From Powells.com
Staff Pick
The SAS is the inspiration for elite fighting units worldwide, but it was started by a dissolute nobleman and his company of rascals and eccentrics. In gripping, graphic style, Macintyre explores the first military team to parachute behind Nazi lines, shifting the war and setting the course of modern combat. Recommended By Rhianna W., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
The incredible untold story of WWII’s greatest secret fighting force, as told by our great modern master of wartime intrigue
Britain’s Special Air Service—or SAS—was the brainchild of David Stirling, a young, gadabout aristocrat whose aimlessness in early life belied a remarkable strategic mind. Where most of his colleagues looked at a battlefield map of World War II’s African theater and saw a protracted struggle with Rommel’s desert forces, Stirling saw an opportunity: given a small number of elite, well-trained men, he could parachute behind enemy lines and sabotage their airplanes and war material. Paired with his constitutional opposite, the disciplined martinet Jock Lewes, Stirling assembled a revolutionary fighting force that would upend not just the balance of the war, but the nature of combat itself. He faced no little resistance from those who found his tactics ungentlemanly or beyond the pale, but in the SAS’s remarkable exploits facing the Nazis in the Africa and then on the Continent can be found the seeds of nearly all special forces units that would follow.
Bringing his keen eye for psychological detail to a riveting wartime narrative, Ben Macintyre uses his unprecedented access to SAS archives to shine a light inside a legendary unit long shrouded in secrecy. The result is not just a tremendous war story, but a fascinating group portrait of men of whom history and country asked the most.
Review
"We all have to come from somewhere. Rogue Heroes gives a glimpse deep down the rabbit hole into how the special forces world started. This is a great look into how a motivated bunch of bad asses changed the tide of war and carved the path for the rest of us to follow." Marcus Luttrell, U.S. Navy Seal, author of Lone Survivor
Review
"By far the best book on the SAS in World War II—impeccably researched and superbly told." Antony Beevor, author of D-Day and Stalingrad
Review
"Macintyre writes with the diligence and insight of a journalist, and the panache of a born storyteller." John Banville
Review
"Ben Macintyre’s suspenseful new book, Rogue Heroes, about the founding of Britain’s S.A.S. during World War II, reads like a mashup of The Dirty Dozen and The Great Escape, with a sprinkling of Ocean’s 11 thrown in for good measure….Mr. Macintyre draws sharp, Dickensian portraits of these men, and he displays his usual gifts here for creating a cinematic narrative that races along….Mr. Macintyre is masterly in using details to illustrate his heroes’ bravery, élan and dogged perseverance…a gripping account of the early days of S.A.S." Michiko Kakutani, New York Times
About the Author
Ben Macintyre is writer-at-large and associate editor of the Times of London. He is the author of Agent Zigzag, The Man Who Would Be King, The Englishman’s Daughter, The Napoleon of Crime, and Forgotten Fatherland. He lives in London with his wife, the novelist Kate Muir, and their three children.