Somalia Books

The Battle of Mogadishu: Firsthand Accounts from the Men of Task Force Ranger

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Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Leaders & Notable People -> Military -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 18 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

“No matter how skilled the writer of nonfiction, you are always getting the story secondhand. Here’s a chance to go right to the source. . . . These men were there.”
–MARK BOWDEN (from the Foreword)

It started as a mission to capture a Somali warlord. It turned into a disastrous urban firefight and death-defying rescue operation that shocked the world and rattled a great nation. Now the 1993 battle for Mogadishu, Somalia–the incident that was the basis of the book and film Black Hawk Down–is remembered by the men who fought and survived it. Six of the best in our military recall their brutal experiences and brave contributions in these never-before-published, firstperson accounts.

“Operation Gothic Serpent,” by Matt Eversmann: As a “chalk” leader, Eversmann was part of the first group of Rangers to “fast rope” from the Black Hawk helicopters. It was his chalk that suffered the first casualty of the battle.

“Sua Sponte: Of Their Own Accord,” by Raleigh Cash: Responsible for controlling and directing fire support for the platoon, Cash entered the raging battle in the ground convoy sent to rescue his besieged brothers in arms.

“Through My Eyes,” by Mike Kurth: One of only two African Americans in the battle, Kurth confronted his buddies’ deaths, realizing that “the only people whom I had let get anywhere near me since I was a child were gone.”

“What Was Left Behind,” by John Belman: He roped into the biggest firefight of the battle and considers some of the mistakes that were made, such as using Black Hawk helicopters to provide sniper cover.

“Be Careful What You Wish For,” by Tim Wilkinson: He was one of the Air Force pararescuemen or PJs–the highly trained specialists for whom “That Others May Live” is no catchphrase but a credo–and sums up his incomprehensible courage as “just holding up my end of the deal on a bad day.”

“On Friendship and Firefights,” by Dan Schilling: As a combat controller, he was one of the original planners for the deployment of SOF forces to Mogadishu in the spring of 1993. During the battle, he survived the initial assault and carnage of the vehicle convoys only to return to the city to rescue his two closest friends, becoming, literally, “Last Out.”

With America’s withdrawal from Somalia an oft-cited incitement to Osama bin Laden, it is imperative to revisit this seminal military mission and learn its lessons from the men who were there and, amazingly, are still here.


From the Hardcover edition.

Surrender or Starve: Travels in Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia, and Eritrea

Robert D. Kaplan

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 11 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

The worst book on the Horn of Africa I have ever read 1 out of 5 stars.
20 of 24 people found this review helpful.

Kaplan's book "Balkan Ghosts" was described by slavist H. Cooper (Slavic Review 52, 1993) as "a dreadful mix of unfounded generalizations, misinformation, outdated sources, personal prejudices and bad writing". The same can be applied to "Surrender or starve". Any specialist could point dozens of minor errors in this book, but lack of scholarship is not the worst. Kaplan is exasperatingly tendentious and partial and his extraordinary simplification and misunderstanding of the conflict in the Horn is outrageous. He overemphasizes the ethnic component, sometimes dangerously approaching racism in his contempt for the Amharas (they are all intrinsically bad). To be sure, the Derg (the communist regime) was evil, but linking a particular culture (the Amharas) with a transient political regime that was imposed against the people's will is absolutely wrong. Besides, anyone minimally informed knows how many Amharas suffered by the resettlement policies of the Derg.
Worst of all, Kaplan embraces the politics he presumedly criticizes: "Surrender or starve" is not the slogan of the former Ethiopian communist regime, it is Kaplan's own motto. According to the author, we should have left 10 million Ethiopians starve in 1984-85, so as to foster a local rebellion against communist rule! To put it bluntly, this book is scholarly defective and morally despicable.

Forget Kaplan. If you really want to be informed about the complex reality of Ethiopia and neighboring countries, take a look at any of the books written by historians Bahru Zewde and Harold G. Marcus or by anthropologist Donald Donham. And if you want to be informed and at the same time enjoy a superb literary experience go for Ryszard Kapuscinski's "The Emperor"!

Editorial Review:

Robert D. Kaplan is one of our leading international journalists, someone who can explain the most complicated and volatile regions and show why they’re relevant to our world. In Surrender or Starve, Kaplan illuminates the fault lines in the Horn of Africa, which is emerging as a crucial region for America’s ongoing war on terrorism.

Reporting from Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, and Eritrea, Kaplan examines the factors behind the famine that ravaged the region in the 1980s, exploring the ethnic, religious, and class conflicts that are crucial for understanding the region today. He offers a new foreword and afterword that show how the nations have developed since the famine, and why this region will only grow more important to the United States. Wielding his trademark ability to blend on-the-ground reporting and cogent analysis, Robert D. Kaplan introduces us to a fascinating part of the world, one that it would behoove all of us to know more about.

Black Hawk Down

Mark Bowden

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Great 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 4 people found this review helpful.

this was the singal greatest story of war i have evr read. He describes the situation in Somalia and how the soldiers deal with it. This is a great buy and you will not be able to put it down once you start.

Editorial Review:

Late in the afternoon of Sunday, 3 October 1993, 140 elite US soldiers abseiled from helicopters into a teeming market neighbourhood in the heart of the city of Mogadishu, Somalia. 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. When the unit was rescued the following morning, 18 American soldiers were dead and more than 70 badly injured. The Somali toll was far worse - more than 500 killed and over 1000 injured. Authoritative, and insightful, "Black Hawk Down" is a minute-by-minute account of modern war. This story is now a major motion picture directed by Ridley Scott, and starring an ensemble cast including Josh Hartnett, Ewen McGregor, Jason Isaacs, Tom Sizemore, Orlando Bloom, Eric Bana, Ron Eldard, Jeremy Piven and Sam Shepherd.

