Robert Jay Lifton has been a witness, in the broadest, most profound, meaning of that word to many of the most traumatic events or movements of the past century: Nazism, Hiroshima, the Vietnam war and veterans, political and religious cults, torture and brainwashing, nuclear weapons and first-strike, the Iraq war, and so much more.

He is also the author of publications on the Armenian Genocide and Turkey’s attempts to deny this crime against humanity perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire at the beginning of the 20th century.

He’s written dozens of books but has not written a memoir, but now his book, Witness to an Extreme Century, has just been published, The Nation reports, describing the book as “an excellent and important work, and remarkably easy to read despite the often grim subject matter.”

Witness is also a kind of love story, as Lifton chronicles the adventures he shared with his late wife Betty Jean Lifton.

Lifton remains fully engaged in current issues. He recently wrote for the IHT and New York Times on Hiroshima and Fukushima, and he has a new op-ed set to be published this week.