On October 3, 1993, about a hundred U.S. soldiers were dropped by helicopter into a teeming market in the heart of Mogadishu, Somalia, to abduct two top lieutenants of a Somali warlord. 

The action was supposed to take an hour. Instead, they spent a long and terrible night fighting thousands of armed Somalis. 

By morning, eighteen Americans were dead, and more than seventy badly injured. 

Mark Bowden's gripping narrative is one of the most exciting accounts of modern war ever written--a riveting story that captures the heroism, courage and brutality of battle.