By E Marla Felcher. (Pp 302; US$17.95.) Common Courage Press (PO Box 702 Monroe, Maine 04951), 2001. ISBN 1-56751-204-6.

This is a passionate, powerful, and well informed book written by an academic and journalist trying to show why the cherished child of well informed and safety conscious professionals died in a nursery product that had been declared dangerous and withdrawn years before the child died.

Seventeen month old Danny strangled in the “V”-shaped wedge formed when the portable cot he was in partially collapsed. This was not an isolated incident. The cot had been ordered from the market five years before because of child deaths. Danny is thought to be the 12th child who died because of a similar faulty design. Three months later a 13th child died.

Dr Felcher makes the case in the introduction “the issue is how a regulatory system allowed more than a dozen children to be killed by a .. cradle (chapter 1), 66 children to die in bath seats (chapter …