About the Author

Jonathan Shay, MD., PhD., a MacArthur Fellow, is a clinical psychiatrist whose treatment of combat trauma suffered by Vietnam veterans has deepened understanding of the effects of warfare on the individual. He worked as Veterans Affairs psychiatrist at the VA Outpatient Clinic in Boston, Massachusetts for twenty years. His work on moral injury is found in his books, Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character and Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming. In 2018, Volunteers of America established The Shay Moral Injury Center, named in his honor and dedicated to furthering knowledge about moral injury in the many populations who experience it. He lives in the Boston area.

Reviews

"Clearly one of the most important scholarly works to have emerged from the Vietnam War. Beyond that, it is also an intensely moving work, intensely passionate, reaching back through centuries to touch and heal. --Tim O'Brien, author of The Things They Carried

"A fascinating book that is simultaneously brilliant on Greek classics and the Vietnam War, on modern psychiatry and the archetypes of human struggle. And, on top of that, it says something that is directly meaningful to the way many of us live our lives. Remarkable." --Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize-winner author of A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain "A transcendent literary adventure. His compassionate book deserves a place in the lasting literature of the Vietnam War." --Herbert Mitgang, The New York Times "Shay's astute analysis of the human psyche and his inventive linking of his patients' symptoms to the actions of the characters in Homer's classic story make this book well worth reading for anyone who would lead troops in both peace and war." --Thomas E. Neven, Marine Corps Gazette "Eloquent, disturbing, and original." --Jon Spayde, The Utne Reader