Title Details

Seriously Not All Right
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More About This Title Seriously Not All Right

  • English

English

For more than a decade, Ron Capps, serving as both a senior military intelligence officer and as a Foreign Service officer for the U.S. Department of State, was witness to war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. From government atrocities in Kosovo, to the brutal cruelties perpetrated in several conflicts in central Africa, the wars in both Aghanistan and Iraq, and culminating in genocide in Darfur, Ron acted as an intelligence collector and reporter but was diplomatically restrained from taking preventative action. The cumulative effect of these experiences, combined with the helplessness of his role as an observer, propelled him into a deep depression and a long bout with PTSD, which nearly caused him to take his own life. Seriously Not All Right is a memoir that provides a unique perspective of a professional military officer and diplomat who suffered (and continues to suffer) from PTSD. His story, and that of his recovery and his newfound role as founder and teacher of the Veterans Writing Project, is an inspiration and a sobering reminder of the cost of all wars.
  • English

English

Ron Capps is the founder and director of the Veterans Writing Project, a nonprofit that provides no-cost writing seminars and workshops for veterans, active and reserve service members, and military family members. His literary writing has appeared in the Delmarva Review, JMWW, the Little Patuxent Review, the New York Times, Prime Number, RiverLit, and in numerous online venues. His policy writing and commentary have appeared regularly in the American Interest, Foreign Policy, Health Affairs, Monthly Developments Magazine, and Time magazine’s Battleland blog and on NPR’s All Things Considered, the BBC World Service, and Pacifica Radio. A combat veteran of Afghanistan, he served in the Army and Army Reserve for 25 years, retiring as a lieutenant Colonel. He lives in Washington, DC. 
  • English

English

“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 staggering violence humans visit upon each other in the name of borders, politics, ethnicity, race, and tribe. Capps’s career carried him through a series of humanitarian catastrophes, from Kosovo to Rwanda, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Darfur, bringing him face to face with atrocities beyond ken. He details every haunted moment with unforgettable precision, but this book travels much further than that, becoming a textured inquiry into the nature of war and violence, a field guide to PTSD-induced madness and despair, and a map to survival and a rediscovery of hope. This powerful and necessary work teaches us that, while we cannot expunge the ghosts of history, we can and must bear witness and share the truth as we know it.” —Richard Currey, author of Fatal Light and Crossing Over: The Vietnam Stories.

“..this approaches the sublime.” —Mark Thompson, TIME Magazine

“…a powerful, haunting testament to war, and the memory of war.” —Patrick Hicks, author of The Commandant of Lubizek

“…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.” —Dario DiBattista, Courage Beyond

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