Black Hawk Down

On November 4, 1979, a group of radical Islamist students, inspired by the revolutionary Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini, stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran. They took fifty-two Americans hostage, and kept nearly all of them hostage for 444 days. The Iran hostage crisis was a watershed moment in American history. It was America’s first showdown with Islamic fundamentalism, a confrontation at the forefront of American policy to this day. It was also a powerful dramatic story that captivated the American people. Communities across the country launched yellow ribbon campaigns. ABC began a new late-night television news program—which would become Nightline—recapping the latest events in the crisis, and counting up the days of captivity. The hostages’ families became celebrities, and the never-ending criticism of the government’s response crippled Jimmy Carter’s reelection campaign. In the end, the crisis changed the way Americans see themselves, their country, and the rest of the world.

In , Mark Bowden, “a master of narrative journalism” (), tells this sweeping story through the eyes of the hostages, the soldiers in a new special forces unit sent on the impossible mission to free them, their radical, naive captors, and the diplomats working to end the crisis. Bowden takes us inside the hostages’ cells, detailing their daily lives, and inside the Oval Office for meetings with President Carter and his exhausted team. We travel to international capitals where shadowy figures held clandestine negotiations, and to the deserts of Iran, where a courageous, desperate attempt to rescue the hostages exploded into tragic failure.

This is Mark Bowden’s first major work since . He spent five years researching the crisis, including numerous trips to Iran and countless interviews with those involved on both sides. is a remarkably detailed, brilliantly re-created, and suspenseful account of a crisis that gripped and ultimately changed the world.

A sterling collection of the year's most shocking, compelling, and gripping writing about real-life crime, the 2006 edition of The Best American Crime Writing offers fascinating vicarious journeys into a world of felons and their felonious acts. This thrilling compendium includes:

· Jeffrey Toobin's eye-opening exposé in The New Yorker about a famous prosecutor who may have put the wrong man on death row

· Skip Hollandsworth's amazing but true tale of an old cowboy bank robber who turned out to be a "classic good-hearted Texas woman"

· Jimmy Breslin's stellar piece about the end of the Mob as we know it

From Mark Bowden, the preeminent chronicler of our military and special forces, comes , a gripping account of the hunt for Osama bin Laden. With access to key sources, Bowden takes us inside the rooms where decisions were made and on the ground where the action unfolded.

After masterminding the attacks of September 11, 2001, Osama bin Laden managed to vanish. Over the next ten years, as Bowden shows, America found that its war with al Qaeda—a scattered group of individuals who were almost impossible to track—demanded an innovative approach. Step by step, Bowden describes the development of a new tactical strategy to fight this war—the fusion of intel from various agencies and on-the-ground special ops. After thousands of special forces missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, the right weapon to go after bin Laden had finally evolved. By Spring 2011, intelligence pointed to a compound in Abbottabad; it was estimated that there was a 50/50 chance that Osama was there. Bowden shows how three strategies were mooted: a drone strike, a precision bombing, or an assault by Navy SEALs. In the end, the President had to make the final decision. It was time for the finish.

Most of the translations from foreign languages in the text are my own, but for the quotation from Machiavelli’s and the quotation from Virgil’s (though I have adapted the latter very slightly). I am indebted to the late scholars George Bull (1929–2001) and E. V. Rieu (1887–1972), respectively.

—OLIVER BOWDEN, PARIS, 2010

Helen is amper zeventien jaar en vertwijfeld. Haar eerste grote liefde, de acteur Julian Holbrooke, laat haar in de steek zodra hij hoort dat Helen zwanger is. En ook haar ouders tonen weinig begrip voor hun dochter. Ten einde raad ontvlucht Helen het kille Engeland en emigreert naar Canada. Maar voor haar vrijheid betaalt ze een hoge prijs. Ze moet haar pasgeboren dochtertje afstaan... Canada, dertig jaar later - Helen Lawrence luistert ademloos naar de onzekere stem van een jonge, Engelse vrouw die naar haar vraagt. De stem van haar dochter Emma. Met trillende handen legt Helen de hoorn van de telefoon neer. Ze had geleerd om haar verleden te vergeten. Maar dit ene telefoongesprek keert haar rustige leven binnenstebuiten. Helen wéét dat haar liefdevolle echtgenoot Bruce haar nooit zou kunnen vergeven als hij achter haar lang verborgen geheim zal komen. En opnieuw, net als dertig jaar geleden, wijst Helen Emma af. Maar Emma is vastberaden; ze wil en zal haar moeder zien. Om het ergste te voorkomen verzint Helen een leugen en reist naar Engeland. Bruce blijft achter met het onbestemde gevoel dat zijn vrouw iets voor hem verbergt. Hij besluit haar te volgen...

EDITORIAL REVIEW: The acclaimed *New York Times* bestseller *Black Hawk Down* is "a shocking account of modern warfare . . . gripping and horrifying" (*San Francisco Chronicle*) Destined to become a classic of war reporting, *Black Hawk Down* is Mark Bowden's brilliant account of the longest sustained firefight involving American troops since the Vietnam War. On October 3rd, 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 injured.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."*Black Hawk Down* ranks among the best books ever written about infantry combat. . . . A descendent of books like *The Killer Angels* and *We Were Soldiers Once . . . and Young*."-- Bob Shacochis, *The New York Observer*"If *Black Hawk Down* were fiction we'd rank it up there with the best war novels: *The Naked* and *the Dead* by Norman Mailer, or *The Things They Carried*, by Tim O'Brien."-- Tom Walker, *The Denver Post*"Stands in a league with Shelby Foote's stirring Civil War Diary, *Shiloh*."-- Jim Haner, *The Baltimore Sun*"One of the most gripping and authoritative accounts of combat ever written."-- Kirk Spitzer, *USA Today*"Amazing . . . One of the most intense, visceral reading experiences imaginable."-- *The Philadelphia Inquirer* A *New York Times* bestseller for 14 weeks Bowden's *Black Hawk Down* series, which appeared in the *Philadelphia Inquirer* was awarded the Overseas Press Club's Hal Boyle Award for best foreign reporting

Product Description

I will seek Vengeance upon those who betrayed my family. I am Ezio Auditore da Firenze. I am an Assassin Betrayed by the ruling families of Italy, a young man embarks upon an epic quest for vengeance. To eradicate corruption and restore his family's honour, he will learn the art of the assassins. Along the way, Ezio will call upon the wisdom of such great minds as Leonardo Da Vinci and Niccolo Machiavelli ? knowing that survival is bound to the skills by which he must live.To his allies, he will become a force for change - fighting for freedom and justice. To his enemies, he will become a threat dedicated to the destruction of the tyrants abusing the people of Italy. So begins an epic story of power, revenge and conspiracy. TRUTH WILL BE WRITTEN IN BLOOD