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Book Review : Bloom, M. (Ed.). (1993). Single-System Designs in the Social Services. New York: Haworth. 185 pp., ISBN-1-56024-574-3

was seen as revolutionary. Unfortunately, back then, the idea was to many quite extreme and to some rather offensive. Joel Fischer’s proclamation that we were, in fact, witnessing a &dquo;quiet revolution&dquo; was met with criticism and disdain by those who argued that experience need not be evaluated quantitatively to be empirical or valid (Gordon, 1983; Nelsen, 1981). The book under review provides an excellent overview of developments that have occurred in the field of empirically based practice in the past 12 years. These developments include not only greater accessibility to practice evaluation but also a concordant shift in perspective around the contribution of empiricism to practice. As in the first special volume of research on single-subject designs (SSDs), the book begins with an essay celebrating the life of a social work researcher, Ludwig L. Geismar, who continues to write after retiring from Rutgers in 1991. Following this honorary introduction, the book presents discussions of the evolution of SSDs over the past decade. The authors explore criticisms and challenges of SSDs throughout with insight and thoroughness, while suggesting future directions. Perhaps as an indication of SSDs’ growing recognition, little argument is presented to justify its use ; rather, the focus of almost all of these articles is to exemplify the use of SSDs in a range of practice settings and to discuss ways in which to make the design more accessible to the practitioner. Joel Fischer seeks to address the impact of the quiet revolution in his article on developments in SSDs. His analysis is divided into three areas of empirically based practice: epistemology, the integration of theory and practice, and innovations in meta-analysis and computer science. This division also forms the general framework of the volume.