Choice Review

Sonnert and Holton have prepared an important and informative book among the many in recent years that have tried to explain why there are fewer women than men in scientific careers, and why among the few who persist in science, even fewer attain the highest ranks. This monograph is a product of a large-scale research project organized to investigate the career paths of the men and women identified as promising scientists, mathematicians, and engineers by virture of having been awarded a postdoctoral fellowship from the National Science Foundation, the National Research Council, or the Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College. The study was both quantitative and qualitative, so that the book includes a great deal of empirical data as well as some of the findings of open-ended interviews. As such, it is an indispensable contribution to the sociological literature and of immense value to those interested in the sociology of gender, women in science, and the sociology of science. The conclusions of this study tend to confirm other similar ones, but this book makes a real contribution by its wealth of information and the wide variety of its data. Undergraduate through professional. M. H. Chaplin; Wellesley College