 |
||||
|
|
The Wounded Keep the Death Count Low The real "body count" of this war is not only our dead, but our wounded. The real risk to our troops is no longer the numbers of dead but the numbers ending up on orthopedic wards and neurosurgical units.
“Americans who believe that the human cost of Iraq can be measured primarily by body bags, need to read ‘Wounded: Vietnam to Iraq.’”
—Michael Arnold Glueck, New Wounds,
Orange County Business
Journal,
April 24, 2006 A War of Disabilities For most soldiers, the war doesn’t end with the playing of taps. The tens of thousands of wounded are rarely heard and as a result, as pointed out in the recent Washington Post articles on the lack of adequate care at Walter Reed and in the current government hearings, these casualties are not getting the help they need.
The Revealing Book Best-selling author, Ronald J. Glasser, M.D., offers in his newest work, Wounded: Vietnam to Iraq (George Braziller), an unflinching investigation into the frightening injuries to our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan and the military and medical innovations that made this a war of disabilities.
Media Experience Dr. Glasser has appeared on The Today Show, CNN, MPR, and PBS. His articles have appeared in Harper’s Magazine, the Atlantic Monthly, the Washington Monthly, and Law & Politics. His books include 365 Days—nominated for the National Book Award and translated into nine languages, the best-selling Ward 402, and The Body is the Hero, Another War/Another Peace, The Greatest Battle, and The Light in the Skull.
-30-
Ronald J. Glasser, M.D., is releasing his latest work, Wounded: Vietnam to Iraq. His new book deals with our soldiers wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. Already compared to his classic, 365 Days, one of the early pivotal books on the Vietnam War, Wounded offers an unparalleled description of the horror endured daily by our troops on the ground. In this critical analysis, the focus is on our wounded soldiers, from the initial cause of injury onto the long road of recovery. Throughout the book, Glasser draws significant and frightening comparisons between our experiences in Vietnam and Iraq.
Wounded: Vietnam to Iraq
In December 2005, the Brooke Army Medical center (BAMC) in San Antonio opened a new amputation center to accommodate the alarming influx of wounded soldiers from Iraq. Since the beginning of the war, over 17,000 U.S. soldiers have been seriously wounded,
With over 17,000 American troops and
100,000 Iraqi already injured, Wounded is tragically
relevant. This timely account—a powerful reminder of the physical,
financial, and psychological costs of war—will only grow more
important as soldiers continue to return home.
“The stories I have tried to tell here are true,” says Glasser in his preface. “Those that happened in Japan I was part of; the rest are from the boys I met. I would have liked to have disbelieved some of them, and at first I did, but I was there long enough to hear the same stories again and again, and then to see part of it myself.” Assigned to Zama, an Army hospital in Japan, Glasser arrived there in September 1968 as a pediatrician in the U.S. Army Medical Corps, primarily to care for the children of officers and high-ranking government officials. But with an average of six to eight thousand wounded per month, Glasser, along with all other available physicians, was called on to treat the soldiers. The death and suffering he witnessed were staggering. The soldiers counted their days by the length of their tour—one year, or 365 days—and they knew, down to the day, how much time they had left. Glasser tells their stories—their lives shockingly interrupted by the tragedies of war—with humane eloquence.  |
Read the Washington Post Article by Ronald Glasser, M.D.
OnWounded: Vietnam to Iraq
“Some books invite our admiration. Some demand that we think. A few force us to conscience. ‘Wounded’ does all three. Superbly.” —Philip Gold, Author of Take Back the Right and The Coming Draft?
“Wounded is a powerful argument on behalf of the soldiers who survived their wounds to tell their incredible stories...written for those least likely to read it...those who didn't learn the lessons of Vietnam.” —Steve Thayer, New York Times best selling author of The Weatherman and Silent Snow
“Ron Glasser is a great American writer. All his books are written out of love: his love for his patients, his love for his profession, his love for the servicemen he treated during Vietnam, and for their sons in Afghanistan and Iraq. His love, as with any doctor, any soldier, and any writer worth anything, is tempered by sadness, which is the attempt at acceptance of the way things are; here in Wounded, also by rage, which is to say by the absolute refusal to accept that suffering and waste which is avoidable. Bravo.” —David Mamet
“Ron Glasser has written a compelling, riveting and truly great book which America needs now. Superbly researched and heart-rending, it is a potential Pulitzer Prize Winner. Well done.” —Lt. General Hal Moore, Co-author of We Were Soldiers Once…and Young
“Disturbing, moving and very intelligently written. I never knew, and kids my age don’t know, there is such a thing as PTSD and how devastatingly it destroys lives. Every man, woman, boy and girl should know about what is happening to our soldiers in Iraq…” —Aaron Silberman, fifth grade, Susan Lindgren Elementary School, St. Louis Park, Minnesota
Ronald Glasser
|
||
 |
||||
Ronald
Glasser, Bestselling Author
of Wounded: Vietnam to Iraq 
