The best books on surviving a life-changing challenge

THOG (yes, we called it by its acronym) was released around the time I entered medical school, and was widely referenced during my training.

Fortunately I was far too occupied to read it at the time, as its revelations, however parodied and overblown, would likely have caused me to leave medicine before earning my license to practice. Encountering it years later, when the whole experience could be reviewed through a humorous retrospective lens, I found the book to be wonderfully entertaining, and spot on in many of its particulars.

Shem’s masterpiece of revelatory satire is the safest, silliest way for anyone to experience medical training, and a proper warning for anyone wishing to enter the field.

I know John Patrick McAfee from art shows where the ‘art husband’ helped his wife set up and present her work. I came to understand him better after completing a year of research on the US Army Special Forces, while creating a drawing honoring the Green Berets.

Slow Walk In a Sad Rain has been described elsewhere as the Catch-22 of the Vietnam War. The story more than lives up to the comparison. McAfee’s wry, tragic humor represents an authentic slice of the life he lived as a Special Forces medic; how he was able to move on from that experience and remain an affable, productive individual capable of sharing his multiple gifts is the greatest mystery, and a testimony to every man and woman who survived the ordeal. 

Shifting from one career to another offers no guarantee of success in the new venture. This is especially true for those of us answering a creative vocation.

The War of Art acknowledges the thousand difficulties any artist faces when trying to render ideas into a livelihood, and reduces them to a singularity: Resistance. Pressfield takes no prisoners, and offers no sympathy for the creative wannabe who can’t find time to work, or edit, or refine, or take whatever next step is required to continue moving forward.

He teaches the reader how to identify a blockage and eliminate it, again and again, as that is the requirement for generating an original product, and making it pay for its upbringing.

Sometimes when faced with impossible choices, the answer is to double down and keep going – even in the face of an existential threat.

As a visual humorist (I deliver my jokes on paper), I shared an immediate rapport with standup comedian Steve Mazan, who was pitching his book at an IdeaFestival, while still dealing with the lingering consequences of liver cancer. Steve’s answer was to say, “I’ve been dying to appear on David Letterman. Now I’m literally dying to do it!”

There’s something to be said of checking off the important boxes on your bucket list. Steve Mazan turned his list into a book, one that delivers a powerful punch line.

Choices, choices, choices. The Things They Carried chronicles in piecemeal, fictionalized format the journey of an army veteran, from an injured spirit focusing on the shortest space between actions necessary for survival, to the expansive vision of a celebrated author.

For me, a creative making his first, furtive attempts at writing, O'Brien’s book gave me permission to experiment with short stories, and to strive for the truth, no matter the amount of fiction required to communicate a reality.