Book excerpt: Contemporary behavior therapy encompasses diverse conceptual positions, clinical and applied problems, and intervention techniques. Behavior therapy has spread to several disciplines to provide substantive concepts and procedures as well as methodological tenets regarding how intervention techniques are to be evaluated. The proliferation of behavior therapy research has produced a plethora of texts. Typically texts review the history of particular treatments and detail contemporary advances. The historical underpinnings are often emphasized with the heavily labored view that in order to understand where one is going, it is important to understand where one has been. To be sure, historical roots of behavior therapy are important to document. However, a given history might have many different outcomes. Similarly, the current status of par ticular areas is frequently reviewed. Sometimes the number of reviews seems to approach or exceed the number of sound studies that there are to be reviewed. A review of current work is obviously essential but leaves open major questions of where the work will all lead. A valuable addition to ex isting reviews would be information that points in a prescriptive or explicit way to areas that are likely to be important in future work. The present book is unique in its approach and focus. Brief reviews of contemporary advances are provided in diverse areas of behavior therapy and serve as a point of departure to chart emerging trends and future direc tions.