Colin Murray Parkes has written a welcome addition to the literature on the nature of the process the individual passes through when a loved person dies. Using Bowlby's 'protest-despair-detachment' model of the normal mourning process, Parkes provides a wealth of clinical material and statistical data on a psychiatrically normal and on a psychiatrically disturbed group of mourners. He deals with such issues as the factors that lead to a normal mourning reaction and those that seem responsible for atypical, disturbed responses; the role of medication and physical symptoms in mourning; the relationship of mourning to physiological changes; and how the