This book has been added as one of my favorites. It is extremely well written (the addition of a second author was a great call) and the stories are fascinating.

Each story was gripping and engaging. It was easy to tell that Dr. Perry had a personal attachment to each patient that was featured in the story. From a psychological perspective (specifically my own developmental psychology background) the impact of neglect and trauma was fascinating. It was also interesting to see how his view points (some of which are extremely accepted as of now) were formed.

I have two favorite aspects of the book. The first is that Dr. Perry nearly never implied cause when there was a correlational relationship. He was very careful to state his theories and the reasoning for such theories. When theories were not backed up (or the evidence had not yet been collected) he was sure to specify. One exception to this is the evidence on children with schizophrenia and abuse in which he implied that children schizophrenia may have been a result of abuse. Another way of looking at the schizophrenia research is that caregivers did not have the support for dealing with a child with schizophrenia resulting in abuse. This is a personal issue with me raising a daughter with schizoaffective disorder. The research shows a correlational relationship - but fault is often found with the caregiver without taking into effect the impact of the child's behaviors. However, I digress.

My second favorite aspect is how Dr. Perry did not just leave his book at the description of the situations. Instead he showcased how we could modify our society to decrees the likelihood of these situations occurring for future children. Since I come from an applied background I believe it is important that we know how to take what we learn to make things better. Unfortunately, I believe that we are not heading in the direction of making things better.

My one grip about the book is that it is a book very focused on trauma. This is the intention of the book (as shown in it's title) and is not specifically my grip. My grip is when he went outside of trauma to childhood developmental and mental health disorders and viewed them from a trauma/attachment perspective. While I understand someone who works with trauma everyday seeing everything from this same perspective, I think this book may leave some health care providers with self-justification on parent blaming children who legitimately suffer from a developmental and mental health issue. While I found his description of autism interesting, and he did include one brief mention of parents having a history of being blamed for their children's schizophrenia and autism, I felt that this section did not undo him doing almost exactly that just prior. This is only a minor section of the book which I found to be engaging, entertaining, and enlightening.