American Soldier: Stories of Special Forces from Iraq to Afghanistan (Adrenaline)

During the past two decades, the aims and the nature of war have changed completely. Today, American soldiers on the ground typically operate in small, self-contained units with well-defined goals that require a high degree of training and risk. This book offers a look at the realities of that warfare, and the lives and deaths of the soldiers who fight it. American Soldier draws upon the extensive literature that has emerged in recent years describing episodes of warfare in places ranging from Somalia, Haiti, and Colombia to Afghanistan and Iraq. Mark Bowden in Black Hawk Down gives a gripping blow-by-blow account of action on the ground in Somalia while Martin Stanton, an officer in the first U.S. army unit to arrive, describes the army's "squalid and puzzling little failure" in Somalia on Five Dollars a Day. CIA agent Robert Baer tells of his twenty-plus years in counter-terrorist espionage in the Middle East in See No Evil, Peter Maas reports from Bosnia on the insanity of modern war in Love Thy Neighbor: A Story of War, and Air Force pilot Scott O'Grady describes the terror of being shot down in Bosnia.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1560254386
• ISBN13: 9781560254386
• Release Date: October 2002
• Publisher: Da Capo Press
• Length: 364 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.8" x 0.8" x 6.0"

Customer Reviews

A very good read -

The first 3/4 of this book are 5-star, but it slips a bit toward the end when it dredges up Vietnam stories (one of which is fiction). Couple things to realize - first, it's not 368 pages - it's under 300. Second - it's not the stuff they advertise. Blow up the cover photo above to see what's really in there. No Peter Maas, no Stanton in Somalia, no Baer of the CIA and no Scott O'Grady, who wouldn't have belonged anyway, not being Special Forces. You get a really good article on SF in Afghanistan, a thrilling story from Desert Storm, an interesting story from Honduras, a couple of riveting reads from Haiti, and of course a chunk of Black Hawk down. But by page 172 you're back in Vietnam reading tired stuff you've seen before. It's worth buying for the first 172 pages, but given the subtitle, I wish Mr. Hardcastle had included some of what was advertised instead of the Vietnam stuff. Still and all, you won't put it down once you start - it's a two-day read and you'll enjoy it.

A broad sampling of material...

Unfortunately, most of the material here has been published prior to this book. There are a few original pieces though. The first is the only one that deals with Afghanistan("The Legend of Heavy D"). Most of the remaining originals deal with either Somalia or Vietnam...There was one particularly interesting piece about Green Berets training terrorists in Libya that I'd never heard of before in any of my extensive USSOF research. I got it to add to my SF library, but it's not essential. If you haven't read Mark Bowden, Eric Haney and Robert Baer's books (all excellent) this will provide you with some good samples ^_^