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CHOICE Review

Akers states, "This monograph provides a single, comprehensive, in-depth statement of social learning as a general theory of criminal and deviant behavior." His book includes a personal history of the development and revisions of differential association theory; social learning theory of criminal and deviant behavior and cultural deviance theory; research on social learning variables in crime and delinquency; adolescent drug and drinking behavior; a Boys Town study; adolescent smoking behavior; the Iowa study; elderly drinking behavior; The Florida study; rape and sexual aggression and other studies on social learning; and a concluding chapter on social structure and social learning in crime and deviance. These topics are treated in such depth that this reviewer found the book to be ponderous, labored, and boring. Its single greatest weakness is continuous discussion and repetition of minute and complex past interpretations of differential association-reinforcement theory. Akers also uses very complex jargon that specialists on differential association-reinforcement theory would probably find enlightening. Not for uninitiated readers. P. J. Venturelli; Valparaiso University