IF THE BOOK WAS WRITTEN BEFORE THE MOVIE,. ALWAYS READ THE BOOK BEFORE SEEING THE MOVIE, IF YOU HAVE TO SEE THE MOVIE. IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO SEE THE MOVIE, READ THE BOOK ANYWAY.

One of the interesting things about reading this whole book in one day is that the action in the book spans a day. When the sun set, and the soldiers were upset that they hadn't brought their infrared goggles, I got up and turned on the lamp. What am I left with? Last Father's Day, I never got a chance to explain to my father that I am not opposed to a military, only to war. The American soldiers were pinned down by the Habr Gidr militia, technically, but throughout the book is the description by the soldiers of the entire population of Mogadishu trying to kill them, despite the fact that the soldiers were presumably there to end the starvation and brutality in Somalia. It would have been easy for the author to depict and dismiss the Somalians as crazy savages, but the author's account is neutral, and even contains somewhat sympathetic depictions of the events from the point of view of certain Somalians. Why were those people so persistently eager to kill the Americans (and Pakistanis)?

Black Hawk Down seems meticulously well researched, written, and edited though it is still easy to get lost by the action and mix up the soldiers. This book wants to be a definitive historical record of the Battle of the Black Sea and is; but after my heart rate slows down, my breathing rate returns to normal, and I start to get over the heroism of the soldiers involved, the tragedy of those who died, I can't figure out what went wrong and whether anyone in particular was to blame and why. Though the author doesn't paint the Somalians as savages, he doesn't provide enough of their point of view to rule out the implied possibility.

I read this book the day after I finished Hideous Dream, about a peacekeeping mission in Haiti, where the citizens welcomed the Americans and rejoiced at their efforts to disarm the warlords. Why did the Somalians want to kill the American soldiers so earnestly? Really? I wrote that sentence and went to bed and when I woke up I remembered that part of the answer might be July 12, 1993, when nearly 100 intellectuals and leaders of the Habr Gidr and a poet were meeting peacefully to discuss a peace initiative and were slaughtered in a helicopter attack. The book expends 4 pages on this and does not report how many were actually killed.