Start reading Beyond the Battlefield on your Kindle in under a minute. Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here.

Deliver to your Kindle or other device

 
 
 

Try it free

Sample the beginning of this book for free

Deliver to your Kindle or other device

Read books on your computer or other mobile devices with our FREE Kindle Reading Apps.
Beyond the Battlefield: The War Goes on for the Severely Wounded
 
See larger image
 

Beyond the Battlefield: The War Goes on for the Severely Wounded [Kindle Edition]

David Wood

Digital List Price: CDN$ 5.00 What's this?
Kindle Price: CDN$ 5.00 includes free international wireless delivery via Amazon Whispernet


Product Description

Product Description

In March 2011, The Huffington Post commissioned its veteran war correspondent, David Wood, to document the struggles of severely wounded veterans, their families, and the medics, surgeons, nurses, psychologists and researchers dedicated to their healing. Wood spent nine months in their world.

The result is our third e-book, "Beyond the Battlefield," an intimate portrait of the soldiers and Marines who volunteered for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and what happened to them after bomb blasts and bullets changed them forever. First published as a 10-part series, this e-book is an expanded version, including a foreword and several new chapters, as well as some of the most poignant photography and revelatory graphics from the original series.

Wood, who has covered wars in Africa, Central America and the Middle East, has made nine reporting trips to Iraq and Afghanistan, where he has accompanied soldiers and Marines on numerous combat operations. A former correspondent for Time Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, Newhouse News Service and the Baltimore Sun, he was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for national reporting.

As Wood's work revealed, one of the enduring legacies of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are the young Americans who have come home severely, catastrophically wounded. They come home not to parades and honor guards and flags, but with terribly burned faces, amputated limbs, traumatic brain injury and other psychological wounds. And once home, veterans and their loved ones are often left alone to deal with years of recovery and the lingering effects of those injuries. And yet that is the good news, Wood said. A decade ago most of them would have died on the battlefield. They are now being saved, thanks to fast-paced improvements in military trauma medicine. Yet the long-term quality of life for them is uncertain, and the costs of lifetime care can be staggering. There are more than 16,000 of them, and while many Americans are eager to know them and to offer help where it's needed, they are largely without voice, invisible and unknown to most of us.

"Beyond the Battlefield" changes that.

Product Details

  • Format: Kindle Edition
  • File Size: 1020 KB
  • Print Length: 143 pages
  • Publisher: BookBrewer, Huffington Post Media Group (Dec 12 2011)
  • Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
  • Language: English
  • ASIN: B006LLRR8U
  • Text-to-Speech: Enabled
  • X-Ray: Not Enabled
  •  Would you like to give feedback on images?


Customer Reviews

There are no customer reviews yet on Amazon.ca
5 star
4 star
3 star
2 star
1 star
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com: 4.8 out of 5 stars  8 reviews
13 of 14 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars BEYOND THE BATTLEFIELD: TRACING THE COURAGE & HEROISM OF THE SEVERELY-WOUNDED MILITARY April 19 2012
By RBSProds - Published on Amazon.com
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
Five COMPELLING Stars! This is an exceptional, meticulously-researched book which won a Pulitzer Prize in 2012 for author David Wood, who has reported from the 'front lines' of many wars and 'hot spots' for 35 years. Seeing his share of deaths and wounded troops who were "med-evaced" from their units, headed to military trauma facilities, he usually never saw them again. The Huffington Post internet newspaper gave him the chance to followup on severely-wounded military as they returned home for recovery. He discovered that the same attributes of courage and heroism displayed on the battlefield, follow them into their recovery phase in receiving medical treatment and into their re-integration into their families and society in general, sometimes very much changed from the person who went off to war. Many returned missing one or more appendages and/or suffering other forms of body & mind trauma. Thanks to the advances in medical treatment and swift evacuation of the wounded, more military personnel are surviving wounds that would have been fatal in previous wars. The more than 53,000 casualties of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars represent an extremely high survivability rate, exceeding any other US war. But the result is a military and VA medical system that is overwhelmed with survivors, many of whom will be in recovery the rest of their lives. The stories of the battlefield settings, the initial injuries, and subsequent medical treatment of military warriors such as Tyler Southern, Cleveland Kinsey, Robert Fierro, and Bobby Henline, are both heart-rending and very inspiring, showing the problems of the veterans, their families and care givers, military medical facilities and staffs, the VA, and those 'gap' organizations (a list of which is provided herein) that all struggle to provide care for the 'tsunami' of wounded military personnel. This is a 'must read' showing the torturous after-effects of the Iraqi and Afghanistan wars on severely-injured military who gave maximum sacrifices on and 'beyond the battlefield', just short of death itself. My Highest Recommendation. Five EXCELLENT Stars! (1020 KB ~143 pages with photographs. This review is based on a Kindle download in text-to-speech and text modes; Intended to be released in digital form, hopefully this book will be issued in Hardcover and paperback versions.)
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars A triumph of long-form journalism April 22 2012
By Nathan Webster - Published on Amazon.com
Format:Kindle Edition
A lot's been made of this series winning a Pulitzer for the Huffington Post, as if it somehow legitimized "blogs" as a conventional news/information source.

Just because David Wood's series appeared on the internet in a non-print style doesn't make it some sort of niche product. This is the result of painstaking reporting, carefully-crafted writing, and decades of experience and skill - which typically is what will earn a Pulitzer, regardless of the venue.

I've embedded as a journalist in Iraq a few times, and was a soldier in Desert Storm. I was never injured, nor saw an injured US soldier; but I did see an Iraqi after he suffered a 'mild' gunshot wound to the foot. The bullet had gone through-and-through, pushing small bones out the exit wound. A second shot had grazed his back, opening a ragged furrow of skin - lucky, though, because it missed the spine.

Those were minor injuries, but even still, I imagine he was going to be walking with some pain for quite some time. But it reminded me how serious and life-altering a 'minor' injury can be.

Wood explores the far more grave and serious injuries suffered by so many US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. Multiple amputations, burns, brain damage - it's ghastly, and hidden behind meaningless terms like "seriously wounded."

It affects family members whose lives are upended - forever. Spouses who go from a partnership to lifelong care providers. And it's just begun - we're only in the first few years of care that thousands of veterans will require for decades to come. We are able to provide revolutionary medical care to soldiers who probably had no business surviving their injuries (and would not have in previous conflicts), but that carries a steep price.

There are so many aspects to these terrible injuries, and Wood seems to have explored them all. It's tough, unpleasant reporting - this doesn't have a happy ending. The uplifting part of the story is that these injured soldiers do the best they can. You're not reading these accounts to feel good; you're reading it to know more about what these soldiers went through, so you didn't have to. I'd say it's a social responsibility.

As usual, the media misses the full story here - they focus on a "blog" winning a Pulitzer, when the real 'victory' here is the important and vital storytelling that this kind of long-form, public service journalism can provide, regardless whether it appears on a website or written on a paper bag.

Readers should buy this series in this e-book format, or look it up on the Huffington Post. I'd say it's the least we can do to remind ourselves that "sacrifice" is not a word reserved only for those who died.
3.0 out of 5 stars The story content is a bit repetative Jan 2 2013
By The critic - Published on Amazon.com
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
I never finished the book as I got the author;s point by the time I was a 3rd of the way into the story.

Look for similar items by category