Only once in a great while does a book come along that really does the job in addressing a major medical issue. When this happens, all can be joyful – and also grateful. Stewart Truswell has provided just such a volume about a large, labyrinthine subject: the causal inter-relations of diet, blood lipids, atherosclerosis, and coronary heart disease, the “diet-heart hypothesis.” Opening with an accurate and expeditious tour of the early history – the Russian experimental feeding of human diets to rabbits and the crucial recognition of clinical coronary syndromes – the bulk of the book is devoted to description and analysis of the complex permutations of the diet-lipid-disease relationships. Readers will find all their favorite dietary puzzlements dealt with, from longchain fatty acids in oily fishes to cholesterol-elevating cafestol in Norwegian boiled coffee. As for alcohol, the absence of even a mention of resveratrol suggests that Truswell must agree with the quotation he cites from Archie Cochrane: “If wine is ever found to contain a constituent protective against CHD then we consider it almost a sacrilege that this constituent should be isolated. The medicine is already in highly palatable form . . ..”