Neonatology, it is said, is 10% emergencies and 90% waiting for those emergencies to happen. The unpredictable nature and timing of those emergencies means that senior skilled help is not always available immediately. Neonatal Emergencies, edited by Georg Hansmann, is written by experts from North America and Europe and constitutes a useful mix of readily accessible information covering emergencies that occur in the first 72 h of life (and sometimes beyond).

It is, it must be said, not the only book of its kind on the market and most of us will have used at least one of the rival Neonatal Handbooks in the past (and probably become familiar with the layout of …