Rating: 
Summary: Light on the Action
Review: I picked up this book thinking there was going to be a good amount of detail of past missions. After reading the book I found that my assumption was wrong. The book starts out with the author's career during the Vietnam War and ends with a description of the Iran hostage rescue operation in 1980. The majority of the book is a review of the author's struggles to set up the Delta Force and a lot of detail on the training that took place. If this is what you are looking for then the book will interest you. If you are after a lot of combat action then you will be disappointed. I did find the slow and painful description of how the Army bureaucracy works to be an eye opener. I would have thought all the higher ups would have jumped at creating a group like Delta but that just was not the case. This could be a case study for persistence in how the author got his group up and running. Overall I found the book to be well written and interesting. There were a few slow spots in the middle, but not so bad that it would make you put down the book.
Rating:
Summary: Light on the Action
Review: I picked up this book thinking there was going to be a good amount of detail of past missions. After reading the book I found that my assumption was wrong. The book starts out with the author's career during the Vietnam War and ends with a description of the Iran hostage rescue operation in 1980. The majority of the book is a review of the author's struggles to set up the Delta Force and a lot of detail on the training that took place. If this is what you are looking for then the book will interest you. If you are after a lot of combat action then you will be disappointed. I did find the slow and painful description of how the Army bureaucracy works to be an eye opener. I would have thought all the higher ups would have jumped at creating a group like Delta but that just was not the case. This could be a case study for persistence in how the author got his group up and running. Overall I found the book to be well written and interesting. There were a few slow spots in the middle, but not so bad that it would make you put down the book.
Rating: 
Summary: special forces? What is so special about it?
Review: I read this book a few days ago and I found this book quite interesting. The author wrote this book with honesty and straightforwardness. his frustration and anger at Desert One were very well written. Deta force's failure is nothing new. They failed at egle claws, somalia, and branch davidian compound. I mean they are only humans with flesh and bones. But their patriotism and sacrifice will not be forgotten. overall. GOOD READ!!
Rating: 
Summary: Not Good
Review: I've read Black Hawk Down and Richard Marcinko's Seal Team Six and looked forward to this book. Beckwith is not a writer. His style of writing is very dry, simple and boring. My fiancee read this too and we both found it dull and uninteresting
Rating: 
Summary: Delta Force
Review: Of all the military books that I have read it has to be among the best. He starts in the begining and brings you through the hardships to cover every step of the birth of one of the military's greatest elite units. Also where some of his ideas and his way of thinking come from. He talks about problems that he endured, some that still exist to this day. The col. needs to hurry up and write a second book, with as much knowledge that he has, he needs to share it. He makes you feel like you are right along for the ride as one of the team, and makes you wonder what it would have been like to serve with him as he introduces the team and people who help make it all possible one by one. The training that the unit has to endure and participate in indeed makes them among the best in the world. The man ranks right up there with Richard Marchinko and Carlos Hathcock. A legend in his own time, and is one who will someday be remembered as well as the greats like patton.
Rating:
Summary: Delta Force is a different type of Special Forces Unit!
Review: Overall this was a very good book to read. Charging Charlie Beckworth tryed for years to start a unit in the US Army that was the same as the SAS. But the not so smart officers above him in the army didn't like it. Delta Force is the best Special Ops Unit in the United States. If it wasn't for a bunch of poorly trained pilots, they would have pulled it off! At least something good always comes from something bad. Just get the book and read it for yourself.
Rating: 
Summary: If you don't like minutiae, don't buy it...
Review: Reading the inside two pages of rave reviews, I expected the book to be far more gripping than it was. It started out great but quickly slid into tons and tons of small details about how hard it was to establish this unit. Every paper clip, every memo, every argument - just too much dull info. Perhaps if you like this kind of thing it's a great read. I found it overall a boring book. Finally, when it got to the failed hostage rescue I think he covered it in about 5 pages. I would not recommend it to MY friends.
