Books by Edward Shorter

Psychiatry today is a barren tundra, writes medical historian Edward Shorter, where drugs that don't work are used to treat diseases that don't exist. In this provocative volume, Shorter illuminates this dismal landscape, in a revealing account of why psychiatry is "losing ground" in the struggle to treat depression.Naturally, the book looks at such culprits as the pharmaceutical industry, which is not inclined to market drugs once the patent expires, leading to the endless introduction of new-but not necessarily better-drugs. But the heart of the book focuses on an unexpected villain: the FDA, the very agency charged with ensuring drug safety and effectiveness. Shorter describes how the FDA permits companies to test new products only against placebo. If you can beat sugar pills, you get your druglicensed, whether or not it is actually better than (or even as good as) current medications, thus sweeping from the shelves drugs that may be superior but have lost patent protection. The book also examines the FDA's early power struggles against the drug industry, an influence-grab that had little to dowith science, and which left barbiturates, opiates, and amphetamines all underprescribed, despite the fact that under careful supervision they are better at treating depression, with fewer side effects, than the newer drugs in the Prozac family. Shorter also castigates academia, showing how two forms of depression, melancholia and nonmelancholia-"as different from each other as chalk and cheese"-became squeezed into one dubious classification, major depression, which was essentially apolitical artifact born of academic infighting.An astonishing and troubling look at modern psychiatry, Losing Ground is a book that is sure to spark controversy for years to come.

This book describes how women's physical experience historically has affected the whole constellation of values that represents womanliness, and the constellation of power relationships that binds men and women together. It explores the role of herbs and of mechanical procedures for abortion.

With every passing year, the mutual mistrust between doctor and patient widens, as doctors retreat into resentment and patients become increasingly disillusioned with the quality of care. Rich in anecdote as well as science Doctors and Their Patients describes how both have arrived at this sad shape.

What has been the source of women's oppression by men? Shorter argues that women were victimized by their own bodies

Argues that the symptoms of psychosomatic illness that patients have produced throughout the centuries are shaped by the cultural shifts of larger society, and that diseases such as "chronic fatigue syndrome" are ailments that express the deepest truths about the culture in which we live.

Written in the Flesh is a history of what people like to do in bed and how that has changed. The change is relentless: human sexuality continually seeks new means of liberation in its expression of pleasure.

Long a generous benefactor of mental retardation(MR)-related organizations, Joseph P Kennedy made MR the special charitable interest of the family foundation he set up in the 1950s. This title focuses on the Kennedy family's commitment to public service.

Now in paper! Writing in a charged, highly-accessible style, Edward Shorter covers the history of psychiatry from the late 18th century to the present.