No Easy Day - Mark Owen (?????)

(The Firsthand Account of the Mission that Killed Osama bin Laden)

Book 20/52

First off, DO NOT start reading this book on a weekday, because you won’t be able to put it down and will be binge reading it. I was glued to my kindle the entire time and even refused to put it down to have a meal.

The memoir is a fast paced and exciting view into the life of a US Navy SEAL from DEVGRU, one of the most elite of soldiers in the world. Matt Bissonnette under the pen name Mark Owen describes in detail how some parts of his training exercises and deployments as a SEAL looked. It gives civilians a rarely seen peek into the lives of the best of the best.

Of course, the biggest USP is the mission that killed Osama Bin Laden. The detailed step by step of how the mission was carefully planned out and executed, all the things that went right and wrong, the candid criticism of Washington and the politics and bureaucracy that come with such high profile cases all make for a gripping read.

While the book certainly taught me a lot about teamwork and collaborative success, my real learnings came from reading the dozens of articles and interviews that came after the book was released. The author Matt faced severe criticism for divulging a wealth of classified information and has been in legal battles since. The thing that struck me the most was that his name has now been added to a rock at the SEALs base in Virginia along with the handful of other former SEALs who are no longer welcome back. After over a decade of intense brotherhood and ties that run deeper than blood and family, it took one scathing error for the man to be ostracized by everyone he knew and loved and called his own. That was a massive takeaway for me; all it takes is one slip up to lose everyone and everything that ever mattered to you.

As gripping and exiting as the book is, the ending leaves you with a slightly sour taste in your mouth. The author comes across as an extremely arrogant killing machine who lack respect for his President and country. He openly criticizes President Obama and talks about how little his thinks of him and civilians at the CIA and the FBI and basically anyone who doesn’t carry a gun and take lives during a war. He talks about how SEALs are considered egomaniacs and that is not true but very acutely comes across as one himself. Make what you will of this personality trait.

Definitely worth a read if this is a genre that interests you.

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