I Am Not Your Victim: Anatomy of Domestic Violence.

Societal awareness of family violence dates back to the Puritans, who enacted the first laws anywhere for the protection of women and children. However, attitudes toward power in relationships and the use of force by stronger persons against weaker ones have changed dramatically since Kempe, Silverman, Steel, Droegemueller, and Silver's first article on the battered child syndrome in 1962, followed by a renewed interest in wife abuse in the early 1970s and later interest in wife rape, date rape, and sexual coercion in nonmarital relationships. Today, no American jurisdiction legally permits one spouse to strike another (Frieze & Browne, 1989).

Nevertheless, as the three books reviewed here attest, this society has not come far in providing the necessary help for those who are victimized in marital or …