- Book Topics
- Biography & Autobiography/Military
- Veterans issues
- PTSD
- Mental Health
- Writing as Healing for Veterans
- Kosovo
- Rwanda
- Refugees
- Darfur
- US Foreign Policy
- Military Intervention
- Iraq
- Afghanistan
- Teaching Writing
- Walter Reed Hospital
Seriously Not All Right
A veteran of five wars, Ron Capps- who served both as a senior military intelligence officer and a Foreign Service officer in conflicts ranging from Kosovo and Rwanda, to Afghanistan, Iraq, and Darfur -provides a wrenchingly honest account of his experiences and his struggle with PTSD, which he suffered as a result of the horrors he had witnessed yet was helpless to prevent. To monitor his emotional condition, he created a scale that ranged from “All Right” to “Seriously Not All Right;” but, after several years spent in the midst of extreme violence, trying to keep himself”All Right,” he found himself plunging headlong into deep depression. One evening in the African desert, he attempted to take his own life, only to be pulled back from suicide by a miraculously timed phone call. SERIOUSLY NOT ALL RIGHT is his memoir that details not only his role as peacekeeper in these wars, but his return home and recovery (still ongoing) from PTSD, and his subsequent career as a teacher and founder of the Veterans Writing Project in Washington, D.C. where he provides veterans with the skills to tell their own stories, in order that they too might, in his words, “write their way home.”
Ron Capps’s debut memoir is an incisive look at the cost of combat and peacekeeping missions, and the limits of extreme violence humans can tolerate when they’re powerless to stop it. Seriously Not All Right is also a harrowing and ultimately redemptive look at Capps’s climb out of the post-traumatic stress disorder pit and what he did to help others once he succeeded. This is a well-written, timely memoir, with scene after vivid scene that lingers, that provides a possible healing path for veterans. Discover: An admirable, important memoir from a combat veteran and observer of genocide-Shelf Awareness, May 20th, 2014
For upcoming author events, more reviews and links to podcasts, visit the author’s website
www.seriouslynotallright.com
www.seriouslynotallright.com/media
Links to Reviews
AMERICAN FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL review
Veterans Affairs blog: Vantage/say-it
Tavis Smiley Interviews Ron Capps
- Book Topics
- Biography & Autobiography/Military
- Veterans issues
- PTSD
- Mental Health
- Writing as Healing for Veterans
- Kosovo
- Rwanda
- Refugees
- Darfur
- US Foreign Policy
- Military Intervention
- Iraq
- Afghanistan
- Teaching Writing
- Walter Reed Hospital
Reviews and Comments
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An affecting meditation about our recent expeditionary wars, and the consequences for those we have sent into the fight.
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Endorsing a book with the word “stunning” is a cliché, but with some books no other word will do. Seriously Not All Right is one of those books. Tracking his extraordinary career as both Army and Foreign Service officer, Ron Capps chronicles the st
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…this approaches the sublime.
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…stunningly good…
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Capps pulled me places I knew I did not want to go, yet, somehow, I went willingly, and emerged scarred but hopeful. He proves there is beauty to be found in the worst places, that there is recovery, and he reminded me to be thankful for my own place.
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A disturbing, heartfelt but soul-weary account… It offers a human-scale view of an endless war mostly hidden from western view, a war of atrocities, blind violence, and hopelessness unto absurdity. There are flickers of caring, flickers, even, of love,
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…a must-read for those who care about our nation, its wars, and the men involved in them. You’ll be hard-pressed to find another story like this one.
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Capps is obviously master of the pointed understatement, …he delivers his stories with a club-chair confidence of clear-eyed reflection. Between emotional slugs to the gut, you can almost hear the clink of ice in the glass. …Seriously – you should read it