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The practitioner who seeks to learn about short-term dynamic psychotherapy must generally turn to books rather than to more accessible journals. These have often been written by authors who have developed their own systems of patient selection and therapeutic technique. A few consist of edited collections of papers by innovators who describe their own methods. It has been difficult critically to evaluate and compare the different techniques of short-term dynamic psychotherapy that have been described and propounded, often with considerable intensity. This volume represents a commendable effort by a pair of authors to delineate and describe in an even-handed way the similarities and differences between the short-term dynamic psychotherapy methods of the three main innovators in the field, David Malan of London, Peter Sifneos of Boston, and Habib Davanloo of Montreal. The other recent important book that covered similar ground, to which this one must be compared, was Flegenheimer's, published in 1982. Whereas Flegenheimer assumed his reader to have a somewhat advanced knowledge of and experience with psychoanalytic personality theory and conventional open-ended psychotherapies, the Bauer and Kobos volume would appear to be quite suitable for students, residents, and beginning practitioners. The brief psychotherapeutic methods dealt with are psychoanalytically informed. Although different investigators advocate somewhat varied therapeutic approaches, Bauer and Kodos emphasize that they all hold a number of essential points in common. These are a high level of therapist activity with consequent intensification of the emotional involvement between patient and therapist, active maintenance of an agreed upon