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Not a Good Day to Die
Not a Good Day to Die
Oct 11, 2024 10:27 AM

Author:Sean Naylor

Not a Good Day to Die

If you loved American Sniper you will love Not a Good Day to Die: The Untold Story of Operation Anaconda. Award-winning journalist Sean Naylor, an eyewitness to the action, vividly portrays the fight for Afghanistan's most hostile battleground.

At dawn on March 2, 2002, the first major battle of the 21st Century began. Over 200 soldiers of the 101st Airborne and 10th Mountain Divisions flew into Afghanistan's Shahikot valley - and into the mouth of a buzz-saw. They were about to pay a bloody price for strategic, higher-level miscalculations that underestimated the enemy's strength and willingness to fight.

After the attacks of September 11, 2001, Coalition forces quickly toppled the Taliban regime from the seat of government. But, believing the war to be all but over, the Pentagon and US Central Command refused to commit the forces required to achieve total victory in Afghanistan. Instead, they delegated responsibility for fighting the war's biggest battle to a tangle of untested units thrown together at the last moment.

Then the world watched as Anaconda seemed to unravel.

Denied the extra infantry, artillery and close air support with which they trained to go to war, the soldiers of this airborne assault fought for survival in brutal high-altitude combat. Backed up by a small, but crucial, team of special forces, they were all that stood between the Coalition and a military disaster.

Perfect for fans of Black Hawk Down, Zero Dark Thirty, Chris Ryan, and Andy McNab.

About the author:

Sean Naylor is a senior writer for the Army Times. He has covered the Afghan mujahideen's war against the Soviets, and American military operations in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Named one of the 22 "unsung" influential print reporters in Washington by American Journalism Review in May 2002, he earned the White House Correspondents' Association's prestigious Edgar A. Poe Award for his coverage of Operation Anaconda.

Reviews

A searing story . . . both meticulous military history and a deeply moving testimony to the extraordinary personal bravery of individual soldiers

—— Tim Gardam , The Times

Sebag-Montefiore tells [the story] with gusto, a remarkable attention to detail and an inexhaustible appetite for tracking down the evidence

—— Richard Ovary , Telegraph

Richard Overy is writing at the height of his powers... The result is often startling, never less than fascinating

—— Adam Sisman , Observer

A thought provoking reappraisal of the war - deeply researched, complex and yet beautifully lucid

—— Correlli Barnett , Times Literary Supplement

We cannot know what Anne Darquier would have thought of Callil's book, but my guess is that she would have been as moved, astonished and impressed as any other reader

—— Ruth Scurr , The Times

Extraordinary...touching... a masterpiece of lacerating satire

—— Peter Conrad , Observer

In providing such a detailed picture of one of the functionaries of the Nazi empire, Callil has brilliantly shown how such a system could encourage and promote nonentities who were prepared to mouth the necessary phrases, and to ignore the call of humanity

—— Richard Griffiths , New Statesman

Bad Faith represents eight years of astonishing research...a remarkable book

—— Antony Beevor , Sunday Telegraph

A meticulous work of scholarship... [an] astonishing biography

—— Adam Thorpe , Guardian

Impeccably researched, Bad Faith is a work of great power and originality; Callil is to be congratulated on her achieivement

—— Sunday Times
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