Unraveling Somalia: Race, Class, and the Legacy of Slavery (The Ethnography of Political Violence)

Catherine Besteman

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Editorial Review:

In 1991 the Somali state collapsed. Once heralded as the only true nation-state in Africa, the Somalia of the 1990s suffered brutal internecine warfare. At the same time a politically created famine caused the deaths of a half a million people and the flight of a million refugees.

During the civil war, scholarly and popular analyses explained Somalia's disintegration as the result of ancestral hatreds played out in warfare between various clans and subclans. In Unraveling Somalia, Catherine Besteman challenges this view and argues that the actual pattern of violence--inflicted disproportionately on rural southerners--contradicts the prevailing model of ethnic homogeneity and clan opposition. She contends that the dissolution of the Somali nation-state can be understood only by recognizing that over the past century and a half there emerged in Somalia a social order based on principles other than simple clan organization--a social order deeply stratified on the basis of race, status, class, region, and language.

Somalia between Jihad and Restoration

Shaul Shay

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Editorial Review:

Dramatic events in Somalia between June and December 2006 included the rise and fall of a radical Islamic movement, the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), which attracted global attention to the strategic area of the Horn of Africa. In this volume, Shaul Shay analyzes the background and the events that led Somalia to its current situation. Since 1991 Somalia has been defined as a failing state, one that lacks an effective central government. The vacuum of power in Somalia, in turn, enabled Al Qaida and other radical Islamic organizations to find allies and refuge in there. Shay's account shows how the presence of radical Islamic entities in the area, alongside local problems and conflicts, has turned Somalia into a focal point in the global war against terror. On June 5, 2006, the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) declared victory in its struggle against the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter Terrorism (ARPCT), a coalition of U.S. backed warlords. Shortly after their victory announcement, the ICU implemented a Taliban-style radical Islamic rule. The rule of the ICU was brief. In December 2006 they were defeated by a coalition of the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and Ethiopian forces. In spite of the ICU's defeat, internal conflict in Somalia between the ICU and the interim government of Somalia (TFG), backed by Ethiopia, is still far from concluded. Shay shows how the internal conflict may spill over into other nations, creating a larger regional theater of Jihad. He also provides some ideas on how to prevent the foundation of a new radical Islamic state that could become a haven of the Islamic terror in the Horn of Africa. This volume is instructive in demonstrating the consequences of destabilization. It will be of interest to foreign policy analysts, regional specialists, and strategists in the war against terror.

Modern History Of The Somali: Revised/Fourth Edition (Eastern African Studies)

I.M. Lewis

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Somali history in detail 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I.M. Lewis is the recognized expert on Somali cultural anthropology. He presents detailed and accurate information on clan and family structure that aids in understanding issues facing the culture (and nation/s) today.

Somalia: Economy Without State (African Issues)

Peter D. Little

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Somalia Economy 2 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

This book has a lot of detail on the Somalia economy
but most of it is from the 1980's and 1990's.
Although it has a lot of detail I felt
it was not organized in a way that
I was getting the big picture.

Wonderful 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

This book is absolutely wonderful. First, it is easy to read and it offers a rarely studied cultural perspective on economies in failed states, and in states with weak governments. The book is very well researched, and sources a number of other very good authors. The only draw back is that the book is almost entirely focused on the nomadic population in Southern Somalia, and offers little perspective on the merchant populations and no perspective on the Sab agricultural groups. Nonetheless, it was very informative.

Blood and Bone: The Call of Kinship in Somali Society

Ioan M. Lewis

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

One of his easier to read books 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

IM Lewis is not an easy author to read. His writing is very dry, and sometimes difficult to follow because it is muddled down in technical anthropological jargon. However, this book is actually very easy to read. There is a ton of information about a very difficult subject.

Warriors: Life and Death Among the Somalis

Gerald Hanley

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Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

One of the best at understanding Somalia 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

Though describing a bygone era in Somalia, this book has few peers when it comes to giving an up-close-and-personal view of the Somalis. Anyone wishing to understand how the US and United Nations came to get so mired in this Horn of Africa country should read this book--and note the lessons that that were never learned before the 1992-1993 humanitarian and military intervention there.

One of the most extraordinary books I have read 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 5 people found this review helpful.

this is a hasty review. If you want to know about life in very hard places and times where people live constantly on the border beetween life and death and to undersand how people survive, love, live and die in such places then read this book.

Editorial Review:

This superb portrait of one of the world's most desolate, sun-scorched lands, inhabited by fiercely independent tribesmen, is Rageh Omer's favorite book on his native land. A grueling description of a little-known aspect of WWII, Warriors describes a group of British Army soldiers charged with preventing bloodshed between feuding tribes at a remote outstation in Somalia. Hanley turns this period of his life, a difficult time that drove seven officers to suicide, into a devastating critique of imperialism.

Eyes Over Mogadishu

Mike Horan

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Editorial Review:

The goal of the book is to educate those who would like to know what Somalia was to those who served there. Most of the veterans of operations there have quietly moved on with their lives after receiving little recognition for their service, while most in the general public only remember the negative aspects of what happened on a single day, 3 October 1993, forgetting the courage shown on that day, and the service of those who came before and after. Eyes Over Mogadishu brings the reader through the whole experience, from preparing for movement, deploying to Mogadishu, and then the return home.