Edited by H O Adami, D Hunter, D Trichopoulos. Oxford University Press, 2002. Vol 33 in the Series “Monographs in Epidemiology and Biostatistics”. (Pp 599; £50, €75). ISBN 0-19-510969-4.

Multiauthored books often look like an incongruous pastiche and taste like an inadroitly cooked panaché de légumes. Not this one: the editors visibly put a lot of effort to achieve a uniform structure and style. Such coherence is particularly welcome in a textbook; otherwise, the main purpose of such book is defeated when its covers just bind a heterogeneous assortment of reviews. While written by an additional 21 contributors—mostly from Boston, Stockholm, and Athens—the fact that at least one of …