It's a great book. Everything is in exact detail as the movie. As I read, I picture the scene in the movie and I feel like I'm watching the movie all over again. It was written word for word, scene by scene. It even includes still photos and a full cast description of each character. It was everything I thought it would be. It was definitely worth the wait since ordering this book before it was even published.

Larry Lavin is a brilliant, complex person, who, despite his enormous crime, emerges as likeable. One cannot help but think, "what a waste!" This is the story of a man who truly had everything: brains, looks, loyal wife, money career, and beautiful children. Yet, he threw it all away. Fascinating account of Lavin's ascent from poor working-class Massachusetts kid with disillusioned father to dental student to coke lord to inmate.

I have never written a review for a book before, so bear with me. This is truly a book about some of the greatest heroes our country has seen. Not only Michael Durant, but every last one of those young men who were there. I was anxious to learn more about Durant's captivity than I had from Blackhawk Down, and I was not disappointed. I felt like I personally knew each of the people involved by the time I was through. If some parts of this book don't bring at least a small tear to your eyes, then you must not have a heart at all. Michael Durant and the others (especially the Delta guys) are the strongest, most courageous, and most patriotic men I have ever read about. If these traits are as strong in the rest of our military personnel, then our country should have no fears.

This book was hard to put down. Durant's writing style and sense of humor make it compelling, as if you're hearing a story from a good friend.

The slices of his life besides his captivity in Somalia also give insight into this man and show how they forged his will and gave him the ability to survive his 10 days in captivity and keep his mind intact.

I'd reccomend this book to anyone who has read Black Hawk Down; especially if you think Bowden came off as a Clinton apologist. Durant expresses the feelings of every red-blooded American Serviceman who has served durring the past 10 years!

I found one small error in the book and even it was probably just an oversimplification and not crucial to the plot, itself. Other than that, it's earned a place of honor on my bookshelf. One that is increasingly becoming more "Army" than "Marines". I left the Corps 10 years ago and I'm going into the Army in the next 10 days!

All we need now is for this story to be turned into a movie and done well. The small piece of it shown in Black Hawk Down does not do this man any justice.

Thank you, Michael Durant. God Bless you and your family! Semper Fi! Hoo-Ah! NSDQ!

As soon as I heard CW4 Durant was writing a book I knew I had to buy it. I bought it the first day it was available to the public (the first book I've ever done that for). It was a quick read that kept me interested to the very end.
The book (which is the most fitting title for any book I've ever read) documents CW4 Durant's crash, capture, and detainment, but also details some of Durant's past missions as well as his training. I felt like I got to know many of CW4 Durant's friends and it put a very personal feel to the Semolina incident.
Thank you CW4 Durant for documenting your story. I am in the process of applying for Flight School (with the Army) and your story has continued to inspire me. I'm thankful that I finally got to hear it from you.

So you've never been in combat. Come to Mogadishu. Maybe you're the rear detachment company clerk who was called forward due to an injury. Join the D-Boys and Rangers on a quick raid gone wrong. Fast-rope into a crowded African city on a Sunday afternoon and smell, taste, hear, and touch the reality of true combat. Test your soul; what would you do if you were surrounded by thousands of deadly Somalis only miles from safety in the heart of their territory and there is a BLACK HAWK DOWN? Mark Bowden has taken his award winning series of newspaper articles written for the Philadelphia Inquirer and turned them into a must-read classic for all military professionals. He definitely took a modest assignment and overachieved; we are the beneficiaries. His detailed account of the Battle of the Black Sea (Mogadishu: 3-4 October 1993) is destined to occupy the bookshelves of every military professional or would-be warrior. Devour and enjoy Black Hawk Down. This book is not about your Grandfather or Father's war. This is about modern war involving many soldiers still on active duty. It's not about destroying tanks from 3,000 meters away. It's about close combat when the rules of engagement cease to have relevance and survival requires immediate instinctive response. This book is a crystal ball on future urban warfare and a cautionary note for contentious peacekeeping operations. The devil is in the details and you will not want for details. The gore, frustrations, disagreements, mistrusts, illusions, misconceptions, ramifications, difficulties, cowardice, and heroics are displayed for all to see. Sure there is some hype and inaccuracy, but no interesting microscopic analysis can exist without such blemishes. Seldom has such a discreet tactical operation had such far-reaching strategic consequences. U.S forces in Bosnia can attribute restrictive force protection measures to this battle's legacy. Future strategic, operational, and tactical leaders who do not assimilate the lessons of Mogadishu are in danger of repeating this tragic history. I strongly recommend this book. Learn what Delta Sergeants Randy Shughart and Gary Gordon did to earn the only Medals of Honor awarded for actions during the past quarter-century. Set aside a Sunday afternoon or a long night for continuous consumption. You will not want to put this book down once you start reading it.

Simply the best book I have read regarding military battle. Mark Bowden has doen an incredible job of giving the reader a 360 degree view of the battles in Mogadishu, from the soldiers on the ground, to the Somalis they were fighting, to the "eyes in the sky" above. His story telling brings the reader into the battles and shows the true nature of urban combat as well as the resolve, training and professionalism those on the ground had against overwhelming forces.

A strong point to the book are the human faces these battles have. The physical and emotional pain suffered during the battle by its participants. It is not a pretty picture, but it shows the dedication they had to the "man next to them". The story of the 2 Delta Force troopers, who knew of the odds against them, refusing to leave a stranded pilot behind jumping out of a helicopter into enemy fire is only one example. There are many such stories in this book, as there may be in every battle of every war. The difference here is the writing and reporting by the author.

For the government (i.e. - Clinton) not wanting to make too much of a presence with the use of armored troop vehicles that could have been used in our soldiers rescue, this sure did not end quietly...

Black Hawk Down (Signet 1999), written by Mark Bowden (a reporter at The Philadelphia Inquirer), is excellent reporting on the strategy and tactics of modern warfare. The book covers an intense firefight, known as the "Battle of the Black Sea," which took place on Sunday, October 3, 1993, in the middle of a marketplace in Mogadishu, Somalia. On that afternoon, a combined force of Army Rangers and Delta Force were assigned the duty of kidnapping two top lieutenants of Mohamed Farrah Aidid (a warlord who headed the Habr Gidr clan) who systematically were robbing the starving populace of food delivered by the international community. The daylight mission was supposed to take one hour. Instead, two Black Hawks were downed by Somali fire and the American soldiers spent the night fighting thousands of armed Somalis. The world awoke the next day to grotesque images of a Somali mob defiling and dragging the corpses of American soldiers through the city streets. Eighteen Americans had died, over seventy were badly injured and one had been captured. Black Hawk Down reports on the terrifying night spent by the American soldiers between the time they were dropped by the Black Hawks in the marketplace and their rescue.

The book provides the reader a chilling view of battle as it reports sequences of scenes through the eyes of those who fought it. In a description of a medic's efforts to save a young Ranger, Bowden writes:

"Give me some morphine for the pain! Smith demanded.... I can't, Schmid told him. In his state, morphine could kill him.... The young Ranger bellowed as the medic reached with both hands and tore open the entrance wound. Schmid tried to shut out the fact that there were live nerve endings beneath his fingers.... He continued to root for the artery. Every time he reached into the wound Smith lost more blood. Schmid and Perino were covered with it. Blood was everywhere. It was hard to believe Smith had anymore to lose....

"We need medevac NOW. We have [ ] critical who is not going to make it....

"Roger, understand. We are pressing the QRF to get there as quickly as they can. I doubt that we can get a Hawk in there to get anybody out, over....

"We are going to have to hold on the best we can with those casualties and hope the ground reaction force gets there on time."

By interviewing the soldiers for their recollection of the events and juxtaposing it with transcriptions of radio tapes of the desperate calls for help, Bowden succeeds in conveying the sense of the horror of war in a manner that is more unsettling than most authors are able to do in their fictional or non-fictional books about war. In that regard, Black Hawk Down is similar to "We Were Soldiers Once...and Young," a book about infantry combat in Ia Drang, Vietnam, written by Lt. Gen. Harold G. Moore (Ret.) and Joseph L. Galloway (Random House, 1992).

Bowden provides such an in-depth account of the battle and so vividly relates the memories and opinions of the soldiers that it's hard to believe that he, himself, was not at the battle. The author's skill in piecing together important sequences of events, his addition of ordinary details (for example, the soldier who wished he had made a restroom stop before the mission) and his description of the surrealism experienced by the soldiers ("this cannot be real!") give the reader a sense of the realism of war. This is an impressive achievement given Bowden's lack of any military background.

