Histology for Pathologists

Several years ago, as editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Surgical Pathology , Dr Sternberg inaugurated a series of articles under the same heading as his book's title, Histology for Pathologists . These articles have now been considerably augmented and incorporated into this large, almost 1000-page, comprehensive text, whose 80 authors comprise an international cast of experts. Inevitably, the chapters vary in their quality, to an extent that reflects either inadequate editorial surveillance or adherence to a very tight deadline. I would assume that the instruction to contributors was to write on pure and applied histology, with the level of detail required by a practicing pathologist. As Dr Sternberg mentions in his preface, there are many histology books in existence, but none contains the detail and variations from normal that form a baseline for estimating the presence of disease. The papers originally published in the American Journal of Surgical Pathology are strictly