A New York Times Notable Book of 1999.

Ninety-nine elite American soldiers are trapped in the middle of a hostile city. As night falls, they are surrounded by thousands of enemy gunmen. Their wounded are bleeding to death. Their ammunition and supplies are dwindling. This is the story of how they got there — and how they fought their way out.

This is the story of war.

Black Hawk Down drops you into a crowded marketplace in the heart of Mogadishu, Somalia with the U.S. Special Forces and puts you in the middle of the most intense firelight American soldiers have fought since the Vietnam war.

Late in the afternoon of Sunday, October 3, 1993, the soldiers of Task Form Ranger was send on a mission to capture two top lieutenants of a renegade warlord and return to base. It was supposed to take them about an hour. Instead, they were pinned down through a long and terrible night, locked in a desperate struggle to kill or be killed.

When the unit was finally rescued the following morning, eighteen American soldiers were dead and dozens more badly injured. The Somali toll was far worse; more than five hundred felled and over a thousand wounded. Award-winning literary journalist Mark Bowden's dramatic narrative captures this harrowing ordeal through the eyes of the young men who fought that day. He draws on his extensive interviews of participants from both sides — as well as classified combat video and radio transcripts — to bring their stories to life.

Authoritative, gripping, and insightful, Black Hawk Down is a riveting look at the terror and exhilaration of combat destined to become a classic of war reporting.

"What this demotic, you-are-there prose lacks in literary finesse...it makes up in pure narrative drive....Bowden has performed an important service by picking out and meticulously dramatizing such a turning point in recent history. Until [the book] came along, this strange and terrible battle was in danger of being forgotten." William Finnegan, The New York Times Book Review

"A vivid, immediate and unsparing narrative that is filled with blood and noise....It bears comparison to S.L.A. Marshall's classic account of a battle in Korea, Pork Chop Hill." Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post

"This story of a U.S. military mission gone awry belongs in an elite category: nonfiction that you can't put down....[A] page-turner." Matthew Heimer, Brill's Content

"[A] horribly fascinating bullet-by-bullet story, in which the purpose of Americans in Somalia fades to irrelevance amidst the immediate desperation of fighting....An account impossible to stop reading, especially for those with army associations." Gilbert Taylor, Booklist

"[A]s reportage, this account offers a look at modern war in the tradition of the great war correspondents. Gripping, passionate, and impossible to put down." Kirkus Reviews

"This is military writing at its breathless best....[A] gripping account of combat that merits thoughtful reading by anyone concerned with the future course of the country's military strategy and its relationship to foreign policy." Publishers Weekly

Mark Bowden is the award-winning author of Bringing the Heat and Doctor Dealer. He has been a reporter at the Philadelphia Inquirer for nineteen years. He also writes for Men's Journal, Sports Illustrated, Playboy, Rolling Stone, Parade, and other magazines.

The Assault 1
Black Hawk Down 69
Overrun 133
The Alamo 199
N.S.D.Q. 259
Afterword 351
Sources 357
Acknowledgments 381
Index 383