Book Review

  • D M Fletcher,
  • K K Unni &
  • F Mertens
Pathology & Genetics of Tumours of Soft Tissue and Bone, World Health Organization Classification of Tumours, 427 pp, Lyon, International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), 2002 ($75.00).

If you are a member of USCAP or IAP, you could buy this book for $ 50.00 (fifty dollars, to spell it out, in case you thought I made a mistake!). This is a few bucks more than an American pathologist is reimbursed for signing out a case of seborrheic keratosis or basal cell carcinoma. If this is not good enough to entice you to visit the IARC stand during this year's annual meeting and take your own copy home, please keep reading.

This is the fourth volume in the ‘blue books’ series published by the IARC according to a simple formula: find three leaders in the field; have them assemble a team of international experts; ask the experts to write what they know about the specific topics of their expertise; convene a meeting of all parties involved (or at least as many of those who could make it!) to discuss the details for a few days, iron out the most glaring disparities and disagreements, and come up with the best illustrations possible; and then use the IARC Press to produce an attractive book at an affordable price.

As this book shows, the formula worked again, and I am confident that it will work for the future books in the series as well. The coverage is encyclopedic, the text concise but most informative, the color illustrations of high quality. The data used to compile the book are current and reflect the state of affairs in the field of soft tissue and bone tumors anno Domini 2002. I have no significant criticism, but to prove that I have really spent time reading it, I should mention that some photographs ‘could have been better.’ I hope that the editors of future additions to the series will reinforce the zero tolerance policy for substandard photographs implicit in the first three volumes!

This book, to quote from the publicity blurb, was ‘prepared by 147 authors from 28 countries, contains 966 colour photographs, numerous x-rays, computer (CT), magnetic resonance (MR) images, charts, and more than 2,300 references.’ Dollar for dollar, it is the best bargain on the market, and a must-buy for your library. While you are ordering one for yourself, include a few copies for your best residents. Books of this kind are excellent publicity for our specialty; if you need an inexpensive, but nevertheless impressive, gift for your clinical friends, this is a nice way of showing them what pathology can do for them. And do not forget to show the ‘blue book’ to your students to impress upon them how exciting pathology can be, as both a science and a clinical specialty.