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In this ambitious follow-up to Achilles in Vietnam, Dr. Jonathan Shay uses the Odyssey, the story of a soldier's homecoming, to illuminate the pitfalls that trap many veterans on the road back to civilian life. Seamlessly combining important psycho- logical work and brilliant literary interpretation with an impassioned plea to renovate American military institutions, Shay deepens our understanding of both the combat veteran's experience and one of the world's greatest classics.

Average Customer Rating:

Should be required reading for all NCOs and family support

Customer Rating:

This book is wonderful. Coming back from Iraq my girlfriend could only quietly accept my sudden anger at 'little old ladies' who got too close to me with their shopping carts in the megamall. But with her quiet acceptance on so many things changed about me, there were still small fights between us when I could not go out with her friends (who I felt were shallow and petty... Odysseus' attitude toward the rich civilians) or why I hated to drive downtown, and how our sex life was really going through the motions and so on and so forth. So many things in this book are mirrored in my own life and the lives of friends who have come back with me. So many of our behaviors and attitudes and great anger are accepted at first by friends and loved ones but they grow tired of us quickly and do not understand why we cannot change back into the people we were before the war. Every NCO is charged with taking care of his/her men. NCOs mentor and guide the troops under their care. Read this book and talk to your troops. Read this book and talk to your families. Every deploying unit should buy this book and give it to the spouses left behind, that they can read it while the deployment lasts, that they can talk about it and be ready for the changed men and women we will be after coming back home. We cannot entertain ourselves and distract ourselves from the fact that our troops are coming back changed. The hard-won lessons learned from world wars 1 and 2 in the care of combat stress were utterly forgotten in treating those coming back from Vietnam and a nation said 'never again'. Yet those hard won lessons on what combat stress are and how to deal with it were, again, thrown out and we are having to learn it all again. Thank you to the veterans of past wars, my heroes, who have stepped up with their stories to welcome me back and to guide me back through my own homecoming. SSG Black, Oregon Army National Guard 2004-2010, USMC 1989-1994

Myth and the Human Experience

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This book powerfully uses myth to capture the reality of the human experience. Myth helps us place our experiences, whether on the battlefield or in everyday life in context. Shay masterfully weaves ancient and modern into something that is very beautiful and very human. Another great book about Homer's Odyssey as it relates to the adolescent experience is Rethinking Adolescence: Using Story to Navigate Life's Uncharted Years by Jay D'Ambrosio. [...]

Finally Understand	Customer Rating:
After reading it and puzzling over it for a couple of months I can honestly say I understand what I have put my wife through for the last 36 and one-half years. Every combat veteran needs to read this book. Just for the understanding if nothing else. Oh, if it is not too late, get some help too.

Returning Veterans

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As those of us who live and work with war trauma know, for many, the Vietnam War is not over.Jonathan Shay writes: "The Vietnam veterans that I have worked with were treated shabbily by both the political right - who scorned them as 'losers'...and by the political left, who held them responsible for everything vile or wrongheaded that led us into the war, was done during the war, or came after the war." I encountered a similar situation in my work with Russian veterans of their war in Afghanistan. Dr. Shay's book provides his readers with valuable insights into the challenges facing soldiers returning from a controversial war.His book is a must read for those who care about the mental and physical health and well being of our returning veterans. Anngwyn St.Just Ph.D. Director of the Arizona Center for Social Trauma and author of " Relative Balance in an Unstable World:The Search for New Models for Trauma Education and Recovery ( 2006 Carl-Auer Verlag, Heidelberg)

Believe neither the gloom and doom ...nor the infantilization in popular lore

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The author is an expert on the return of combat veterans. The literary references are terrific. For instance, the 'Siren Song' cliche' is generally misunderstood. The Sirens are NOT singing flowery or sentimental or erotic or false lyrics to weary sailors. No, the story goes that only THOSE WHO WERE IN COMBAT would recognize the Sirens' stories as exactly truthful, therefore hypnotic. (I did not know the importance of the particular mythology until this book described the context.) That and much much more...