This book is the product of 25 years’ work, during which human embryos from 4 to 9 weeks post-fertilization were collected and prepared for scanning electron microscopy. Many of the embryos were dissected before drying to reveal internal views of each organ system. Some of the illustrations are stunningly beautiful and I hope that the author and publisher will allow the book to be used as a source of examples of human, rather than rodent, material that can be shown alongside sections and diagrams in future editions of the human embryology textbooks in current use. It is a great pity that no embryos younger than 4 weeks are included. These are only rarely available but some should have come the author’s way during the course of 25 years. Anyone with a thorough knowledge of human developmental anatomy will learn nothing new from this book; indeed, the author states that ‘To instruct or teach the readers is not the aim of this atlas, rather it simply offers them an opportunity to develop a more precise conception of the anatomy of the human embryo through the power of their own observation’. How well does the book fulfil this aim? Sadly, there are many lost opportunities in the way that the material has been presented. To have collected human embryos for such a long time, but to have used them exclusively for SEM, means that they can only show surfaces, internal as well as external and some cut, but nevertheless only surfaces. Surely some of the embryos could have been used for whole-mount staining techniques that show a single tissue type within a near-transparent embryo, e.g. to show cartilage alongside the developing limb SEM illustrations or nerve alongside the dissections showing the vagal nerve and spinal nerve roots? Even to have photographed the embryos before fixation, using a dissecting microscope system with transmitted light, would have enabled some structural detail to have been added alongside the solidity of the SEMs. There is also a problem with the vague way in which the age of the material has been categorized. The author states in his introduction that the reason he has not used the O’Rahilly and Muller modification of the Streeter staging system is that there are only 23 stages for the first eight embryonic weeks. The decision to use weeks, of which there are only five in the 4- to 8-week period that covers most of the specimens, seems perverse. The two systems are not mutually exclusive and both could have been used; this would have enabled cross-referencing with other books so that embryo sections could have been studied alongside the SEMs. The labelling is also somewhat idiosyncratic: at week 4 the yolk sac is labelled ‘umbilical vesicle’ and the tail bud ‘sacral/coccygeal region’; at week 5 the lens pit is labelled ‘eye’. At weeks 5–6 the auricular hillocks, clearly visible on arches 1 and 2 in both the external whole embryo views and the pharyngeal arch chapter, are unlabelled; even more curiously, they are not labelled or referred to in the brief text accompanying the beautifully illustrated chapter showing development of the external ear. The external genitalia (separated by 262 pages from the section on the urogenital system) are one of the most suitable parts of the embryo for SEM but the information provided in the introductory text is so meagre that it leaves the readers to work out for themselves which of the week 7 illustrations are male and which are female (the amount of growth within a week means that this is not necessarily obvious). The amount of unused space on each double-page spread cries out to be used for a two-column male–female comparison for the week 7–9 specimens. O’Rahilly and Muller’s Human Embryology and Teratology, the 3rd edition of which was published in 2007, includes several human embryo SEMs, mainly by K.V. Hinrichsen (1990). Hinrichsen’s own book, Human-Embryologie (sadly not translated into English) also contains many human SEMs, including some by Gerd Steding himself. In both of these books, the SEMs are integral to the text, along with sections, diagrams, etc. Alone, as in this atlas, SEMs are much less informative. The author’s stated aim not to ‘instruct or teach’ has, I feel, been taken too far – even the most experienced embryologist needs more information than is offered. Without sufficient explanation, the undeniable beauty of the images reduces the embryos to works of art.