Just for once, this is a pocket book that might just fit into one's jacket. It is indeed a handy reference guide, following the format of the previously reviewed Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery: Clinical Reference Guide (Pasha and Golub). The multi-author (a who's who of US neurotology and skull base surgery) text provides 55 chapters, ranging from the first, the history of this specialty, to the last one, intriguingly entitled ‘On the Horizon’.

The text is set out in bullet points and it is obviously intended for revision before examinations of factual knowledge. It is ideally suited to those who have already read widely, and is designed to be ‘dipped into’, rather than read cover to cover. Certainly that is what I did, and it did strike me how useful this could also be when suddenly asked to lecture with great authority on any otological subject about which one is profoundly ignorant.

It is particularly well updated. I had not expected the four chapters on hearing rehabilitation to be so interesting. I learnt much about currently marketed devices and their individual characteristics. I suspect that, like many a surgeon, I tend to see this topic as requiring completion of a request form and then leave it to the experts! There are very few illustrations or diagrams, and the only computed tomography scans I could find (on intracranial complications of mastoiditis) are unconvincing as they are very faint. This does not detract from what is a very useful reference guide, one which represents good value and will surely appeal to those in the last weeks before that paper or viva voce.