Book Review by Edward Shvets

With the third edition of Stuttering: Foundations and Clinical Applications, Drs. Ehud Yairi and Carol H. Seery unravel the intricacies of stuttering, step-by-step and methodically, on the clinical and personal level alike, to equip the speech-pathology student with not only the thematic and scientific background but also the practical, working knowledge needed to become a “speech clinician par excellence.” This book is significant in that it foregrounds the issues in understanding, identifying, and addressing stuttering, and in tandem displays the complexity and nuance to penetrate the multifactorial, multifaceted yet far from occult nature and role of stuttering, thereby advancing the wellbeing of the stuttering community as a whole.

To start, we have before us a first-rate textbook. To an effect that will be invaluable for the student come exam day, the material is regimented. It is divided into three parts—Part I. Nature of Stuttering; Part II. Explanations of Stuttering; and, Part III. Clinical Management of Stuttering—which are further divided into chapters, which are themselves parceled in a tiered structure that enumerates information and its implications in a lucid and mindful way. The book also provides numerous built-in learning tools: Students are likely to find the “Learner Objectives” at the start of every chapter and the “Summary,” “Study Questions and Discussion Topics,” and “Suggested Readings” sections included at the end of every chapter particularly useful. The authors encourage and show the reader how to systemically scrutinize and evaluate the role of everyday events, relationships, and other aspects of material and social life through a scientific lens in analyzing the development and formulating the treatment of stuttering. From there, the book’s structure pairs this strong empirical framework presented in a succinct, masterfully organized, and laconic manner with directly encouraging holistic “clinical responsibility” to embody not merely a textbook for memorizing material, but a practical logical-thinking device that reminds the student to what end they are studying, in what context, and why it matters.

Through not only going the extra mile by presenting a review of its explanations/theoretical perspectives and a “substantial clinical ‘how to’ guide” in addition to the general information on the nature of stuttering but also synthesizing such a breadth of knowledge in a cohesive, instructive single text, the authors transcend scant summary and offer a work of substantive analysis that can prepare the student for the demands of the difficult yet critical objective of becoming “good clinicians” who “understand why they do what they do” and are “able to communicate with their clients, and/or clients’ families.” The authors break down into parts and study the interrelationships of those parts to explain the origins and significance of stuttering and dig deep beneath the surface to unearth relations and distinctions that are not evident at first glance. In other words, this book fosters in students the critical skills and functional mindset that will enable them to appraise sources about stuttering, assign significance to causes in its development, and assess competing explanations. By taking the seemingly mammoth and unfathomable phenomenon of stuttering and itemizing its various parts and showing how those parts interrelate to both each other and on a larger scale, the authors enlighten and equip students on how to operate in a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts toward the higher purpose of effectively helping their future clients. Drs. Yairi and Seery throw light on how stuttering fits into the human experience and what the clinician can do to help, and painstakingly do so with a sense of direction only possible with years of experience and a vast survey of scholarship—their work stands as a powerful antidote to prevailing myths about stuttering and whole cloth research.

This book showcases an inspiring example of experts avoiding the streetlight effect. The age-old metaphor follows a man searching the ground under a streetlight and a second man (often a police officer, depending on the version) who agrees to help the first find his lost car keys (or home keys). After much time with no success, the second man asks the first if he is sure that he dropped his keys by the streetlight. The first man replies that he lost them in a park (or parking lot) a block away. In response to the exasperated second man bellowing why they have been searching under the streetlight all this time, the first replies: “Because this is where the light is.” From David H. Freedman’s Wrong: Why experts* keep failing us—and how to know when not to trust them (2010) to economist William Easterly’s The Tyranny of Experts (2015), a considerable, growing body of literature lambastes many researchers across various fields for imitating the man looking for his keys; i.e., looking for/contriving answers where it is easy rather than where they are most likely to be found, and misleading others to follow suit. Contrary to that trend, Drs. Yairi and Seery accomplish the masterful: They do what is hard and present it in a way that looks easy. To reverse streetlight effect terms, they brought a searchlight to the park and illuminated the path toward the keys—that is the hallmark of true experts. The speech-pathology student can be confident in following their lead, and the person who stutters can take comfort in the fact that a sensible pursuit of real answers is at the forefront of stuttering therapy instruction.

From the Fall 2022 Magazine