Blackhawk Down

Destined to become a classic of war reporting, Black Hawk Down is Mark Bowden’s brilliant account of the longest sustained firefight involving American troops since the Vietnam War. On October 3, 1993, about a hundred elite U.S. soldiers were dropped by helicopter into the swarming market in the heart of Mogadishu, Somalia. Their mission was to abduct two top lieutenants of a Somali warlord and return to base. It was supposed to take an hour. Instead they found themselves pinned down through a long and terrible night fighting against thousands of heavily armed Somalis. The following morning, 18 Americans were dead and more than 70 had been badly injured. Bowden, an award-winning journalist, captured this harrowing ordeal through the eyes of the young soldiers and the Somalis who fought that day. Interviewing people on both sides, and accessing thousands of pages of Army records, including still-classified videotapes, radio transcripts and audiotapes, Bowden has written a fasci...