George Prochnik's work about the relationship between Freud and James Jackson Putnam, and about the development of American psychology, is a rollicking good read. Prochnik melds family memoir (he is a great-grandson of Putnam) with sociological and historical work, and presents his own idiosyncratic, highly opinionated version of psychology's development in the United States. He is good company, often very funny, clearly very knowledgeable, and has a remarkably interesting tale to tell.

This ambitious work profiles the development of American psychology in the twentieth century, covering broad social, religious, and cultural developments of the time. The foreground is the remarkably interesting relationship between Freud and Putnam. Prochnik makes a convincing case that the encounter between the two men, which had important ongoing repercussions for both,