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Task Force Black | 
 enlarge | Author: Mark Urban
Publisher: Little, Brown
Category: Book
List Price: £17.99
Buy New: £7.99
You Save: ??10.00 (56%)
New (21) Used (2) from £7.50
Rating:  4 reviews
Sales Rank: 123
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 320
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.4
ISBN: 1408702649
EAN: 9781408702642
ASIN: 1408702649
Publication Date: February 18, 2010 (New: Last 30 Days)
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
Detail and Insight March 9, 2010
Ben Harvey (UK)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The author has a lot of detail not to be found elsewhere and clearly he knows what he's writing about. The fact he's been in Iraq repeatedly is obvious. He scatters convincing and clearly well-sourced accounts of specific Special Forces operations throughout the book but also illuminates the complex political realities which shaped what was going on after 2003. He's open both about the UK forces' failures and successes: some will be surprised at the amount of bureaucratic sniping which appears to go on between different parts of the British military. He's honest about the way tensions between certain senior officers played out on the ground. There are interesting photos - for once in color. A serious but highly readable and clearly reliable book.
 A Must Read March 4, 2010
P. Waller (North Yorkshire)
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
For the readers of the SAS and operations this is a must read.
An excellent book.
Superb Book - Buy it February 20, 2010
Douglas Newell (Ayrshire, UK)
24 out of 25 found this review helpful
This is a superb book recounting the story of the SAS (and Delta Force's) secret war against Al Queda and the Shi'ite militias, many of whom were backed by Iran and their revolutionary Guards. The author of this book is a well respected BBC defence correspondent with multiple contacts in the military and who spent time as an embed (as he recounts in the book) with American forces around Baghdad. As such the author is well qualified to narrate this tale and in doing so provides a book that is well researched and authentic.
Be warned though, the author is also a well respected military historian (Big Boys Rules, Fusiliers, Rifles, etc) and while the book includes many stories of derring do, its primary role is to tell the history of this particularly nasty theatre of the Iraq War. In this way it is not a "kill and tell" adventure story like Bravo Two Zero or Sniper One.
The one surprise in this book, I found, was the author's pretty damning revelations about the "defeatism" which permeated certain sections of the British Army officer class, particularly senior officers, and which had a detrimental effect on UK relations with the US allies and with the prosecution of the conflict in Southern Iraq ... eventually culminating in what can only be called a Defeat for the UK.
I'm not sure why a previous reviewer gave this only 1 star and had a pop at the author, maybe he read a different book or maybe he has his own agenda in slagging it off, but rest assured he is wrong. This is a SUPERB book and I would thoroughly recommend it to both readers of the more "populist" books like Bravo Two Zero (it has lots of stories of SAS raids) and for those looking for a more distanced analytical review of the Iraq War (it traces the entire Iraq war, though concentrates on the years 2004 to 2007).
Buy this book, you won't regret it.
 Not worth it! February 19, 2010
Shuey (UK)
11 out of 39 found this review helpful
You have to wonder about Mark Urban's sources! I doubt that any serving soldier would put their stamp on this. Books like this are about self-promotion, not about doing what is right to help these guys do a difficult and dangerous job into the future. And if you admire the Special Forces then do them a favour, let them maintain their operational effectiveness. Save your money, go out for a run and buy someone special a present instead. Truth is hard to separate from fiction.
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