It appears that I was able to make good on my hope that I would be able to catch back up to my previous pace of a at least a book a week as I just finished Roughneck Nine-One. As I have found before, it is much easier for me to stay interested and plow through a book that I am really interested in. Roughneck Nine-One is about one particular engagement of a special forces ODA during the beginning of the most recent Iraq war. There is also some good color associated with their workup as well as their analysis after the fact.

Special forces are an interesting group in that most of what you can read about in the press or in books are atypical of their normal modus operandi as they typically operate covertly. This book is thus only one side of what type of action an A-team gets itself into. The fact that there were reporters on the battlefield made this story easier to sell to the Army that it should be told. I found the book to be an quick and interesting read. The writing could have been a little better, but it was definitly functional.

I would not characterize this book as great, but it is clearly a good book in the military genre. There are many books written about situations that arose in Iraq and Afghanistan post 9/11, and this is a great entry in that list as it is written by someone on the ground about a very particular engagement that he was directly involved in.