The Only Thing Worth Dying For II

The deeper I go into this book, the more impressed I am. For three years I studied War in the Modern World, reading almost everything my tutors threw at me, but The Only Thing Worth Dying For says so much more, and says it so well! Here we have a Special Forces sergeant sitting in the back of a Toyota truck with his laptop, calling in air strikes upon a Taliban column that not only hugely outnumbers the eleven-man A Team but also the ragtag Afghan force that Hamid Karzai has gathered to help them. Without firing a shot, the Green Berets have destroyed much of a battalion-sized force and sent the rest reeling back to regroup. And all this is so ordinary in November 2001 that Mr Blehm doesn't find it necessary to tell us how Alex recharged his laptop, nor very much about the antenna that enables him to talk to the F-18s, which at 30,000 feet are invisible to the Taliban until they come down to strafe. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford