This is largely the story of roughly the same time period as Gary Schroen's excellent "First In", which was the CIA ("Jawbreaker" team) perspective (this book is the US Army SF perspective). ODA 574 (this book) worked with Karzai; ODA 555 with Jawbreaker/CIA, and several other SF ODAs throughout the country.

Several excellent books were written about this period -- the best way to learn about our lost opportunity to quickly win a limited victory in Afghanistan; we could have won and withdrew by 2002, rather than escalating for the following two decades to no greater victory. ( )

This book left tears in my eyes. Incredible and heroic story. ( )

This book was hard for me to put down. Starting at the beginning of our involvement in Afghanistan, this walks through some early lessons learned that changed our methods of ops execution. Couldn't really help but start to feel connected with those operators. I may be slightly biased as I have been to that location, all be it many years after this event, but just to walk that same piece of dirt and understand what happened there changes you as much as the conflict does. ( )

As per the author standards, or so is my impression having read Fearless, this one is right there on the verge of reading like a hagiography of 9/11 American heroes. Not as bad as a Fox News broadcast but deeply suspect of concealing the more obscure parts of the story ... almost everything is way too perfect, with just a couple of characters carrying all the blame when things go wrong. Who knows how things really happened on the ground. ( )

Fantastic book that gives wonderful insight into what our military troops go through while trying to fight a war. Should be required reading. ( )