The author is the editor of Modern Hospital, and the book consists mainly of editorials, essays, and articles written over a period of five or six years for that magazine. Also included are speeches made over the same period of time at meetings of hospital administrators and trustees, physicians, nurses, government officials, and other miscellaneous groups. The "third world of medicine" is the complex of hospitals, prepayment and insurance plans, union-and-management and doctor-sponsored group practices, government health programs, and regional planning agencies. The book attempts to evaluate the impact made by this complex on the total medical care system in the country. It is inevitable that a compendium of short essays is somewhat disjointed and uneven in quality. Too often the coverage of a particular subject is skimpy and superficial, and there is a fair amount of repetition which detracts from the quality of the book.
An additional criticism, that