Diseases of the Inner Ear

It is by your own eyes and your ears and your own mind and (I may add) your own heart that you must observe and love Sir William Osler It has been just over 20 years that Hawke and Jahn’s seminal book entitled Diseases of the Ear: Clinical and Pathologic Aspects was published. The book was unique from other textbooks in otology at the time and concentrated its message according to two well-known proverbs in English literature namely “A picture is worth a th- sand words” and “Seeing is believing. ” Dr. Masoud Motasaddi Zarandy has taken these twin concepts, and in the process, has produced a very beautiful and a visually pleasing book. The pictures and acc- panying text allows the reader not only to see how different pathologies affect the inner ear but also to appreciate the clinical consequences that arise from our decisi- making processes. Far from dry, the inner ear and skull base comes to life when we see the dynamics of how disease involves this complex and integral part of the body. For the uninitiated, this book takes us on a tour of the feld that has evolved over the past decade into the formal discipline of neurotology/skull base medicine and surgery. It has quite rightly become a specialized branch of otolaryngology/neurosurgery where interdisciplinary collaboration has become the rule rather than the exception. Advances in imaging (including intraoperative stereotaxis), technology (i. e.