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Actually a monograph within a multiauthored textbook, this finely produced volume offers the depth that is expected from 38 chapters written by 49 acknowledged authorities on areas delimited by their expertise. At the same time, it provides the integration and consistency of the running editorial comments appended to each chapter. The latter more than adequately compensate for the heterogeneity of the general text with high-quality discussions correlating obstetric and surgical viewpoints and resolving many controversial issues. In several places the editors have effectively supplemented, modified, redirected emphasis, and even refuted material covered in the foregoing chapters in a most direct and often intrepid manner. This accrues to the benefit of the reader who, as a consequence, is afforded a solidly conservative and reasonably up-to-date viewpoint that will in general be usefully applied to his practice. This praise for the editorial notes is not meant to imply denigration of the rest