Book Review

This handbook is certainly an ambitious enterprise, since ”it is intended to of-fer a definitive, benchmark statement on evaluation theory and practice for the first decades of the twenty-first century ” (p. 4). The editors continue: “In developing this Handbook, we strove to offer a coherent picture of the nature and role of evaluative inquiry in contemporary twenty-first century societies around the globe ” (ibid.). At the end of this review, I will return to these goals but first, let me briefly present the content of the handbook. This sum-mary will by no means reflect the substance of this extensive volume; the in-tention is just to give some ideas. The handbook contains 26 chapters, authored or co-authored by 43 emi-nent scholars, organized along four main sections, namely: – Role and purpose of evaluation in society, – Evaluation as a social practice, – The practice of evaluation, and – Domains of evaluation practice