This book has been one of the bibles of neuro-oncology since the publication of its first edition in 1959. The fifth edition, published in 1989, was a tour de force for Lucien Rubinstein, who almost single-handedly produced a single volume of over 1000 pages that was a central repository of information about nervous system neoplasms. With Professor Rubinstein's untimely death in 1990, one feared that the end of this core text had arrived.
Fortunately, Darell Bigner, with his coeditors, Roger McLendon and Janet Bruner, and with the blessing of Mary Herman, undertook the formidable task of producing another edition. Although the tradition of single authorship (or double authorship, while Dorothy Russell was alive) ends with the sixth edition, the scholarly approach, the encyclopedic compilation of information, and the high-quality publication standards have survived. The sixth edition will have the same stature as the earlier editions and will continue to be consulted regularly by anyone interested in the biology of these tumors.