Principles and Practice of Structural Equation Modeling, Second Edition (Methodology in the Social Sciences)
A good book has gotten much better.  Since the first edition appeared in 1998, Kline's book has been the only one I assign in my SEM course.  It easily surpassed its competitors in clarity and accessibility, without sacrificing accuracy and completeness.  This new edition is a major upgrade, with substantial reworking of the original chapters to add depth and clarity, as well as new chapters on topics like latent growth curve modeling and hierarchical linear modeling./m-/Paul D. Allison, Department of Sociology, University of Pennsylvania"An outstanding introduction to SEM, geared toward the beginner in this area. The relaxed, conversational writing style makes access to this complex material pain-free and easy. The book strikes a perfect balance between easy reading and the presentation of technical detail and technical terms. I recommend this book strongly, and I will use it the next time I teach SEM."-Alexander von Eye, Department of Psychology, Michigan State University"An excellent choice....The book strikes a nice balance between the technical and practical aspects of SEM. A particular strength is that the examples include correlations and standard deviations, so that readers can execute the examples using various SEM software."-Fred E. Markowitz, Department of Sociology, Northern Illinois University"An extremely important resource for both the theoretical and applied researcher interested in SEM. Dr. Kline's work contains information that is insightful, accurate, and practical. I recommend this book as both a text for graduate-level seminars and a technical resource for research."-Larry Price, College of Education,  Texas State University-San Marcos"The approach to SEM is wonderful. Difficult concepts and issues are explained in a waythat is accessible to those who are not trained as quantitative methodologists. The blendof conceptual and procedural explanations is generally very good, and the discussions and explanations are technically accurate."-Xitao Fan, Curry School of Education, University of Virginia