While the early edition was truly remarkable, the two-volume, second edition of 1679 pages of expanded size represents an effort reminiscent of Polyak's 1390-page tome ...The basic organization and many features of the first edition are carried over to the second, but this is bigger and better in every way. Most impressive, the second edition is profusely illustrated with drawings, photographs of investigators, and especially, photomicrographs of brain sections through the thalamus. The photomicrographs are not just of a brain section here and there, but of series of sections from the same cases, and not just from the laboratory species that we can view in the many stereotaxic atlases that are now available, but also of species such as tree shrews, galagos and the egg-laying monotremes.