Really Essential Medical Immunology

I use this book for first-year pharmacy students, 50% of whom have only associate's degrees and no prior exposure to genetics or molecular biology. The strengths of the book are its brevity, medical orientation (hence the title) and organization. The sequence of presentation seems to make more sense to me than other books I have examined. Kuby Immunology, for example, has far better figures and vastly more detail, especially in molecular biology and signal transduction. There is also a great deal of experimental methodology presented. But the latter features would certainly overwhelm my audience. Also, Kuby shows some peculiarities in the sequence of presentation that add to and complicate the inherent nonlinearity of the whole immunology 'story' that you want to tell students. Much the same thing can be said about Janeway, a book that seems clearly aimed at a postgraduate audience. A real downside of Roitt is mediocre figures, many of which are not even included on the Roitt web site. Kuby has all of its figures unreservedly available on the web. For my particular audience and application, Roitt is the best choice.