Cranial Base Surgery is a multiauthored textbook with internationally recognised contributors from Europe and the United States of America. The stated aim of the editors is to collate the experience of skull base surgeons to provide an account of the contemporary management of skull base lesions including surgical techniques and outcome data. However, because of the rarity of some of the lesions, the authors admit that long term data on their outcomes are not yet available, which precludes definitive statements about the best management plans.

The book is divided into four sections dealing initially with presentation and diagnosis and sequentially with the surgical approaches, pathological conditions and finally with adjuvant therapy for cranial base tumours.

The section on general considerations concentrates on neuroimaging, interventional neuroradiology, neurophysiological monitoring, and neuroanaesthesia. The chapter on critical surgical anatomy is excellent and certainly for …