Books with author Mark Bowden

This work charts the rise and spectacular fall of the Colombian drug lord, Pablo Escobar, richest and most powerful criminal in history. The book exposes the massive illegal operation by covert US Special Forces and intelligence services to hunt down and assassinate Escobar. It is a story that has rarely been told before: Mark Bowden has had exclusive access to highly classified intelligence documents, secret surveillance footage and Escobar's wiretap transcripts, and interviewed all the major players in the manhunt. The book sets out to combine the energy of a Tom Clancy techno-thriller and the detail of award-winning investigative journalism.

Already a classic of war reporting and now reissued as a Grove Press paperback, Black Hawk Down is Mark Bowden's brilliant account of the longest sustained firefight involving American troops since the Vietnam War. On October 3, 1993, about a hundred elite U.S. soldiers were dropped by helicopter into the teeming market in the heart of Mogadishu, Somalia. Their mission was to abduct two top lieutenants of a Somali warlord and return to base. It was supposed to take an hour. Instead, they found themselves pinned down through a long and terrible night fighting against thousands of heavily armed Somalis. The following morning, eighteen Americans were dead and more than seventy had been badly wounded.Drawing on interviews from both sides, army records, audiotapes, and videos (some of the material is still classified), Bowden's minute-by-minute narrative is one of the most exciting accounts of modern combat ever written--a riveting story that captures the heroism, courage, and brutality of battle.

This work charts the rise and spectacular fall of the Colombian drug lord, Pablo Escobar, richest and most powerful criminal in history. The book exposes the massive illegal operation by covert US Special Forces and intelligence services to hunt down and assassinate Escobar. It is a story that has rarely been told before: Mark Bowden has had exclusive access to highly classified intelligence documents, secret surveillance footage and Escobar's wiretap transcripts, and interviewed all the major players in the manhunt. The book sets out to combine the energy of a Tom Clancy techno-thriller and the detail of award-winning investigative journalism.

A searing portrayal of modern warfare recounts a 1993 firefight in Mogadishu, Somalia that resulted in the deaths of eighteen Americans and more than five hundred Somalis, examining the rationales behind the disastrous raid. (Tie-in to November 2001 film directed by Ridley Scott and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer.) Read by Joe Morton, with an intro read by the author.