An intriguing study for students of military culture and mental health.
A challenge to conventional wisdom about the military ignoring PTSD, traumatic brain injury, and suicide among troops who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Kieran (History, American Studies/Washington & Jefferson Coll.; Forever Vietnam: How a Divisive War Changed American Public Memory, 2014, etc.) never denies the seriousness of PTSD, TBI, and suicide among active and discharged veterans. However, he contends that critics of the military and federal bureaucracy often downplay the complexities of understanding the problems and finding effective solutions. In fact, he contends, implacable anti-war critics have unfairly used the psychological injuries for political ends. “In a climate in which anti-war sentiment was often dismissed with assertions that critics were not supporting the troops,” writes Kieran, “pointing out how the wars were harming those troops facilitated broader policy critiques.” Before the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, research about PTSD, TBI, and suicide was based on the premise that deployments would be brief and that the same troops would not be ordered to return to the same war zones multiple times. When the nature of war changed, the military and the Veterans Administration had to recalibrate their policies and their research to react to new realities. As the author points out, those recalibrations take time and don’t usually conform to the urgent needs of combat veterans. Kieran’s research takes readers inside the medical arm of military services and civilian government bureaucracies, showing dedicated researchers and administrators trying to reach consensus about how to treat—and perhaps even prevent—serious mental damage and suicide. The author stresses that the disagreements about how to proceed derive from compassionate advocates relying on science-based research. Kieran rejects the commonly held belief that those in charge of warfare are dismissive of effective treatments for veterans. Throughout, the author provides memorable individual case studies. Much of the book, however, relies on dense academic research and a scholarly writing style, so general readers will need to pay close attention to digest the author’s arguments.
An intriguing study for students of military culture and mental health.Pub Date: April 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4798-9236-5
Page Count: 404
Publisher: New York Univ.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
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