Let’s talk about… this Book!!
Every once in a while, a book finds you right when you need it. And West Point to Wall Street isn’t just a book—it’s a mirror, a gut check, and a long overdue conversation about what happens when the strongest among us finally stop pretending they’re fine. Omar Ritter has done something rare here. He’s taken a life that many would summarize in bold print—West Point grad, soldier, Wall Street success story—and cracked it open to show us what’s underneath. The grit, the grief, the glory, the ghosts. It’s all there, and it’s all human.
I’ve read a lot of books by men who’ve done big things. Men who’ve led, fought, conquered, invested, commanded—then written about it like it was all a perfectly choreographed dance. But this one? This one isn’t choreographed. It’s lived. It’s messy in the way truth always is. And that’s what makes it great. Ritter doesn’t hide behind the medals or the money. He takes us with him into the quiet, into the rooms where success echoes too loudly and silence starts to hum with all the things you never said out loud.
The beauty of his storytelling is that it doesn’t demand your sympathy—it invites your understanding. He writes not like a man trying to prove something, but like someone who’s already been through the proving ground and decided to come back for the rest of us. There’s a humility in the way he unpacks the transition from a life of structure and rank to one where the battle is internal, unseen, and unrelenting. The battlefield changes, but the courage it takes to face it doesn’t.
What stayed with me most wasn’t just the military discipline or the Wall Street grind—it was the honesty. The raw, unfiltered acknowledgment that even the most disciplined mind can fracture under the weight of expectation and trauma. Ritter brings light to what so many are too proud or too afraid to say: that healing is not weakness, it’s work. And that mental wellness, for all its buzzword branding these days, is actually a lifelong practice.
As an OG mum who’s watched her own son march through those same gates at West Point, I read this with equal parts pride and ache. Because I know what it means to send your child into a world built on pressure and purpose, and to hope they remember that humanity doesn’t have to be sacrificed for strength. Ritter reminds us that strength isn’t silence—it’s survival with your soul intact. It’s speaking when speaking costs you comfort. It’s choosing peace after years of war, whether that war was fought overseas or in your own head.
There’s a tenderness in his truth. A quiet dignity in how he writes about rediscovering himself beyond the uniform and beyond the corner office. He doesn’t sell redemption as a product; he shows it as a process. A process that involves humility, therapy, faith, and a kind of emotional honesty that most people never get to. That’s what makes this book powerful—it’s not just a story of what he achieved, but of what he reclaimed.
I closed this book feeling both heavy and hopeful. Heavy because the world needs more spaces for stories like this—where masculinity doesn’t have to mean suppression, and where leadership includes vulnerability. Hopeful because Omar Ritter is proof that it’s possible to carry the weight, put it down, and still stand tall after.
If you’ve ever carried something too long—grief, expectation, the myth of having it all together—this book will speak to you. Not like a lecture, but like a conversation you didn’t know you needed. It’s a hand on your shoulder and a reminder that you’re allowed to be both strong and soft.
Omar Ritter did something great here. He told the truth. And in a world that keeps rewarding performance over peace, that’s about as revolutionary as it gets.