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Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War (Paperback) (Paperback)
by Mark Bowden
| Category:
Warfare, Story |
| Market price: ¥ 158.00
MSL price:
¥ 148.00
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Pre-order item, lead time 3-7 weeks upon payment [ COD term does not apply to pre-order items ] |
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| MSL Pointer Review:
Authoritative, gripping, and insightful, Black Hawk Down is a riveting look at the terror and exhilaration of combat, destined to become a classic of war reporting. |
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Author: Mark Bowden
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Pub. in: February, 2000
ISBN: 0140288503
Pages: 400
Measurements: 8.6 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
Origin of product: USA
Order code: BA00666
Other information: ISBN-13: 978-0140288506
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- Awards & Credential -
New York Times Bestseller. |
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- MSL Picks -
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.
If you are interested in modern warfare, you must read this book, because it will probably be long considered a classic of modern American literature.
Target readers:
General readers
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Mark Bowden is the author of Bringing the Heat and Doctor Dealer. He has been a reporter at The Philadelphia Inquirer for nineteen years and has won many national awards for his writing, including the Overseas Press Club's Hal Boyle Award for Best Foreign Reporting for his original series on the Battle of Mogadishu, which has appeared in ten newspapers across the nation.
Bowden has also written for Men's Journal, Sports Illustrated, Playboy, Rolling Stone, Parade, and other magazines. He is currently at work on a screenplay for the motion picture version of Black Hawk Down with Jerry Bruckheimer Films.
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Ninety-nine elite American soldiers are trapped in the middle of a hostile city. As night falls, they are surrounded by thousands of enemy gunmen. Their wounded are bleeding to death. Their ammunition and supplies are dwindling. This is the story of how they got there-and how they fought their way out. This is the story of war. Black Hawk Down drops you into a crowded marketplace in the heart of Mogadishu, Somalia with the U.S. Special Forces-and puts you in the middle of the most intense firefight American soldiers have fought since the Vietnam War. Late in the afternoon of Sunday, October 3, 1993, the soldiers of Task Force Ranger were sent on a mission to capture two top lieutenants of a renegade warlord and return to base. It was supposed to take them about an hour. Instead, they were pinned down through a long and terrible night in a hostile city, locked in a desperate struggle to kill or be killed. When the unit was finally rescued the following morning, eighteen American soldiers were dead and dozens more badly injured. The Somali toll was far worse: more than five hundred killed and over a thousand wounded.
Award-winning literary journalist Mark Bowden's dramatic narrative captures this harrowing ordeal through the eyes of the young men who fought that day. He draws on his extensive interviews of participants from both sides-as well as classified combat video and radio transcripts-to bring their stories to life. A Black Hawk pilot is shot down and besieged by an angry mob, then saved by Somalis who plan to ransom him to the local warlord. A medic desperately tries to keep his grievously wounded friend alive long enough to be evacuated-only to have him bleed to death in his arms. The company clerk, who is the butt of jokes in the barracks, rises to the task and per-forms extraordinary feats of valor.
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| View all 16 comments |
Gordon Cucullu (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-01 00:00>
Writing about battles in a manner than makes the reader feel involved is more the genre of fiction than non-fiction. Mark Bowden accomplishes the extraordinarily difficult by accurately recounting the story of a brutal, desperate battle in a way that puts you right in the middle of the fight. The often overlooked battle of Mogadischu has been ignored or downplayed by many. It is to Bowden's great credit that he pulled back the curtain on this brave but ultimately futile action that many in the political sector were only too willing to keep hidden.
Bowden puts you in the helicopters beside the Rangers and Delta operators as they plunge into a routine mission gone terribly wrong. You sense the awful loss as comrades are killed or wounded and the helplessness of a small group of elite soldiers who are suddenly confronted by a guerrilla army of thousands in a dusty, dark, stinking pesthole on the Horn of Africa.
You share the bravery, loyalty and skill of these soldiers and you will weep over their loss. Even more troubling, you will recognize the utter waste when a vacillating and spineless political leadership abruptly yanks them out of Somalia on the verge of achieving the impossible goal - removal of 'General' Adid that the politicians had set in the first place.
That weakness of moral core was startling enough to give Osama bin Laden - present at the time in Somalia - the motivation to press his attack on the United States. The road to the attack on 9-11 begins on the Mogadishu Mile.
