Brain, Vol. 123, No. 11, 2361-2363,
November 2000
© 2000 Oxford University Press
Book reviews |
AMYOTROPHIC LATERAL SCLEROSIS.
Edited by Robert H. Brown Jr, Vincent Meininger and Michael Swash.1999. London: Martin Dunitz Publishers. Price £75. Pp. 479. ISBN 1-85317-421-1.
Department of Neurology, Royal Preston Hospital, Preston, UK
Any author or editor contemplating a new volume on motor neurone disease (MND) enters an increasingly competitive field. All recent works reviewing this rapidly expanding area of neurology stake their claim in different ways, generally with success. Some try to achieve this by reducing the numbers of contributors to the minimum, thus ensuring relative uniformity of style; others, as in this case, use a multi-author approach. This is a way of trying to ensure that the chapters are written by experts, but it can lead to a patchiness of style. Each strategy has its potential advantages and disadvantages. Such is the pace of development in this area of research that a delay in publication resulting from a late-submitted chapter can mean that the main body of the volume becomes outdated by the time it is published. This is an increasing area of concern with