"Carlos Schenck and Mark Mahowald will be remembered years from now for their remarkable contributions to sleep medicine. Rarely have individuals been able to typify a virtually unknown and uncharacterized but common disorder, convincingly understand its pathogenesis and develop an effective treatment. However, over the course of the last quarter of a century, that is precisely what Schenck and Mahowald have done. They have named it REM Sleep Behavior Disorder, beginning in 1986 with the description of their first patient, later realizing that the earlier work of Jouvet and others provided the pathological basis for the disorder and discovering the dramatic effect of clonazepam in its treatment. During that time they have also characterized and named other heretofore

unknown parasomnias including status dissociatus.

This remarkable contribution is captured in a very personal way by Carlos Schenck in his book Paradox Lost. Hundreds of cases of many different types of parasomnias are delineated by documention of actual conversations that took place between physician and patient, with individual chapters devoted to each of the entire compendium of parasomnias. The basic essence of these cases is also summarized by Schenck, and insights are provided that can only come from someone with the breadth, depth and richness of 25 years of experience. This book, written for both the professional and lay audiences, succeeds in being valuable and accessible to both.

It is well worth the read for the experienced sleep clinician who will learn from it, and its straightforward style should also be easily comprehensible to the lay public. To both audiences, and without reservation, I enthusiastically recommend Paradox Lost."

- Arthur S. Waltersab

Center for Sleep Disorders Treatment,
Research and Education, New Jersey Neuroscience
Institute, JFK Medical Center,
Edison, NJ, USA

Department of Neuroscience,
Seton Hall University, School of Graduate Medical
Education, South Orange, NJ, USA

Received and Accepted May 2, 2006