Blood Warriors : American Military Elites

Rating:
Summary: The book to read, recommend, and buy!
Review: It should be obvious that Michael Lee Lanning's BLOOD WARRIORS: American Military Elites was intentionally written for the reader with an interest in---but neither an obsession with, nor an already encyclopedic knowledge of---US Air Force Combat Control "CCTs" and Pararescue "PJs"; USMC Force Reconnaissance Marines; US Army Delta operators, Green Berets, and Rangers; and US Navy SEAL Teams. This is a book for readers who might not have already read dozens of other books about American special operations units. It is a book for people whose interest in America's elite military units may have been stirred by the fact that our country is at war and that members of these units are doing an extremely important share of the fighting. Even a glance at the books shelved next to each other will show that BLOOD WARRIORS is only marginally longer than Lt Col Lanning's INSIDE FORCE RECON or INSIDE THE LRRPs, and a glance at the subtitles shows that BLOOD WARRIORS covers a broader spectrum of units. It is pretty obvious, then, that this book was not intended to look at all these units in the same depth with which INSIDE FORCE RECON looked at Recon Marines, or INSIDE THE LRRPs looked at the Long Range Patrol and Ranger companies of the Vietnam War. BLOOD WARRIORS was intended to be an overview of American special operations forces, both historical and present day. And that is exactly what it is. It is unfortunate, then, that the first review of BLOOD WARRIORS posted ... takes Lt Col Lanning to task for accomplishing exactly what he sat out to do. BLOOD WARRIORS may have been written for a general audience and not specifically for those who've read dozens of books about American special operations forces. But I have read hundreds of books about American special operations forces, and I still learned new things from this book. When I showed BLOOD WARRIORS to a military author who has served in the active duty Army Rangers, reserve and National Guard Special Forces, and the Marine Corps Reserve Force Reconnaissance Company, he would have read it straight through if I hadn't snatched it out of his hands and told him to buy his own copy. He commented that the book was awfully hard to put down, and that the appendixes at the end of it were themselves worth the price of the book. When it comes to a comprehensive overview of American special operation forces, Michael Lee Lanning's BLOOD WARRIORS is the book to read, the book to recommend, and the book to buy.

Rating:
Summary: Not impressed and a letdown for this author
Review: It's difficult to believe that this book was written by the same man who wrote the excellent (if a bit dry) books about the Vietnam era Recon Marines and LRRPs. I get the impression that the book was quickly written to take advantage of the recent interest in the special operations elites of the US militaries.

Firstly, there is nothing new here at all. The background of the units might be of interest for those who don't want to buy a book dedicated to the individual units. However, it is quite abbreviated. The coverage of the units in the current day is even worse, there is nothing in there that is not covered more completely and for free on the web at sites like specialoperations.com or what have you. In addition, several of the entries, most notably the Delta Force one, looks like all of the research was done by reading older books on the subject already out there. The old story of Delta Force's racism is brought up again, which has as its sole source a poorly written special operations overview by an Italian author whose title I won't dignify by repeating. The fact that people, including former black Delta Force members have denied this is not even mentioned. The fact that most special operations forces have low nmumbers of minorities is never mentioned, except in the SF section where it is carefully explained away socially.

This book may have some use if you know nothing about these units and would like a relatively cheap primer. However, there are vastly better books already out there so save your money. And that is my main complaint with the book. There are already better books out there that do the same overview of America's units. Douglass Waller's "The Commandos" and David Bohrer's "America's Special Forces" come to mind. In addition, it repeats myths as fact, seemingly taken out of older, innaccurate books. In short, it's a book that tries to do what other books have already done and it does it poorly. It is simply another superficial "quickie overview of all of America's elite units or at least the ones with name recognition" book in a shelf already crowded with those books. From an author like this, who is simply the gold standard for special forces books along with Kevin Dockery, it is a true letdown. Also, the repeating every or two pages of the term "blood warriors" gets old, awfully fast. This seems to be the case of an exceptional author who, in this case, wrote a poor book.

Matt