This book is about the contribution of women to the lives of famous artists. Although women have given so much to these artists, this selfless contribution has been largely overlooked by art historians. In trying to redress such a huge imbalance, I have focused mainly on male painters. As a retired psychiatrist, I could not write about these artists, and the women who were their intimate partners, without considering their psychopathology. In writing about this I have struggled to avoid jargon and to ensure readability. The main focus is on the relationship between psychopathology and creativity, with some comments about the effects of psychiatric treatment on the creative process. The overall bias of the book is feminist, but my voice here is not strident. I have tried to comment sensibly on what modern women may learn from the truly heroic women who are the main focus of this work.

In Hollywood or Lust, Robert Julian picks up where he left off in his memoir, Postcards from Palm Springs. When Hollywood calls, the author is thrown into a whirlwind of meetings, phone calls, and pitch sessions surrounding several proposed television series. As Julian's Hollywood saga unfolds, he explores the more outre corners of Palm Springs and its alternate universe of sexual hedonism. In the process, he finds himself fighting City Hall - and the police department. Hollywood or Lust is the final installment in Julian's autobiographical trilogy. The author's odyssey reflects times and places, both past and present, and the journey of an entire generation of men - many of whom are no longer present to tell their own stories. Hollywood or Lust takes the reader on an amusing, heartbreaking, and ultimately insightful journey that is as unexpected and unpredictable as it is moving. Robert Julian now works in reality television.

In BUT THE SHOW WENT ON, (the prequel to his best-selling memoir, POSTCARDS FROM PALM SPRINGS) author Robert Julian revisits 17 essays, interviews, and feature stories he created for the San Francisco Sentinel over 20 years ago. Each entry is illuminated by a new backstory that provides a perspective only made possible by the passage of time. With the same take-no-prisoners attitude that propelled thousands of readers through POSTCARDS FROM PALM SPRINGS in one sitting, Robert Julian once again establishes the value of a smart mouth, sharp eye, and snappy rejoinder.

"Postcards from Palm Springs" is the underground phenomenon that is doing for this California desert community what "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" did for Savannah, Georgia. Author Robert Julian's sharp eye, keen wit, and strong sense of the absurd recalls the work of Augusten Burroughs and David Sedaris. A funny, outrageous, and ultimately moving memoir of both person and place, "Postcards from Palm Springs" soars.