Book reviews play an essential role in guiding readers towards meaningful and engaging content. They provide insights, critiques, and recommendations that help readers make informed choices about what to read next.
The US Review of Books, a US-based contemporary book review publication run by professional reviewers and editors, stands at the forefront of the industry. It champions the writing community by offering impartial and thorough evaluations, ensuring every author receives equitable visibility and recognition.
Recently, Mihir Shah of the US Review of Books highly praised “Why Didn’t I Die: A Memoir of PTSD” by Fred W. Kirkpatrick.
“Why Didn’t I Die: A Memoir of PTSD” is the author’s legacy for forty years as he suffered from something that was not defined until 1980 as PTSD, a full twelve years after he left Vietnam.
This compelling memoir is his story of his struggles. The author hopes that his story helps families dealing with PTSD or complex PTSD to know what PTSD is and help them heal and learn how to deal with and cope with PTSD.
Fred Kirkpatrick served with the famed First Infantry’s Black Lions as a combat infantryman in Vietnam in 1967. He was exposed to Agent Orange and struggled to try and understand what PTSD was doing to his life. He writes about those struggles as a new author in his memoir of PTSD, “Why Didn’t I Die?”
In a strange twist of irony, his father, nearly fifty years earlier, was exposed to lethal gas in World War I as a combat infantryman with the 4th Division in France. His father would later be found to be suffering from “shell shock,” which would now be regarded as a form of PTSD.
And Fred has been using his considerable investigative skills to write a second book about his ancestors called “My Great, Great, Aunt (s).”
Even though he was red-lined as a C-student in grade school by Catholic nuns and graduated at the bottom of his high school class, he was able to focus his PTSD struggles on studying and, in later years, was able to earn two undergraduate college degrees and a master’s degree.
Here is an excerpt of the review:
“The author also delves into being raised in Cleveland, attending a Catholic school, and even being bullied by his peers who made fun of the immense age gap between his father—who had also served—and his mother. As in life, every story has that sliver of light, of hope, and for Kirkpatrick, he finds it in friendship. His detailing of his diverse friend group is refreshing and heartwarming all at the same time. Whether they were Irish, Italian, Ukrainian, Polish, or Slovenian, each of the friends literally had their own unique background and upbringing. Still, they fit together almost seamlessly. Overall, Kirkpatrick’s work is a raw, genuine outpouring of his life journey, one that is living proof that PTSD should not be ignored but rather nurtured and treated with timely care.”
