This enormous biography - more than 500 paperback pages - traces the life and work of the man who has probably had more influence than anyone else on our attitude to children and how they should be treated, from his early years in Vienna through his incarceration in Dachau and Buchenwald to his suicide in 1990. Sutton's style is lively and readable, and if her overall view of Bettelheim and his work is somewhat romanticised, she doesn't shy away from the controversies which have surrounded him since his death, or the occasional obnoxious behaviour of which he was capable during his life. An accessible and thought-provoking introduction to the complex and sometimes contra dictory ideas of an extraordinary thinker.
