Black Hawk Down

Listening to Joe Morton read Bowden's nonfiction study of war is a bit like sitting through Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan. Your reaction is so powerful that you tend to forget the quality of the work itself. It's a testament to Morton's abilities as a reader that he never makes himself more important than Bowden's story, never draws attention to himself, yet he still manages to leave a profound imprint on the finished work. In the midst of Bowden's story, a study of the brutal battle in Mogadishu, Somalia, which resulted in the downing of two Black Hawk helicopters and the deaths of a score of U.S. Army Rangers, Morton remains fully in control. Bowden's book portrays a situation that went from neutral to bad, then from bad to infinitely worse, in a matter of hours. Yet while taking us on a trip through the minds of individual men facing the horrors of modern combat, Morton stays on task. Some of those minds are nearly Zen-like in their calmness. Others are crazed in panic. All, in one way or another, exhibit the kind of turmoil that accompanies the imminent possibility of sudden death. Yet Morton never oversells the moment. He never overstates the danger. He doesn't have to. It's all in Bowden's words, which Morton delivers perfectly. D.A.W. Winner of AUDIOFILE Earphones Award (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Starred review from February 1, 1999
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.

They all knew this mission might get hairy. The 1993 attempt to arrest warlords and save a starving population got 99 American soldiers trapped in a hostile city. The most intense firefight since Vietnam left 18 elite fighters dead and branded our consciousness with the images of naked American corpses dragged through the streets of Mogadishu. The enemy toll was far higher--more than 500 Somalis killed--but afterward the UN pulled out. We won the battle; lost the war. Alan Sklar draws us into the tragic 18-hour nightmare. His husky voice can boom or whisper, expressing confidence, doubt, horror, and outrage. He never hams, never overplays his hand. The tragedy is read as written, with exquisite care and boundless passion. B.H.C. (c) AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine