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This introductory text achieves a compact and comprehensive format in an introduction to the early care of patients with problems pertaining to neurosurgery. It covers many subjects in general, but then refocuses on pertinent specific clinical challenges emphasizing circumstances that should help alert primary medical personnel to early diagnosis, appropriate care, and referral. It is organized in a very original format to serve that purpose. Critical elements of history taking are not emphasized as much as many might expect or wish to find. It is limited to one paragraph in the first portion of the book, but it reemerges periodically throughout the volume in separate contexts. By contrast, the pertinent elements of a general physical examination and a neurologic examination are substantially developed and neatly packaged into 19 pages. Radiological (magnetic resonance imaging in particular) and more functional diagnostic strategies are less well developed, suggesting perhaps that their timing in