This is an articulate, edifying, terrifying exposé of some of the most complex sociological issues facing the world today. It enriches our clinical understanding of the significance of the internalized shame and humiliation of failed fathers within the context of the family and extends our appreciation of this failure within the larger sociopolitical sphere. It also devotes considerable attention to the question of how much of what we learn from our patients represents their real past rather than reconstructed imagery. Again and again Lansky's clinical vignettes affirmed this reader's concerns about premature, oversimplified judgments of “deadbeat dads” or men who cannot be consistent with the women with whom they make partial attachments.

Lansky has joined with those analysts who have expanded their focus from “the role” of the father to the concept of “the paternal