Out of the plethora of medical books that materialize each year, perhaps a dozen or so emerge as "best sellers." Some are original texts which present the essence of information about a new disease or discipline or techniques, material that has appeared in the journals during the preceding years. Some are fresh editions of classic tomes, old familiar friends, updated. Alas, the majority are poor to mediocre and should never have been written, much less honored by publication between hard covers.
But the task of sifting and scanning and separating wheat from chaff is amply rewarded by the occasional discovery of that superb text that somehow you had missed previously. Such a book is The Heart edited by Hurst and Logue. This is the second edition of this multiauthored (82) text, and it must be ranked with the modern classics of medicine. One cannot devour a book of 1,615 pages;