My Brief Thoughts on Black Hawk Down

The story Black Hawk Down written by Mark Bowden, is a non fiction story about the battle of Mogadishu, a conflict between Somali militias and the US army. I was intrigued to read the story because I have already seen the movie already and I wanted to see if the story gave any additional insight to the battle. The story did give more insight than the movie in fact, there was some perspective from a Somali civilian which I enjoyed reading and was insightful. The fact that it is also a true story that happened not that long ago also makes it more interesting. The language in this story is super descriptive. Here is just one example from the first page, “Hanging from a hovering Blackhawk helicopter, Eversmann was a full 70 feet above the streets of Mogadishu. His goggles had broken, so his eyes chafed in the thick cloud of dust stirred up by the bird’s rotors. It was such a long descent that the thick nylon rope burned right through the palms of his leather gloves.” This story has lots of imagery which comes from the very descriptive texts. When the author is telling the story I can easily imagine the corresponding scene from the movie. A text to world connection is that this really did happen in Somalia in 1993, the event was known as the battle of Mogadishu. I recommend checking this story out, as it is a very good read.

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