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| Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10 | 
 enlarge | Author: Marcus Luttrell
Creator: Patrick Robinson
Publisher: Back Bay Books
Category: Book
List Price: $15.99
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Avg. Customer Rating:  786 reviews
Sales Rank: 889
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 416
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.4 x 1.2
ISBN: 0316067601
Dewey Decimal Number: 958.1047
EAN: 9780316067607
ASIN: 0316067601
Publication Date: May 1, 2008
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| Customer Reviews:
 Not For Me December 10, 2007
41 out of 108 found this review helpful
For many reasons, I expected to enjoy this book. I'm the daughter and granddaugther of veterans, with close friends who've served in Iraq, and a history major who enjoys military histories. Still, I returned this to the library after reading only the first three chapters - so technically, this is a review of only the beginning of the book.
Luttrell lost me pretty early on. He speaks of how he was going to do "God's work" - call me picky, but it's not like the Navy Seals were heading to Afghanistan to help feed the hungry. Their mission might best be termed a necessary evil, but referring to killing enemies as "God's work" makes Luttrell sound strangely similar to the very men he was ordered to destroy.
Speaking of those men, Luttrell considers them "crazy" and speaks of how they must be worshipping some other god since they're willing to kill civilians and innocents. Sadly, the Taliban fighters are not crazy at all - fanatical, yes, but not crazy. If they were, they wouldn't capable of carrying out such consistent, long-term attacks against U.S. forces. As for worshipping some other god? Here Luttrell betrays his complete lack of knowledge of the Muslim faith, and a serious lack of education in history as well. There are plenty of examples of innocents being killed in the name of Christ - one need look no further than the actions of the Spanish upon arriving in the New World, or the Crusades. It's perspectives (or lack of perspective) like Luttrell's that have kept Christians and Muslims locked in tragic conflict for centuries.
Ultimately, I think what doomed this book for me was that it was written by Marcus Luttrell. In his zest to portray the U.S. military's actions in Afghanistan as the ultimate in "good", he frankly loses all credibility and comes off as arrogant and small-minded. Maybe he actually believes his own rhetoric; maybe it's a desperate attempt to reassure himself that his friends died for a cause worth dying for.
Perhaps had Patrick Robinson written the book as a third-person account based on interviews with Luttrell, he could have injected some necessary perspective, similar to Mark Bowden's excellent "Black Hawk Down". Perhaps had Luttrell resisted the urge to make "his" side God's infallible warriors and the other side the ultimate evil, he could have created a nuanced, heart-wrenching account of tragic loss like Jon Krakauer's "Into Thin Air".
I have no doubt that Luttrell's friends died bravely and honorably, as Navy Seals do. I'll have to wait to hear their story until someone makes a movie about it though, simply because I find Luttrell so arrogant and myopic that I can't finish the book. If the things I listed above don't bother you, then this may be the book for you, as it seems to be for so many people. If you find these things troubling, then move this from your "buy it" list to your "library, maybe" list.
 An Outstanding Portrait of Bravery, Sacrifice & Survival June 20, 2007
36 out of 44 found this review helpful
This book is a compelling, easy read that you will find hard to put down. The first part takes you through SEAL training in Coronado, CA and gives you a deep appreciation for just how hard it is to become a SEAL, while the second half takes you through a harrowing battle that in many ways validates just why the SEAL selection and training process is so difficult and so effective.
The battle sequence in Afghanistan and its aftermath is incredibly intense . The best screen writer in Hollywood couldn't have dreamt up something more intense, moving, and awe inspiring. If they make it into a movie it will in some ways be like a Afghani inspired version of Full Metal Jacket.
Reading this fills one with humility and gratitude for the sacrifice that all the members of our armed services make on our behalf, but especially for the men of the SEAL teams. All I can say is that I am very glad they are on our side.
As an aside, if you enjoy books like this you should check out Bravo Two Zero by Andy McNab, an SAS operative who served in the first Iraq war. I found it highly ironic that in both cases great misfortune results from acts of human mercy that elite soldiers felt compelled to take despite the clear risk it posed to their own lives. These books should be required reading for anyone who questions the character and moral fiber of such brave men.
Not impressed. January 3, 2008
35 out of 67 found this review helpful
This book was recommended to me by a very good friend (Ex Ranger) who is a veteran of Operation Urgent Fury. I have some knowledge of SF operations and I have on two occasions exercised with USN SEALS. I was very disappointed with this book. The writing style is terrible and the author really does not seem to personify the unassuming, quiet professional SF operator. He seems to be the opposite. At one point he talks of many years of training when in fact at the time of this operation he was a very junior operator with no real depth of knowledge. I was appalled when he spoke of the team yelling out to each other and joking in loud voices. No wonder they were comprimised, sound carries a long way in the mountains. I applaud the amazing fighting spirit of his teamates who though all having been shot several times fought to the end. I had some real questions about this version of events. I don,t think we will ever really know what happened up on that mountain, we only have Luttrels version which is very self serving. My hat goes off to the men of the QRF who died trying to help the team and the 3 members who died. They were brave men and they deserve their story to be told in a book worthy of their sacrifice.
