Medicine of the Fetus and Mother

Abstract

Maternal-fetal medicine is a maturing specialty—at least books describing the specialty are gaining weight and showing middle-age spread. Medicine of the Fetus and Mother is one weighty tome, eight and a half pounds and 1600 pages. The design, materials, and graphics are excellent. The editors wished to produce a state-of-the-art maternal-fetal medicine reference book. They have very nearly achieved their goal. Many subjects in Medicine of the Fetus and Mother bear the Yale stamp, but viewpoints from multiple American centers and several Canadian and British authors give the book a commendable balance of opinions. The designation of authorship of some chapters indicates contributions by fellows in subspecialty training rather than by their expert mentors. This practice has become perhaps too common in modern medical scientific writing. Certain other chapters reveal the distance of the author from the discipline of obstetrics. For example, in the five pages devoted to neurological disorders