Let me start by saying that this is the fourth edition of the book previously called "Handbook of Health Physics and Radiological Health". Why they took the "Handbook of" part out of the title is beyond me - those were the two most important words. This is not a textbook, it's a reference book. There's no prose. It's not meant to be read from cover to cover. I actually know someone who bought this thinking it was a new textbook she could use to teach an introductory university course in health physics. The Cember and Gollnick textbooks are fine, but have their issues... though that's a topic for another review.
In any case, just like the previous versions, the sheer volume of information in this book is astounding. Some of it is freely available in other references, but the convenience of having it all in one place is worth the purchase price. Instead of wondering if the x-ray shielding transmission graph you're looking for is in NCRP 49 or NCRP 147, just look it up in here.
There are a few changes from the third edition, my copy of which I vigilantly guarded after it went out of print and it started going for hundreds of dollars on eBay. The buildup factor data are updated. ICRP 72 committed effective dose coefficients are included as a function of age. There's some cancer risk data from BEIR VI and VII. There is information on concentration factors for marine and freshwater organiasms from NRC Reg Guide 1.109 (1997). There's a table about survey meters. Most helpfully, every other row in each table is shaded, making them a lot easier to read. It's a simple change, but one I definitely appreciated. They used a font that seems a bit more readable now too.
The publisher has also included online access to the entire book. I've tried it and it works reasonably well. You have to be connected to their website and use their special in-browser reader program, so you can't download a copy for a tablet for offline reference, unfortunately. Still, as long as you have an internet connection, you can have the book's information at your disposal without having to actually lug it around. Plus, the online version is searchable, which makes it even more useful than the book itself. For me, that's what made this edition worth buying even though I had a previous one.
Back when I was a nuclear engineering undergraduate, my health physics professor made a previous edition of this book required, and we all grumbled because it was expensive. In retrospect, though, it's been the most useful book I've ever owned, and I'm glad it's in my library. I recommend this to all health physicists, and anyone else for whom radiation safety and/or dosimetry is an important part of their job.
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