Bessel Van Der Kolk, THE BODY KEEPS THE SCORE: BRAIN, MIND, AND BODY IN THE HEALING OF TRAUMA

In 1980, the author, a psychiatrist at the Boston VA clinic, submitted a grant to examine the effect of PTSD on veterans, and the first line of the grant rejection read: "It has never been shown that PTSD is relevant to the mission of the Veterans Administration." (!!!) When it comes to understanding trauma, we've come a long way. This (nonfiction) book reflects on the history of trauma studies and describes contemporary neuroscience and treatments. It has a lot to offer both writers (with respect to developing backstory for characters) and the general reader--not least of which is understanding some of what's going on in our brains (Broca's area, which controls language, and the amygdala and PFC) with current levels of stress. This book also took me back to my dissertation days, when I would often get the academic version of eye-roll from people when I tried to explain (probably poorly) that I was writing about trauma as an explanatory narrative that began with Victorian railway crashes. To my quiet delight, this author opines that trauma studies began with the work of medical men such as John Erichsen writing about railway disaster victims in the 1870s in England. Well-written and accessible.