THE END OF PERSONALITY?Since it was introduce in 1987, the antidepressant Prozac has been prescribed to nearly five million Americans. But what is Prozac? Reported to turn shy people into social butterflies and to improve work performance, memory, even dexterity, Prozac has changed millions of troubled lives -- but not without raising troubling questions of interest to anyone who has ever tried to improve his or her life.Is Prozac a medication, or a mental steroid...a cure ...

Sigmund Freud’s life bridged the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and his reputation and influence have endured, even intensified, in the twenty-first. Often referred to as “the father of psychoanalysis,” Freud did, in fact, conceive of many of its defining characteristics: he was the original advocate of the “talking cure,” and discovered--or, some argue, invented--the human unconscious.Kramer’s take on Freud is at once critical and sympathetic: he recognizes what is archaic in...

In a novel that’s part comic mystery, part political satire, and part case vignette, a psychiatrist reviews his involvement with a narcissistic national leader who has turned up dead on the consulting room couch.When Peter D. Kramer wrote about his work with psychiatric patients in books like Listening to Prozac and Should You Leave?, Joyce Carol Oates said, “To read his prose on virtually any subject is to be provoked, enthralled, illuminated.”When Kramer switched to ficti...

Do antidepressants work, or are they glorified dummy pills? How can we tell? In Ordinarily Well, the celebrated psychiatrist and author Peter D. Kramer examines the growing controversy about the popular medications. A practicing doctor who trained as a psychotherapist and worked with pioneers in psychopharmacology, Kramer combines moving accounts of his patients' dilemmas with an eye-opening history of drug research to cast antidepressants in a new light. Kramer homes in on the moment of c...

"Deeply felt... [Kramer's] book is a polemic against a society that accepts depression as a fact of life." —O, The Oprah MagazineA profound look at depression by the author of The New York Times Bestseller, Listening to ProzacIn his landmark bestseller Listening to Prozac, Peter Kramer revolutionized the way we think about antidepressants and the culture in which they are so widely used. Now Kramer offers ...

When Peter D. Kramer wrote about his work with psychiatric patients in books like Listening to Prozac and Should You Leave?, Joyce Carol Oates said, “To read his prose on virtually any subject is to be provoked, enthralled, illuminated.” When Kramer switched to fiction, Publishers Weekly wrote, “The depth, quality, and ambition of Kramer’s prose will surprise those expecting a superficial crossover effort.”In his new novel, Death of the Great Man...

"Elliott's absorbing account will make readers think again about the ways that science shapes our personal identities."—American ScientistAmericans have always been the world's most anxiously enthusiastic consumers of "enhancement technologies." Prozac, Viagra, and Botox injections are only the latest manifestations of a familiar pattern: enthusiastic adoption, public hand-wringing, an occasional congressional hearing, and calls for self-reliance.I...

Drawing on new research in the Stanley Kubrick Archive at the University of the Arts London, Krämer's study explores the production, marketing and reception as well as the themes and style of A Clockwork Orange against the backdrop of Kubrick's previous work and of wider developments in cinema, culture and society from the 1950s to the early 1970s.

Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) is widely regarded as one of the best films ever made. It has been celebrated for its beauty and mystery, its realistic depiction of space travel and dazzling display of visual effects, the breathtaking scope of its story, which reaches across millions of years, and the thought-provoking depth of its meditation on evolution, technology and humanity's encounters with the unknown. 2001 has been described as the most expensive a...

Combining a detailed film analysis with archival research and social science approaches, this book examines how American Graffiti (1973), a low-budget and star-less teen comedy by a filmmaker whose only previous feature had been a box office flop, became one of the highest grossing and most highly acclaimed films of all time in the United States, and one of the key expressions of the nostalgia wave washing over the country in the 1970s.American Graffiti: George Lucas, ...

Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) has long been recognised as one of the key artistic expressions of the nuclear age. Made at a time when nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union was a real possibility, the film is menacing, exhilarating, thrilling, insightful and very funny.Combining a scene-by-scene analysis of Dr. Strangelove with new research in the Stanley Kubrick Archive, Peter Krämer's study foregr...

Offering a fresh perspective on The General, arguably one of the most successful American films of the silent era, this insightful text analyses its initial critical reception and the thematic and stylistic characteristics of the film that made it difficult for critics to appreciate at the time, but led to its celebration by later generations.