A review by secrethistory
Surviving Our Catastrophes: Resilience and Renewal from Hiroshima to the COVID-19 Pandemic by Robert Jay Lifton

3.0

I enjoyed this book and found the ideas in it fascinating, and I’d like to read some of the author’s earlier work. I do feel that Covid-19 was shoehorned in occasionally (not every time), and it made the whole argument feel ridiculous at times. If something is going to be compared to the bombing of Hiroshima or Auschwitz, it needs to feel fully earned or it just falls flat. Some of the seemingly blind praise of some people seemed poorly thought out to me. I would have liked more nuance even with figures who largely performed well. The central ideas were very thought-provoking, however, and the more holistic treatment of the notion of survivor was welcomed, as was the emphasis on activism. A hopeful little read that places a learned but not naive faith in the human spirit in the face of atrocity.