Collects Born #1-4, Punisher (2004) #1-12.
Experience the gritty and uncompromising PUNISHER MAX from the very beginning! When a mob hit killed his beloved wife and children, Frank Castle became the Punisher — an unstoppable one-man army waging war on every piece of criminal scum plaguing New York's streets. But do the Punisher's origins trace back even further? In 1971 Vietnam, Captain Castle's platoon faces a Viet Cong attack — and to survive, he must make a grim choice. Then, Punisher's old partner, Microchip, long thought to be a casualty of Castle's war, resurfaces with a startling offer! Will the Punisher play patsy for the CIA? If not, will they let him walk away? And in a story ripped from the headlines, Castle must take on rival Irish gangs when a bomb goes off in Hell's Kitchen!

It's 1896. Yankel Bogovnik, a Russian Jew, emigrated to the United States three years earlier and has settled where many of his background have, namely on Hester Street on the Lower East Side of New York City. He has assimilated to American life, having learned English, anglicized his name to Jake, and shaved off his beard.