The Authoritative Guide to Self-Help Books - Hardcover

To guide lay readers-and librarians-through today's proliferation of self-help literature, the authors have compiled opinions from over 500 members of the clinical and counseling divisions of the American Psychological Association. Using a five-point scale ranging from "extremely bad" to "extremely good," the evaluators were asked to rate over 350 titles, the majority published in the last decade. Each of 33 topical categories is given a chapter, which provides an overview of the literature, descriptions and evaluations of the titles, and positive or negative recommendations. Other chapters list the 25 best self-help books and nine strategies for selecting. Appendixes present chapter bibliographies and a chart of the ratings for all books surveyed. Author and subject indexes are also included. More evaluative than Bill and Linda Katz's Self Help: 1400 Best Books on Personal Growth (Bowker, 1984) and more appropriate for lay readers than John T. Pardeck's Using Bibliotherapy in Clinical Practice (Greenwood, 1993), this resource is recommended for both public and academic libraries.
Carol R. Nelson, Ball State Univ. Lib., Muncie, Ind.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.