This is a gem of a book. I assigned it for the grad students in my intellectual assessment course and both they and I found it to be very helpful and easy to use. The format of the book makes it very user-friendly and unintimidating. There are a lot of boxes and highlighted text that help the reader to find what he or she is looking for quickly. This book covers administration, scoring, and interpretation and provides numerous helpful tips for beginners on common errors. The approach to interpretation provided in this book is a pared-down and slightly modified version of the method described in Kaufman's book Intelligent Testing with the WISC-III (an excellent book with a great deal of information on interpreting the WISC-III). Kaufman and Lichtenberger take the guess work and estimation out of interpreting the significance of various scores. This approach is based in the scientific method (assume nonsignificance unless you have a compelling reason, based on the test data, to believe that the variations in scores on the test protocol are unlikely to have resulted by chance). This approach is very helpful in giving students an understanding of how much variation in test scores can result from test error, and brings the "science" back into test interpretation. There are a lot of numbers to crunch using this method, and in some ways the clarity of the system can encourage users to become mechanistic, but I feel that the emphasis on systematic and defensible interpretation is well worth this risk. Kaufman's approach has become the basis of the standard described in the WAIS manual and calculated on the WAIS-III record form, and this book is an excellent way to learn it and the rationale behind it. The book is also an excellent reference for practitioners. I find myself pulling it off my shelf very frequently as I supervise student assessments, and it's loaned out to various students a lot of the time. The book provides pages of useful tables, some of which are in the WAIS-III manual, but many of which are not. One caution is that the shared abilities tables provided here are based on theory rather than data, so it's important to take these with a grain of salt. Also there are a couple of points in the "decision tree" where it's not entirely clear in some situations what the reader is to do. This is not a common problem, but one that is not really adequately addressed in my opinion.
Overall a truly excellent book that raises the standard for WAIS-III interpretation above that seen in many practitioners. This is a treasure chest of information at a great price.

I am a graduate student in psychology and this is the clearest text I have ever read that describes the interpretive process of IQ tests! Look for their new book for WISC interpretation as well!

I really enjoyed this book -- it was easy to read and well-written, and made the topic matter (which normally is quite hard) understandable.

I read Kaufman's book in a graduate class on assessment and intelligence testing. I still refer to it whenever I have unusual test scores with a WISC-III. It explains in a comprehensive and clear manner how a competent psychologist should interpret the WISC-III. It is worth every penny.

Nicely done! A good follow-up to his WISC-R book, this is an enjoyable, in-depth look at something most psychologists don't know enough about.

brilliant, incisive, surprisingly funny and readable. A must-hav

This is a masterful work -- getting a little out of date now, but still well worth a read for the section on the history of IQ testing alone.

A must-read for all people in school psychology, intelligence testing, or education.

This is another great book in the "Essentials" series -- provides information on seven different "Kaufman" tests, most notably the K-ABC (for children) and the K-BIT (the brief test). Well-organized, easy to use, well-written. Tells you how to administer the test and how to interpret the test, step by step.
Recommended!

This is a quick, easy to understand guide to understanding neuropsychological assessment. It is a great companion to any of the common neuropsychological tests (i.e Luria-nebraska) as a reference. It also provides a comparison among the more common assessment tools.

Wow -- a really well-done book that captures a wide spectrum of ideas and research on learning disabilities. What I find remarkable about this book is that for nearly every test that is talked about here, the test authors themselves write the chapter -- Woodcock writes about the Woodcock-Johnson, Feuerstein writes about dynamic assessment, and Reitan writes about the Halstead-Reitan. An integrative chapter by the editors brings everything together. Worth checking out.

No poet of recent memory has moved me as much as Kaufman. While all sorts of past masters from Whitman to Ginsberg come to mind, Kaufman is as immediate as thunder, as relevant and neccessary as oxygen and as nourishing as bread. If you love language, story and life, get this book now!

This funny, innovative look at baseball's worst pictures is a genuine treat and a gem for historians and all sorts of baseball fans. The Kaufmans have combined photos, interviews, and other materials into a seamless narrative. Excellent!

I grew up in Brooklyn in the same period that Kaufman grew up in the Bronx--the 50's and 60's. His portrayal of his parents represent very common types of the period--a mildly psychotic mother and an uneducated robotic mope of a father. These types were by no means typical of Holocaust survivors in the neighborhood who were generally quiet and dignified. Alan Kaufman had a very bad childhood but I wonder how much was due to madness and stupidity and how much was the result of the Holocaust.

I can't remember the last time I was moved so emotionally by a memoir. Although first published in 2000, I think the chaos and violence of February 2003 make it an even more important book, a must read for everyone concerned about the "approaching clouds of war" and the current world-wide epidemic of racism, nationalism, religious intolerance, and fear of the "other." Kaufman is a great writer and poet. "Who Are We?", the poem that ends the book, is worthy of serious study in our schools; and his observations of places and people are beautifully written, whether describing the bleakness of a Nebraska landscape or the changes in the mien of an Israeli soldier on a bus: "... in time of war you can tell when a soldier is thinking about the war. ... she woke, looked up into his eyes, saw it there, struggled to sit upright, her hand going to his face, but he pushed it away. His shoulder shrank up against the cold glass window filled with the world that he had defied to touch him and it had touched him in that strange way that war touches people and makes them prefer cold glass to a warm hand." Read it, please.

The books a work of genuis, pure and simple. Never read anything like it. A real original. A new Henry Miller. Or Kerouac. Or Hubert Selby Jr. Jewish literature never had a writer like this.
Isaac Babel maybe. Hope he writes another. He's a star.

Though I am not yet finished with this humongous book of poetry and prose, I must say it touches me. Touches as in very nearly strangles my heart on a regular basis. I open it, almost unconsiously, and read whatever peom greets me. Poems of War, of Lust, of Rape, of Death, Toilets, Hurt and Love. My God, this is quite a find. There are poems so brutally honest that you want to throw up, but of course, that is the point. Everything contained in these pages is so outrageously honest that it makes you wonder like what folks were smoking when they wrote about those damn blades of grass blowing in springtime, and the shape of snow capped mountains in December. These poems are not sappy-and- shallow-trying-to-sound-deep, if you know what i mean. If you ever get a chance to read this collection, read it. Even if you don't buy it now, read it. Chances are you wont be able to finish it in the ammount of time you are permitted by the library, and you will want to finish every piece so very very much that in the end you will buy it. This is my prediction. It happened to me...

(and i do like sappy poetry occassionally....just for the record)

I found this book on accident and couldn't put it down for days. Anyone w/ an open mind and a love for poetry must read this book. Kaufman not only included some of the best radical poetry in america, but also goes through great pains to make sure the reader is educated on the authors and the poems back grounds.

The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry by Alan Kaufman is a brilliant anthology, maybe the greatest anthology of new American poetry I've ever read. Part of its genuis is that"Outlaw" breaks new ground, introducing poets unknown to the mainstream while showing how they belong to the Outlaw lineage begun by WC Williams and later the Beats. And I like the way "Outlaw" mixes up the poetry with mini-histories of poets live's and scenes and has lots of wild pictures of poets and motorcycles and cafes and what not. That's great. This book announces a new canon in Americn poetry, has the depth and insight to be taught in classrooms even, but I bet every dreaming kid too from New York to Wichita to LA is going to read this book as a manifesto of revolt and liberation and to get up and do something with your life, be a poet of life!