Excruciatingly vivid

I don't normally buy paperbacks so this was a departure for me; one that I certainly don't regret. As a child of the Vietnam era and an avid reader of its fiction and nonfiction writing, I did not expect to find a modern-era "war" read that could match the intensity and first-person horror of Southeast Asia in the 1960's. Mark Bowden has written an obviously well-researched account of a short-lived but terrifying episode in the history of U.S. "diplomacy". His ability to put the reader into the streets and alleys of Mogadishu, as well as into the thoughts and desires of the combatants, is very simply a direct result of extensive, and surely emotional, research. Many, many books have been written of the years that the United States was mired in the rice paddies of Vietnam. Few have attained the level of intensity of this story of the 10-hour struggle of 150 members of the U.S. Army Rangers and Delta Force to survive the streets of Mogadishu.