Category: Book Review

A few weeks ago, Robert Lewis asked me to review his book, Love Me When I’m Gone about his career with Special Forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. Of course, you know me, the first thing I did was ask him for a copy of his DD214, and after he sent it, his wife loaned me her copy of the book on Kindle.

The story s a perfect mix of war stories, soldiers’ friendly banter, and it gives a great look at the training and personal dedication of all soldiers, not just Special Forces soldiers. And through out the book, Robert tries to maintain a relationship with a young actress.

There are some white-knuckle combat for those of you who want to get a sense of what goes through a soldier’s head while he’s engaged with the enemy. The writing is so good that I could feel my own heart increase it’s beat rate.

It also gave me a feeling for what my son experienced while he was deployed to a hospital in the theater. So, I’m grateful for that. But, you should read this book, if you have any interest in the war against terror and what influences young people go off to that war.

Our buddy, Parachute Cutie was lucky enough to get an advanced copy of Sal Giunta’s book “Living With Honor, A Memoir”. I’ve got it advance ordered at Amazon, but it’s due out tomorrow. PC reviews the book at her place;

When my advance copy of Living with Honor, A Memoir arrived it took me a few hours before I finally sat down to read it. Since I know Sal and many of the men he served with I was anxious as to what stories he had shared in the book. I wasn’t sure I wanted to revisit most, if not all, of those stories. By the time I had finished the book it was clear that, while he certainly addresses the experiences of joining the Army and of being deployed in war, this is not a typical blood and guts war story.

She also interviews Sal;

Aside from the obvious (the events of October 25, 2007) what else can we expect to learn from the book?

Sal: I hope the take away from reading this book is how plain and average I am just as are most Soldiers who fight for our nation. I also hope the readers learn that service isn’t just for those in uniform; that anyone can get involved at the community level and make a difference. While those I served with and I may be professional Soldiers we really aren’t any different from any American citizen. We just all “gave back” in our way.

So you should go read the whole post, and then buy the book.

The folks at Random House sent me a copy of Marine Corporal Dakota Meyer’s book “Into the Fire: A Firsthand Account of the Most Extraordinary Battle in the Afghan War” Friday night. I didn’t get a chance to start reading until last night – but I made up for lost time, I guess, because I couldn’t put the book down until I’d finished it. The book grabbed me by the throat and wouldn’t let me put it down until I got to the end.

It was definitely a change of pace from all of the SEAL books which have permeated my reading list recently, but I came away with even more anger at Big Army than I had before, even though I thought that was not possible. Most of the book is about a battle at the village of Ganjigal near the Pakistan border in Afghanistan. American advisers followed an Afghan unit into the town which was basically located at the end of a box canyon and they’d given the Taliban two days notice to set up an ambush in the village and the Taliban took advantage of it. As soon as the Afghans and their American advisers arrived, RPGs, PPKs and 107mm rockets rained down on them in the kill zone.

While they were trapped, Big Army decided that they couldn’t use indirect fire to extricate themselves from the deadly trap, they wouldn’t even fire smoke to cover the withdrawal, because Big Army was concerned about civilian casualties.

Corporal Meyers, who had been left behind at the COB, along with his driver Sergeant Rodriguez charged into the maelstrom with an armored Hummer to rescue the members of his advisory team, but ended up pulling out the dead and wounded, and then charging back into the firefight.

The book also talks extensively about Army Captain Will Swenson, whose heroics matched those of Dakota Meyers, but who goes unrecognized by Big Army because Swenson chose to criticize the Army’s reluctance to provide fire support for the pinned down Americans in Ganjigal. Meyers dedicates an entire chapter to the story of the Army’s failure to recognize Swenson with even an ARCOM with a “V”. If Meyers’ account is to be believed, Swenson certainly deserves a Medal of Honor for his courage and seizing the mantle of commander in the absence of leadership in the kill zone.

Meyers also goes into some detail about how he dealt, sometimes not so well, with coming home.

Meyer’s co-author is Bing West, whose name might sound familiar to many because he has been writing about grunts since Vietnam and was a grunt himself.

If you need something to read to explain the experiences of our troops in Afghanistan and how they return, this book is a “must read”. But you’d better block out a large piece of time to read it – because you won’t be able to put it down.

I wasn’t able to get to Charlotte this week like I’d promised, so that gave me all day to read pseudonymous Mark Owens’ book “No Easy Day” which went on sale today (thank you, Kindle). I was going to wait to write it about in the morning, but the government is trying to keep us from reading it by claiming there’s classified information in the book.

A few years ago, they prevented some of us from writing about the Wikileaks documents by claiming they were still considered classified and threatening some of us with administrative action if we wrote about them. So this is me getting ahead of the government.

I didn’t see anything in the book that could be considered classified information. All of the operational stuff you could pick up reading any of Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six novels. Generally, everything that Mr. Owens writes about the actual raid has been in the general press. The only thing that hasn’t been in the media is the anticlimactic final moments of Osama bin Laden – but certainly nothing about that could be classified.

