Ashley Grossman; ed. 1063 pages. Oxford: Blackwell; 1992. $214.95.

In recent years, many textbooks on endocrinology have been published. Several of these are complete and useful. The editors of this text have attempted to carve a niche in the purely clinical area. To the extent that few strictly animal experimental results are included, the book is successful. It is a multiauthor text written primarily by authorities from the United Kingdom with a smattering of contributions from other European countries, Australia, and the United States.

The editor has done a good job in standardizing how the various disease entities are presented. Typically, each chapter includes a section on epidemiology, clinical signs and symptoms, pathophysiology, laboratory and radiologic diagnosis, natural course of the disease, medical or surgical therapy, comments on how to select the best test, and a selected set of references. Polymerase chain reaction technology, an exciting, relatively new area of great potential benefit to endocrinologists, is not mentioned. A Table of normal values is also missing. On the other hand, a fascinating chapter entitled "Notes on the History of Endocrinology" brings an entirely fitting and enjoyable ending to the work.

The text is introduced with some basic principles of molecular biology that are useful to endocrinologists. Basic genetic principles, methods of investigation, hormone receptors, and intracellular signalling are reviewed. The first chapters are basic and not clinically oriented. However, the entire purview of endocrinology is later covered in a useful and detailed fashion.

The flavor of the book is slightly but noticeably different from most American texts. In several ways, these differences fulfill an unmet need. The sections on epidemiology allow the reader to understand how likely the disease is to occur in her or his practice. Endocrinology depends on the laboratory rather more than some other specialties do. Illustrating this point is the authors' emphasis on the influence of the likelihood of disease on the probability of false-positive and false-negative laboratory results. The text is broad in its coverage and includes the unusual topics pediatric and gynecological endocrinology. These additions make the text more useful to the general specialties such as family medicine. I would quibble somewhat with the section on primary aldosteronism. In addition, the reference to our group's paper is incorrect. We did speculate that the prevalence of normokalemic primary aldosteronism might be as high as 20%, but the date cited is 6 years too late and the author list is mostly incorrect.