The prose in this book is so convoluted and each point takes so long to develop that you'll be soon asleep.

What's worse, the book is neither a solid academic overview of the field nor is it a useful handbook for the practitioner.

Rossi and his co-authors make many attempts to give us the grand theoretical frameworks but they quickly get lost in qualifying themselves into a tepid soup in which nothing is ever black or white, hot or cold, true or false.

Although there are some capsule summaries and references to real programmes, these callouts are helpful only to break the tedium. They are not presented in sufficient detail that normal people could ever learn from them. There is never any clear instruction about how one should begin an evaluation or how one should proceed.

Possibly this book is useful for an intermediate-to-advanced evaluation practitioner who is interested in comparing his broad generalizations with Rossi's.

THIS IS A TIPTOP REF FOR THOSE OF US WHO NEED TO PUSH OUR FACT-DRIVEN PROGRAMS THROUGH THE BARRIERS THAT READ: "I'VE MADE UP MY MIND & I'VE GOT MY OWN PRIVATE AGENDA, SO DON'T CONFUSE ME WITH THE FACTS!" THE CHICAGO 'HOMELESS' RESEARCH (EXHIBIT 10) IS A CLASSIC. EMPHASIS IS ON 'SOCIAL' PROGRAMS, BUT EVERY BUSINESS POLICYMAKER SHOULD OWN & READ & RE-READ THIS BOOK AT LEAST ONCE A YEAR.