Summary

In this preface to the narrative, Dr. Philip Zimbardo, describes the author’s arrival on an aircraft carrier, the only woman on the ship “there to teach five thousand young Navy men how to deal with the adversity, trauma, and chaos of war” (xiii).

Zimbardo goes on to describe how he came to have a relationship with the author, whom he calls Edie. He narrates her appearance before, and presentation to, one of his classes, and describes how, after she was finished, more than a hundred students came onto the stage to thank her. He also describes another of her presentations, one that took place after a tour of places in Hungary where the Nazis had perpetrated some of World War II’s worst atrocities. Zimbardo describes wondering whether the author, at the end of a long day of encountering painful memories, would be...