When I entered the field of allergy in the early 1970s, the standard
textbook was a few hundred pages, and the specialty was so compact that
texts were often authored entirely by a single individual and were never
larger than one volume. Compare this with Allergy Frontiers:
Epigenetics, Allergens, and Risk Factors, the present s- volume text
with well over 150 contributors from throughout the world. This book
captures the explosive growth of our specialty since the single-author
textbooks referred to above. The unprecedented format of this work lies
in its meticulous attention to detail yet comprehensive scope. For
example, great detail is seen in manuscripts dealing with topics such as
"Exosomes, naturally occurring minimal antigen presenting units" and
"Neuropeptide S receptor 1 (NPSR1), an asthma susceptibility gene." The
scope is exemplified by the unique approach to disease entities normally
dealt with in a single chapter in most texts. For example, anaphylaxis,
a topic usually confined to one chapter in most textbooks, is given five
chapters in Allergy Frontiers. This approach allows the text to employ
multiple contributors for a single topic, giving the reader the
advantage of being introduced to more than one vi- point regarding a
single disease.
