joined the academic community after a career in private practice, the classroom was an alien place to me. I puzzled over the fact that the students I taught, who were of the very highest quality, still had trouble grasping the topics. I began to pay more critical attention to the textbooks I had selected for them, and I quickly learned the student perspective of most pathology texts: they are difficult to read. Most pathology books are compilations written by multiple authors, each with a certain writing style and with differing views about the relative importance of things. The style is generally stilted and formal—the text doesn’t flow, and the reading is bare.
