I'll provide a quick summary:
Robbins Review of Pathology: 1st edition vs. 2nd edition:
I own the first edition, and I have borrowed the second edition and done questions from it. I have done many of the questions in the first edition as well. Overall, either book is an excellent way to review/assess your knowledge. The questions they ask are more penetrating than Qbank, and are clinically oriented. They are often 2nd order questions, and about every third question requires the interpretation of a gross or histological specimen as part of the question stem. The explanation of answers (both correct and incorrect) is suberb and concise.
The second edition of this book goes above and beyond the first edition in several ways, however I would not recommend buying the new one if you already started on the old. Most of the questions are identical, perhaps 1/5th to 1/6 of the content is new, depending on the section. The second edition is an improvement insofar that more answer choices are offered, (a-f, a-g, etc), and the question stems tend to be somewhat longer. The explanations also appeared to be longer, although this is probably simply because there were more incorrect answers to explain. The overall number of questions is mostly unaltered; however the new book includes a "total test" at the end which tests your knowledge of all subject areas.
Robbins Big Pathology:
I like the new book better - although it is slightly larger, I think that there are more diagrams in the this book, and it is slightly more molecularly-focused. The color-coding of chapters is also helpful. If your school subscribes to MD Consult, you may access the new edition online, although it is not as pleasant as reading the real textbook.
