The authors set out with very laudable intentions. They wanted to get the “maximum value out of both professional time and expensive testing modalities”. I therefore picked up this book with great expectations—the prospect of learning a better and more memorable way of dealing with neurological cases in the emergency department.

The chapter headings (14 in number) seemed to identify the key points I needed to know and the size of the book (346 pages) indicated that it was possible to read.

Unfortunately things did not start well. The initial chapter on basic neuroanatomy mainly used diagrams from other books. The end result was areas of confusion where the text did not entirely marry up with the diagrams. The second chapter dealing with evaluating the neurological complaint was better and had some useful tips. However the format provided a clue as to how the rest of the book was to take shape—mainly text and lists.

The content of this book was reasonably up to date and if you like learning neurology by reading text and memorising lists then this is the book for you. Personally I would not buy it. I felt it was a rehash of a standard neurology textbook and missed a golden opportunity of being a comprehensible text on emergency neurology, written by emergency practitioners for emergency practitioners.