num_pages: 400
description: Already winning acclaim as one of the best accounts of combat ever written, Black Hawk Down is a minute-by-minute, heart-stopping account of the 1993 raid on Mogadishu, Somalia. Late in the afternoon of Sunday, October 3 1993, 140 elite US Soldiers abseiled from helicopters into a teeming market neighbourhood in the heart of the city. Their mission was to abduct two top lieutenants of a Somali 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 in a hostile city, fighting for their lives against thousands of heavily armed Somalis. Two of their high-tech helicopters were shot out of the sky. When the unit was rescued the following morning, eighteen American soldiers were dead and more than seventy badly injured. The Somali toll was far worse - more than five hundred killed and over a thousand injured.Authoritative, gripping, and insightful, Black Hawk Down is destined to become a classic of war reporting. It is already the most accurate, detailed account of modern combat ever written.
language: English
title: Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War
titlecomplete: Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War
genres: Historical, History, American History, War, Africa, Military History, Somalia, Nonfiction, Military Fiction, Politics
ratings_count: 63009
places: Mogadishu
awards: awardedAt: 915177600000
name: National Book Award Finalist
category: Nonfiction
publisher: Penguin Books