Review by ’ Publishers’ Weekly
The relatively light body count among American soldiers fighting in Iraq is but the tip of an iceberg of suffering, argues this harrowing meditation on the hidden costs of war. Glasser (365 Days), who served as an Army physician during the Vietnam war, details the breakthroughs in technology, medical procedures and body armor that have made the Iraq war more survivable than previous conflicts but notes a depressing side effect: soldiers now survive horrific wounds that would have killed them in the past, wounds that will saddle them with physical and financial burdens for decades to come. The litany of ""polytraumas"" he describes-sometimes in grisly clinical detail-is varied and heart-rending, from the multiple amputations, seared lungs and brain-damage inflicted by road-side bombs to the psychological scars borne by a group of panicky Marines who open fire on a car, only to find they have killed an innocent woman and her three young daughters. Glasser mixes in his own Vietnam reminiscences to point up the similarities between the two quagmires, from moral corruption (he deplores the current involvement of physicians in interrogating prisoners) to social and economic inequalities that force the disadvantaged to bear the brunt of the fighting and maiming, to the false claims and false optimism officials deploy to justify war. The insights he draws are not always cogent (""In any war, but particularly this one, you can run, but you can't hide,"" he muzzily intones), but Glasser offers a sobering look at the new circles of hell being pioneered in Iraq.
Wounded is a must read!
“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
“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
“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?
“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 -Mr. Mamet, a playwright, screenwriter and film director, is the author of "Theatre," recently published in paperback, and coming in June, "The Secret Knowledge" (Penguin).
“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