“Two writers made good use of their time in the big house to compile a lexicon of the colorful terms they heard. Arranged alphabetically within chapters on such topics as communication, sex and drugs and alcohol, and death in prison.”

Publisher: McFarland
Hardback: 128 pages

“Absinthe produced a sense of euphoria similar to the effect of cocaine and opium. The drink was highly addictive and caused a rapid loss of mental and physical faculties. Despite that, Picasso, Manet, Rimbaud and Wilde were among those devoted to the ‘green fairy’; they produced writings and art influenced by absinthe.”

Publisher: McFarland
Hardback: 185 pages
Illustrated

In this book, Jule Eisenbud, psychiatrist and psychic investigator, revealed to the world the amazing story of Ted Serios, a sporadically employed Chicago bellhop and alcoholic who it was claimed could produce recognizable visual images on polaroid film by concentrating his mental energies. A typical “Serios performance,” often held in the respectable living rooms of curious followers of psychic phenomena, consisted of Ted showing up a bit late, possibly tipsy, then asking for something to drink. After he felt properly “prepared” Ted would leap into action, grabbing the polaroid camera (kept up to that point safely hidden to ensure that no tampering was possible) and holding it pointed at his head. Ted would then place a plastic tube called his “gizmo” over the lens and as he focused his mental energies into the camera. His face would turn red, veins would pop up on his forehead, and he'd begin sweating profusely and shaking violently. The shutter would be tricked and the print would be pulled and developed normally. Usually the result was all black or all white with no recognizable image.
This process could go on for hours, as Ted alternated between still calmness and agitated drunken excitement, often with no real success. Once in a while, Ted might even strip off all his clothes and stand naked, perhaps to show that he had “nothing up his sleeve” as it were. Usually just when the interested parties were ready to give up, Ted would produce a “hot one,” often a blurry soft-focused image of a building or a landscape, “miraculously” projected onto the film by Ted's mind. Several of these evocative images are reproduced in the book looking much like photo student pinhole pictures.
Was Ted Serios a true psychic projector, creating images by force of will alone? Or a skilled trickster/performer using some unknown method along with deliberately eccentric behaviours to fool his audiences into accepting these fuzzy photos as real manifestations of psi-phenomena? Dr. Eisenbud, who began as a skeptic of Ted's, ultimately came to believe in him, and promote him as the real thing. AS

Publisher: McFarland
Hardback: 260 pages
Illustrated

The pros and cons of anabolic steroids, the synthetic derivative of male sex hormones used extensively in modern athletics. In America, they’re available by prescription only, but that hasn’t stopped their use and abuse by an estimated 1 million athletes. This book discusses “The Steroid Spiral,” a pattern of addiction common to heavy users; “Potential Psychological Alterations Induced in Men Using Anabolic Steroids”; “Beneficial Factors on Women’s Athletic Performance” (as well as “Adverse Factors”); and “Will the Use of [human growth hormones] in Athletes Cause Acromelgy?” The author argues that anabolic steroids should be a controlled substance, and covers the controversial use of growth hormones to treat gigantism, stunt the growth of “constitutionally tall girls,” and prepare prepubescent children for athletic success. GR

Publisher: McFarland
Paperback: 208 pages

“For parents, teachers and anyone who works with children—here is advice, insight and answers to questions about child sexual abuse, tips on how to help a child foil or frustrate a would-be molester and straight talk unlike any other book on the subject.”

Publisher: McFarland
Hardback: 248 pages

“In July 1991, the author underwent a surgical sex change from a man to a woman. The surgery was performed (in Trinidad, Colorado) by Stanley Biber, M.D., dean of sex-change operations. This work begins at the time Ms. Griggs decided to pursue the surgery and continues through her recovery. Though the procedure altered the author’s body, poignantly accounted for also is the mental transformation.”

Publisher: McFarland
Hardback: 216 pages

Early psychoanalytic study of paraphilias by the great sexologist Wilhelm Stekel. “The fetishist… founds himself a new religion. He smelts his animal ideal and his divine ideal into a new concept. His fetish becomes a god to him just as it does to primitive man. But it is really a caricature of a god. The analyst, however, can retrace the divine features underneath the grotesque lines of the caricature. It is precisely this amalgamation of the religious and the ideal which makes the fetishism almost indissoluble. Thus, we arrive at a formula which at first sight may appear paradoxical: the fetish represents the divine ideal as well as the animal ideal. The synthesis between God and Satan has succeeded. Both rule over the individual, but the division of power is the one guarantee that neither the one nor the other may achieve complete tyranny. Love and religion have been molten into a single, mystical union.” Chapters include “Fetishism and Incest,” “Calf Partialism, Sadism and Kleptomania,” “Partialism and the Cult of the Harem,” “The Bible of the Fetishist (Corset Fetishism),” “Analysis of a Foot Fetishist,” and more.

Publisher: McFarland
Paperback: 355 pages

“Explains why the practice existed and how it was accomplished.”

Publisher: McFarland
Hardback: 144 pages
Illustrated

“Marvelous compilation… skillfully captures the ‘last roundup’… “—Choice

Publisher: McFarland
Hardback: 207 pages

“Nearly 2,000 deathbed quotations from saints, popes, statesmen, scientists, soldiers, athletes, artists, entertainers, writers, criminals and others are included in this reference work. Each entry includes a brief biographical sketch of the person and sets the quotation in context.”

Publisher: McFarland
Hardback: 304 pages