The Yellow Birds, by Kevin Powers. Compelling, beautiful, heartbreaking: I read this book in three days. This elegantly written and structured little tome holds one man’s experience of war between its covers. At 230 pages it’s a tome not in length but in weight: it’s heavy. John Bartle is 21 when he arrives in Iraq in early 2004; his fellow soldier Daniel Murphy is 18. The story moves in time and place, between