Consciousness, memory, our relationship with time, and free will—things that I’ve obsessed over since my days as a philosophy student. It’s also about trauma—in this case, being present at the fire-bombing of Dresden in World War Two.
Some months ago, someone close to me (who had long been suffering from PTSD) died by suicide. This great book comes directly from a place of suffering from PTSD and spoke to me for that reason. And for a book as dark as it is, it’s utterly hilarious.
A special fiftieth anniversary edition of Kurt Vonnegut’s masterpiece, “a desperate, painfully honest attempt to confront the monstrous crimes of the twentieth century” (Time), featuring a new introduction by Kevin Powers, author of the National Book Award finalist The Yellow Birds
Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time
Slaughterhouse-Five, an American classic, is one of the world’s great antiwar books. Centering on the infamous World War II firebombing of Dresden, the novel is the result of what Kurt Vonnegut described as a twenty-three-year struggle to write a book about what he had…
Six months ago, I lost someone very close to me to suicide. This person had been suffering for years from complex post-traumatic stress disorder due to traumas endured both as a child and an adult.
I read this book in an attempt to understand more about the nature of PTSD, its causes and consequences.
The book is a harrowing account of the torment caused by PTSD, but also a history of the birth and development of the whole concept of PTSD (it gained recognition as a disorder thanks to the efforts of a group of Vietnam vets in the 1970s), and a history of its predecessors (so-called shell-shock and combat fatigue).
Morris’s book is deeply personal, compelling, and exhaustively researched—highly recommended.
“An essential book” on PTSD, an all-too-common condition in both military veterans and civilians (The New York Times Book Review).
Post-traumatic stress disorder afflicts as many as 30 percent of those who have experienced twenty-first-century combat—but it is not confined to soldiers. Countless ordinary Americans also suffer from PTSD, following incidences of abuse, crime, natural disasters, accidents, or other trauma—yet in many cases their symptoms are still shrouded in mystery, secrecy, and shame.
This “compulsively readable” study takes an in-depth look at the subject (Los Angeles Times). Written by a war correspondent and former Marine with firsthand experience of this…
Martin Scorcese’s adaptation of this novel has long been one of my favorite films—the wonder is that it took me as long as it did to read the source material.
I’m not church-going or part of a specific denomination, but I’m deeply spiritual and have read and appreciated the gospels—the fascinating thing about Kazantzakis’ book is that in it Christ is depicted as a Christian, not as a superbeing or flawless man-god. He has an obsessive need to preach a message of personal salvation coming to him from a transcendent source he doesn’t understand. But he is a flawed searcher, tempted by lust, rage, and the human need to be a mate, parent, and provider.
Kazantzakis’ deeply moving, haunting, and beautiful book comes from a place of personal spiritual torment, and from his own obsessive need to understand the call to spiritual enlightenment and peace that most people feel at some time in their lives. This book will be in my heart always.
The internationally renowned novel about the life and death of Jesus Christ.
Hailed as a masterpiece by critics worldwide, The Last Temptation of Christ is a monumental reinterpretation of the Gospels that brilliantly fleshes out Christ’s Passion. This literary rendering of the life of Jesus Christ has courted controversy since its publication by depicting a Christ far more human than the one seen in the Bible. He is a figure who is gloriously divine but earthy and human, a man like any other—subject to fear, doubt, and pain.
In elegant, thoughtful prose Nikos Kazantzakis, one of the greats of modern…
When Professor Walton Honderich was a young grad student, he participated in a government prison program. He committed an act that led to the death of his friend, the brilliant physicist Marc Lepore, and resulted in unimaginable torment for an entire class of people across the United States.
Twenty years later, now an insecure father slipping into alcoholism, Walton struggles against the ghosts that haunt him in a futuristic New York City.
With full-color art and a cutting-edge critique of our increasingly technological world, The Furnace speaks fluently to the terrifying scope of the surveillance state, the dangerous allure of legacy, and the hope of redemption despite our flaws.
