Corgi 2000. Softcover, 571 pp
Already winning acclaim as one of the best accounts of combat ever
written, Black Hawk Down is a minute-by-minute, heart-stopping account
of the 1993 raid on Mogadishu, Somalia. Late in the afternoon of Sunday,
October 3 1993, 140 elite US Soldiers abseiled from helicopters into a
teeming market neighborhood in the heart of the city. Their mission was
to abduct two top lieutenants of a Somali 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,
fighting for their lives against thousands of heavily armed Somalis. Two
of their high-tech helicopters were shot out of the sky. When the unit
was rescued the following morning, eighteen American soldiers were dead
and more than seventy badly injured. The Somali toll was far worse -
more than five hundred killed and over a thousand injured. Authoritative,
gripping, and insightful, Black Hawk Down is destined to become a
classic of war reporting. It is already the most accurate, detailed
account of modern combat ever written.