- Paperback: 496 pages
- Publisher: Signet; First THUS edition (Jan 17 2002)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0451205146
- ISBN-13: 978-0451205148
- Product Dimensions: 17.3 x 10.4 x 3.8 cm
- Shipping Weight: 703 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (611 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #807,202 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
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; instead he provides a moment-by-moment chronicle of what happened in the air and on the ground. His gritty narrative tells of how Rangers and elite Delta Force troops embarked on a mission to capture a pair of high-ranking 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 other miscues left them trapped through the night. Bowden describes Mogadishu as a place of Mad Max-like anarchy--implying strongly that there was never any peace for the supposed peacekeepers to keep. He makes full use of the defense bureaucracy's extensive paper trail--which includes official reports, investigations, and even radio transcripts--to describe the combat with great 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
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
This is military writing at its breathless best. Bowden (Bringing the Heat) has used his journalistic skills to find and interview key participants on both sides of the October 1993 raid into the heart of Mogadishu, Somalia, a raid that quickly became the most intensive close combat Americans have engaged in since the Vietnam War. But Bowden's gripping narrative of the fighting is only a framework for an examination of the internal dynamics of America's elite forces and a critique of the philosophy of sending such high-tech units into combat with minimal support. He sees the Mogadishu engagement as a portent of a disturbing future. The soldiers' mission was to seize two lieutenants of a powerful Somali warlord. Despite all their preparation and training, the mission unraveled and they found themselves fighting ad hoc battles in ad hoc groups. Eschewing the post facto rationalization that characterizes so much military journalism, Bowden presents snapshots of the chaos at the heart of combat. On page after page, in vignette after vignette, he reminds us that war is about breaking things and killing people. In Mogadishu that day, there was no room for elaborate rules of engagement. In the end, it was a task force of unglamorous "straight-leg" infantry that saved the trapped raiders. Did the U.S. err by creating elite forces that are too small to sustain the attrition of modern combat? That's one of the key questions Bowden raises in a gripping account of combat that merits thoughtful reading by anyone concerned with the future course of the country's military strategy and its relationship to foreign policy.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
At liftoff. Matt Eversmann said a Hail Mary. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
At liftoff. Matt Eversmann said a Hail Mary. Read the first page
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Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Black Hawk Down,
By Jordan kempfle (greenwich, ct, USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Black Hawk Down (Mass Market Paperback)
This book is so cool. It should be on your top ten list. Well, thats what I think. There is so much action and suspense. I cant stop reading it. There are so many facts. I think that the book was relly good. People should read this book if they're into action. You will probably like it just as much as me. I gave this book a five star rating
4.0 out of 5 stars
Breath Taking and Riveting,
By "midnite565" (Richmond Hill, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Black Hawk Down:: A Story of Modern War (Paperback)
This book truly proves that war is no game. Where fear is always on the move.The book was a powerful aspect of the men who died in Somalia, carfully scripted and studied that it proved WHY the Somali's attacked the Americans. This book earned my respect and I reccommend to ANYONE. Even if you are the romantic person, this book will move you deeply.
5.0 out of 5 stars
An excellent book!,
By
This review is from: Black Hawk Down (Mass Market Paperback)
Mark Bowden has done an outstanding job of telling the story of the battle of Mogadishu. U.S. army rangers and delta forces were in Mogadishu trying to kill or capture Mohamed Farrah Aidid, a local warlord, leader of the Habr Gidr clan, who was preventing international relief agencies from properly distributing food in famine-decimated Somalia. Trying to pluck one well-hidden person from the midst of a very sympathetic populace is not so easy, as we learned then and have re-learned in the case of Ossama bin Ladin. The U.S. began to settle for picking off top Aidid aids. This battle bagan when U.S. forces learned that two Aidid lieutenants were meeting in a building near the center of the Aidid-controlled section of Mogadishu. The plan called for Delta forces to take the building and capture the men, for army rangers to secure the corners of the block containing the target building, and for black Hawk helicopters to provide overhead cover for the rangers. It was a reasonably good plan, but it had one very serious weakness. It turned out that the Black Hawks were very vulnerable to fire from rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), a cheap and reliable Soviet made weapons system. RPGs are as common as dirt in third world countries, and Aidid's forces had plenty of them. Two of the Black Hawks were shot down by RPG fire, and two more were damaged so badly that they had to crash land back at the U.S. base. In trying to retrieve the downed Black Hawk pilots and crews (or their bodies), the rangers and Delta forces got shot to hell by an extremely hostile city full of AK-47-toting Somalis. It is an amazing story, well told by Mark Bowden. Part of the irony and horror of the situation is that we were only trying to help, we were only trying to do good. Yet we ended up getting 19 of our own boys killed and 70 others wounded, and killing perhaps (no one knows for sure) 500 Somalis. The moral to the story is that if you're trying to do good, send missionaries. The army is not a missionary force. The purpose of the army is to kill people, and it should never be deployed unless U.S. national security is implicated, which it was not in Somalia.
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