Description
A bold and intricate exploration of catastrophe as not just a transformative experience or a test case for resilience but something that completely reinvents usa reincarnationRobert Kolker 1 New York Times bestselling author of Hidden Valley Road
A masterpiecea book that truly captures what it means to be changed by tragedy and a necessary salve for our troubled timesEd Yong New York Times bestselling author of An Immense World and I Contain Multitudes
What doesnt kill us makes us stronger the adageadapted from Nietzsches famous maximgoes But how much truth is there to that ubiquitous inexhaustible saying Tracing the lives of six people who have experienced profoundly lifechanging events journalist Mike Mariani explores the nuances and largely uncharted territory of what happens after ones life is severed into a before and after If what doesnt kill us does not necessarily make us stronger he asks what does it make us
When his own life was transformed by the onset of a chronic illness Mariani turned inward changing his bustling exuberant lifestyle into something more contemplative and deliberate In this ambitious work of narrative reporting he uses his own experience as well as lessons from psychology literature mythology and religion to tell the stories of people living what he describes as afterlives His subjects harrowing episodes range from a paralyzing car crash to a personalityaltering traumatic brain injury to an accidental homicide that resulted in a sentence of life imprisonment Their afterlives Mariani argues have compelled them to supercharge their identities narrowing and deepening their focus to find a sense of meaningwhether through academia or religion or ministering to othersin lives sundered by tragedy Only then can these people truly reinvent themselves testifying to their own unseen multitudes and the valiant mutability of the human spirit
Delving into lives we rarely see in such meticulous detaillives filled with struggle loss perseverance transformation and triumphMariani leads us into some of the darkest corners of human existence only to reveal our endless capacity for kindling new light
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