The Course of Human Development. FREE

There are two main clashing opinions this reviewer has about this book: first, pleasure and interest at seeing the names of the four editors—great experience and diverse skills with one of the great longitudinal growth studies, leading surely to presentation of diverse works from Berkeley. No disappointment as such—only in the second opinion: the book is very largely a collection of selected papers from the Institute of Human Development's longitudinal studies. A large personal bias now appears: perhaps such excellent papers should be read in the publications which published them. This is a major function of libraries.

Placing this aside, the editors have chosen carefully and often carried out skillfully abridgment and editing of the original papers and monographs. The subjects are covered by three main overall headings—Problems, Issues, and Methodology; Developmental Trends; and Interrelationships among Variables over Time. Part IV is a most valuable and worthy chapter, "Perspectives on