Sternberg's Diagnostic Surgical Pathology (2 Vol. Set)

Rating:
Summary: Usual excellent surgical pathology reference.
Review: An excellent summary of surgical pathology. Does need to be supplemented with monographs and articles, such as those by Odze, Fenoglio-Preiser, Barnhill, Rosen, Foucar, Harris, Gnepp, Neville, Vigorita, Stocker, Humphrey, Ro, Robboy, Connor, Burger, Ellison, Miettinen, AFIP tumor and non-neoplastic fascicles, Major Problems in Pathology, Atlases in Diagnostic Surgical Pathology, WHO blue books, and all the usual journals. I also recommend Fletcher as an additional source.

Rating:
Summary: Abbreviation overload
Review: Of course Sternberg is one of the leading sources of general surgical pathology information and the book lives up to its reputation with adequate discussions of each topic with relatively good microscopic descriptions and information on special stains (unlike the new Rosai/Ackerman). However,consistently, he gives the name of an entity in one place in the books/volumes and then every where else it is only reffered to by its abbreviation. So now if you don't remember the abbreviation you have to hunt for it ealier in the chapter or in other chapters all together. And of course the abbreviation is not in the glossary nor is there a seperate index of abbreviations. I find that this adds unnecessary distractions and time to what should be smooth studying.