Noting that the "assessment and intervention phases of clinical reasoning are shot through with normative commitments and judgments," Ward (forensic psychology, U. of Melbourne, Australia), Laws, (formerly of Adult Forensic Psychiatric Services, Canada) and Hudson (formerly Director of Clinical Psychology, U. of Canterbury, New Zealand) present 19 contributions that are about equally divided between discussions of conceptual issues of forensic psychology and examinations of therapeutic responses to sexual deviance (in a criminal sense). Among the topics: child sexual abuse, evolutionary explanations of rape, behavioral economic approaches to assessment and treatment, developmental antecedents to sexual offending, pharmacological treatments, sexual offending as a public health problem, and risk-need models of offender rehabilitation. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)