What Have We Done: The Moral Injury of Our Longest Wars Audible Audiobook – Unabridged David Wood (Author), David Pittu (Narrator), Hachette Audio (Publisher) (Hachette Books)

This book will become the premier book on the subject of PTSD. This book takes a perfect blend of academic and journalistic look at the subject. His focus is on just the last 13 years or so. I like the broad approach the author takes. He touches on the history of treatment over the past 100 years. You learned that the issue is more than just shock from contact with the enemy. It is in a way a moral injury, just as real as a physical injury like missing an arm. The author shows both the cause of the injury but what it is like living with the injury from the perspective of the individual. I would have like something more. He doesn't touch on things which could be done in advance that might mitigate the risk. This injury could be from the shock of conflict but it comes from an internal conflict between values and actions. It comes from the clash of environments of war and two days later being back in the world. This book will help anyone understand the subject. It will tell the story of the veteran in clear terms all will gleam something from.

Most Americans are now familiar with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and its prevalence among troops. In this groundbreaking new audiobook, David Wood examines the far more pervasive yet less understood experience of those we send to war: moral injury, the violation of our fundamental values of right and wrong that so often occurs in the impossible moral dilemmas of modern conflict. Featuring portraits of combat veterans and leading mental health researchers, along with Wood's personal observations of war and the young Americans deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, What Have We Done offers an unflinching look at war and those who volunteer for it: the thrill and pride of service and, too often, the scars of moral injury.

Impeccably researched and deeply personal, What Have We Done is a compassionate, finely drawn study of modern war and those caught up in it. It is a call to acknowledge our newest generation of veterans by listening intently to them and absorbing their stories and, as new wars approach, to ponder the inevitable human costs of putting American boots on the ground.