Phobias ruin lives. But although many people are crippled by intense irrational terrors - whether focused on sex, spiders, social situations or just going out of the front door - reliable new treatments and self-help methods now promise relief for almost everyone. In this lifeline for long-standing sufferers, researcher and consultant psychiatrist Dr Richard Stern offers understanding, reassurance and straightforward practical advice. Considering in turn the commonest phobias and the more unusual variants (fears of flying, farting, dogs and diseases), he provides readers with self-assessment questionnaires and shows them how to break through the constraints of agoraphobia; build up assertiveness and social skills (but control anger); develop freedom from sexual worries and inhibitions; draw up action and thought plans; consider the (useful but limited) option of medication; and find further information and help. Phobias cause immense damage, but no one has to put up with them. This invaluable book will allow sufferers to tackle and beat them.

Mastering Phobias: Cases, Causes and Cures

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Stern, Richard

Psychology & Counseling

Penguin??Books

In midcentury America, the golden age of television, a man named Golk is wreaking havoc with the medium. Through a devastating series of exposures—"You're on Camera"—Golk manipulates the high and mighty, the lowdown and dirty, and the outrageous weird; all are within the compass of Richard Stern in this early novel, a comedy with as many inspired maneuvers as its rambunctious protagonist has for taking the measure of a profligate world. "Golk is a rich and marvelously detailed novel by a man with a cultivated intelligence; it is also the first really good book I have read about television."—Norman Mailer "An original: sharp, funny, intelligent, rare. . . . Working in a clean, oblique style reminiscent of Nathanael West, Mr. Stern has written in Golk a first-rate comic novel, a piece of fiction that is at once about and loaded with that kind of recognition that junkies call the flash."—Joan Didion, National Review "Golk is fantastic, funny, bitter, intelligent without weariness. Best of all Golk is pure—that is to say necessary. Without hokum."—Saul Bellow "Golk (like Golk himself) is a wonderous conception. Its world responds to personification, not analysis, and personify it Mr. Stern has done. A book in a thousand."—Hugh Kenner "What I like about Mr. Stern's fantasy is that it has been conceived and written with so much gaiety. Far from a political melodrama, it reminds me of a René Clair movie, and even the surrealist touches needed to bring out the power and pretense of the television industry are funny rather than symbolically grim."—Alfred Kazin, Reporter "A mighty good book, altogether alive, full of beans and none of them spilled."—Flannery O'Connor

Golk (Phoenix Fiction)

Literature & Fiction

Contemporary

University of Chicago Press

Cy Riemer—fifty-ish, divorced, and father of four—surveys the dispersal of his family with a mixture of anxiety, humor, sadness, and pride. In this wry, moving, and wise novel, Richard Stern offers his masterful portrait of Cy as the quintessential caring yet controlling parent, a relentless seeker of self-knowledge whose search is intensified through conflicts with his brilliant, ne'er-do-well son Jack. The "manipulation of a smart, sane, self-justifying narrator . . . is not the least of Stern's achievements in this delicate fabrication of tough prose and tender adjustment of sentiment."—Geoffrey Wolff, Los Angeles Times  "Richard Stern's novels are robustly intelligent, very funny, and beguilingly humane. He knows as much as anyone writing American prose about family mischief, intellectual shenanigans, love blunders—and about writing American prose."—Philip Roth  "A delectable rhetorical display. . . . "—The New Yorker  "Anyone who has read Richard Stern's previous novels won't need to be told he is an unusually crisp and intelligent writer, with a sharp edge to his wit; and in A Father's Words he runs true to form. Many of the book's pleasures are incidental: jokes, intellectual cadenzas, agile turns of phrase . . . The author's powers of farcical invention climax in a brilliant, bitter episode where . . . the younger man proclaims his final failure . . . Mr. Stern has written an excellent novel."—John Gross, New York Times  "Richard Stern is American letters' unsung comic writer about serious matters . . . [A Father's Words] produced in this reviewer an apostolic desire to convince a wider audience to try Stern, especially the vintage Stern."—Doris Grumbach, Chicago Tribune

A Father's Words: A Novel (Phoenix Fiction)

What Is What Was

What Is What Was, Richard Stern's fifth "orderly miscellany," is the first to meaningfully combine his fiction and nonfiction. Stories, such as the already well-known "My Ex, the Moral Philosopher," appear among portraits (of the sort Hugh Kenner praised as "almost the invention of a new genre"): Auden, Pound, Ellison, Terkel, W. C. Fields, Bertrand Russell, Walter Benjamin (in both essay and story), Jung and Freud, Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger. In the book's seven sections are analyses of the Wimbledon tennis tournament as an Anglification machine, of Silicon Valley at its shaky peak, of James and Dante as travel writers, a Lucretian look at today's cosmology, American fiction in detail and depth, a "thought experiment" for Clarence Thomas, a salvation scheme for Ross Perot, a semi-confession of the writer. The book contains but isn't philosophy, criticism, opinion, reportage, or autobiography (although the author says it is as much of this as he plans to write). There is a recurrent theme, the ways in which actuality is made and remade in description, argument and narration, fictional and nonfictional, but above all, What Is What Was is a provocative entertainment by a writer who, as Philip Roth once said, "knows as much as anyone writing American prose about family mischief, intellectual shenanigans, love blunders—and about writing American prose."

