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An admirable exposition of the whole suicide question. The author, primarily a statistician, introduces his subject by a review of the statistical information available, not only in this country, but in other countries, and brings the matter up to date from this angle. The book, however, is far from being a purely statistical study. The author has a deep appreciation of the complexities of the issues that are involved, and while he presents the statistics that it is usual to review when dealing with this subject, and discusses the causes that are generally assigned for self-destruction, he fully realizes that in doing so he is after all only getting leads and touching the surface of what is presumably one of the most profoundly intricate of problems in human psychology. It is of course interesting, important, and significant to know that more men than women commit suicide, and more white people than negroes commit suicide; that the rate of suicide increases with age, and many other statistically expressed facts. It is significant that suicide has some relation to social conditions, and the statistics with reference to climate, etc., are interesting, but the real depth psychology that is involved cannot stop here and feel that anything really significant in the way of explanation has been reached. And so the author has reviewed what the psychiatric and the psychoanalytic literature has to say on the subject, and has given briefly a very good statement of this pronouncement.
From the point of view of previous publications this can be considered one of the best works on suicide that the reviewer has seen. From the point of view of what might be considered desirable it affords an excellent