The idea behind this book is appealing, high-minded, and symbolically attractive—to bring together the work of 21 medical scientists from all over the world who share the convictions that global health is both critically important and critically imperiled and that governments and physicians must quickly learn to transcend geographic and political boundaries or risk losing their patient—the planet. The execution of the idea, unfortunately, falls short of the mark. The book seems somewhat arbitrarily subdivided, for example, and one frequently wonders what contiguous contributions have in common either with each other or with their section heading. A section on ethical issues (eg, research with children and animals and the artificial heart) adds little and seems discordant with the avowed global thrust of the book. Similarly, many of the chapters are overly focused on issues relevant only to the developed nations, while the crisis—as so eloquently described by other authors—lies with