A physician with a broad consultative practice, Dr. Floch combines his clinical experience with a zeal for exploring what has been written by others. Chief of Medicine at the Norwalk Hospital for the past decade and still an active consult ing gastroenterologist, Dr. Floch has given us a volume which every clinician dealing with digestive disorders will want to have at his or her desk. Not everyone will agree with all that Dr. Floch has prescribed in the way of detailed dietary help for the common afflictions of mankind''s gut, but in this book the reader can get at the background of the controversy. All clinicians have had problems in assessing when to use elemental diets, how to apply advances in peripheral and intravenous alimentation, and in many other matters which are discussed in detail in this fine volume. Dr. Floch displays what is available in dietary therapy, evaluates the nutritional inadequacies surrounding most diges tive disturbances, and calmly evaluates competing claims. He gives a brief overview of gastrointestinal physiology pertaining to an understanding of nutri tional complications as well as the genesis of the major gastrointestinal dis orders. In this sense his book can be read as a mini-physiological text. I am delighted to have this book in our gastrointestinal series and I hope that the reader will profit from it as much as I have.