Nicholas Bakalar – författare

This landmark work surveys the major factors that influence voting behavior in Japan. It is the first comprehensive study of the Japanese voter to be written for English-speaking audiences. It is commonly believed that Japanese voting behavior cannot be compared to voting behavior in the West because it is not determined by the same kinds of group loyalties, interests, and attitudes but rather by unique patterns of personalistic networks and group mobilization. However this book demonstrates through a wide range of examples that there are recognizable bases of comparison between Japanese and Western voting behavior. It also produces a number of fascinating contrasts with voting in the West, because Japan is different, even if it is not unique. Thus we learn about the relative absence of economic voting, the weak role of the media, the continuing importance of cultural values, the enormous stability in voting patterns, and the effects of the unusual Japanese electoral system. Drawing on data from the 1950s onward, the book includes coverage of the most recent national elections in Japan.

While HIV spreads among people with severe mental illness for the same reasons it does in the general population, there are specific ways in which mental illness is associated with elevated HIV risk. Every mental health institution or program now has to deal with the consequences of increased HIV rates, but until now there has been no single book that could tell them how to do so. AIDS and People with Severe Mental Illness covers the entire range of information essential for those who deal with these patients: epidemiological, medical, psychological, legal, ethical, and policy issues are all examined by eminent authorities in those areas.Nurses, social workers, psychologists, psychiatrists, mental health administrators, forensic specialists, and others involved in the care of people with severe mental illness will find here exactly what they have been looking for: the information essential for dealing with the challenges the AIDS epidemic has set before them.

Hepatitis is a growing epidemic caused by a number of viruses labelled A to G. Each one requires a different diagnostic and therapeutic approach. Alan Berkman explains how they are contracted and how to deal with them.