P.J.C.

Aaron Judge, the hulking superman who carried an easy aw-shucks demeanor from small-town California to stardom in the Big Apple, had long established his place as one of baseball’s most intimidating power hitters. Baseballs frequently rocketed off his bat like cannon fire, dispatching heat-seeking missiles toward the “Judge’s Chambers” seating area in right field, sending delirious fans scattering for souvenirs. But even in a high-tech universe where computers measure each swing to the nth degree, Roger Maris’s American League mark of sixty-one home runs seemed largely out of reach.

In January of 2019, I was trapped in a hotel room in the DusitD2 in Nairobi for 17 long hours while Al-Shabaab terrorists attacked the property. I was completely alone, and certain I was going to die. However, thanks to the incomprehensibly brave men who fought to get us out, hundreds of us were extracted to safety. After the attack, though, PTSD made me so miserable that I started to wish I had died after all. This book is the in-depth retelling of the attack, combined with my personal journal entries about PTSD afterward. It's a true story about trauma.