Purple Hearts: Back from Iraq

TROLLEY BOOKS, $24.95

PHOTOGRAPHER NINA BERMAN did not make this book of portraits to reaffirm anyone's faith in the Iraq war or the nobility of those fighting it. Her goal is to open the morning blinds on the hospital rooms and darkened bedrooms of normal people-kids, mostly-who returned shattered in mind and body, a Purple Heart draped around their neck. The result is a heartbreaking combination of the grotesque and the pitiful. Thirty-seven-year-old Sgt. John Quincy Adams is seriously brain damaged. Luis Calderon, 22, is a quadriplegic. Jose Martinez, 20, has severe burns all over his face. Missing limbs abound. The color photos, paired with soldier testimony, are direct and powerful.

Berman's subjects all have different feelings about the war and their injuries. More than one says, "Saddam was a bad guy," and defends the invasion; a few express anger over the lack of weapons of mass destruction. For most, though, the present is too consumed with recovery, and the future too bleak, to care much about the why's of the war. For most the military was just a job, which some miss more than others.

"I want to go back to the military," says Pfc. Tristan Wyatt, 21, who lost a leg. "I was a combat engineer. We blew things up. I felt like my heart was in the right place over there."