No Easy Day by Mark Owen

No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission That Killed Osama Bin Laden by Mark Owen.


I picked up this book because I caught the curiosity bug. I wanted to see what all of the media hype was about…what ‘secrets’ this former SEAL unveiled to the public which supposedly violated some governmental code. I also figured that after reading an amazing book such as Unbroken, I would maintain the military mindset and dive into this book with an open mind.

Epic failure.

Not only is this book one I would dub a ‘boy book’, but I am so not into military jargon that getting through it was torturous. I don’t care about the make of your planes and helicopters…in fact, B-52 is just the name of a band to me. I don’t care about your fancy abbreviations (night vision goggles = NVG…clever clever, you saved two syllables there)…I don’t care about your inside jokes. I just didn’t care for the book, really.

It’s amazing how the author had all of the good one-liners. He must be so smart. And reading an anecdote about a black dildo? Really? I can see how that helped in the capture of Osama Bin Laden. Oh you practical jokers…

In addition, the little jabs at the government, the white house and Obama…those were really cute. A couple of references to how the SEALS do all the hard work and the President takes credit for it was really classy. How did the SEALS know that Osama was there? Oh…CIA intelligence. So really it’s an entire system working together. Everybody plays their part—a society. And if the mission failed? The President may have taken slack for that, it may have hurt his re-election. Politics (something else I’m not too keen on).

Although I only have negative things to say about this book—I do admire the SEALs. I do. They are amazing individuals who go out every day and do things I couldn’t even fathom. They put their lives in harm’s way daily so that lame people like me can have a happy existence, family, job and security. They are clearly risking their lives so that I can blog about them in my online diary. I have the utmost respect for our military and our country. I just didn’t like this book.

As my friend delicately put it, this book could be summed up in a 10-page essay.