At the Very Top of My Summer Reading List

CANNOT TELL you how much I want to crawl in a hole and read this book from cover to cover without ever stopping. Of course I've hardly had time to breathe the last few weeks. The man I had dinner with tonight regaled me with fascinating tidbits and details of what a great read it is, and he's only a quarter through it. We even parted early so he could go read a couple more chapters (while I came home to get ready to run down to Atlanta tomorrow.) Said once you start, you can hardly put it down.

It's the story of a small band of Special Forces from Ft. Campbell, Kentucky who were ordered to Afghanistan by Bush's Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld immediately after 9/11. After getting the order, these secret soldiers were airlifted, then dropped there days after the attack on our homeland. Little did these brave men know what they were getting into behind enemy lines or that they would very soon become accomplished horseman warriors under tribal war lords fighting the Taliban in some of the roughest terrain in the world.

My kind of book! When I start, I don't plan to stop. If you want to fall in love with the military again, and if you want one of the great reads of your summer, then consider putting this on your list. And when I've gotten to it, I'll come back and tell you more.

Meanwhile, some Amazon reviews.

And from Simon and Schuster:

Horse Soldiers is the dramatic account of a small band of Special Forces soldiers who secretly entered Afghanistan following 9/11 and rode to war on horses against the Taliban. The bone-weary American soldiers were welcomed as liberators, and overjoyed Afghans thronged the streets. Then the action took a wholly unexpected turn. During a surrender of six hundred Taliban troops, the Horse Soldiers were ambushed. Dangerously outnumbered, they fought for their lives. At risk were the military gains of the entire campaign: if the soldiers perished or were captured, the effort to defeat the Taliban might be doomed.

Until now the full story of the Horse Soldiers has never been told. Author Doug Stanton received unprecedented cooperation from the U.S. Army's Special Forces soldiers and Special Operations helicopter pilots, as well as access to voluminous after-battle reports.

In addition, he interviewed more than one hundred participants and walked every inch of the climactic battleground.

Reaching across the cold mountains of Afghanistan and into the homes of small-town America, Horse Soldiers is a big-hearted and thrilling epic story from one of our preeminent storytellers.

That and it's all true taking Stanton years to interview, research and to write!