Neuropsychological Assessment IV: A Moderate (Not-So-Extreme) Makeover of an Old Friend

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Neuropsychological Assessment, Fourth Edition. Muriel D. Lezak, Diane B. Howieson, and David W. Loring, with H. Julia Hannay and Jill S. Fischer. 2004, New York: Oxford University Press. 1016 pp., $89.50 (HB).

When I was in my 3rd year of graduate school, I became interested in neuropsychology and purchased the first (1976) edition of Muriel Lezak's Neuropsychological Assessment to help prepare for my qualifying examination. It was the first neuropsychology book I ever owned and it was one of the few textbooks I have ever read from cover to cover. Neuropsychological Assessment is one of the classics in the field of clinical neuropsychology. It and the subsequent three editions of this classic have both reflected and shaped the field it represents. The book, often referred to as “Lezak,” is without question the most widely-consulted source on neuropsychological assessment as a clinical enterprise. The fourth edition continues in the great tradition of its predecessors, except that the sheer scope and magnitude of current work in neuropsychological assessment has now made an exhaustive and inclusive review of available tests impossible. As indicated in the preface, the revised goal of “Lezak IV” is to provide a “broad but necessarily and selectively restricted range of the information that is currently relevant and necessary for understanding and undertaking neuropsychological assessment.”