Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War
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- ISBN13: 9780451203939
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
The acclaimed New York Times bestseller Black Hawk Down is “a shocking account of modern warfare . . . gripping and horrifying” (San Francisco Chronicle)
Destined to become a classic of war reporting, Black Hawk Down is Mark Bowden’s brilliant account of the longest sustained firefight involving American troops since the Vietnam War. On October 3rd, 1993, about a hundred elite U.S. soldiers were dropped by helicopter into the teeming market in the heart of Mogadishu, Somalia. Their mission was to abduct two top lieutenants of a Somali warlord and return to base. It was supposed to take an hour. As a replacement for they establish themselves pinned down through a long and terrible night fighting against thousands of heavily armed Somalis. The following morning, eighteen Americans were dead and more than seventy had been terribly injured.
Drawing on interviews from both sides, army records, audiotapes, and videos (some of the material is still classified), Bowden’s minute-by-minute narrative is one of the most exciting accounts of modern combat ever written–a riveting tale that captures the heroism, courage, and cruelty of battle.
“Black Hawk Down ranks among the best books ever written about infantry combat. . . . A descendent of books like The Killer Angels and We Were Soldiers Once . . . and Young.”– Bob Shacochis, The New York Observer
“If Black Hawk Down were fiction we’d rank it up there with the best war novels: The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer, or The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien.”– Tom Walker, The Denver Post
“Stands in a league with Shelby Foote’s stirring Civil War Diary, Shiloh.”– Jim Haner, The Baltimore Sun
“One of the most gripping and authoritative accounts of combat ever written.”– Kirk Spitzer, USA Today
“Incredible . . . One of the most intense, visceral reading experiences imaginable.”– The Philadelphia Inquirer
A New York Times bestseller for 14 weeks
Bowden’s Black Hawk Down series, which appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer was awarded the Overseas Press Club’s Hal Boyle Award for best foreign reportingAmazon.com Review
Journalist Mark Bowden delivers a strikingly detailed account of the 1993 nightmare operation in Mogadishu that left 18 American soldiers dead and many more wounded. This early foreign-policy disaster for the Clinton administration led to the resignation of Secretary of Defense Les Aspin and a total troop withdrawal from Somalia. Bowden does not spend much time considering the context; as a replacement for he provides a moment-by-moment chronicle of what happened in the air and on the ground. His stark narrative tells of how Rangers and elite Delta Force troops embarked on a mission to capture a pair of high-status deputies to warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid only to find themselves surrounded in a hostile African city. Their high-tech MH-60 Black Hawk helicopters had been shot down and a number of additional miscues left them trapped through the night. Bowden describes Mogadishu as a place of Mad Max-like anarchy–implying fervently that there was never any peace for the supposed peacekeepers to keep. He makes full use of the defense bureaucracy’s wide paper trail–which includes official reports, investigations, and even radio transcripts–to clarify the combat with fantastic accuracy, right down to the actual dialogue. He supplements this with hundreds of his own interviews, turning Black Hawk Down into a completely authentic nonfiction novel, a lively page-turner that will make readers feel like they’re standing beside the embattled troops. This will quickly be realized as a modern military classic. –John J. Miller
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It was borin
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
It’s like reading the newspaper
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
Way too detailed and too long. I don’t have any patience for the detail… just get to the point and tell the tale.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
The hype that the movie Black Hawk Down received prior to its relief encouraged me to read the book: a fatal mistake. The book is as groan inducing as the movie and this is mainly because it spends so small time with character development that it’s hard to care about the outcome and feel sorrow at the deaths of the soldiers. Action buffs who loved the movie regularly criticize me by adage that this is a right account of an actual event, but even so this does not make the book any more exciting for me to read. If you are interested in knowing of what happened in Mogadishu, read the book, otherwise, steer clear of it as you would any additional mindless action book/movie.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
I bought this book looking forwards to learning about the Somalian
incident and started reading it with fantastic anticipation. I am so
disappointed in the writer, both his “jump-around” reporting
and his redundant and poor writing that I could not force myself past
page 50. By that page he has told the reader no less than four times
that the dust is ochre colored and the trees in the courtyards are
tiny. He has also judged the Somalian adults as being bone idle because
they don’t have jobs, this from a reporter whose own account describes
a country who’s infrastructure had been ruined. Who, exactly was
looking to hire anyone? He dismisses persons who question military
actions as “liberal do-gooders” and describes the troops as
men who couldn’t even “write a high school report about
Somalia,” an ignorance that is truly frightening and clarifies why
this country finds it so simple to “bomb the brown people”. At
one point he states that the more than 100 military personnel involed
includes only 2 people of color, which he says is revealing, but does
not clarify what it reveals or clarify in any way what he meant by the
statement. I surmise Mr. Bowden (…), and his
treatment of the event is bitty and superficial. As a high-school
report, this book would get high inscription for amount of factual (?)
information and flunk on writing skill.
The book angers me because
I feel duped by all the hype about it.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5