The Liver: Biology and Pathobiology

The recent proliferation of excellent books devoted to liver disease made us approach the release of another long (897 pages), expensive ($95) textbook with a certain amount of skepticism. This book is not, however, another catechism of clinical liver disease, but an effort to encapsulate knowledge in the expanding field of hepatobiology. The editors are attempting a comprehensive exposition of the "concepts and advances of fundamental biology regarding the structure of cells, how they communicate with each other, how they are assembled and undergo differential turnover... [and] how they perform their multiple functions under physiologic and pathologic stress." Their book "is one step in an effort to bridge the ever increasing gap between basic biology and medicine." The editors have obviously accomplished what they set out to do. They have produced a definitive text on the biology and pathobiology of the liver.

To accomplish their task, Arias et al have