The author’s goals are two-fold: teach the basics of X‑ray crystallography and provide a case study for beginning research scientists about how science actually works. Quoting from the introductory chapter,

Too many textbooks hand you canned information, with instructions to open the can and swallow the contents whole … This book is different; you will read the actual words of the people who were working on major problems at the time. You will see when they had flashes of genius, and when they missed the point entirely … Hopefully you will come to think of them as real people, who struggled just as hard for their achievements as you will have to do for your own.

The text was developed from a graduate reading–discussion course on macromolecular structure determination at UCLA and as such is probably best suited for use in similar courses. Yet, the book assumes no more background than an introductory biochemistry course. Consequently, this book could also be employed as a primary or secondary text in a senior-level undergraduate course on molecular structure determination. It is also highly recommended reading for any instructor of biochemistry, even if the details of structure determination have not been a major interest—the story is just too interesting and too well told to miss.

The text comprises nine chapters, but the core content resides in Chapters 2–7 where the reproduced papers are found. Dickerson begins each chapter with a 6–16 page preface that provides the scientific background and historical context necessary to understand the papers that follow. The preface also includes additional references for related readings that are not reproduced in the book and ends with a set of study questions (answered at the end of the book) meant to probe understanding of the chapter preface and the following papers. The story begins in 1934 with one of the first X-ray fiber diffraction studies of protein samples, specifically keratins and silk (Chapter 2). From this would come the first accurately described protein secondary structure, the β-sheet. Controversy surrounds the interpretation of some of the diffraction patterns reported in the initial work, and this controversy and its 1951 solution—the α-helix—are captured in Chapters 3 and 4. These chapters also develop the emerging English–American, Cambridge–Cal Tech rivalry that helped propel the field forward. In the context of solving DNA’s double helical structure, Chapter 5 introduces in pictorial form (“crystallography without mathematics”) the basis for diffraction patterns and the idea of reciprocal space and Fourier transforms. Finally, Chapters 6 and 7 conclude the story, for the most part, with a more detailed discussion of protein structure determination (but still without rigorous math), introducing the phase problem and its solution using multiple isomorphous replacement. Here the 1960 reports of the first complete protein crystal structures, those of myoglobin and hemoglobin, are presented.

The author, Richard Dickerson, worked on the myoglobin structure as a post-doc in John Kendrew’s lab at Cambridge in 1959; hence he really was “Present at the Flood” as the book’s title alludes. As one of the players in the development of the field, Dickerson knew many of the individuals involved in this story (including the field’s preeminent scientific illustrator, Irving Geis), most of whom have since passed away. Chapter 9 (Epilogue) and Appendices I and III are thoughtful memorials to them.

In sum, this book is a very valuable addition to the science literature both as a text and a history of the field of structural molecular biology. Readers with no more than an introductory biochemistry background should come away with a good appreciation of the field’s development and a beginning knowledge of the techniques used to solve protein crystal structures. In the best case, readers may even feel that, for a moment, they have lived a part of that history.