This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Reply to article  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in this journal  Topic Collections  • Ophthalmology, Other  • Articles for Residents  • Alert me on articles by topic

H. Stanley Thompson, MD; Donald L. Blanchard, MD

Arch Ophthalmol. 2001;119:761-763.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

We set ourselves to this project because it promised to be interesting and enjoyable. It has, in addition, turned out to be intensely instructive for us, and we sense that the job will remain permanently unfinished because we have, finally, had to make some coin-toss decisions about rounding out the collection to exactly 100 titles.

We have been aware from the beginning that the mere act of providing such a list is to ask for dissent and disparagement. To start with, what does "important" mean? Does it just mean popular? Is Duke-Elder on the list just because a lot of copies of his book were sold? It is our hope to call a book important when there seems to be some agreement that the book has made a significant contribution to ophthalmic knowledge or practice. We concede that it often takes time . . . [Full Text of this Article]

From the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, University of Iowa, Iowa City (Dr Thompson), and Oregon Health Sciences University, Portland (Dr Blanchard).