United States

What Is What Was, Richard Stern's fifth "orderly miscellany," is the first to meaningfully combine his fiction and nonfiction. Stories, such as the already well-known "My Ex, the Moral Philosopher," appear among portraits (of the sort Hugh Kenner praised as "almost the invention of a new genre"): Auden, Pound, Ellison, Terkel, W. C. Fields, Bertrand Russell, Walter Benjamin (in both essay and story), Jung and Freud, Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger. In the book's seven sections are analyses of the Wimbledon tennis tournament as an Anglification machine, of Silicon Valley at its shaky peak, of James and Dante as travel writers, a Lucretian look at today's cosmology, American fiction in detail and depth, a "thought experiment" for Clarence Thomas, a salvation scheme for Ross Perot, a semi-confession of the writer. The book contains but isn't philosophy, criticism, opinion, reportage, or autobiography (although the author says it is as much of this as he plans to write). There is a recurrent theme, the ways in which actuality is made and remade in description, argument and narration, fictional and nonfictional, but above all, What Is What Was is a provocative entertainment by a writer who, as Philip Roth once said, "knows as much as anyone writing American prose about family mischief, intellectual shenanigans, love blunders—and about writing American prose."

Dominating the skyline of Manhattan is the new World Communications Center, the greatest building ever constructed. Pm the dau pf ots dedication, as a glittering cast of VIP's gathers at the very top of the building, the junior architect makes a horrifying discover: the building's structure is fatally flawed. And then in the core of the building, a chain of accidents and a sudden insane burst of violence start and avalanche of events that threatens the center and everyone trapped in it.

The Tower

McKay

Still on Call (Writers on Writing)

"Richard Stern is a literary treasure." ---Scott Turow "Stern's new miscellany reveals a literary mind of the first order, thinking in elegant prose about dozens of interesting subjects." ---Philip Roth "Stern is a great virtuoso. . . . [I]n an ailing literary culture, we should be grateful for a work like this and a career, too, spanning the American half-century." ---New York Times Book Review "Stern's skill gives vitality to everything he treats." ---Edmund White, Los Angeles Times "Like a gifted dancer in a small space, Stern has tremendous grace and ease on the page, executing dynamic turns and dips with a fine economy of motion and without sacrificing nuance." ---Booklist Still on Call is the sixth and final collection of critically acclaimed novelist and educator Richard Stern. "Orderly miscellany" is the author's term for this aggregation of reflections, essays, reviews, reportage, commentary, and observations on writing and fellow writers, life, and contemporary culture. The collection's three sections, Coasting, Posting, and Hosting, contain pieces that range from reflections on becoming a writer in the 1940s to assessments of such major writers and close colleagues as Saul Bellow, and Donald Justice to topical offerings from Stern's popular blog for the New Republic. This wide-ranging collection is intended as the culmination of sixty years of the writing life but, first and foremost, as provocative entertainment. Stern is a prolific writer, and this selection of some of his highest-quality writing both educates and enthralls. Richard Stern is the Helen A. Regenstein Emeritus Professor of English and of the Humanities at the University of Chicago and the author of nineteen works of fiction and nonfiction. His books include the novels A Father's Words and Golk, and, most recently, the collection What Is What Was. Stern has been the subject of two books: The Writings of Richard Stern: The Education of an Intellectual Everyman by David Garret Izzo and Richard Stern by James Schiffer.

Still on Call (Writers On Writing)

Essays & Correspondence

University of Michigan Press

"Richard Stern is a literary treasure."---Scott Turow"Stern's new miscellany reveals a literary mind of the first order, thinking in elegant prose about dozens of interesting subjects."---Philip Roth"Stern is a great virtuoso. . . . [I]n an ailing literary culture, we should be grateful for a work like this and a career, too, spanning the American half-century."---New York Times Book Review"Stern's skill gives vitality to everything he treats."---Edmund White, Los Angeles Times"Like a gifted dancer in a small space, Stern has tremendous grace and ease on the page, executing dynamic turns and dips with a fine economy of motion and without sacrificing nuance."---BooklistStill on Call is the sixth and final collection of critically acclaimed novelist and educator Richard Stern. "Orderly miscellany" is the author's term for this aggregation of reflections, essays, reviews, reportage, commentary, and observations on writing and fellow writers, life, and contemporary culture.The collection's three sections, Coasting, Posting, and Hosting, contain pieces that range from reflections on becoming a writer in the 1940s to assessments of such major writers and close colleagues as Saul Bellow, and Donald Justice to topical offerings from Stern's popular blog for the New Republic.This wide-ranging collection is intended as the culmination of sixty years of the writing life but, first and foremost, as provocative entertainment. Stern is a prolific writer, and this selection of some of his highest-quality writing both educates and enthralls.Richard Stern is the Helen A. Regenstein Emeritus Professor of English and of the Humanities at the University of Chicago and the author of nineteen works of fiction and nonfiction. His books include the novels A Father's Words and Golk, and, most recently, the collection What Is What Was. Stern has been the subject of two books: The Writings of Richard Stern: The Education of an Intellectual Everyman by David Garret Izzo and Richard Stern by James Schiffer.

Univ of Michigan Pr

The books in Fred Hampton's apartment

E.P.Dutton & Co.

Written by one of America's finest contemporary novelists, Other Men's Daughters is the story of an intense love affair between a middle-aged professor and a young woman, wise and worldly beyond her years. One reviewer writes, "I...was struck not simply by its psychological depth but particularly by the combination of toughness and tenderness through which romantic love was represented and discussed. The lack of sentimentality (in a novel about the refusal to live a life without love) was immensely important to me...and is likely ...to be immensely important ...today."

Other Men's Daughters

E.P.Dutton

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Stern, Richard. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Stern, Richard

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Stern, Richard. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Mastering Phobias: Cases, Causes and Cures

Golk (Phoenix Fiction)

A Father's Words: A Novel (Phoenix Fiction)

What Is What Was

What Is What Was

The Tower

Still on Call (Writers On Writing)

Still on Call (Writers on Writing)

The books in Fred Hampton's apartment

Other Men's Daughters