casting void pointers

[Roger A. Hurwitz]

Appendix A, section 6.8, of K&R 2d, states in part,

	"Unlike the pointer-to-pointer conversions discussed in [section]
	A6.6, which generally require an explicit cast, pointers may 
	be assigned to and from	pointers of type *void, and may 
	be compared with them."
	
Does this mean that the explicit cast that one always sees with
malloc() is unnecessary since malloc() returns a void pointer?
For example, why not:

	fooptr = malloc(sizeof(struct foo));
	
instead of:

	fooptr = (struct foo *) malloc(sizeof(struct foo));
	
Even K&R 2d states that an explicit cast should be used with malloc(),
in another part of the book (p. 142), but I am having trouble reconciling
that with the above language.