The past 25 years have seen the rapid growth of adolescent medicine as a specialized area of medical education. Yet, when interested students, house officers, or practitioners would ask for the one book to buy, they were given several books and monographs to address the spectrum of adolescent medicine concerns. With Comprehensive Adolescent Health Care , by Friedman et al (St Louis, Mo, Quality Medical Publishing Inc, 1992, reviewed in JAMA May 26,1993) or Textbook of Adolescent Medicine , edited by McAnarney, Kreipe, Orr, and Comerci, they may now have that book. In the book under review, the editors have brought together nationally recognized authorities in adolescent health care to produce a meld of clinical and research approaches to adolescent development and the conditions commonly seen during adolescence. Throughout the textbook, there is a strong emphasis on the normality of adolescence, a welcome change from pictures of it as the age of