ROBBINS AND COTRAN ATLAS OF PATHOLOGY 1ST EDITION EDWARD C. KLATT Reviewed by Dr. Clair Evans SpR, Dept. of Histopathology, Royal Hallamshire Hospital, Sheffield, on behalf of The Royal College of Pathologists www.rcpath.org, October 2006 This is a new addition to the Pathologic Basis of Disease series of books. With an attractive purple and blue coloured cover and is 529 pages long. The book is divided into 20 chapters that are said to closely follow the second unit of the seventh edition of the big Robbins Pathologic Basis of Disease and the Basic Pathology textbooks.

One may ask why an atlas is needed to compliment such a comprehensive predominantly undergraduate text. The author states in the preface that the majority of students are visual learners and readily take advantage of visual study material this book therefore is said to provide even more examples of disease processes in a visual format. The aim of the book is also to provide a greater clinicopathological correlation of disease processes by including photographs of patients, radiographs and gross anatomical specimens as well as the histology. So, is this book needed or helpful and would I buy a copy? This book definitely complements the Pathologic Basis of Disease series. It provides some useful clinical and radiological images which serve as a good aide memoir when looking at the histology and learning about the disease processes. The Pathological Basis of Disease series of books are regarded by most histopathology trainees to be superior to other general pathology texts for undergraduates and junior histopathology trainees. It is not comprehensive enough to replace a pure histology text. However, withthe current paucipathology undergraduate medical curricula currently in fashion, this would be a good atlas to use with any general pathology textbook.

I would even recommend to those pathologists who still bravely volunteer to give undergraduate tutorials to take this book along with them. I think that books like this definitely have a place in the problem based learning setting.