THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO EYE CARE, EYEGLASSES AND CONTACT LENSES

Yet another eye guide (see Eden & Esterman, above), this tract subscribes to the anti-ophthalmologist anti-drop pro-optometry school. (Ophthalmologists are for diseases and surgery; you have a sight problem.) ""The odds are 99 to I that you need eye care now, or will need it in the future,"" say Zinn and Solomon as openers. From then on, it's what the good optometrist can do for you, why it was nasty of the FDA to allow price advertising for glasses, what programs of exercises or special lenses can accomplish for children, and other notions, including many contradicted by the aforementioned ophthalmologists. There are clearly learned as well as inherent elements in visual perception, anatomical as well as experiential circumstances in seeing. The authors lean heavily toward the we-can-fix-it-with-training-or-glasses approach to visual problems, insisting that reading is artificial, for example, and myopia culturally bound. (All cultures have highly developed, learned pattern recognition, however, whether literate or not.) Withal, there are some good sections in the book--on illusions, on the visual process in the brain, and on topics such as seeing aids for those with low vision that are not treated in the other eye books. And the authors' coverage of their field--the fitting and care of glasses or contacts--is excellent. Dare we say it: had the authors been less my-opic in their view of the profession, less hostile to the medical/surgical practitioners, and more informed in their discussion of perception and development, we would be Mess inclined to take a dim view.