With the issuance of the 2001 European Employment Strategy, the European Commission explicitly adopted job quality and quality of working life as policy objectives for Europe, with work-life balance chosen as one of the ten groups of indicators for assessing quality of working life. In this volume, Drobnic (sociology, U. of Hamburg, Germany) and Guillen (sociology, U. of Oviedo, Spain) present 11 chapters providing analysis of work-life balance from a variety of conceptual, methodological, and policy approaches. The goal of the contributions is to understand, in cross-national perspective, the associations between job demands and resources, such as job security, working conditions, and time patterns of individuals and households, and the institutional context, including family policy institutions and other country characteristics. Annotation ⓒ2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)