CHARLES F. ZORUMSKI, EUGENE H. RUBIN, EDS; Psychopathology in the Genome and Neuroscience Era. American Psychiatric Publishing, Inc., Washington, DC, 2005, 256 pp., $54.00, ISBN 1585622427. In this exciting time, when the gap between psychotherapy and neuroscience theory is shrinking, the enthralling Psychopathology in the Genome and Neuroscience Era adds a comprehensive and stimulating insight into the recent advances in the genetics and neurobiology of psychiatric disorders. The book is based on talks presented by twenty world experts at the 2003 American Psychopathological Association annual meeting. This rich compilation presents an extremely broad and state-of-the-art review of recent (up to 2005) conceptual and clinical/practical paradigms in the fields of epidemiology, molecular biology, neuroscience and their implications to the fields of ethics, therapeutics, and training in psychiatry. The book is organized in four sections. Each section encompasses meticulous reviews of, respectively, advances in genetics; diagnostic and epidemiologic issues in psychiatry; recent neurobiology developments and their implications for psychiatry and, finally, a discussion of impending concerns in the field of psychiatric education and research. The initial chapter reviews the now clear evidence for the involvement of genes in several mental disorders and underlines the need for long term epidemiological study while highlighting the inherent difficulties of such research in psychiatry due to the lack of validity of a classification system. While recognizing that complex pathology presents complex patterns of transmission and multifaceted interactions between environment and gene expression, the author emphasizes the role of genetic research as a critical essential tool in public health prevention. Suitably, the next chapter examines how genetic theories, accurate or inaccurate, can inherently bring challenging ethical and political debates at best, discrimination and eugenics at its worst. However as the author points out: one cannot avoid the evil by suppressing science (p. 26) and the potential benefits of new knowledge, including treatments, far outweigh the danger of misapplication in a society determined to learn from and avoid the extremism of the past (p. 29). The call for a revision of our medical diagnoses integrating a molecular genetic component is underscored in the next chapter through the presentation of the results of new experimental diagnostic approaches in the fields of ADHD and autism. The last chapter of this first part thoroughly reviews recent developments in the genetic research related to Alzheimer disease. The second part of this compilation looks into the challenging issues of diagnosis; clinical significance; and the issues of phenotype, reliability and validity. …