True stories of obstacles, adversity and stubborn transcendence—including an intimate look at an extraordinary barracks of wounded Iraq War veterans at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.

Lt. Col. Tim Maxwell prided himself on being a hard-core Marine—a patriotic leader on his sixth deployment overseas. Then his brain was shredded with mortar shrapnel. Meet Maxwell and the rest of the Devil Dogs at the Wounded Warriors Barracks he founded. From day one, the Marine Corps trained them to be lean, mean, killing machines. But what happens after the machine is broken? A report on the aftermath of the war in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Other stories in Wounded Warriors depict life inside an LA crack gang, ex-pat Vietnam War veterans in Thailand, a 650 pound man, teenage pit-bull fighters in the Philadelphia barrio, a round-the-world-hunt for the legendary actor Marlon Brando, and five days in Las Vegas with basketball anti-hero Kobe Bryant and his wife– all of it captured stylishly by the writer who has been called “the beat poet of American journalism.”