Comprehensive Cardiovascular Medicin‐ Two Volume Set Edited by Eric J. Topol Lippincott‐Raven Publishers, Philadelphia (1998) 3, 376 pages, illustrated, 275. 00 ISBN: 0‐7817‐1596‐2

This new textbook edited by Dr. Eric Topol is a remarkable achievement-an up-to-date comprehensive text at a reasonable price.There are eight sections with 121 chapters by a total of 190 authors mainly from the USA and Europe.The term "comprehensive" is by no means an exaggeration.The eight sections consist of over 3,000 pages, of which "clinical cardiology" constitutes 1,000 pages.This section is devoted to disease description and medical therapy, with surgical and interventional techniques described in Section V.The final two chapters devote over 250 pages to vascular and molecular biology in relation to cardiovascular disease.The introductory chapter on the history of cardiology is welcome but largely overlooks European contributions (e.g., Paul Wood, Russell Brock, John Parkinson, Sven Seldinger, etc.).At the end of each chapter there is a brief "boxed" comment on future developements as seen through the eyes of the writer.For a book of this size references are surprisingly up to date, and include many from 1997.The layout is clear with plenty of line and half-tone diagrams and photographs, although none in color (this might have been useful in the Doppler section).The typeface is pleasing but the font size a trifle small- at 3,