Jacques Barzun, the noted Columbia University historian of ideas and culture, once described the feeling that some people experience when they come upon a new reference book. He wrote: “Hand over to one of us a new Dictionary, “Companion,” or Guide, and our eyes first light up and then turn dreamy: we have seized the volume and are off, arm in arm with the guide i or companion. …” The book now in your hands made my eyes light up. Thyroid Disorders with Cutaneous Manifestations is that kind of book. Heymann, who has been fascinated by this sometimes controversial subject for decades, has brought not only his own expertise, but that of many experts from the fields of the skin and the thyroid gland. Steven Jay Gould wrote about overlapping and nonoverlapping magisteria—this book demonstrates just how much important overlap there is. But it also covers the basics in such a way that dermatologists can find what they need to know about the thyroid and thyroidologists can find what they need to know about the skin. Thyroid Disorders with Cutaneous Manifestations falls neatly into the tra- tion of medical monographs that become standards. They fulfill the roles of gathering, digesting, and synthesizing current knowledge, and they do so in a way that review articles cannot approach and that the scientific literature is not designed to accomplish.
