BigMonkey's Full Review: Mark Bowden - Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern W...
Anyone who gives a hoot about America's ongoing geo-political struggles--which too often seem to be accompanied by the deployment of U.S. troops--needs to read this book.
"Black Hawk Down" is a comprehensive, from-the-bottom up account of an October 1993 raid into Somalia's capital which was supposed to net the U.S. and the UN the bad guys who were systematically pillaging the country back to the stone age.
Instead, despite the use of the elite men and equipment of the Army Rangers and the super-secret Delta Force, the raid degenerated into a running, multi-day firefight which caused horrific casualties in the tight-knit special-ops units and likely killed hundreds, if not thousands, of Somali gunmen.
Author Mark Bowden managed to get the men involved to talk about their experiences--no small feat considering how secretive their world is--and uses their insights to construct a narrative that reads more the way Tom Clancy thinks he writes than any dry battlefield history.
Best of all Bowden refrains from trying to make-sense-of-it-all and glom on some pained thesis for all the pain, death, and misery. He is content to provide a vibrant, pulse-quickening, metal-taste-in-your-mouth snapshot of modern war. That is more than enough.
And...a film version is currently being shot with intense involvement of the Army, including some of the very Rangers who are central to the book. Release is expected November 2001.
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