This is a popular book on the history and the present status of psychiatry by a former editor of Vogue and Harpers Bazaar. Written in a light, journalistic style, it is very readable and entertaining. Although it is often uncritical and naïve, it will stimulate and instruct the unsophisticated layman to whom it is addressed. The method used is largely the reporting of conversations held with well-known contemporary psychiatrists, thereby dramatically bringing into focus their case material and their special views on theory and practice. The theme of the conflict between those two camps in the psychiatric profession, the neurophysiologists and the psychologists, runs through the book for further dramatic effect. It is all happy, good humored and engaging and will promote popular good will for the psychiatrist, especialy for the laboratory psychiatrist, as Men in White did for the surgeon.

That three chapters are given to shock therapy because of its news value and only one to the The Three Grand Old Men, i.e.