Comprehensive Respiratory Medicine

Richard Albert, Stephen Spiro, James Jett

Mosby, £99.95, pp 800

ISBN 0 7234 3118 3

Rating:

If you enjoy reading, then textbooks are companions, not to be discarded lightly. New editions may be unwelcome, like friends' new wives or husbands, though adaptation is easy when the second version is much better than the first. A new arrival is a different matter—usually a source of pleasure and readily assimilated if it has anything to offer. This is surprising: it is a truth universally acknowledged that the textbook is an antediluvian method of storing information that will be extinguished any day by hordes …