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This is a useful, if expensive, book that, like its predecessors in the series, brings together much useful information in one slim volume. The 12 sections range from yet another review of the physiology of the gastroesophageal junction, (a topic that must rival in popularity the high fiber diets and reviews of which would benefit from a five-year moratorium) through such less commonly reviewed topics as the use and abuse of laxatives, connective tissue disorders affecting the gastrointestinal tract, and liver disease in infants and children. There is no unifying concept throughout the book, beyond the editor's aim of picking fields of "particular growth" to refresh the "modern gastroenterologist," a tautologous classification that presumably includes the general surgeons who, more and more, are running with the gastroenterologists anyway.
The merit of this book is simply that it brings together in a handily portable volume information that is also available elsewhere,