Rating:
Summary: Respond to world-wide terrorism and see the birth of Delta
Review: Sadly, the new and current generation fail to appreciate the difficulties that Colonel Beckwith had to overcome in order to found Delta in a U.S. military where egos/roles are often intertwined. Even more sadly, the whole point of Delta was to have a specially trained and ready force to respond to terrorist incidents and NOT resort to ad hocery-which is throwing together unqualified units together---which is EXACTLY what was forced on Delta when higher authorities insisted unsuitable marine pilots and navy MINESWEEPING helicopters be used to attempt the Iran rescue mission. This book should be read in conjunction with Colonel Jim Kyle's "The Guts to Try" to get an accurate picture of the "desert one" disappointment which was caused by the failings of another service which postures as a quasi-911 force when its barely able to handle "411" directory assistance calls to evacuate U.S. citizens when the enemy permits this in order to get us out of their way of killing/rebellion. When the enemy does the opposite we need REAL hostage rescue forces from SFOD-D and ST 6 not "extremis" posturers. If there is a fault to blame on Colonel Beckwith is that his plan itself was overly complex and reliant on rotary-wing aircraft for extreme long-range insertion/extraction when it should have been based on parachuting men from mechanically-sound fixed-wing aircraft to get the force into Iran, and then flying in the helicopters INSIDE fixed-wing aircraft to get them closer to the objective and then pull them out. This is now SOP these days with the 160th SOAR. Its too bad Colonel Arthur D. "Bull" Simons (see "THE RAID" by Benjamin Schemmer and "On Wings of Eagle" by Ken Follet) was not on active duty in a mentorship role to insure a simple plan was employed but the arrogance of youth mitigates against this. In a bitter irony, years after SFOD-D had created a string of impressive victories to erase the memories of Desert One, it was the now-deceased Beckwith who was reported not welcome at the very command he spilled his guts for to create! Lesson learned is to "with wise counsel make war", ask the veterans for advice, don't assume we can field a gadget plane (V-22) to make unsound concepts "fly". Read this book, and build a monument in honor of "Charging Charlie" with your life lived to the fullest by daring greatly like he did. Its too bad Hollywood hasn't gotten around to making Colonel Beckwith's life into a film yet---American culture is often best passed on by film and his values of fighting for a vision for the common good are worth remembering and emulating.
Rating:
Summary: Best part is about the SAS.
Review: The best parts of the book are Beckwith's account of his first experience on secondment to the SAS, and how he implemented the lessons he learned there in developing the selection process, training, and mission for the Delta force.
Rating:
Summary: FOUR STAR BOOK!!!
Review: The only book I've read willingly, since high school, COVER to COVER. I was surprised how ensnared I was while reading the SAMPLE PAGES here at amazon.com. The SAMPLE PAGES start off with the author, Charlie Beckwith, a young United States' Green Beret, on the shores of Great Britain, and follows his shell-shocked induction into the unorthodox echelon of its elite military special forces, known as the SAS. The book itself, begins with the author, a mature colonel commander of an already established elite Army shadow-unit, known as Delta Force, on route with generals to brief (then) president Jimmy Carter on the fragile hostage crisis escalating critically out of control in Tehran, than fades to his early years as a young special forces exchange soldier with the British SAS --a place were most of his unconventional views would be shaped-- and how it all lead up to that very critical junction in history. We follow him from his training with the SAS, through his growing pains as a young green beret soldier in Vietnam, to his underdog fight with the U.S. military bureaucracy in the hopes of establishing a "SAS-capable" unit, able of fill the "gaping holes" now evident in the U.S. special forces. Through trial and error Charlie painfully learns the ins-and-outs of a rigid Army bureaucracy, bent on protecting its traditions, and money, in the face of it's obvious flaws. Charlie Beckwith may have not expected all the walls he would have to overcome when going against the Army convention, and often thought of giving up; when commanders threw his recommendation papers in his face. But, eventually, an emotional Charlie, and his perseverance, paid off. With the bloody dawning of a terrorism movement now escalating throughout the world, and no means of combating it with traditional military means, and fear now gripping the Carter administration, Charlie Beckwith, after years of battling the system, is commissioned to create his unique Delta unit, in the hopes of freeing American hostages trapped inside the U.S. embassy of Tehran. Delta Force was finally born. But It's ultimate test would now come in the form of an impossible mission, across the perilous deserts of Iran, into the capital city of Tehran, and fight it's way out of the city -- to bring home the American hostages and restore public faith in the Carter administration.
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