The sixth edition of Russell and Rubinstein's Pathology of Tumours of The Nervous System has appeared in 1998, 39 years after the first edition. For the first time it is divided into two volumes, which together contain nearly 1400 pages. It is now edited by three North American pathologists who have assembled a team of 30 authors, most of them also from North America but with a few from elsewhere. By contrast with the highly individual stamp imparted by Lucien Rubinstein on the previous few editions, we now have a book in which most of the 23 chapters are multiauthored. The result is a book that bears virtually no resemblance to its preceding editions …