middle east

Zucchino does a great job of describing the Thunder Run that conquered Baghdad and proved to be instrumental in defeating Saddam. The book doesn't glorify the carnage of war and portrays the soldier's who fought it to give us some perspective. The glaring error in this book is the lack of a decent map, pictures of the weapons involved or anything else that would aid in understanding the story. Hey publisher, when you put out a second edition don't forget that stuff.
If you know a little about the war already and can tell the difference between a Bradley and an Abrams, get the book.

This is slated to be one of the best, although not-comprehensive, stories from the Gulf War. The forward is by Mr. Bowden of 'Black Hawk Down' fame and this book mirrors that similarly epic read. Here is the story of the last minute 'thunder run' armored thrust into Baghdad. This is the on the spot account of the minute by minute actions of this famed adventure into what many thought was a heavily fortified Baghdad and what the planners had though would be a long siege. Instead the 'thunder run' proved that Baghdad, although swarming with Fadayeen was mostly devoid of organized conventional forces.

This is a riveting tale of armored combat in the 21st century, by the worlds most technological and educated army. A wonderful account of Americans at war.

Seth J. Frantzman

An overall well done history of the "Thunder Runs" to demonstrate to the press, the Hussein Regime, and the world that the US was in Baghdad, and in Baghdad to stay. A gripping account of the mismatch in quality and quantity of forces, underscored with accounts of the gory details of combat.

This history shows overwhelmingly, that modern armor forces are matchless in dominating a low-tech enemy with poor local command and coordination. The toughness of the heavy US MBTs as well as the IFVs comes through in this book as cited in numerous examples. The overall toughness and adaptability of the US troops comes through as the overriding factor however. Using their skills and teamwork, the American soldier not only penetrated into the depths of the Hussein Palace complex, they then fought numerous battles to preserve logistical lines of contact, sometimes in thin skinned ammo trucks and fuel tankers in a hot battle zone, and then fought through the debilitating loss of the Brigade command post to an SSM to persevere against thousands of Ba'athists and Syrian mercenaries in making a claim to Baghdad's symbols of power.

In summation, a well researched book, written in clear pose, with a little bit of dry objectivity thrown in, a recommended read for amateur theorists and military enthusiasts.