Atul B Mehta and A Victor Hoffbrand
Blackwell Science Inc, 2000; £13.95
ISBN: 0632047933
Rating: 2/4

Textbooks get you honours. I am convinced that the vast majority of students can pass even final medical exams without any recourse to books. They certainly don't need reference to those weighty tomes that seem only ever to be found on dusty shelves in medical school libraries. Perhaps the odd vade mecum such as the Oxford Handbook of Medicine and the British National Formulary are almost essential to a good student, but people pass exams without them.

The "At a Glance" series has always been a valuable addition to the bookshelf of the average student. They should tell you everything you need to know, and nothing that you don't. They should be the books that we all turn too the night before the exam. Remember that stage you get to when you have learnt about acid-base balance so many times that you can't even remember whether H+ ions make your pH go up or down any more? It should be the "At a Glance" books which reassure you with one simple diagram that in reality you do know what you are up to and that it is time to get to the pub before you confuse yourself any further.

That's where this book fails. It contains a great page with comparative diagrams of red cell abnormalities and some useful clinical photographs, and the quality of the micrographs reproduced throughout the text is superb. There are some useful "night before" questions (and answers) in the back, which you could use either on you own or on those evenings when you've got together with some friends but can't really be bothered to do anything too strenuous. But there is almost nothing "At a Glance" about the rest of this book. Over 15 pages on anaemia and nearly 20 pages on haematological malignancy seems excessive to me. Some pages have hardly any illustrations, and the simple colour line drawings, which are the most attractive part of any book in this series, are fewer and further between than normal.

The book is not bad - the text is informative and well explained, but this is more than "At a Glance" - this is too much. This is a comprehensive guide to a lot more than a medical student needs to know, and for that reason if no other, it disappoints.