This book is in many ways a manual for the public health decathlete, althoughthe editors have gone much further by including 15, not 10, items. These items covermany of the contemporary challenges confronting population health. Seven chaptersreview the changing burden of disease and injury, providing many examples ofthe tremendous successes of the public health community. The most celebrated havebeen those in the struggle against communicable disease, with the authors notingachievements in transforming acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) intoa condition that those infected die with rather than from. However, there are others,less well-recognised, such as the 50 % decline in mortality from cardiovasculardisease in North Western Europe in the past four decades. Yet, as the authors of allof these chapters note, progress is not inevitable. Communicable diseases that onceseemed to be coming under control are reappearing, such as tuberculosis, but nowin a much more alarming drug-resistant form. Indeed, antimicrobial resistance isnow recognised as a global threat, potentially posing an existential threat to humanity,just like climate change. Failure by governments to act against the vectors ofnon-communicable disease, and especially the major corporations that profit fromsales of unhealthy products, for example by placing considerations of health abovethose of trade liberalisation, has permitted the spread of obesogenic and alcogenicenvironments, with profound consequences for our future health.