Surviving Our Catastrophes: Resilience and Renewal from Hiroshima to the COVID-19 Pandemic

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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.

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.

'Lifton shows us why we must confront reality in order to save democracy.' - Peter Balakian, Pulitzer Prizewinning author ofOzone Journal

Reviews

Praise forSurviving Our Catastrophes:
"[Surviving Our Catastrophes] cuts through the existential fog to reveal something like hope. . . . Liftons wisdom is worth readingand heeding."
The Washington Post

"Thought-provoking. . . .Surviving Our Catastrophesis an absorbing sociological study focused on survivorsthe keys to social renewal after disasters strike."
Foreword Reviews

"Readers will cry and cheer as they immerse themselves in Liftons wise, chilling, enlightening, and compassionate book."
Booklist (starred review)

A thoughtful, pithy, and inspiring narrative. . . . Written with the authority of experience, this book offers a viable path to true recovery.
Kirkus Reviews

"Lifton, more than anyone alive today, can serve as a wise and lucid guide . . . [to] the remarkably life-affirming responses of survivors of atrocities, and the larger human capacity for collective renewal."
Bessel van der Kolk, author ofThe Body Keeps the Score

Lifton makes a difficult subject accessible . . . the book feels almost like a conversation. In this summation of a lifetimes work, he distills the wisdom gained from bearing intimate witness to survivors of historys most terrible events, and offers us all a message of hope.
Dr. Judith Herman, author ofTruth and Repair: How Trauma Survivors Envision Justice

With the same intellectual rigor and passionate commitment he has brought to his lifes work, Robert Jay Lifton explains how the way we process and memorialize catastropheHiroshima, the AIDS plague, the murderous early days of the COVID pandemiccan reveal, and mobilize, what he calls our human commonality. Its a book we can all be grateful for.
Daniel Okrent, author ofThe Guarded GateandLast Call

If the human race can look back without despair on what it did to itself in the twentieth century (and may well be about to do again), then we should thank the unflinching wisdom of Robert Jay Lifton. This short, utterly necessary book is written at the climax of a very long life, by a man who has looked straight into the black sun of Auschwitz and Hiroshima and yet preserved his moral eyesight. . . . Lifton writes here about victims who become survivors . . . of catastrophes present and to come: COVID-19, nuclear threat, climate change. We have to learn from the survivors of catastrophe if we are to learn the truth about ourselves, if we are to go on living as a species.
Neal Ascherson, Scottish journalist and author ofBlack Seaand the novelThe Death of the Fronsac

This exquisite distillation of a genius-lifes wisdom turns our age of troubles into a time of unexpected affirmation, abundant possibility. Robert Jay Liftons briefest book isstunninglyhis magnum opus.
James Carroll, author ofThe Truth at the Heart of the Lie

Lifton shows us why we must confront reality in order to save democracy.
Peter Balakian, Pulitzer Prizewinning author ofOzone Journal

Lifton offers a powerful and clear physical and spiritual road map of how to navigate our pain after a personal or global disaster: see it, feel it, own it, share it, and use it.
Sohaila Abdulali, author ofWhat We Talk About When We Talk About Rape

Lifton escorts us on a soul-searching journey and gives us an emotional and intellectual road map for accepting and living through catastrophes using what he calls survivor power. This book is not just a captivating read; its also a life-affirming experience.
Dr. Michael Osterholm

The COVID-19 pandemic appears to us a catastrophe like no other. And yet from the Holocaust to Hiroshima to the War on Terror, the pandemic is but the leading edge of a catastrophic century. To make sense of the plagueto understand it as medical challenge, moral conundrum, and societal wounddemands the rare writer who has confronted the centurys horrors. In its wisdom and humanity,Surviving Our Catastrophesis an essential book.
Mark Danner, author ofThe Massacre at El Mozote,Torture and Truth, andSpiral: Trapped in the Forever War

A poignant, beautifully crafted, and compelling case for optimizing our survival as individuals and as a species,Surviving Our Catastrophesis the culmination of a lifetime of inquiry and study of the most horrible and horrifying things human beings do to each other and their ensuant moral injury. Lifton shows how we might and sometimes do heal from such events and their aftermath through bearing witness, remembering, public mourning, and above all, widespread social action and activism. He also shows us how we might come to prevent impending disasters stemming from the human mind when we fail to recognize our common humanity.
Jon Kabat-Zinn, founder of MBSR (mindfulness-based stress reduction) and author ofFull Catastrophe LivingandComing to Our Senses

Author Bio

A pioneer in the field of psychohistory, Robert Jay Lifton is a psychiatrist and author best known for his studies of the psychological causes and effects of war and political violence and for his theory of thought reform and cult behaviour. He has written over twenty books, including many seminal works in the field such as the National Book Awardwinning Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima, Los Angeles Times Book Prizewinning The Nazi Doctors, National Book Awardnominated Home from the War, as well as The Climate Swerve, Losing Reality, and Surviving Our Catastrophes (all from The New Press). He has taught at Yale University, Harvard University, and the City University of New York. He lives in Wellfleet, Massachusetts.