The present monograph is filled with useful information boiled down to concise statements. However, because fact and opinion are freely mixed, discrimination is required. This is not the kind of book from which to begin learning about diseases of the heart. For a senior student, intern, or resident, or for the puzzled clinician, it can serve as a useful checklist when considering the possibilities in a given case— like having a wise friend at the bedside, to provide feedback for one's thinking about a problem.
To keep the book small, the authors have purposely omitted diagrams, pictures, tracings, and the like. For similar reasons there is no bibliography. This is regrettable because the readers for whom this book is intended would want to have the authors' opinions on good references for clinical cardiology, electrocardiography, and special diagnostic techniques and tests. A few well-chosen references reflecting the authors' preferences might well