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This book is intended to "… document what we know about normality, or mental health, throughout the life cycle" (p. IX). It is divided into three parts. The first, "The Life Cycle" (Chapters 1–7), describes what is currently known about normality from infancy to old age. This is followed by four chapters on theoretical and methodological perspectives. The book concludes with an integration and expression of their own viewpoint by the editors.
The chapters in Part I are all extremely comprehensive and well written. They certainly achieve the editors' goal of documenting what is currently known about normality. The bibliographies themselves are worth the purchase of the book. In Chapter 1, "Infancy: Perspectives on Normality," Robert Emde and James Sorce discuss infancy from Offer and Sabshin's four perspectives on normality (as utopia, average, health, and transactional system). They find three of the four self-evident and useful, but believe the utopian concept begs for clarification. After reviewing three disciplinary traditions on infancy (the differential psychology-IQ; pediatric-neurologic; and psychiatric-psychoanalytic),