Nothing is more complicated than stress. No single volume provides a more balanced and substantive range of theoretical and research articles and chapters devoted to clinical aspects of stress and stress management. The authors/editors wisely warn in chapter one about "Stress Research at a Crossroads." Any professional involved in researching or clinically treating forms of stress knows all too well that stress research is multiplying exponentially and that as the body of information is expanding it is also diversifying and dovetailing with similar topics such as emotion, neurology, physiology and even physics and linguistics. Given, then, that no volume - let alone one that attempts to maintain a substantive input by the classical pioneers such as Selye, Lazarus, Janis and Meichenbaum among many others - can keep up with the research, this one constitutes a masterful, one-stop basic text for integrating the rich underpinnings that launched the stress revolution. The three major strengths of this book that keep it almost constantly on my desktop are its rich classical/historical content (just where exactly did we get the ideas of "eustress and distress"?), the expansive range of topics ranging from medicine and emotion to psychological measurement, diagnosis, and environment, and its applicability to a wide array of practical clinical applications including social turmoil (the Holocaust, migration of populations, HIV), treatment modalities and links to overall physical health. This classic text is the springboard handbook for any professional who makes a living trying to understand or apply stress theory to helping people change, or addressing the social context in which people live.

I liked this book even though I didn't rate it highly.
Breznitz did a good job detailing his life in wartime Slovakia and his placement in a Catholic orphanage. His troubles surviving the war are touching. No one should be made to feel this sense of tragedy. What got in the way was Shlomo's rationalizing in the book. Some of these thoughts confused me because they made it hard to follow the story.
This book is a good read detailing the suffering of one person. However there are better books out there. If one wants to read about the Holocaust, there are some great books out there such as the Diary of Anne Frank.

A fine, well written memoir of one of the few Jewish survivors of the "Shoah" in Slovakia. A young boy and his sister are sent to a Catholic orphanage to survive WWII. Very human, often sadly humorous; a wonderfully touching Christmas scene where the author and his sister sing "Silent Night", in German, to one of the occupation officers -- since the Slovak orphans do not know German... The author intimates, but does not divulge many, harsh Nun disciplines; but dispensed fairly to all. There are interesting notes about playing chess, learnt from his father; the whispered myth that a Jew would convert into a Christian and become Pope -- with the author learning many Catholic prayers by heart, in Latin, fanning hopes for such a possibility; snippets of fervent Nazi anti-Jew, anti-Catholic actions ("Jesus was a Jewish child..." as the Nazis murder a priest). A sad, moving ending. Recently translated into Slovak.