Personal Effects: What Recovering the Dead Teaches Me about Caring for the Living. This item is unavailable.Personal Effects: What Recovering the Dead Teaches Me about Caring for the Living

The owner of the world's leading disaster clean-up corporation chronicles the unseen world behind the yellow tape. As the head of one of the world’s leading disaster management companies, Robert Jensen handles the dead, literally. The necessary next step is to help the victims' family members manage their recovery and guide them to the understanding that their lives have changed forever. From 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and the 2004 South Asian tsunami to the 2010 Haitian earthquake and other tragic events, Robert Jensen led the effort to recover and repatriate the human remains and return their possessions to families. As he puts it, “If journalists write the first rough draft of history, I’m the one putting the punctuation on the past.” Personal Effects is the unsparing, up-close look at the difficult work Jensen does behind the yellow tape and the lessons he learned there. The first: No one is ever quite prepared. Not merely the chronicle of an almost impossible and grim job, Personal Effects tells Jensen’s own story of surviving tragedy, knowing what it means to be a survivor and having that event determine one’s calling. A rare glimpse into what many know nothing about, Jensen allows his readers to see over his shoulder as he cleans up disaster sites, uncovers the victims, and cares for their families to show how, in the vein of Tara Westover's Educated, a strong will and a desire to do good can become a path through the worst the world can throw at us.

Robert A. Jensen is Chairman of Kenyon International Emergency Services, the global leader in crisis management and mass fatality response. He has spent most of his adult responding to such events.