An unorthodox assessment of the value of ophthalmology texts can be established by counting the number of copies of each text that "vanish" from ophthalmology libraries in teaching institutions. Only the most useful texts disappear with regularity. The early editions of Dr Gass' Stereoscopic Atlas of Macular Diseases vanished from many libraries, as did the first edition of Ultrasound of the Eye and Orbit, published in 1992. With this second edition, Sandy Byrne and Ron Green have clearly improved on what was already the most comprehensive and authoritative reference in this field.