William J. Ronan, a licensed independent clinical social worker, examines the facts of Elvis Presley 's journey on Earth to reveal the truths of the legendary rocker 's life and the root causes of his death in Psychological Autopsy of Elvis Presley, subtitled The Elvis Analysis: The Role of Suggestion in the Etiology of Psychosomatic Disorders. No one can escape the legacy of Elvis celebrity, but Ronan uses the full resources of his profession to forge beyond the well-known facts and the irrepressible hype. Ronan presents a set of psychological circumstances of Elvis death self-image, relationships, the death of his mother and twin brother, and his own morbid feelings before he died. The author relates these circumstances to several case studies and adds layers of analysis from hypnotherapy, traditional psychology, and biomedical ethics. In so doing, Ronan forces the reader to consider the sheer psychological force that core beliefs play in creating and re-creating lives, and in dooming others to an early end. The book is a journey fueled by facts and original thinking that lead the reader to unexpected revelations.

Why it Matters! These issues can happen to everyone but they always come in different forms. This book is for serious students of psychosomatic influences on our lives.

Integrating research from multiple disciplines, this text provides a comprehensive perspective on suicide and examines what works in prevention and intervention. The author is a pioneering researcher and clinician who addresses the classification, prevalence, and assessment of suicide and self-destructive behaviors and explores risk factors at multiple levels, from demographic variables, personality traits, psychiatric diagnoses, and neurobiological factors to the social and cultural context. Student-friendly features include text boxes that dive deeply into specific issues, instructive figures and tables, thought-provoking clinical cases, and engaging examples from literature and popular culture. The text reviews medical and psychosocial treatment and prevention approaches, discusses ways to help those bereaved by suicide, and considers issues of professional liability.

Thoroughly revised to reflect contemporary diagnostics and treatment, this Third Edition is a comprehensive and practical reference on the assessment and management of acute and chronic pain. This edition features 14 new chapters and is filled with new information on invasive procedures...pharmacologic interventions...neuraxial pharmacotherapy...physical and occupational therapies...diagnostic techniques...pain in terminally ill patients...cancer pain...visceral pain...rheumatologic disorders...managed care...and medicolegal issues. Reorganized with two new sections focusing on diagnostics and cancer pain. A Brandon-Hill recommended title.

A “sympathetic and exceptionally well-written account” (USA Today), Ray Connolly’s biography of the King soars with “spontaneity and electricity” (Preston Lauterbach). Elvis Presley is a giant figure in American popular culture, a man whose talent and fame were matched only by his later excesses and tragic end. A godlike entity in the history of rock and roll, this twentieth-century icon with a dazzling voice blended gospel and traditionally black rhythm and blues with country to create a completely new kind of music and new way of expressing male sexuality, which simply blew the doors off a staid and repressed 1950s America. In Being Elvis veteran rock journalist Ray Connolly takes a fresh look at the career of the world’s most loved singer, placing him, forty years after his death, not exhaustively in the garish neon lights of Las Vegas but back in his mid-twentieth-century, distinctly southern world. For new and seasoned fans alike, Connolly, who interviewed Elvis in 1969, re-creates a man who sprang from poverty in Tupelo, Mississippi, to unprecedented overnight fame, eclipsing Frank Sinatra and then inspiring the Beatles along the way. Juxtaposing the music, the songs, and the incendiary live concerts with a personal life that would later careen wildly out of control, Connolly demonstrates that Elvis’s amphetamine use began as early as his touring days of hysteria in the late 1950s, and that the financial needs that drove him in the beginning would return to plague him at the very end. With a narrative informed by interviews over many years with John Lennon, Bob Dylan, B. B. King, Sam Phillips, and Roy Orbison, among many others, Connolly creates one of the most nuanced and mature portraits of this cultural phenomenon to date. What distinguishes Being Elvis beyond the narrative itself is Connolly’s more subtle examinations of white poverty, class aspirations, and the prison that is extreme fame. As we reach the end of this poignant account, Elvis’s death at forty-two takes on the hue of a profoundly American tragedy. The creator of an American sound that resonates today, Elvis remains frozen in time, an enduring American icon who could “seamlessly soar into a falsetto of pleading and yearning” and capture an inner emotion, perhaps of eternal yearning, to which all of us can still relate. Intimate and unsparing, Being Elvis explores the extravagance and irrationality inherent in the Elvis mythology, ultimately offering a thoughtful celebration of an immortal life.

To Thomas T. Noguchi, America’s most famous medical examiner, every death is a mystery—until the cause is found In his first book, the runaway bestseller Coroner, Dr. Noguchi wrote of his controversial investigations as medical examiner of Los Angeles County. In Coroner at Large, the man who has often been called the “Detective of Death” probes the mysteries surrounding the most celebrated criminal cases in recent American history. Using sophisticated techniques of modern forensic science and once again “telling it like it is,” Dr. Noguchi reveals the truth behind the headlines in the untimely deaths of show business celebrities: —The drowning of Beach Boy Dennis Wilson —The murder of Sal Mineo —The suicide of Freddie Prinze —The slaying of “Playmate of the Year” Dorothy Stratten —Elvis Presley’s fatal heart attack Forensic science, too, provides new clues to fascinating historical puzzles: the true fates of General George Custer, the Emperor Napoleon, and Adolf Hitler. In Coroner at Large, Dr. Noguchi brilliantly provides the missing links in our knowledge of these cases. Here, from his own investigations and his pioneering work in the field, we see forensic science in action, unraveling the mysteries of death—both natural and unnatural—in real-life cases that might have baffled even the great Sherlock Holmes.