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Surviving Our Catastrophes

Resilience and Renewal from Hiroshima to the COVID-19 Pandemic

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

From the National Book Award winner, a powerful and timely rumination on how we can draw on historical examples of "survivor power" to understand the upheaval and death caused by the COVID-19 pandemic—and collectively heal
"Lifton shows us why we must confront reality in order to save democracy." —Peter Balakian, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Ozone Journal
In this moving and ultimately hopeful meditation on the psychological aftermath of catastrophe, award-winning psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton calls forth his life's work to show us how to cope with the lasting effects and legacy of the COVID-19 pandemic. The result is a thought-provoking examination of life in the face of COVID-19 from one of the most profound thinkers of our time.

When the people of Hiroshima experienced the unspeakable horror of the atomic bombing, they responded by creating an activist "city of peace." Survivors of the Nazi death camps took the lead in combating mass killing of any kind and converted their experience into art and literature that demonstrated the resilience of the human spirit. Drawing on the remarkably life-affirming responses of survivors of such atrocities, Lifton, "one of the world's foremost thinkers on why we humans do such awful things to each other" (Bill Moyers), shows readers how we can carry on and live meaningful lives even in the face of the tragic and the absurd.

Surviving Our Catastrophes offers compelling examples of "survivor power" and makes clear that we will not move forward by denying the true extent of the pandemic's destruction. Instead, we must truly reckon with COVID-19's effects on ourselves and society—and find individual and collective forms of renewal.

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    • Booklist

      August 1, 2023
      Psychiatrist and National Book Award-winner Lifton has written extensively and powerfully about psychohistory in relation to genocide, war, and cults. In this concise book about survivors of catastrophes, the 97-year-old Lifton accomplishes a scholarly act of alchemy by transforming the tragedy and horror of disaster into hope and paths to renewal. He identifies shared attributes of the survivor experience: recognition of the truth and pledging to remember the atrocity, emotional and psychological "resurrection," resolve, and a commitment to "reestablishing the flow of life." Lifton examines death anxiety, psychic numbing, mourning, survivor mission, and "a sense of debt to the dead." He questions how ordinary individuals can actively participate in acts of brutality. He movingly describes the psychological fear of "invisible contamination" from radiation experienced by Hiroshima survivors. He eloquently encapsulates the havoc of COVID-19, a virus whose "omnipresence can be experienced as a supernatural entity." The possible use of nuclear weapons, war in Europe, worsening climate change, attacks on democracy, mass shootings, future pandemics, these threats and more will continue. Yet hope and resilience somehow find a way to rise from the wreckage. Readers will cry and cheer as they immerse themselves in Lifton's wise, chilling, enlightening, and compassionate book.

      COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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  • English

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