Black Hawk Down Book Review

Black Hawk Down: A story of a modern war

By Mark Bowden

The book takes place in Somalia, 1993, when the U.S. military was trying to make peace there. The book starts with the U.S.'s main objective to capture and arrest a Somali warlord's people. Everything soon goes wrong when a black hawk helicopter is shot down. The objective soon changes to a new one, to rescue the trapped pilots.

A strong point of reading the book was that while reading it shows you the will of a soldier to do whatever needs to be done to finish an objective. It also showed how much a soldier relies on one another during war. Another strong point of the book was again the details given. Like the way he describes the environment around the soldiers. Also the way he writes what is going through the soldiers minds.

A weakness of the book is that it is almost to detailed. I know I said that was a strong point but at the same time, some of the information given was rather boring. In some situations the events that take place seem like it's just dragging on and on. But at the same time it was still really good. Another thing I didn't like is how long it was. That's more of a personal opinion, but I don't really like to read. So I think that might be a reason it began to lose some of my interest.

Some lessons I learned after reading it was that things can change in a matter of seconds. They believed this mission was going to be a quick get in and then get out no problem. But the Somali were willing and able to fight. One thing can change the whole course of a war, in this case it was a black hawk helicopter.

I liked when they shouted "Hoo-ah". It's just an all around cool saying. Knowing that they are going to battle they show know fear. But what I found out from my brother in law, Colton, is that Army Rangers don't say "Hoo-ah". But it's still a cool quote. Another good quote was when one of the soldiers said, "Let's go out together. Some of us will live and some of us will die." This quote to me shows the strength, and like I said earlier, the will of the soldiers. They know they have to complete the mission and are willing to go out and face death together to do it.

This book is really similar to what's happening in the world today. The war were in now has gone on longer than what we had expected. We planned on going over there and killing the terrorist's leaders and getting out. But we are still fighting. Also, how the war were in now started because of the 9/11 terrorists attack on The United States. That event caused a whole war, which is somewhat similar to the shooting down of an American helicopter.

I do recommend this book to people. If you like to read this is a very good choice because it is long, very detailed, and will keep your interest. It is also a good choice