The history of psychiatry is complex, reflecting diverse origins in mythology, cult beliefs, astrology, early medicine, law religion, philosophy, and politics. This complexity has generated considerable debate and an increasing outflow of historical scholarship, ranging from the enthusiastic meliorism of pre-World War II histories, to the iconoclastic revisionism of the 1960s, to more focused studies, such as the history of asylums and the validity and efficacy of Freudian theory. This volume, intended as a successor to the centennial history of American psychiatry published by the American Psychiatric Association in 1944, summarizes the significant events and processes of the half-century following World War II. Most of this history is written by clinicians who were central figures in it. In broad terms, the history of psychiatry after the war can be viewed as the story of a cycling sequence, shifting from a predominantly biological to a psychodynamic perspective and back again-all presumably en route to an ultimate view that is truly integrated--and interacting all the while with public perceptions, expectations, exasperations, and disappointments. In six sections, Drs. Roy Menninger and John Nemiah and their colleagues cover both the continuities and the dramatic changes of this period. The first four sections of the book are roughly chronological. The first section focuses on the war and its impact on psychiatry; the second reviews postwar growth of the field (psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, psychiatric education, and psychosomatic medicine); the third recounts the rise of scientific empiricism (biological psychiatry and nosology); and the fourth discusses public attitudes and perceptions of public mental health policy, deinstitutionalization, antipsychiatry, the consumer movement, and managed care. The fifth section examines the development of specialization and differentiation, exemplified by child and adolescent psychiatry, geriatric psychiatry, addiction psychiatry, and forensic psychiatry. The concluding section examines ethics, and women and minorities in psychiatry. Anyone interested in psychiatry will find this book a fascinating read. American Psychiatry after World War II is the American Psychiatric Association's tribute to the first 50 years of the field's second century. Intended to follow in the footsteps of the centennial history of psychiatry, published in 1944, this book is fittingly edited by Roy Menninger, a scion of a family that made important contributions to the story of psychiatry, and John Nemiah, a distinguished emeritus editor of the American Journal of Psychiatry, which recorded so much of what is retold here. In more or less chronological sections, the book covers the lessons of war, the growth of clinical psychiatry after World War II, public attitudes and public policy, and scientific empiricism and specialization. The final section includes chapters on ethics, women in psychiatry, and minorities and mental health. The text is rich in reminiscence and anecdote. The amateur historians among the authors provide the book with a subtly pervasive Whiggish view, suggesting that science overcomes superstition, knowledge replaces ignorance, and that all the forces at play in the history of psychiatry are those within the field. The chapters on psyche and soma, by Lipsitt, deinstitutionalization, by Lamb, and functional psychoses, by Cancro, are particularly well written. Only 3 of the 25 chapters were written by professional historians; these are masterly summaries of postwar American psychoanalysis, mental health policy, and antipsychiatry. Too few of the authors are women. The result is "his story" rather than history. However, because the authors had important roles in the tales they tell, as George Makari notes in a cover blurb, this book "will be an important starting place for future historians." It will not be the whole story, for it is not my story, and I have lived in the field for more than 35 of the 50 years under review. For instance, in contrast to the account of the dominance of psychoanalysis, which later was overthrown by biology, followed by a balanced integration of the two, biologic considerations were never out of sight or mind during my professional youth at Bellevue Hospital, and we were taught even then that the so-called organic psychoses carried psychodynamic baggage. The chapters by the three historians, Hale, Grob, and Dain, are models for amateurs: they place events within a broad context of social forces and change. A real history of these years will require the inclusion of more primary data, more distance, and a comprehensive view of psychiatry in the context of society. Until then, this is a useful review of some visions of the recent history of American psychiatry. Century for Psychiatry, edited by Hugh Freeman, celebrates the turn of the millennium, and as Norman Sartorius notes in the foreword, "the past century... excels in terms of [the]