Wounded Warriors

Lt. Col. Tim Maxwell prided himself on being a hard-core Marinea patriotic Devil Dog on his third tour of Iraq. Then his brain was shredded with mortar shrapnel. Today, Maxwell has a large angry scar on the left side of his head. He forgets words, his wife has to read to him, and he drags one foot when he walks. Yet he works 12-hour days as commander of the Wounded Warrior Barracks at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. For these warriors, Iraq and Afghanistan will never quite be in the past. And the struggle never ends. Other stories in depict life inside an L.A. crack gang, ex-pat Vietnam War veterans in Thailand, and five days in Las Vegas with basketball anti-hero Kobe Bryant, all of it captured stylishly by the writer who has been called the "beat poet of American journalism."