AIDS: Etiology, Diagnosis, Treatment, and Prevention

Deciding which reference book to purchase among the many available on the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) should prompt several questions. What is the book's scope and how does its area of strength match the interest of the reader? How authoritative are the authors and how timely is the information—the latter an especially difficult issue in the rapidly moving AIDS field? Finally, how thoroughly referenced is the work for the reader with a more specific question than can be dealt with in a single-volume reference text?

Clearly, no single book on AIDS will suffice for all applications. In the end, a basic retrovirologist, a clinician, or a public health authority will use other information sources for questions that arise within his or her own field. Yet, this same reader may well use such a reference for help in understanding issues that fall outside a limited area of expertise. For this "crossover"