This is a meetings book (“songs from the show”) containing 24 contributions in just over 260 pages on the state of the art in pancreatic disease, as of September 1998. It is a virtual textbook with eight chapters on acute pancreatitis, eight on chronic pancreatitis, three on cystic fibrosis, four on cancer, and one on epidemiology (“lessons from”). The chapter titles are intriguing, focusing on biological …