The Selected Correspondence of Karl A. Menninger, 1919-1945: Edited and with an introduction by Howard J. Faulkner and Virginia D. Pruitt,  Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1988,  xiii + 432 pp., $40.00.

Anyone who has worked at the Menninger Clinic, as this reviewer has, will understand my feelings about “Dr. Karl.” In 1956 when “The Menninger Story” appeared, a history of the family written by Walker Winslow, I read it with avidity. Now we have some of Dr. Karl's correspondence, transpiring from 1919 to 1945, and I approached it with equal alacrity. When once you had met Karl Menninger you were not likely to forget him easily, and you could be pretty certain that he would not forget you.

Karl Menninger who died in 1990 at the age of 96, lived a long life like his father, who also reached his 90s. The family's life is as interesting as Dr. Karl's. Religion had a deep influence in the family, the mother writing a daily Bible column for a Topeka newspaper. Yet Karl never inflicted his religious views knowingly on others in his professional life. However he continually dispensed axioms and values by which to live. For example, he could not understand why anybody would not want to work long hours; he disapproved of the half holiday which the clinic staff had on Labor Day, so he called a meeting after lunch that day to tell the professional staff of the virtues of hard work until the half holiday was largely consumed. He wanted to conduct a psychoanalytic seminar on Sunday mornings