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A review by amandakitz
The Unexpected Gift of Trauma: The Path to Posttraumatic Growth by Edith Shiro
challenging
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
3.5
I wanted to love this book. I loved the idea of it. I read so many books about the impacts of trauma and the ways it affects our psychology, neurology, and physiology, alters how our children's bodies read their genetic code, and makes our lives harder; it was attractive to think about the ways in which it can make our lives better.
However, the lack of organization in the first part of the book and the extremely inconsistent citation made it difficult to believe the author's claims. The more the author got into the meat of her post-traumatic growth model - those last two steps from forging your identity after trauma to the stage of wisdom and growth - the sparser the citations became, which is not a great sign if you're trying to convince the reader that the research is with you. In fact, the chapters containing those two steps contain only website links to organizations or in one case, a blog. On one occasion, the source was cited only after being referenced multiple times in the previous chapter.
My most generous assumption is that the author didn't want to scare away less academically inclined readers, but without grounding arguments in primary sources or even properly citing references, I had a tough time believing what she was telling me was backed up in the research. I hope that if she plans to have the book go through any revisions, this is corrected to more effectively communicate her work.
However, the lack of organization in the first part of the book and the extremely inconsistent citation made it difficult to believe the author's claims. The more the author got into the meat of her post-traumatic growth model - those last two steps from forging your identity after trauma to the stage of wisdom and growth - the sparser the citations became, which is not a great sign if you're trying to convince the reader that the research is with you. In fact, the chapters containing those two steps contain only website links to organizations or in one case, a blog. On one occasion, the source was cited only after being referenced multiple times in the previous chapter.
My most generous assumption is that the author didn't want to scare away less academically inclined readers, but without grounding arguments in primary sources or even properly citing references, I had a tough time believing what she was telling me was backed up in the research. I hope that if she plans to have the book go through any revisions, this is corrected to more effectively communicate her work.