The Oxford Handbook of Health Psychology

It is evidence of the importance of the new field of health psychology that it warrants this volume in the prestigious series of Oxford Handbooks. Presenting the state of research, the 35 chapters are divided into five sections; foundations, core concepts, core issues, health behaviors and change, and population and sociocultural issues. The focus on methodology and practice of the initial two sections will be particularly useful to beginning practitioners and graduate students. Editor Howard S. Friedman (psychology, U. of California, Riverside) has contributed a chapter on personality, disease, and self-healing and the concluding chapter describing future trends in addition to co-authoring the chapter on the field's intellectual roots with Nancy E. Adler (U. of California, San Francisco). As is typical for the series, the material is clearly and thoughtfully presented, with an abstract, list of keywords, and bibliography in each chapter, with the text presented in outline form, clearly dividing a substantial body of information into accessible parts. Annotation c2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Howard S. Friedman is Distinguished Professor at the University of California, Riverside. Major awards for his health psychology research include the Outstanding Contributions to Health Psychology Award from the American Psychological Association, and the James McKeen Cattell Fellow Award from the Association for Psychological Science, its most prestigious award in the field of applied scientific research. Author or editor of a dozen books and 150 scientific articles, Dr. Friedman graduated from Yale and was awarded a National Science Foundation graduate fellowship for his doctoral work at Harvard.