After service in Vietnam as a surgeon for the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment in 1968-69, at the height of the war, Dr. Gordon Livingston returned to the U.S. and began work as a psychiatrist. In that capacity, he has listened to people talk about their lives, what works, what doesn't, and the limitless ways (most of them self-inflicted) that we have found to be unhappy. He is also a parent twice bereaved. In one 13-month period, he lost his eldest son to suicide, his youngest to leukemia.

Out of a lifetime of experience, Livingston has extracted 30 bedrock truths: We are what we do. Any relationship is under the control of the person who cares the least. The perfect is the enemy of the good. Only bad things happen quickly. Forgiveness is a form of letting go, but they are not the same thing. The statute of limitations has expired on most of our childhood traumas. Livingston illuminates these and 24 others in a series of carefully hewn, perfectly calibrated essays, many of which emphasize our closest relationships and the things that we do to impede or, less frequently, enhance them. Again and again, these essays underscore that "we are what we do", and that while there may be no escaping who we are, we also have the capacity to face loss, misfortune, and regret and to move beyond them, that it is not too late.