If you’ve ever read “The Black Banners”, it still contains the places where the CIA redacted potentially embarrassing information about the investigations by the FBI into the lapses of judgement by people working for the CIA – things that would place the blame for 9-11 squarely on the CIA’s political games.I think those are the types of things that the White House wants redacted from Owens’ book.

Like after the raid, the SEALs secretly meet President Obama and the Vice-President at Fort Campbell and Owens says he doesn’t remember anything about the speech because it was typically political in nature and Owens makes fun of Joe Biden’s lame jokes and calls him the “crazy uncle at Christmas time”.

Owens also pokes fun at the “good idea fairy” who suggested that they take bullhorns on the raid for crowd control, and a flashing police light to put on one of bin Laden’s vehicles to make the neighbors think that there was police activity at the compound and not a raid. Because, you know, flashing lights would distract most Pakistanis from the orbiting helicopters, the explosions and automatic gunfire.

He also jokes with some of his team mates about how the president will end up taking credit for the raid, saying they’ll get him reelected. Yeah, I guess that will never happen, though.

All-in-all it was a very good read. I couldn’t put it down all day. I’ve told people that I’m giving Owens the benefit of the doubt that he wouldn’t release anything that would hurt his friends and team mates without the book being cleared by the White House and DoD, and I think my trust was well-placed in this case.

All of us have wanted to set stories straight, that’s what this blog is all about and I think Mr. Owens did a fine job. I urge you to read the book before you pass judgement on him. He claims at the end of the book that all of the profits he earns are going to charity, so claims that he’s out to make a fortune from his service are wrong, at least by all appearances.

Our buddy, Laughing Wolf, from Blackfive, has a book out about his experiences in Iraq in 2007 entitled “A Different View: Travels with Team Easy, Iraq 2007” and he wants us to tell you that it’s just come out on Kindle.

Rather than combat, this book is about the day-to-day life with troops in Iraq. The focus is on the 90-99 percent of the time that is tedium or boredom, rather than the one percent that is the focus of most photographs seen on the news.

Foreword by Matthew Currier Burden, author of “The Blogs of War” “You can see that in his excellent work here. And I sincerely believe that you will experience something new through his “arch” into a very untraveled world…”

Introduction by JD Johannes, author and filmmaker, “Outside The Wire” “Blake’s photography shows the preferred normative, but because it is not news, rarely seen.”

Blake encourages you to review the book after you’ve read it of course. It’s a very affordable $2 at Amazon.

Justin Burgess, an Army Captain, who comments here often and sends us great tips, also sent us a copy of his eBook “Another Day in Paradise“, and I really enjoyed it. Here’s what the pubicist says about his book;

A young officer is forced to deal with love, loss, and his own understanding of duty while fighting a savage enemy in the wilds of Afghanistan. Although fictional, this story is an honest, gritty, and often humorous portrayal of the realities of combat, and the toll it takes on those who fight. From the frustrations of a desk job to the responsibilities of a commander thrust into the thick of the action, Captain Chris Braddock is a man who must overcome his own personal demons to successfully lead his men into battle, and safely home. Written entirely in Afghanistan while the author served on his own combat tour, this story offers a unique and realistic look at our nation’s longest war.

For the Fourth of July, the book is free at Amazon, so if you need some reading material for today, go get it. It will remain free tomorrow, too.

The folks at Little, Brown and Company were kind enough to send me a copy of the book “Kingdom of Strangers” by Zoë Ferraris. I really like murder mysteries and this one is one of the best I’ve ever read. It’s about a serial killer running loose in Saudi Arabia and the cultural and religious restrictions that are placed on the women helping the investigation.

According to the press agent, Ms. Ferraris lived in Saudi Arabia and is quite familiar with the difficulties of being a woman in that culture. The title of the book refers to the “guest workers” in Saudi Arabia and their relationship to the odd culture in which they find themselves – which results in them being the victims of this particular serial killer.

The book not only is a very good story about solving a gruesome crime, but also shines a light on the problems Saudi Arabia faces in a 21st century world with their seventh century cultural restrictions. You should add this book to your stack of summer reading.

Our buddy, Laughing Wolf at Blackfive has written a book that he credits our own ROS for nagging him into publishing photos he took in Iraq which haven’t been published before. I know how he feels, ROS could nag me into eating barbed wire.

One of the opportunities that came with publishing A Different View: Travels with Team Easy, Iraq 2007 this way is the chance to do some good. The link I’m giving is a special one, that offers the opportunity for Cooking with the Troops to get more money, as 10 percent of the profits from this book will go to CwtT. Royalties to authors can and do vary by means of distribution, and this link gives a special percentage that will mean more for charity.

I haven’t had a chance to look at it yet (you’d think I’d get an advance copy, wouldn’t you?), but, knowing Laughing Wolf from our rum-drinking and cigar smoking days, I’m sure it’s pretty good.