Blood Brothers
Among the Soldiers of Ward 57
By Michael Weisskopf
(Henry Holt and Co., Hardcover, 9780805078602, 320pp.)
Publication Date: October 3, 2006
Other Editions of This Title: Paperback (September 18, 2007)
Categories: Military, Military - Iraq War (2003-), Military - United States
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A powerful account of eighteen months in the lives of three soldiers and a
journalist, all patients in Ward 57, Walter Reed’s amputee wing
Time magazine’s Michael Weisskopf was riding through Baghdad in the back of U.S. Army Humvee, an embedded reporter alongside soldiers from the 1st Armored Division, when he heard a metallic thunk. Looking down, he saw a small, dark object rolling inches from his feet. He reached down and took it in his hand. Then everything went black.
Weisskopf lost his hand and was sent for treatment to Ward 57 at Walter Reed Medical Center, the wing of the armed forces hospital reserved for amputees. There he crossed paths with Pete Damon, Luis Rodriguez, and Bobby Isaacs, three soldiers whose stories he learned during months in the ward. Alongside these men, Weisskopf navigated the bewildering process of recovery and reentry, and began reconciling life before that day in Baghdad with everything that would follow his release.
Blood Brothers is the story of this difficult passage—for Weiss-kopf, Damon, Rodriguez, Isaacs, and hundreds of others—a story that began with healthy men heading off to a war zone, and continued through the months in Ward 57 as they prepared their minds and bodies for a different life than the one they left. A chronicle of devastation and recovery, this is a deeply affecting portrait of the private aftermath of combat casualties.
A senior correspondent for Time magazine, Michael Weisskopf is a Pulitzer Prize finalist and winner of the George Polk Award, Goldsmith Award for Investigative Reporting, National Headliners Award, and the Daniel Pearl Award for Courage and Integrity in Journalism. Weisskopf lives in Washington, D.C.
“This book is a modern masterpiece. The spirit, wit, and searing honesty that have marked Michael Weisskopf’s life and career as a world-class correspondent shine through on every page as we follow his passage among the amputees of Ward 57. Blood Brothers is an unforgettable account of what happened, physically and emotionally, to Weisskopf and these men after the war.”—David Maraniss, author of They Marched into Sunlight "Blood Brothers is unsparing, unsentimental, and unflinching, a story of pain but also a tale of redemptive courage. Michael Weisskopf has written a book unlike any other to emerge from the long war in Iraq. Read it and weep."—Rick Atkinson, Author of In the Company of Soldiers and An Army at Dawn "This is a real war story. It is not about victory or defeat, or the heroism of men in combat, it is about loss and pain and learning to live with a body terribly maimed. The story of Time correspondent Michael Weisskopf's grave injury and survival parallels the experience of many soldiers: He went to Iraq with a specific short-term task, and came home with his body and his life permanently altered. Like the fine writer he is, Weisskopf understands that parallel, which is what makes Blood Brothers something much more than a story of injury and survival."—Mark Bowden, author of Guests of the Ayatollah and Black Hawk Down "Walter Reed's Ward 57 is often in the news, but always viewed from the outside in. Blood Brothers gets it right because its author actually shared in the torments of the amputee warriors he befriended during his stay. Weisskopf's story is theirs, with the unyielding pain, the acute sense of loss, and the deep need to recover a personal narrative that makes that loss bearable."—Garry Trudeau
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