One criticism I have of the book is the author's failure to follow up on President Clinton's abrupt cancellation of the mission within days of the battle. While Bowden briefly touches on this issue in the Epilogue, he could have elaborated on this stage of events by addressing the soldiers' feelings and opinions concerning this issue. There must have been a tremendous sense of frustration and a sense of "all this for nothing" for those who fought in the mission. Perhaps there was no easy way to address this issue given that the soldiers were still active members of the military and their comments would have been too circumscribed.

Another criticism I have of the book is the author's reluctance to address the wisdom of the policymakers who authorized the mission. To the extent he addresses it, he, personally, does not appear to find as much fault as one would think his book warrants. He acknowledges, however, that the rest of the country may be of a different view, especially with respect to the President's role. Bowden reported:

"At the Medal of Honor ceremony for the two Delta soldiers killed in action, [the author] read that the father of posthumous honoree Sergeant Randy Shughart insulted the president, telling him he was not fit to be Commander-in-Chief."

Despite these minor shortcomings, I found the book to be a raw, gut-wrenching account that vividly captures the ferociousness of urban warfare. Black Hawk Down is written like an action novel; it's gripping and very easy to read.

The Battle of the Black Sea was the worst firefight since Vietnam, and is a battle that America has preferred to forget. But, so long as America engages in police action missions and OOTW, we must not forget October 13. In an article in the New York Times (11/2/01), Somalia's president pleaded for America to re-establish relations with his country. He urged American officials to end the cold shoulder treatment "and to realize that Somalia, although not perfect, could be much worse." I would highly recommend that everyone reads Black Hawk Down before America allows its leaders to re-engage with Somalia or to expand its peacekeeping role in places like Bosnia. After reading Black Hawk Down, this reviewer has an indelible image of young Americans going to a distant country to feed starving stangers and returning home in body bags.

I've been an Eagles fan since 1970, and I still think the 1992 team had the most potential, possibly surpassing the 1979-80 Vermeil teams. This book gave me the inside scoop on that (disappointing) season, and also detailed the seeds that led to this team's collapse in the second half of the season, where they started 7-2 and finished 7-9.

I rate it as "mostly" accurate because of little things like the Eagles playing the Phoenix Patriots. (I read the first edition, maybe that error was fixed in a later edition.)

Bringing The Heat is a gridiron epic: a robust 500-page chronicle of the Philadelphia Eagles' tumultuous 1992 season that lifts the lid on the pressure cooker environment of an NFL team desperate for a final shot at the Super Bowl, even as its internal conflicts surpass those unfolding upon the field. Haunted by the death of talismanic defensive tackle Jerome Brown, the team struggles to heal the locker-room rift between its league-leading defense and a misfiring offense led by talented but erratic quarterback Randall Cunningham. It must also contend with the expectations of a team owner and a sports-mad metropolis desperate for a championship to dispel its citywide inferiority complex. Former Philadelphia Enquirer reporter Bowden compares gridiron football to a religion in the devotion it demands from coaches and players, and explores the disconcerting consequences such dedication brings. These include the unpredictable effects upon young black males as they are thrust - sometimes from abject poverty - into a world of wealth but also unrelenting media scrutiny. His attention as well to the saddening regularity of players' marital infidelities portray familial breakdown to be, for some, an inevitable feature of a pro football career. Panoramic in its perspective (the advent of free agency that threatens to dismantle the talented Eagles), intimately personal in its detail (the venomous rage of linebacker Seth Joyner: the extravagant idiosyncrasies of Cunningham), Bringing The Heat is both an absorbing and colorful character-driven tale and a serious and incisive social commentary upon the phenomenon of professional sports in America.

Mark caputures a team I remember in my youth with remarkable detail. Awesome insights. Remarkable profiles of players and coaches. You grow up with them, go on the field with them, and go home with them. I highly recommend this book. Only critism is sometimes the in game detail is overbearing and detailed. This book made me realize one thing that is often overlooked: athletes are humans.

If you're a fan of Mark Bowden's, add this book to your collection. I was hooked from page 1 until the end. I believe this book was even better then Black Hawk Down (if you can believe that!). I thought the length of the book would provide tiring details about unimportant aspects of the story. Not true. This was a very focused book and I had no trouble keeping high interest througout.

