ABSTRACT
In the Public Broadcasting television series CONNECTIONS, historian James Burke explains how seemingly isolated and disparate events in the chronicles of man are actually connected. One episode, for example, relates how England became master of the seas and merchant of the world. Colonies were acquired, they bought England's textiles, this paid for more ships, which then established more colonies, and so on. A similar chain of events precedes and follows the discoveries about our white blood cells and their peculiar immunity-related surface molecules. If made into a television special, the trail from mysterious blood transfusion reactions, to heart transplants, to daring research, to the rescue of a celebrated operatic tenor, would provide a story as astonishing as anything seen on CONNECTIONS.
