This work deals with the fundamentals of novel writing and the execution of such. Though it engages specific notions of literary and cultural theory, it privileges the architectonics of the texts themselves as it crosses boundaries of both time and culture. The novels include: Austen's "Northanger Abbey", Beckett's "Company", Bronte's "Wuthering Heights", Cervantes' "Don Quixote", Flaubert's "Madame Bovary", Hamsun's "Hunger", Hardy's "Tess of the D'Urbervilles", Lispector's "Hour of the Star" and Smart's "By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept".

Approaching the question of how male novelists perceive their female characters, this collection of creative yet analytic literary essays unwinds the complexities of male authorship versus narration. Mark Axelrod looks at a wide range of male authors including Fydor Dostoevsky, D.H. Lawrence, Carlos Fuentes, and the theories of Jacques Lacan.

An homage to Nabokov's Lectures on Literature, this collection of essays sheds new light on canonical authors such as Ibsen, Beckett, and Strindberg. Using style and structure as the connective thread, Mark Axelrod joins a wide and deep conversation on writers on writing.

This volume is a collection of work spanning the last 20 years, broken down into ten sections, each focusing on a specific domain of psychology. Part I: The Psychology of Zombies includes a new essay examining society's current love affair with the undead. Part II: Violence on the Internet explores types of violence on the internet and how to behaviorally assess the risk/threat they pose. Part III of the book focuses on topics such as what it is like to work as a Police Psychologist, outcome vs. process thinking, and hostage negotiation. Stress, trauma, & crisis intervention is the domain of psychology examined next. Part V: Criminology, includes a review of gangs in the United States, the relationship of criminal justice system to poverty, and an introduction to the fundamentals of wound ballistics. Part VI: Divorce & Family Conflict explores the impact of divorce and family conflict on the adjustment of college students. Part VII: Theories of Personality, examines personality from a variety of theoretical perspectives using several famous characters from popular culture to illustrate those theories. The next section of the book explores Memory & Intelligence and examines topics such as the self-reference effect and the accuracy of early childhood memory. Part IX: Psychological Treatment focuses on issues relevant to the therapeutic practice of psychology. The final part of this book, tackles issues from the perspective of Sociology reviewing areas such as Freud's view of religion and the growing importance of cross-cultural psychology. Ten parts, forty chapters, a collection of disquisitions.

The purpose of this book is to help people understand what stress is, what it does, what impact it can have on people, and what we can do about it. This book begins by defining stress and discussing the differences between stressors that are learned and stressors that are instinctive. Next, how people find themselves "spinning out of control" due to stress will be reviewed by explaining the stress cycle, followed by a thorough discussion of the symptoms related to both short-term and long-term stress. One potential outcome of prolonged exposure to stress, burnout, will also be examined and potential steps to avoid burnout will be presented. This book will also provide a complete review of traumatic/critical incident stress by defining what it is and explaining the phases of trauma, discussing how a person is contaminated by traumatic stress, and intervention strategies to lessen the impact of trauma. Finally, because being able to manage stress effectively and appropriately is the cornerstone of feeling better, being healthier, and addressing a variety of health issues, both mental and physical, this book will review numerous techniques for managing stress and trauma in an effort to help people become more effective at emptying their buckets.