920 General Biography
Maier, Thomas. Dr. Spock: An American Life. (Illus.) NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1998. xvii+520pp. $30.00. 97-32632. ISBN 0-15-100203-7. Index; C.I.P.
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Few physicians have been more visible to American society as Benjamin Spock. And few have influenced society as widely as he has. His Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care, though often tarred inaccurately as the voice of "permissiveness," served through decades as a virtual Holy Writ for millions of mothers needing help with caring for their infants and growing children. "Dr. Spock" may have been in more homes than the Bible and was probably far more read and called on for concrete advice. But hardly less influential was Dr. Spock's role in the huge demonstrations against the Vietnam War that erupted in the late 1960s. Maier's thoroughly documented and highly readable biography is far more than a portrait. His accounts of Spock's growing years clearly suggest why Spock became a rebel against the rigidities of earlier kinds of pediatric guidance, but also a father paradoxically seen by his sons as distant and cold, not the same man seen publicly as caring, warm, and generous. Maier details how psychoanalysis became a not widely known influence on Spock's famous book and, consequently, also sketches a picture of the New York psychoanalytic community. In describing Spock's antiwar engagements, he brings alive the turbulence and passions of the late 1960s. Here, of course, is Dr. Spock, but here also is much of American life in the post-World War II years. This biography of Benjamin Spock is unlikely to be surpassed.—Edward J. Huth, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA
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