A MOOD APART: Depression, Mania, and Other Afflictions of the Self by Peter C. Whybrow, M.D. (BasicBooks, NY, 1997. 340 pp., $24). In this fine work, Whybrow, the director of the Neuropsychiatric Institute at UCLA, explains the major mood disorders, depression and manic-depressive illness. He crafts a detailed portrait of both the science and the experience of the disorders by building around selected cases, carrying his account seamlessly into the emerging scientific understanding of the emotional brain. The result is elegant, informative and absorbing, a reader's book by a leader in his field.

SHADOW SYNDROMES by John J. Ratey, M.D. and Catherine Johnson, Ph.D. (Pantheon Books, NY, 1997. 369 pp., $25.95). Ratey, assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, and Johnson, a contributing editor at New Woman magazine, make the case that people can suffer from unrecognized, mild forms of serious disorders such as depression, attention deficit disorder and autism. Using numerous patient anecdotes, they show how identifying and treating these problems can intervene in the adverse effects on the lives of those who have them and allow them to function more normally.

WHY PEOPLE BELIEVE WEIRD THINGS: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of our Time by Michael Shermer with a foreword by Stephen Jay Gould (W.H. Freeman, NY, 1997. 352 pp., 20 illustrations, $22.95). Shermer teaches the history of science, technology and evolutionary thought at Occidental College in Los Angeles and hosts the Skeptics Lecture Series at the California Institute of Technology. In this book, he examines such modern phenomena as the recovered memory movement and alien abduction experiences and shows how a better understanding of the pleasures of real science is the most satisfying antidote to such crazes.