Moved by the beautiful poem Rolla in which Musset glorifies youth, Guy Laroche, the distinguished endocrinologist of the Tenon Hospital in Paris, regrets in his preface to La Puberté, that this 'ideal evolution' cannot be valid for the youth of our time. The adolescent of our day is often unbalanced thanks to a milieu which having confused him and crippled his mind proceeds to misunderstand him. Referring to numerous authors, particularly Gide, who have portrayed the consequences of an abnormal sexuality, Laroche deplores the mistakes which contemporary educators daily commit.

Unfortunately, this volume fails to bring to the problems of the adolescent the understanding so earnestly desired by the editor. In some twenty articles contributed by as many well-known French physicians, very little space is given to the psychological aspects of adolescence while a great deal is written about the medical problems of individuals in this age group. The question of sexual orientation and its relationship to the developing personality is