Book Review: "Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War", by Mark Bowden

Lord, grant me the strength to change the things I can, to accept the things I can't, and the wisdom to know the difference.

The Serenity Prayer, by Reinhold Niebuhr

I found this book (and a number of other older books) at Goodwill a few months (or is it a year? I don't remember) ago, and I decided to get them. I'm a sucker for military history, and the story of Operation Gothic Serpent is pretty much a quagmire in a box, full of failures that future leaders may find important to study.

The book itself is a very drawing read. By contrast, I purchased a bunch of books on internal medicine, CNC machining, and woodworking, and those are still sitting on my plastic table at home as I kept hanging onto this book. I think one really nice thing about this book is how truthful the book appears. The author went to great lengths in order to interview first-hand sources to what actually happened, even going as far as flying to Mogadishu and interviewing the Somalis there, and therefore it's not just another piece of propaganda but a window into a real story.

I think it's kind of telling how the book is asking what the price is for ignoring small brushfire conflicts around the world, back in the year 2000, because the answer to that question came to our doorstep a year later.