This compact reference book, part of the Oxford Care Manual range, can fit into your pocket despite its 400 pages. It aims to provide a practical guide for health and social care staff, in a clear, short summary style and it is largely successful in this aim. It is impressive that, despite its primary role as a reference work, the work can usefully and coherently be read from beginning to end.

The book comprises 18 chapters each starting with a short contents list. The chapters include helpful tips mostly, but not exclusively, in a bullet point style and there are sometimes case vignettes to illustrate points. Some chapters provide useful pointers to further sources of information (such as a link to a checklist form to record the key points to consider in a review of the use of covert medication). The book also has eight colour plates which generally illustrate some of the histological changes that occur in dementia. These coloured pictures are then repeated in black and white and described in more details in a later chapter. The book comprehensively covers the clinical aspects, describing how dementia can present and how it is to be assessed, along with a chapter covering delirium including such useful management tips as “Keep Your Nerve” (somewhat reminiscent of the motto “Don't Panic” famously emblazoned on the front of the ‘Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy’) and further on in the list “Don't Make the Wrong Plans Too Soon”. These are both excellent but rarely expressed pieces of advice.

The chapter on care gives useful and practical tips in dealing with common issues that arise for care staff when meeting reluctance to engage in activities of daily living.

The manual acknowledges that dementia occurs in various settings and divides up the advice depending on the setting, e.g. the community, the hospital and care homes. Unfortunately whilst the advice is comprehensive, the advice is not necessarily in the chapter where you might expect to find it. No doubt this was to avoid repetition, but this can make the volume slightly less useful as a reference work – although this point is much mitigated by a good index. A useful chapter on palliative care and physical problems that arise in dementia was well informed and had a multi-disciplinary perspective. The latter part of the book considers legal issues, decision- making, measurement scales and particular issues arising with different ethnic groups. Finally (and in a way I would have preferred this at the beginning) the book ends with chapters on the biological aspects, prognosis and prevention of dementia and on the rarer causes of dementia.

Whilst this is a very helpful book there were some small omissions. First, the MMSE (Mini-mental Sate Examination) is mentioned but there is no advice on how to score – often a difficult task for those unfamiliar with it. Also there is not enough, in my view, about the presentation of depression in dementia – a condition often missed by care staff. The idea of the book however is excellent and it has a lot to commend it. I would hope that it would be used by junior doctors on the ward but if this is the intended use for the book a more robust outer cover, similar to the ones in the Oxford Handbook series, might be useful.