Don't misunderstand. This is not a book one picks out because he is feeling depressed. This is an extremely well thought out and researched treatise on suffering, meaning, justice, revenge, endurance, and theology. This is a book hard to get through but equally hard to put down. Trachtenberg doesn't use philosophical or theological jargon; he uses real life experiences he has knowledge of.  He speaks with equal understanding of personal tragedy from disease to Rwandan genocide with a compassion which seeps through, no matter how hard he tries to hide it, as I suspect. This is a powerful book, not one to be taken lightly. It has changed me in reading it. I think it changed Peter Trachtenberg in writing it as well.