Review by Booklist Review
Dramatically, graphically reconstructing the October 1993 gun battle in Mogadishu, Somalia, journalist Bowden leaves nothing about combat to the imagination. Thinking there must have been some official inquiry into the disaster that killed 18 American soldiers and upwards of 500 Somalis, Bowden discovered none was undertaken, and so conceived this account. It is a horribly fascinating bullet-by-bullet story, in which the purpose of Americans in Somalia fades to irrelevance amidst the immediate desperation of fighting. The battle ignited as the army's elite formations, the Delta units and the Rangers, were ambushed in the course of capturing clan leaders. In the ensuing day-and night-long snafu, helicopters were shot down, rescue convoys drove in wrong directions, men bled to death. In effective New Journalism style, Bowden projects the individual soldier's thinking: his pride in his elite training, his surprise at the strangeness of combat, his determination to hold out until rescue, and, in two instances, his pure self-sacrificial heroism. An account impossible to stop reading, especially for those with army associations. --Gilbert Taylor
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
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. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Based on a series that won the Hal Boyle Award for best foreign reporting from the Overseas Press Club after appearing in the Philadelphia Inquirer, this book details the American assault on Mogadishu, Somalia, in 1993. A 75,000-copy first printing. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Journalist Bowden (Bringing the Heat: A Pro Football Team's Quest for Glory, Fame, Immortality and a Bigger Piece of the Action, 1994, etc.) originally wrote this as a serialized account in the Phildalphia Inquirer; he has now crafted the pieces into a searing look at one specific incident during the US military action in Somalia. This is the story of a military action on October 3, 1993, when elite US Rangers and a Delta task force swooped down on a Mogadishu neighborhood to capture two top lieutenants of a Somali warlord. The action was to be a quick surgical strike into a crowded market district that was known to be very unfriendly. Rather than a quick success, the attack decayed into mayhem as the Somali crowd'which Bowden depicts vividly as a mixture of armed mercenaries working for warlords and a general populace that runs confusedly toward gunfire rather than away from it'downs the high-tech helicopter with a simple grenade, and the American forces become pinned down in the city. Bowden captures the intensity of the situation with a brisk writing style reflecting the quick pace of action. Although he was not present in Somalia during the fighting, his account is well balanced with firsthand sources that cover the spectrum, from members of the Ranger forces stationed in Mogadishu to Somali citizens. As the Somali night unfolded, more than 500 civilians were killed, more than 1,000 injured, and 18 US soldiers died. Bowden covers these deaths with detail and passion. One element that is lacking from his account is a level of background that would offer more than a surface look at the actions as they unfolded; this is a work of reportage, rather than analysis. But as reportage, this account offers a look at modern war in the tradition of the great war correspondents. Gripping, passionate, and impossible to put down.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
