The continued need for scientific monographs: an appreciation of John Rothwell’s “Control of human voluntary movement”

Here I write a personal assessment of Professor John Rothwell’s seminal book, “Control of Human Voluntary Movement”. I focus on the second edition published in 1994, reflecting on its importance over the last 25 years and explaining why it remains highly relevant for the motor control field to this day. It is to be hoped that a third edition will be written that updates the physiology and unifies it with computational motor control. The book attests to the continuing importance of monographs in science, as they uniquely allow for long-form narrative and coherent synthesis.