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Benjamin Wolman approaches psychological ideas with boundless energy and a Gargantuan editorial appetite. He is the author of a considerable number of books in his own right, but his true calling has been that of Chief Editor, gathering, organizing, and amalgamating articles by workers in various psychological fields to create reference works of impressive magnitude. His crowning achievement is the truly Brobdingnagian International Encyclopedia of Psychiatry, Psychology, Psychoanalysis and Neurology, originally published in 1977. It consists of 12 large volumes containing 1500 articles resulting from the collaborative efforts of 2000 people. Rather than retiring for a well-deserved rest after his Herculean labors, however, he has continued to construct psychological "handbooks" of such proportions that the hand of a Liszt, a Rachmaninoff, or an All-Star NBA center must be what he has had in mind for them.
The Handbook of Developmental Psychology is no exception. It is nearly a thousand pages in length, each one 8½ by 11 inches with two columns. In contains 50 chapters by 77 authors (almost all academic psychologists), on multiple aspects of human development, primarily from the viewpoint of cognitive theory. It is dedicated, in fact, to the memory of Jean Piaget.
The book is divided into six sections: Research Methods and Theories, Infancy, Childhood, Adolescence, Adulthood, and Aging. The first is addressed to various dimensions of research design and methodology. The second covers prenatal factors, biopsychosocial aspects of early development and infant-mother interaction, and the beginnings of cognition and language.
The section on childhood is almost exclusively cognitive in orientation. It is addressed largely to memory, language, and learning. The chapter on sex differentiation and the development of sex roles, although interesting, ignores psychodynamic issues, and the one on moral development concentrates on Piaget and Kohlberg (Freud is given brie