Surgical planning from an extensive literature can sometimes be a painful process. Anything that makes such work easier is welcome. As surgery is often indicated in orthopedic practice (after all, it is called orthopedic surgery), the orthopedist must master the technical details of the craft in order to perform effectively. Will a proper book help? The Gestalt psychologist Fritz Perls warns us, "The map is not the territory." On the other hand, as Osler wisely aphorized, "To practice medicine without books is to sail an uncharted sea." Enter Operative Orthopaedics, edited by Chapman and Madison.
These well-planned, concise, and scholarly volumes serve their purpose. This they do by offering up a soup-to-nuts banquet of orthopedic surgery, from basic surgical principles and techniques through the intricate subtleties of microsurgery. The editors have assembled a team of 128 authors, recognized experts in their orthopedic subspecialties, who describe, in 175 chapters (three volumes,