Baghdad ER: Fifteen Minutes

Between 2007 and 2009, Baker spent 15 months in Iraq as part of the emergency medical team at the U.S. Army%E2%80%99s 86th Combat Support Hospital in Baghdad, and this important memoir is a moving look at his experiences %E2%80%9Csaving Americans and Iraqis alike with double lower-extremity amputations and other devastating injuries.%E2%80%9D Although descriptions of his training are slow going, once Baker gets to Baghdad he delivers a riveting and detailed account of emergency room life during wartime. If anything, Baker%E2%80%99s account is too detailed, with hundreds of pages of trauma, including an American soldier whose foot is blown off in a blast that pushes %E2%80%9Chis tibia down through the bottom of his boot after ripping all the flesh from it,%E2%80%9D and an account of another soldier %E2%80%9Cburned beyond all recognition.%E2%80%9D And while Baker worries that he may have become addicted %E2%80%9Cto the emotional roller coaster ride of life and death in the ER,%E2%80%9D he never once loses sight of his mission: to help the soldiers %E2%80%9Cwho had done their part to win this war with unbelievable professionalism, compassion, resiliency, and an unstoppable will.%E2%80%9D