BOOK REVIEWS

pital training programs. The material

would need to be reused by supervisors.
Costs might be controlled a little if the
notebook sheet was separate and could
be retained by the individual and reviewed.
This is the first in a series of courses
for hospital personnel from the AMA.
For the hospital employee who is a supervisor the course could serve as a foundation/basis for the study of other management/administrative principles. Training
directors in hospitals are in need of all
kinds of educational materials; this new
programmed text should be a helpful
contribution to the development of
management skills of supervisors.
RUTH F. RICHARDS
EKISTICS: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE
SCIENCE OF HUMAN SETTLEMENTSBy Constantinos A. Doxiadis. New York: Oxford University Press (200 Madison Ave.),
1968. 527 pp. Price, $35.

"Health is the state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and
not merely the absence of disease...
These well-worn lines from the WHO
charter sum up our cities: diseases decline, man decays physically, mentally,
and socially.
If Public Health approaches the crisis
ecologically, five elements must be taken
into account: nature, in all its resources
and its ecological processes, as these affect man, who is himself the most
ubiquitous aspect of our environment;
shells, meaning houses, buildings and
structures of every kind; society in all
its social, cultural, economic, political,
and legal aspects; networks of communication, transport, and land use which
relate man and space.
The formulation of these five elements
and the comprehensive analytical system which relates them to man and his
communities comprise the work of an
architect and planner, C. A. Doxiadis.
He calls it "Ekistics," the science of
MARCH, 1969

human settlements. It is a coined word

from good Greek roots; it is ecology applied to "the well-being of man" as an
urbanizing animal.
Doxiadis thinks in charts and drawings as some men think in equations
or financial reports or adversary briefs.
The 527-page volume, the size of a large
atlas, is replete with swift, evocative
drawings from his palette of colored
pencils. They make his points hard to
miss: how life shapes form and how
form and space shape life-or can distort it. He is sensitive to the human
scale; population and environmental decision are reciprocals, each can conserve or destroy the other. Down one
side of his ekistics grid are the elements
italicized above. Across it, on an ascending logarithmic scale, are increases in
population cluster, from man the individual, through neighborhood, village,
city, to megalopolis and beyond. Each
step involves not only change in size,
but potential or actual changes in the
character and quality of life.
Each of the five elements are involved
in these qualitative changes. To guide
decisions are basic laws or principles
of human habitation. Man has constant
needs, biological, psychological, sensory,
cultural. If consideration of discernment,
definition, and suitable forms for the
application of these needs is not basic
public health responsibility, what is?
As a system for relating the variable
and the constant factors, ekistics can
serve urban design and public policy in
many ways. For the systems analyst, the
planner, the developer of retrieval systems, or the designer of simulation
models, the ekistic grid should have
great usefulness. For the practicing environmentalist, the grid can be an evocative reminder of a complex pattern of

relationships.
As head of an architectural and planning firm with world-wide operations,
as founder of the Athens Technological
Institute, and the organizer of the
569

Athens Center for Ekistics, Mr. Doxiadis

has had vast opportunity to test his science and to persuade. The dialogue he
has generated has involved legal scholars and legislators, historians, economists, sociologists, physicians, geneticists,
as well as planners and architects: 39
disciplines in one recent conference. So
far it has involved too few public health
!professionals; one hopes that it will in,volve more, for the author is asking the
essential questions.
This volume is the most comprehensive statement of a theme upon which
Mr. Doxiadis has written and lectured
for more than a quarter of a century.
It should be in very public health library
and on the bookshelf of scholars and
practitioners. PHILIP S. BROUGHTON
A PRIMER FOR PARENTS-By Jerome S.
Fass. New York, N. Y. 10020: Trident Press
(630 Fifth Ave.), 1968. 192 pp. Price, $4.95.

Appropriately titled and subtitled, this

book is indeed a "primer" designed to
help parents (and guardians) understand the child's emotional behavior
during the normal growing-up process.
While some of the advice to be followed
is couched in the form of "do's" and
"don'ts," considerable insight into problematic situations faced by parents is
offered throughout.
The content, deriving from the child

psychiatrist-author's experience, both

professional and personal, covers a wide
range of topics. This feature is the chief
merit of this well-arranged and wellwritten volume. Most of the 34 chapters
which constitute the content are appealingly entitled-to wit, "Toiling in the
Toilet," thus pin-pointing specific parental needs and/or interests. Each of
the topics considered is amply illustrated
by a "real-life" situation, encountered
principally in professional practice.

These illustrations are most effective. To

this reviewer, the chapters dealing with
fears, discipline and communication,
and "Starvation in the Suburbs" seemed
particularly outstanding. Each chapter
contains a prelude and summary.
Altogether, this volume presents a
balanced view of the problems that conceivably may confront the parent eager
to do his level best to maintain an
emotionally healthy climate for his offspring. On the debit side, parents of
low social status might find this book
difficult to digest, for it is obviously
geared to the middle- and upper-social
class of parents. A second limitation is that
references for more extensive reading,
preferably in depth, for the higher social-class parents for which this book
is intended, are not given. Despite this
weakness, this primer could and should
be recommended to parents.
MARY LOUISE PAYNICH

BOOKS RECEIVED
Listing in this column acknowledges the receipt of books and our appreciation to the senders.
Space and the interests of readers will permit review of some, but not all, of the books listed.

Catalog of Federal Pesticide Monitoriing Ac-

tivities in Effect July 1967. Arlinigton. Va.:

Federal Committee on Pest Control, 1968.
131 pp. Free.
Classification of the Major Groups of Htnmani
and Other Animal Viruses (4th ed.). Btur-toni

S70

I. Wilner. Minneapolis. Minn.: Burgess.

1969. 250 pp. Price, $7.50 cloth bound.
Clinical Toxicology of Commercial Prodnets
Acute Poisoning (3rd ed.). Marion M. Gleason. et al. Baltimore, Md.: Williams &
W'ilkins. 1969. 1,539 pp. Price, $24.50.
VOL. 59, NO. 3, A.J.P.H.