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After many years of apparent neglect, several recent reviews of the history of developmental psychology have identified Johann Nicolas Tetens' (1777) Philosophical Essays on Human Nature and its Development as one of the first major contributions to the field (Tetens, 1979/1777). Because Tetens has only recently re-emerged as an important figure in developmental psychology, most developmental scholars may be unaware of who he was and what he wrote about human development. In this article, we sketch Tetens' life and career, and describe his notably contemporary contributions to psychology in general, and developmental psychology in particular. We also consider the reasons that Tetens was previously forgotten. For example (a) he wrote (in German) over 200 years ago; (b) he was a contemporary of Kant, whose reputation may have overwhelmed his own; (c) he was perceived (by such influential authors as Wundt and Ebbinghaus) as a proponent of the antiquated theory of faculties; and (d) his theory was not perceived to contribute to the shift in emphasis from the study of general human capabilities to the development of concrete and practical abilities.

The perceived visibility and quality of human development journals in France, Great Britain, and West Germany was evaluated. Following the method employed by Peery and Adams [Human Development 24: 312–319, 1981], two questionnaire items were distributed to members of the developmental sections of the respective national psychological associations. In the interest of assessing international information flow, the results were compared to those obtained by Peery and Adams with an American sample. Overall, the dominance of English-language (and especially American) journals is notable. Generally, the European respondents nominated either journals from their own countries or English-language journals. Achieving particular international prominence were Child Development, Developmental Psychology, Human Development, and Journal of ExperimentalChild Psychology. Thus, by this measure, there is an apparent lack of international information distribution among these European communities and an unmistakable one-way information flow from American developmental psychologists to their European colleagues.

In modern wars 95% of the victims are civilians, for the most part children and their families. The book edited by Leavitt and Fox is an important contribution to this widely neglected problem of modern wars. It is a comprehensive collection of theoretical, empirical, and applied articles and gives a good overview of the latest developments in psychological research on children experiencing war and violence.In the first section general consequences of wars for the development of children are outlined. Goldson reports that the life of children is threatened not only by weapons but also by famine and disease caused by the breakdown of agricultural, medical, and social infrastructures in war. Garbarino and Kostelny conclude, from many years of field research, that children with intact relations to their mothers can cope with war situations without showing social maladjustment. But even where there is no immediate damage, there will be heavy negative consequences in the long-term and for further generations: In a war situation, for instance, it is nearly impossible to establish socialization conditions that allow social moral development on higher levels. Cicchetti, Toth, and Lynch describe the structural identity between the developmental conditions for maltreated children and for children in wars, and they develop an intervention program for those children.The second section starts with a comprehensive trend report by Klingman, Sagi, and Raviv on the effect of the Middle East Conflict on children. It is followed by empirical research on the Gulf War: Shilo-Cohen describes drawings of Israeli children produced during war and Bat-Zion and Levy-Shiff analyze their reactions to scud missile attacks. Toubiana investigates gender and geographic differences in Israeli children's reactions to the Gulf War and to Intifada, and Nader and Pynoos assess the reactions of Kuwaiti children to violence experienced in reality and in television. Qualitative methods are used by Masalha, who analyses dreams of