The story of Ron Autrey nearly ended before it began. Born two months premature, the Jacksonville, Florida native fought for his life—and won—after both of his lungs collapsed in the first of many near-death experiences.
In his 2023 book, Ron’s World: All the Times I Died, Autrey chronicled the seven decades following his fateful birth by juxtaposing a lifetime of close calls with concurrent 20th- and 21st-century geopolitical events to present readers with a unique perspective on human existence through the tales he lived to tell. Autrey’s trip down memory lane occasionally takes dangerous detours into deadly scenarios, some of which he admits “should’ve gotten [him] killed.”
Alongside these recollections, he examines in vivid detail a range of trials and tribulations spanning war, famine, and natural disasters, recounting how these and other encounters with mortality shaped the world as he came to know it. And the rest, as Ron writes it, is history.