This is an important book from many points: to demonstrate the amazing character of the American soldier, to point out the ability of the US to carry out extremely difficult missions, and most of all to demonstrate the absolute necessity of having high level political backing for any commitment of military resources. Black Hawk Down has to be a part of any serious reader's library.
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Alex Granados (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-01 00:00>
On October 3, 1993, less than a year after President Clinton began his first term as President of the United States and almost eight years before Sept. 11, 2001, a small force of U.S. Army Rangers and members of the elite Delta Force were helicoptered into the heart of Mogadishu, Somalia's war-torn capital, in a daring daylight raid to capture two of Somali clan leader Mohamed Farrah Aidid's top lieutenants. The plan was simple - drop four "chalks" of Rangers to secure a perimeter around the target building (near the Olympic Hotel) while the Delta commandos - the D-Boys, as the Rangers referred to them - gathered the prisoners. Then they'd be exfiltrated by a convoy of armed humvees and trucks and whisked back to the U.S. Army base in Mogadishu International Airport.
But, as General of the Army (and later President) Dwight Eisenhower once said, no military plan ever survives intact once the first shots are fired, so instead of a quick in-and-out raid, the 100 men of Task Force Ranger found themselves in the middle of a hostile and anarchic sector of Mogadishu known as the Bukara Market (and also as "the Black Sea"), engaged in what was, until the recent war in Iraq, the most sustained and deadly firefight in American military annals since Vietnam.
Mark Bowden, a long-time reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer, chronicles the harrowing "Battle of the Black Sea" in his bestselling book Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War with a fine eye for detail, a crisp and gripping narrative, and without bias toward either the Somalis or the Americans involved in the 18-hour firefight that left 18 American soldiers dead, over 70 wounded, and hundreds of Somali casualties. Despite having had no prior military experience or even any expertise on defense issues, Bowden has written a non-fiction work that joins such works as Cornelius Ryan's A Bridge Too Far and Lt. Gen. Hal Moore's We Were Soldiers Once...and Young as a true classic of military history.
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Chris Salzer (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-01 00:00>
While others have written books recounting battles and wars, Mark Bowden has penned, in Black Hawk Down, an incredibly real, almost surreal, account of war that enthralls and invigorates like no other. When reading the book, you not only feel like you're there in the bustling and chaotic Bakara Market in impoverished Mogadishu, you also feel like you are a veritable member of Task Force Ranger. Bowden takes you, the reader, to the site of this tumultuous bloodshed vicariously through his exquisite and no-holds-barred account of modern warfare.
So much better than the movie, the book fully engrosses you and makes you root for the Rangers and Delta Force members, as they find themselves in for a real barn burner in hostile territory, overwhelmingly outnumbered by thousands of hostile drugged-out AK-47 toting clansmen. Despite only losing 18 valiant men to hundreds, if not thousands(depends who you ask) of Sammys, many seem to chalk The Battle of Mogadishu up as a destitute failure. Although it would have been a resounding success, if not for the inaction and incompetence of Secretary of Defense Les Aspin and President Clinton, Task Force Ranger nonetheless achieved their objectives of extracting two high-ranking clan leaders. The procurement of AC-130 Gunships, Abrams Tanks, and Bradley Fighting Vehicles, as requested by General Montgomery - and subsequently denied by Aspin, would have assured a more pragmatic, and in turn, more successful battle plan. This book is a tribute to the brave men and women, like Randy Shughart and Gary Gordon, who fight, and oftentimes die, so that we may be free.
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Andrew Adams (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-01 00:00>
This book had me laughing on one page than crying on the next. It had me stand up salute the flag and cry "God Bless America" and than a few pages later wonder what in the world we were doing there in the first place. This book is quite possibly my favorite book of all time. For the true story of the Battle of Mogadishu (The Day of the Rangers) and Operation Restore Hope this is it. I think Mark Bowden does a good job of stating the facts and not placing the blame on former president Bill Clinton. (Hey I might hate the guy but Somalia really wasn't his fault.) I've recommended this book to all my friends and two of them also think it to be a great book. One thing that stands out is the difference in training, attitude, and ability between the Mountain Division troops, the Rangers, and Delta Force and other Commandoes. The vastly superior quality of Commando units, such as the D-boys, SEALs, and Paramedics was clearly evident. Still the rangers did very well considering they were made up of a lot of 19-21 year olds.
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