Tony Buzan may be a bit of a one trick pony, but what a trick! Admittedly his Mind Maps® (yes, somehow he persuaded the trademark people to register the words "Mind Map", which is bizarre as their guidelines quite clearly say you can't register generic words like these) aren't really original as a concept, fitting in the much wider field of concept mapping, but Buzan's use of the mind map and the way he has publicized it is masterly.

This is perhaps the best of his books on mind maps. It gives you clear guidance on using them, starting with a simple map and working up. It describes how mind maps can be used at work from team construction to presentations and note taking. And, as in previous books, there are a selection of beautifully drawn mindmaps as colour plates in the centre of the book, giving ideas and a good feeling of how mindmaps are drawn.

Please don't assume from the first paragraph that we aren't convinced about mind maps. They are a method of recording and structuring information that involves producing a tree structure on paper, growing out from a central theme. They are a great concept, they work superbly well for many people and Buzan explains them better than anyone else. This is a book that should be in the library of anyone wanting to be more creative about business.

Just one small moan - you'd really think the book was self published from its internal layout. It uses a san serif font, which simply doesn't work well on the page (they're great on the computer screen, but blocks of text work better with a serif font like Times Roman on paper). Although the book is cheap and nasty (it's on good paper, well printed), the look is a cheap one - and when it's a book on a subject that involves the combination of the visual with words to get across ideas, it's a real shame.