Michael Weisskopf

When Time magazine reporter Michael Weisskopf went to Iraq to do a cover story on the U.S. soldier as Time's "Person of the Year" for 2003, he came back with the story of a lifetime. Problem is, it wasn't the cover story. It was a story that came from losing his right hand to a grenade.

As the first reporter wounded in a war ever afforded the privilege of being treated at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Weisskopf was in a unique position to view and truly understand the care and treatment provided battlefield amputees. From that position, he brings us Blood Brothers, the story of soldiers treated on Ward 57 of the hospital, the amputee ward.

Weisskopf was in a Humvee on patrol with the First Armored Division in a district of northwest Baghdad on December 10, 2003. He heard a clanking sound, thinking it was just one of the rocks youth tended to throw at the Humvees. He looked down, saw a small dark oval, picked it up and began to toss it over the side of the vehicle. "I may as well have plucked volcanic lava from a crater," he recalls. "I could feel the flesh of my palm liquefying."

Thus starts Weisskopf's journey into a world of pain, medicine, rehabilitation and courage. At Walter Reed, he comes to know a variety of soldiers who have lost one or both hands, arms, feet or legs or any combination of them. Weisskopf tells the stories of three of them as much as his own. He takes us through not only his own experiences, but the medical, rehabilitative and personal trials and tribulations of a variety of Ward 57's patients, focusing in particular on Pete Damon, Luis Rodriguez and Bobby Isaacs even after their discharge from the hospital. None of them are alone or particularly unique. By the time Weisskopf was injured, the Iraq War had produced twice the rate of amputations of every war of the 20th century, except Vietnam, for which there were no good statistics.

Read balance of review at http://prairieprogressive.com/?p=824… (más)

This was fascinating in that it didn't just regurgitate all the stuff we heard on the news. There was an effort to get to know the investigators and what they went through, both in their work and in their handling of the pounding they took from the White House. It was written from the perspective of being a fly-on-the-wall. Conversations were shown and thoughts were revealed. Even better was the effort to show why they did what they did. It was not a typical Clinton-bashing book. The investigators did make mistakes, both in how they handled the investigation and in how they didn't pursue certain avenues with as much urgency as they say they should have, in retrospect.

A great read for someone wanting to know a fly-on-the-wall perspective of the Starr investigation.… (más)