Arrogance Survived Operation Redwing Too!! November 1, 2007
34 out of 81 found this review helpful
I really wanted to love this book...really! I'm not going to drone on and repeat what others here have so correctly observed. I'm just writing a quick observation. I heard Mr. Luttrell on NPR being interviewed by Terri Gross. Having a brother in Iraq for his second tour perhaps made me a little hypersensitive, but I cried when he spoke. I even cried again when I toldmy wife his story. He sounded so humble and so professional, answering questions with , "yes ma'am, no ma'am." A true gentleman. I figured I owed him and his fallen comrades at least the price of the book to thank them for the price they've paid for all Americans. I started to read the book and was a little taken back by his abject hatred for liberals and the liberal media and the blame he places on them for not letting him do his job. I even told my wife I wasn't thrilled with those passages, but that was his opinion and I'm sure it was just background- it wouldn't carry throughout the book I was sure. Boy was I wrong! This guy is a total blowhard! I admire what he's accomplished to get where he is and have nothing but respect for his counterparts. As part of a military family, I know the sacrifice. But come on... to blame poor planning, poor decision making, and poor execution of your mission on the liberal media is just too far of a stretch. I'm at chapter 6 and I refuse to read anymore unless someone can tell me that the tone of the book changes and he has an epiphany and realizes that liberals are kind of OK people too. Guessing that's not going to happen! He's totally entitled to his opinion, but he wears the flag of the United States on his uniform, not the flag of Just The Red States. I enjoyed the backstory, the Hell Week first hand account and I understood the bravado and macho- these guys are trained to be that way because the mental weapon is the most powerful. I enjoyed the objective parts of the book, but the subjective is just so preposterous that I'm not wasting anymore of my time. Thanks for reading my review.
 An amazing story, but nearly unreadable October 30, 2007
33 out of 55 found this review helpful
Because I'm going to say some uncomplimentary things about this book and its author, I want to make something clear: Marcus Luttrell has literally shed his blood attempting to carry out the missions his commanders gave him, and I admire him for that and appreciate his sacrifices very much. He's done things I know for a fact I couldn't do. This book is his account of Operation Redwing, which resulted in the deaths of his three SEAL teammates and of twenty rescuers.
However, this book is very nearly unreadable.
First, the actual account of Operation Redwing comprises only about a third of the text. The rest is endlessly repetitive macho boasting. Luttrell is a rip-roaring, six-gun shooting, God-fearing Texan, as we hear over and over and over and over. The SEALs are the roughest, toughest, baddest dudes walking the earth, as we hear over and over and over and over. Do you remember those loud-mouth, over-bearing jocks you went to high school with? Luttrell is one of them.
Second, Luttrell's dramatic you-are-there account of his unit's heoric fight to the death against overwhelming odds is badly-- and sadly-- marred by his complete failure to comprehend why it happened the way it did. Three interacting factors led to the deaths of Operation Redwing's casualties: Bad planning and intelligence, bad luck, and arrogance. Luttrell's four-person SEAL team was plunked down on a barren mountainside that offered no cover and, most importantly, no easy way to escape if anything went wrong. They were there to watch for and, if possible, capture or kill a Taliban leader. However, no one seemed aware that he was there with hundreds of his fighters. While the SEALs were crouched on the mountainside watching, three goat-herders and several dozen bleating goats almost literally stepped right on them.
The mission was doomed at that point. The SEALs could have killed or detained the goat-herders, but their disappearance and the goats milling around on the hillside would have given them away. They chose to let them go, but then, for some unfathomable reason, they didn't immediately abort their mission and depart the area. A short while later, they were attacked by hundreds of Taliban fighters and cut to pieces. Luttrell was the only survivor, mostly because a grenade blew him into a ravine where the Taliban couldn't find him, and he eventually was rescued by some villagers who decided to protect him, even though they put their lives at great risk to do so.
Luttrell believes that everyone died not due to bad planning and bad luck, but as a direct result of liberal politicians and media in the US, who won't let the military kill anyone they want. Luttrell claims that while his team was being shot at, they had a debate about whether the liberals would prosecute them for murder if they shot back. There's not a chance that really happened. Nor is there the slightest possibility that the hero of the book, Lt. Michael Murphy (who was recently awarded a posthumous Medal of Honor for his actions that day) took a vote about whether to release the goat-herders, and fear of liberals caused the SEALs to let them go.
Luttrell directly states that no civilians have the right to even know what the military is doing, let alone the right to control it. This is a man who clearly doesn't understand the way the American system was designed by the founders.
Even worse, he is aggressively and arrogantly ignorant about the places he's sent to, the events that have transpired there, and the people who live there. I'll bet you didn't know that everyone who hates America in the region-- Saddam, the insurgents in Iraq, the Taliban, al Qaeda, the Iranians, and everyone else-- are all in a conspiracy to destroy us. I'll bet you also didn't know that there actually are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but-- you guessed it-- the liberals won't let the military go after them. This kind of claptrap goes on for many, many pages.
Finally, the book is riddled with factual errors, some the result of Luttrell's braggadocio, but others more serious. For example, he tells us that his father was a Texan born and bred, but a few pages later, he was actually born in Oklahoma, then a few pages later, he's an Arkansas woodsman. No big deal, really, but we also learn that the Pakistani border is in Afghanistan's northwest, that the C-130 that Luttrell flies in is built by Boeing, not Lockheed, that the Taliban derived from the Mujahideen who fought the Russians, and so on. There are many, many such errors, and one wonders why a respectable publisher like Little, Brown apparently didn't do any fact-checking.
So, while I admire Luttrell for his sacrifices, the book he and his co-writer produced is so badly flawed as to be nearly unreadable. And that is a great shame.
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