Customer Reviews

US Navy SEALs (Elite)

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I was quite anxious to get this book as it's publication date was repeatedly pushed back since it's origianl publication date almost a year ago. What I finally got was very disappointing. Osprey and the author have done much better in the past, but stay away from this one. The cover of the book pretty much sums it up -- the title is US NAVY SEALS, but there is not a SEAL in sight on the cover. The section of the book descriping the naval spec ops community looks like it was cut and pasted verbatim from Specialoperations.com circa 1999. It spends alot of time descrbing the SEALS as there were a few years ago, but glances over the major changes that have occurred in the community recently and how they are currently structured and operate today. The artwork is poor and lacks the crispness and realism of other Osprey titles. There is nothing in it that has not been presented much better elsewhere. Wanna learn about the SEALS? Read Dick Couch's books. The Navy SEALS and the navy's Special Operations community deserves a better effort from Osprey, I hope that they give it another go.

Osprey's Elite series is an outgrowth of it's earlier Men-at-Arms series. I think it was originally conceived as a way to cover some of the world's special military forces like the British Paras or the Texas Rangers. Although the series has veered off into other topics like tactics in recent years, this volume from Mir Bahmanyar brings it back to its original goal of covering special ops. It's not as comprehensive as information you'll find in longer books--or even Bahmanyar's new book on the SEALs, which is awesome--but it has lots of great photos and the illustrations are informative, if somewhat below Osprey's usual high standard.

This book smacks of an author attempting to rush a book into publication for the sake of having his name on the cover. The books provides absolutely no new, insightful information on the SEALs and seems to simply regurgitate information from other sources. The most telling thing about the book is the reference sources include the author's other books and personal web site devoted to the history of Army Rangers.