When we moved into Larry's Virginia Beach Neighborhood we wondered how could a man who piddles in his garage all day could afford to live in such a nice house. Well a couple months later the house was wrapped in crime scene tape and we found out how he could afford to handout full sized Snicker bars on Halloween!
Mark described him accurately during his Va Beach days. He was a good-guy and even helped my friend Kevin and I unhinge the jaws of a snapper turtle, which was trying to eat another turtle we had caught in the marshes.
Bowden scores again, with readable interesting non-fiction

Bowden does it again, this story is irresistible!
Dr. Larry Lavin, a charismatic fellow from humble beginnings becomes the largest cocaine dealer of Philadelphia. A family man in an affluent suburb that could easily be mistaken as your neighbor was the head of complex network of YUPPIE cocaine suppliers. His charisma and industrious caution couldn't save him from arrest and defeat. When I finished this book, I admired and pitied Larry Lavin. Bowden is one of the finest authors of our time.

This short 30 page account of the D-Day invasion with first hand
narrative is unique in that it contains reproductions of various items associated with the invasion. There are personal items such as notebooks and Bibles and operational items such as orders
and after-action reports. All in all this is an interesting look into the history of D-Day made more so by the inclusion of historical artifacts. I recommend it to you, inspite of its brevity and price.

Despite its brevity, this book is both informative and revealing. Bowden gives a good overview of what preceded and led up to D-Day. He describes Operation Overlord and the German defenses on the French coast, as well as the air and land assault plans.

Especially interesting are the authentic photos and artifacts from the collection of the D-Day Museum in New Orleans, founded by the late Stephen Ambrose. These artifacts include a soldiers' diary, the front page of the New York Times, a letter from Roosevelt, and an inspirational message from Eisenhower. All are able to be pulled out and looked at by the reader.

One of the artifacts, "A Pocket Guide to France" was given to the military and is included in this book as a pull out. It was simple and patriotic as it explained the military mission in France, the history of the conflict, and told the soldiers how to behave while in France.

Bowden also writes of the possible pitfalls in the plan, including dropping soldiers at night and the unpredictability of the weather. He concisely relates the events of D-Day, the airborne efforts, the invasion of Utah Beach, and the action of the armada, all interspersed with the words of those who were there.

Following this is a section about the Allied advance through France and into Germany...and less than a year later, the Reich was in ruins and Hitler was dead.

I liked this book most of all for its simplicity and authenticity.

Wow, great book. i was very impressed with the way Tregaskis reported the story. He does an excellent job in entertaining the reader while putting forth the facts. Great book for ANYONE of almost ANY AGE.

Read Tregaski's description of Red Mike Edson (paraphrase - the mouth smiles but not the eyes)...his account of the Tenaru River and Bloody Ridge....and marvel how the long road back started. Consider spending a few bucks on a first edition - surprisingly affordable. Then re-read every couple of years.

Richard Tregaskis, a 24-year-old reporter, went ashore with the 1st Marine Division on Guadalcanal. He lived with the men, sleeping on the ground and eating the same chow. He remained on that nightmarish piece of coral for 50 days, usually under combat conditions. His retelling of the engagement along the Tenaru is as good or better than other first hand reports. His description of the several days of combat on Edson's Ridge was excellent, as he had moved his tent to that elevated location the morning of the first day. With an eye toward the readers' morale, losses of flights at Henderson Field were not reported as accurately as they could have been. As many as seven aircraft had crashed on take off while he was still on the island. Tregaskis left the island before the major battles on the Matanikau or the desperate fight for Henderson Field, but he had his story. He had seen the boys of democracy turn back the seemingly invincible Japanese Army; he had seen some of our flyers defeat the unstoppable Zeros; he had seen our navy hold their own against the designers of the attack on Pearl Harbor and he hurried home to tell the American public. This book was started aboard a B-24 before he returned home and was an instant best seller. This was a first hand reporting of our first offensive engagement of WW II. A nation hungry for news of the front greeted it eagerly. Not even the casual reader of WW II can bypass this major work, if for no other reason than the place it holds in the history of the war in it's own right.

Mark Bowden's "Killing Pablo" is a very well researched law enforcement tale that makes for an enjoyable read. I use the term "law enforcement" loosely because Bowden's main thesis seems to be that the killing of Pablo Escobar was successful only because of the efforts of extralegal vigilante groups that terrorized Escobar's associates and who were helped--at least indirectly--by the U.S. military, DEA, and CIA. Also, capturing the fugitive Escobar was never an option, the understanding was that he would be killed when he was found.

Bowden does a great job of outlining how deep U.S. involvement was in this affair. An incredible amount of money was spent by the U.S. on killing Escobar despite the fact they knew it wouldn't have any appreciable effect on the cocaine supply available to the States. The other subtext of the book is how corrupt and violent Colombia was, and likely still is. If you ever have a chance to interact with Colombians, you will no doubt find them to be the most cultured and worldly Latin Americans there are; it's sad that just below the surface their country is so lawless.

