THIS book is concerned with the inheritance of various diseases of bone, muscle, joints, nervous system and connective tissues. Most of the text is devoted to bone disorders, localized abnormalities of the limbs and syndromes involving the skeleton. The style is clear with a short section for each disease which includes a brief clinical description, the genetic information and the appropriate references at the end. I t is not a textbook of diagnosis. There are no illustrations and only a few tables which deal with the analysis of genetic data. It is a reference book for those who, having diagnosed a particular disease, wish to know about the mode of inheritance. So much is acknowledged by the authors in their preface so the absence of clinical illustrations is not surprising. However, some comparative tables would have been useful for highlighting important clinical or genetic differences between rather similar diseases. This book will be most useful to clinical geneticists, orthopaedic surgeons, paediatricians and physicians interested in bone disease. There is not sufficient in it about joints to interest the rheumatologist and the genetics of connective tissue disorders is covered by McKusick in his very comprehensive monograph on that subject. Neurologists and neurosurgeons may prefer the earlier Oxford monograph which deals entirely with the inherited diseases of nerve and muscle. It is unlikely that a general surgeon would refer to it very often, but i t will be a quick, easy and authoritative reference book for those with special interests in bone disorders and skeletal malformations.