An operation to abduct a Somali warlord in 1993 Mogadishu leaves 18 Americans dead, 70 wounded and several helicopters destroyed. Filled with imagery--a Somali gunman attacks, riding a cow, a gunwoman fights with a baby on her arm--the book is based on interviews with participants on both sides. The testimony illustrates the military's arrogance and the hate it engendered in the population. By a reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer, author of Bringing...

With exacting detail, the film re-creates the American siege of the Somalian city of Mogadishu in October 1993, when a 45-minute mission turned into a 16-hour ordeal of bloody urban warfare. Helicopter-borne U.S. Rangers were assigned to capture key lieutenants of Somali warlord Muhammad Farrah Aidid, but when two Black Hawk choppers were felled by rocket-propelled grenades, the U.S. soldiers were forced to fend for themselves in the battle-torn streets...