The current volume of this popular series continues to be the information bargain of the year. Nowhere else can the pediatrician find so many abstracts of the previous year's pediatric literature so expertly selected and so well written. Moreover, many of these abstracts are followed by invited—or the editor's own—comments Some serve to interpret; others, to dispute: some to confirm, and still others to refute! These comments alone make the book mandatory reading.
A number of quips provide zest and humor for the reader. For example, in pointing to the significance of a single umbilical artery, the editor stresses that "the obstetrician will have to learn not to be an old 'shut-mouth.'" Is the message clear? Or, in speaking of chromosome terminology, he adds, "The blood coagulationists now speak in a strange tongue that requires interpreters; cardiologists frequently slip into their peculiar mumbojumbo; the virologists will soon be speaking only