideas come and go, but technical progress cannot be taken away''; Crow on MotooKimura and Molecular Evolution (page 17), and on The First ChromosomeMap (page 37); Dove on The Year of the Fly (page 40); Crow on The Ultrasel¢shGene (page 43); Diane Paul on HG Muller: Communism and The Cold War (page51); Dan Hartl on Evolving Theories on Enzyme Evolution (page 97); SH Waelsch

J. Inherit. Metab. Dis. 23 (2000) 855^857# SSIEM and Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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^ In praise of Complexity (p. 122); Crow on RA Fisher, a Centennial View (p. 142);Mary Lyon on LC Dunn and Mouse Genetic Mapping (page 161); Horvitz andSulston on Joy of the Worm (p. 176); Brenner, Dove, Herskovitz and Thomason Genes and Development (p. 182); Joshua Lederberg on The Gene as understoodby Muller in 1947 (p. 238); Hartwell on 25 Years of Cell Cycle Genetics (p. 247);Crow on Vavilov ^ A Martyr to Genetic Truth (and a victim of Lysenkoism)(p. 338); Dove on Gene, Polygene and Genome (p. 353); Crow on Francis Galton(p. 357); Lederberg on the anniversary of the paper by Avery, MacLeod andMcCarty (p. 384); Bearn on AE Garrod, The Reluctant Geneticist (p. 395);Keightley on A Metabolic Basis for Dominance and Recessivity (p. 520); andLaxsova on Penrose, a Personal Memoire (p. 693). Selection is unfair; every essayin this book has something relevant to say to me, the eternal student.

The preceding paragraph refers to the Table of Contents. When one consults theSubject Index, other delights are discovered. For example, if you count the numberof entries for particular scientists, one ¢nds a dozen or more entries for each ofBeadle, Delbruck, RA Fisher, Haldane, EB Lewis, Lysenko, TH Morgan,McKlintock, HJ Muller, Sturtevant, and Sewall Wright. There are 11 entries forTheodosius Dobzhansky. Some of the latter refer to his laboratory experiments,but the major locus of interest is on his book Genetics and the Origin of Species,published in 1937 and considered to be one of the ``most in£uential books on evol-ution in the 20th century'' (JR Powell p. 31). Dobzhansky proposed superior ¢tnessin genic heterozygosity and that speciation was caused by variation in genes.The genetic basis of natural selection and the idea that selection acted on phenotypebut the object selected was the gene, would be knowledge awaiting arrival only laterin the century; the early insight is nevertheless remarkable. Meantime, some ofus (myself included) have used Dobzhansky's phrase ``Nothing in biology makessense without evolution'' repeatedly, and how relevant his understanding now isin the era of genomics. Moreover, his phrase translates well, in a modi¢ed form,into medicine: nothing in medicine makes sense without biology. The essays inPerspectives onGenetics highlight those messages again and again. This book furtheropened my mind when I was preparing the Keynote Address for the 8thInnternational Congress on Inborn Errors of Metabolism (Cambridge, England,Sept. 14^17, 2000). The Horowitz essay (on the origins of ``biochemical genetics'')made it clear why Plasterk's comment (``genomes speak biochemistry, notphenotype'') is so relevant; a perspective we must repossess in the post-genomicsera. The essay by Keightley focuses on the great paper by Kacser and Burns(Genetics 97:639^666, 1981) while providing a beautiful summary of £ux controltheory and its renewed relevance in the era of expression genomics. When it is oftendi¤cult to ¢nd the papers that were so important in building our present knowledge,it is a blessing of sorts to have authoritative essays reminding us, in accessible form,about the ideas brought to us by giants in the past. We do stand on their shoulders.This book is a very small investment to take those giant steps onto those shoulders,allowing us to look forward with a better perspective. Recommended.

Charles R. Scriver

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J. Inherit. Metab. Dis. 23 (2000)

Current view of fatty acid oxidation and ketogenesis: From organelles to pointmutations. P.A. Quant, S. Eaton (eds.) Advances in Experimental Medicine &Biology, Volume 466 (1999) Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, New York.

Over recent years, there has been considerable progress in our understanding of fattyacid oxidation and ketogenesis ^ particularly peroxisomal b-oxidation ^ and thereare few up-to-date books on this subject. The current volume is derived fromthe 4th Fatty Acid Oxidation and Ketogenesis Conference, which was held inLondon in April, 1998. The conference attracted representatives from mostEuropean andmany American groups undertaking research in this ¢eld and approxi-mately 70% of the speakers contributed articles to this volume of proceedings.

The book is well organized and most of the articles are interesting and clearlypresented. The book did not appear until 18 months after the conference, partlydue to the merging of 2 publishers. Thus, some of the articles (such as reportsof mutations) are now of limited interest. The reviews and hypothesis papers haveaged less noticeably. Clinical aspects are represented less well than basic biochem-istry ^ there are some papers on diagnosis but few on treatment, partly becausetherapeutic advances have been relatively slow. As a clinician interested in this ¢eld,I am as guilty as anybody for failing to ¢ll this gap.

The papers have, presumably, been written in the light of the discussion at theconference but the editors have not attempted to reproduce this. If you want thediscussion, the editors clearly think you should attend the conferences. The nextconference is dedicated to the memory of Derek Williamson and is to be held underthe auspices of the Biochemical Society in the University of Sussex in December2000. Details are available from Simon Eaton (s.eaton@ich.ucl.ac.uk).

Andrew Morris

Book Reviews 857

J. Inherit. Metab. Dis. 23 (2000)