Irritable Hearts

“Mac McClelland has reported from crisis zones like Myanmar and the Democratic Republic of Congo, but in her memoir Irritable Hearts she chronicles a crises she can't leave behind. McClelland learned she had post-traumatic stress disorder only hours after her return from Haiti, where she covered the aftereffects of the devastating January 2010 earthquake. She quickly came to understand the true cost of working in a zone of catastrophic hardship—even those who are not directly affected are damaged . . . In search of answers, McClelland executed an inward dive into her own history . . . In the process she draws a valuable portrait of what it is like to live with PTSD...When McClelland brings the subjects of her interviews into the frame of her book, it is then that Irritable Hearts reveals its own warm, beating heart . . . Irritable Hearts striking candor will win McClelland the empathy she deserves.”—Sonia Faliero, The New York Times Book Review

"That we are as strong as we are frail is the most profound of many truths rising out of Mac McClelland's astonishing Irritable Hearts. In her unforgettable memoir, McClelland begins to unravel her experience with PTSD while falling in love, traversing the globe and trying to understand both how the mind breaks and what it takes to heal in a world where all too often, we are constantly faced with how terribly vulnerable we are."—Roxane Gay, author of An Untamed State and Bad Feminist

"There's an easy way to ignore PSTD, and we've all heard it. You'll never understand anyway. Well, Mac McClelland never takes the easy way out. Instead she writes with grace and wit, relating her extraordinary life experiences so eloquently that you can't not understand her affliction. This is an important and brave book about a growing epidemic that everyone should read."—Katie Crouch, author of Girls in Trucks and Abroad

"Mac McClelland is a ferociously talented journalist-and an exceptionally brave one-whose reporting from disaster areas and war zones have left her with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. A work of astonishing emotional intensity, fierce intelligence, and soul-baring honesty, Irritable Hearts chronicles McClelland's searing battle with PTSD, evoking the symptoms of her disorder—the dissociation, the alternating rage and sadness and numbness, the urge toward self-harm and suicide—with immediacy and remarkable candor (most notably about the sexual fantasies and dysfunctions her PTSD causes). At once a memoir, a cockeyed romance, a reporter's travelogue, and a clinical case study, Irritable Hearts will provide great consolation to others who suffer from PTSD—and McClelland's resilience and determination will resonate powerfully even with those who don't."—Scott Stossel, author of the New York Times bestseller My Age of Anxiety: Fear, Hope, Dread, and the Search for Peace of Mind

"McClelland's story asked me to think more deeply about the tragedy of noncombatants in all the world's harsh places and about the future of our own soldiers, who are still so poorly served after they return home. Which is worse: the physical loss of a limb, or the collapse of the essential mental comfort that allows a person to value being alive? A broken body can heal only when the mind has found some peace. So I hope that Irritable Heartswill draw attention to PTSD in all its forms and wherever it occurs, and that McClelland will continue poking into those dark places from which the rest of us too easily recoil and turn away."—Julie Metz, author of the New York Times bestseller Perfection: A Memoir of Betrayal