Principles of Cognitive and Behavioral Neurology: 2nd Edition, edited by M.-Marcel Mesulam, New York:  Oxford University Press, 2000,  540 pages; $79.00.

The first edition of this compilation of articles became a classic shortly after its release in 1985, and was virtually a “Bible” for several years in the rapidly expanding field of behavioral neurology-neuropsychology. I am very pleased to report that the very high standards set by the first edition are equaled in this extensive updating and rewriting, with many of the chapters being definitive summaries of the subject matter. The first chapter of this volume (in which Mesulam reviews the functional behavioral, affective, and cognitive specializations of most of the brain and virtually all of the forebrain) is easily one of the very finest overviews of functional neuroanatomy available today. Its only deficiencies might fall around a modest neglect of more ventral brain structures, particularly midbrain and basal forebrain systems, such as superior colliculus, periaqueductal gray, parabrachial nucleus, bed nucleus of stria terminalis, hypothalamic regions, and so on. I wish that there had been somewhat more attention paid to the structures underneath the thalamus in the first chapter, but this is a modest quibble. Additionally, Mesulam's last chapter in which he summarizes an enormous volume of literature on aging, dementia, and Alzheimer's disease, is head and shoulders above any other treatment of these subjects in the