From February 2005 to March 2006, Navy trauma surgeon Zsolt T. Stockinger served on a forward operating base in Iraq's Sunni Triangle, where he treated more than a thousand casualties and performed hundreds of surgeries. Throughout his deployment, he penned his more introspective thoughts and frustrations about his experiences in a journal that he occasionally sent to his wife as a way to stay connected. Stockinger's diary comprises a compendium of daily military life in Iraq from a surgeon's perspective, from the intense action of rocket attacks and emergency procedures to the creative and...