“[A] departure from anything anyone named Bush — or any other President — has published after leaving office . . . Accompanying the portraits are stories, also written by Bush, about how each subject dealt with setback and then mounted a recovery. The paths are anything but straightforward, and Bush's book, in words and pictures, is a challenge and a road map for anyone who faces difficulty.”
-TIME
“What an uplifting volume. It’s a testament to, for sure, the GIs it portrays – and, by implication, to all our soldiers, airmen, and sailors. It’s also a tale of life’s capacity to surprise, its ability to hand up new and unexpected lives not only to these veterans but also to their constitutional commander.”
-Seth Lipsky, New York Post
“Evocative and surprisingly adept . . . After staring at the haunting close-up portraits of wounded warriors and reading the searing accounts of their suffering, I’m beginning to understand why this beautifully published book went to No. 1 on The Times’s nonfiction best-seller list.”
-Jonathan Alter, the New York Times Book Review
“Most of [the portraits] show the head and face full size, seemingly bursting out of the frame with genuine presence and considerable expressive energy . . . There is genuine empathy in Bush’s embrace of the stories told by these soldiers . . . He demonstrates in this book and in these paintings virtues that are sadly lacking at the top of the American political pyramid today: curiosity, compassion, the commitment to learn something new and the humility to learn it in public.”
-Philip Kennicott, the Washington Post
“[It’s] impossible to look at these 98 extraordinary images without thinking deeply about the artist who made them: A leader who sent troops off to the battlefield, and who, so many years later, spends his days channeling the damaged but determined warriors who came home . . . Spend a little time in the presence of these pictures, and one is overwhelmed by their subjects’ sacrifices, their courage, their strength and, in some cases, their turmoil.”
-Task and Purpose
