Peter van Agtmael’s images of war and domestic strife are arresting and almost cinematically spare, but it is the careful narrative arc of his new book, “Look at the U.S.A.,” that deepens the viewer’s experience.

For a decade and a half, Peter van Agtmael has been photographing the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and their human fallout around the globe. In 2014, he published “Disco Night Sept 11,” which chronicled some of the more unexpected echoes between the wars overseas and the home front between 2006 and 2013. His new book, “Sorry for the War,” focusses on Iraq but roves farther afield. It includes images of refugees in Europe, U.S. military veterans Stateside, victims of an isis terrorist attack in Paris, an American guard at Guantánamo, and an Iraqi civilian injured in the battle of Mosul. Each individual picture is startlingly rich and lucid. Cumulatively, though, they present the viewer with a riddle: What can we learn from this body of work as a whole?

Peter van Agtmael’s new monograph, Buzzing at the Sill published by Kehrer, is a timely collection of images of a more challenged America, a sequel to his well-celebrated book, Disco Nights September 11th. Expanding on his work created during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq from 2006 to 2013, and their impact back home, Buzzing at the Sill, shows us a country in flux, a country in crisis, and more importantly, a country in need of better days

Disco Night Sept 11 is a book about more than the brutality of conflict. It is an intimate and personal meditation on modern warfare from the perspective of a young American photographer who came of age in the confusion of a post 9/11 world, and who saw many others of his generation sign up to fight towards abstract ends and unpredictable fates.