Customer Reviews

American Soldier: Stories of Special Forces from Iraq to Afghanistan (Adrenaline)

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The subtitle of this book is "Stories of Special Forces from Iraq to Afghanistan." Why then, is over half the book taken from the Vietnam conflict? And one of the stories is by that foul-mouthed self-promoting braggart, Richard Marcenko, a name that makes real navy seals wince in embarassment.

There is not one original story in the entire book, and it's the only book I've ever purchased only to realize that I'd read it already. Each article is some re-hashed part of another book that most SF fans will have already read.

Very disappointing.

The first 3/4 of this book are 5-star, but it slips a bit toward the end when it dredges up Vietnam stories (one of which is fiction). Couple things to realize - first, it's not 368 pages - it's under 300. Second - it's not the stuff they advertise. Blow up the cover photo above to see what's really in there. No Peter Maas, no Stanton in Somalia, no Baer of the CIA and no Scott O'Grady, who wouldn't have belonged anyway, not being Special Forces. You get a really good article on SF in Afghanistan, a thrilling story from Desert Storm, an interesting story from Honduras, a couple of riveting reads from Haiti, and of course a chunk of Black Hawk down. But by page 172 you're back in Vietnam reading tired stuff you've seen before. It's worth buying for the first 172 pages, but given the subtitle, I wish Mr. Hardcastle had included some of what was advertised instead of the Vietnam stuff. Still and all, you won't put it down once you start - it's a two-day read and you'll enjoy it.

Only a couple of the stories were from Iraq and Afghanistan. Rename the book to "Mostly Vietnam Stories with a Few Current Ones and Some from the Gulf War" and it would automatically be more correct.

Unfortunately, most of the material here has been published prior to this book. There are a few original pieces though. The first is the only one that deals with Afghanistan("The Legend of Heavy D"). Most of the remaining originals deal with either Somalia or Vietnam...There was one particularly interesting piece about Green Berets training terrorists in Libya that I'd never heard of before in any of my extensive USSOF research. I got it to add to my SF library, but it's not essential. If you haven't read Mark Bowden, Eric Haney and Robert Baer's books (all excellent) this will provide you with some good samples ^_^

This book had some good stories, but lacked the stories advertised by the title, hense the warning, don't judge a book by it's cover! I first thought that a new title would be appropriate, but the stories themselves do not belong in the same book. I've read some of the stories in other books.