Customer Reviews

Black Hawk Down

5 star:		(486)
4 star:		(96)
3 star:		(16)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

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

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.

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.

I first hear about this book years ago when someone suggested it on tv. But I did not pay it any attention until I saw the movie. Once I saw the movie I wanted to know more about what happened with those soldiers. What I loved about the book was Mark Bowden's attention to detail. It is as if you are reading a very long but very interesting news article. I did not sense any bias, as if Mr. Bowden was trying to lead me to see only one side of this story. Needless to say, the book is very informative and has given me a new favorite author. I am reading his other book "Killing Pablo" now and loving it. Read Blackhawk Down.

Mark Bowden's story is an excellent retelling of the events of that day in 1993, but it only tells half the story. I don't think he even realized he was telling only part, even though he did try to get Somali voices in it. The real other half, which he does not seem to have a clue about, is that the whole event was a trap, an ambush coordinated and managed by Bin Laden and the Islamists in Sudan and Iran (see Y. Bodansky's book, Bin Laden, The Man Who Declared War on America). Isn't the author even curious about how, without any warning, all of these snipers and other armed individuals knew to be where the US soldiers were at that particular time? Mogadishu was and is a pretty lawless place, but even there I doubt that most areas have that many RPG launchers in one place all the time, just in case US soldiers drop in. The lack of adequate intelligence then and now, has led to the vulnerability of Western nations to terrorism. That and an unwillingness to admit that anyone could hate the US enough to ambush its soldiers, as well as putting hundreds of innocent civilians in the line of fire. Unfortunately, the US did not learn in Mogadishu, at the Khobar Towers, on the USS Cole, or even the WTC bombing in 1993. But it did learn on Sept. 11th.

This book is very good in many ways. But the complete story of these events in Mogadishu has yet to be told.

Black Hawk Down is about the battle on October 3rd, 1993 in Somalia. I won't reveal anything, because I think you should read this wonderful book for yourself. However, if I do say so myself, the message of this book is irreperable, and that is that regular people can do extraordinary things, if they are in a desperate situations. The writing is overall very well done. It is truly a quality book. The book gives you great insight into the battle, but don't take it all from me, read the book.

What a fascinating and gripping account of modern urban combat! Bowden has written an excellent narrative of the ferocious events in Mogadishu on 3-4 October 1993. I would reccommend this book to any student of history, political science, or military studies--especially soldiers in need of an understanding of how, when even minute mistakes are made in planning, terrible things can happen to deter a unit's mission. One crticism is that Bowden should have shied from the political critique in his Epilogue. Since his book focused on the Rangers' and D-boys' combat experience, that's what he should have discussed. It seems that the political implications leading to US / UN involvement in Somalia were an afterthought and Bowden does a much better job focusing on the stories of the individuals involved. Overall, however, this is a great read and a fascinating testament to the courage, bravery, and devotion to each other shown by those who participated in the terrible Bakara Market Battle.

"Black Hawk Down" by Mark Bowden was one of the best war book that I have read. The story is a true story about 500 American soilders and Marines who go to Somalia(Which is located in east Africa) to bring food to all the starving people but War Lord Mohammed Farid Aidid siezes control of the ports where the Americans are giving the food to the people. Mohammed is taking the food to his army. The Americans come and try to arrest some of Mohammed's top Officers. Everything was going as planned. They were ready to transport the prisoners until Wolcott Black Hawk was shot downand 100 American soldiers were pinned down against 1000 angry Somalians. They set up a perimitor around the crash site untill Mike Durrant Black Hawk was hit and they had two blawk hawks in the city and now the whole city is against them. If you want to hear more you should read this book. This is a good book for anybody who likes true storys or war books. Personally, I think it was the best war book I have ever read.

On October 4, 1993, America was rocked by the news that American Special Forces were ambushed in the Somali city of Mogadishu. And, as the television filled with images of dead American soldiers being dragged through the streets, people began to demand to know what happened. The administration of Bill Clinton was rocked, and reacted by quickly announcing that American forces would be pulled out of Somalia as quickly as possible. But, more than most, reporter Mark Bowden wanted to know what really happened in Mogadishu. This is the story of what happened.

On the afternoon of October 3, 1993, in a desperate attempt to capture two top aides of warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid, a small force of Rangers and Delta Force commandoes stormed into a house in Aidid's stronghold. However, very quickly things began to go wrong. When two of the Black Hawk helicopters (their pilots specially trained and equipped for night operations) were unexpectedly shot down, the American soldiers quickly found themselves surrounded by armed Somalis who were determined to bring the soldiers to battle and destroy them. As the American commander tried to round up support from Pakistani and Malaysian armored units, the American soldiers fought through the afternoon and through the night. When the fight was finally over, there were 18 Americans dead and 73 wounded, plus some 1,000 Somalis dead or wounded.

In this story, author Mark Bowden does an excellent job of taking the reader right into the firefight. This is not a modern Zulu (a 1964 movie of British soldiers fighting against Zulu warriors during the 19th century); this is not a story of heroes and villains. Instead, the author tells the story from both sides, showing the feelings and motivations of both sides, and showing modern combat with all of its horrors and uncertainties. Indeed, what surprised me the most was the profound contempt that the Delta Force "D-Boys" expressed for their Ranger comrades.

No, this is quite a story, one that has to be read to be understood. If you are interested in modern warfare, then I would say that you must read this book. Indeed, I would go as far as to say that this book will probably be long considered a classic of modern American literature.

This book is absoutly stunning! It shows what these brave men had to endure. Reading this book made me fee like I was there. The graphic nature of this book gives you a sense of reality that can't be found in any other book. Your emotions will flow with the book. When things are looking bad you feel depressed, when things are looking better you'll feel happy. Mr. Bowden is an exclent writer, and he did a surberb job with this novel. He needs to consider a sequel to this book. I recomend this book to everyone who wants to know what it's really like. I have talked to soldiers and they all agree that this book does the story justice.