This comprehensive textbook is edited by a pioneer in pediatric gastroenterology, Dr Charlotte M. Anderson, currently professor of pediatrics and child health, University of Birmingham, and Dr Valerie Burke, one of her most distinguished students. The editors write with clarity on small-bowel function. Descriptions of normal physiology are lucid and useful. Malabsorptive conditions are separated into those with mucosal abnormality and those without histologic defects. Celiac disease is arbitrarily treated in a separate chapter. Their classification is clear, logical, and easily followed.
One wishes that Dr Anderson and Burke's expertise as authors might have extended into their editing. Surgical aspects with the appropriate clinical discussions have not been included. A separate chapter on radiology provides useful brief general discussions of patient preparation, use of contrast media, normal appearances of certain organs at various ages, etc, but the reader must search for a particular condition in both the appropriate clinical chapter