Overall I would recommend the book. I would warn, however, that it is poorly written and certainly poorly edited. There are run-on sentences and many subject confusions that make you have to stop and re-read a paragraph to figure out who Bowden is talking about. If you're a stickler for good prose, it may drive you nuts.

Bowden tells an amazing story, no doubt about it. His story of the rise and fall of the Escobar cocaine cartel is a fascinating narrative with stories of murder and terror that seem larger than life. With Killing Pablo, Bowden takes the reader into the a world of drug lords, CIA agents, and a Columbian police force and government that seemed wrapped around Pablo's finger. All the elements are there for a great book, and Bowden, in his usual style, delivers a well written compelling story.

My one criticism is that Bowden barely gives the reader a larger perspective of his story other than "on the ground" accounts of the hunt for Escobar. Bowden does not give the reader a perspective of Pablo's place in the drug industry, who his competition was, the impact his cocaine had on the streets of America, and whether his pursuit and death had any measurable benefit to anyone but the other cocaine cartels. I always found that I wanted more information when I was reading this book. It is also clear that Bowden did not have sources who were close to the internal dealings of the Escobar cartel, which is a noticable hole in the book.

Its a good book, fun to read, highly enlightening, but also limited in scope to the actuals events on the ground in taking down Pablo. I think I was looking for something closer to the movie "Traffic" that looked at the drug trade and Escobar in a wider context.

This is a good book that details the rise and fall of Pablo Escobar. Despite it having moments when it gets dull and monotonous especially when it bogs itself down with many technical terms and explanations used to describe the equipment used to capture El Doctor, it is overall a good book with the best bit being the beginning highlighting Pablo's exploits.

This a true story about one of those weird occurences in life that everyone hopes for in the back of their minds: A million dollars falls out of an armored car and some lucky stiff find it, grabs it, and takes it home. Unmarked bills! Untraceable bills! You could hide it for a long while, couldn't you? You could find a way to bank it, spend it, whatever, without anyone else knowing a thing, couldn't you? And, of course, you could give it back. Well, that's you. The drug addicted fool who actually found the money did none of these things. He created a bizarre whirwind of motion, but, in the end, he lost it all.
Mark Bowden tells this story fast and he tells it very well. You can rip through it in a night or two. It will be time well used.

This is a true story about something that lurks in everyone's daydreams: What if I found a million dollars? What would I do with it? The man in this book DID find a million, in untraceable bills.
What would you do with that kind of money? Hide it for a long, long while, then carefully spend it? Find a way to sneak it into various bank accounts? Give it back to the armored car company that lost it? You would do something with it, right? Well, that's you. The fool who found it in real life created a whirlwind of motion, plotting, and bragging that resulted in virtually nothing. Yeah, he lost the money.
Mark Bowden tells this story fast and he tells it very well. You can rip through it in a night or two. It will be time well spent.

I received this as a Christmas present, and what a neat present it was!
I started reading this obviously fictional book about this unemployed meth addict Philadelphian dockworker named Joey who finds $1.2 million in unmarked unsequential $100 bills laying on the street -- a $1.2 million which literally fell off the back of the truck. He immediately enters into all these improbable and zany adventures, capped by an arrest at the airport as he's getting ready to fly to Acapulco! During his trial, his attorney opts for a temporary insanity defense, which the jury buys because the guy's buddies testify he "went bananas" for a week when he found the money.
Yet this comedy has an edge to it -- the tragedy of "men who were raised to go to work out on the docks like their fathers and uncles and older brothers, only there's no work for them on the docks anymore, and there's nothing else they know how to do.... It's a story about addiction, about the belief that there is a shortcut to true happiness."
When I got to the Epilogue, I was quite surprised to find that this obviously fictional story was true! The author tells what happened after the trial, and how Joey's story was literally Disneyfied -- and how his good fortune turned out to be his tragic ruin.
The typeface used is a bit distracting since there is no "1" -- and unlike ancient typewriters, instead of the small "L," the capital "I" is used: thus $100 is $I00 and 314 Dunfor Street is 3I4 Dunfor Street.
This is a great book because it encompasses universal themes -- Joey is a Greek tragic figure whose internal flaws, despite his good fortune, emerge to undo him. Many of us, likewise, have envisioned what we would do if sudden riches came upon us.