No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission That Killed Osama Bin Laden

by Mark Owen, Kevin Maurer

Overview

For the first time anywhere, the first-person account of the planning and execution of the Bin Laden raid from a Navy Seal who confronted the terrorist mastermind and witnessed his final moment

From the streets of Iraq to the rescue of Captain Richard Phillips in the Indian Ocean, and from the mountaintops of Afghanistan to the third floor of Osama Bin Laden’s compound, operator Mark Owen of the U.S. Naval Special Warfare Development Group — commonly known as SEAL Team Six — has been a part of some of the most memorable special operations in history, as well as countless missions that never made headlines.

No Easy Day puts readers alongside Owen and the other handpicked members of the twenty-four-man team as they train for the biggest mission of their lives. The blow-by-blow narrative of the assault, beginning with the helicopter crash that could have ended Owen’s life straight through to the radio call confirming Bin Laden’s death, is an essential piece of modern history.

In No Easy Day, Owen also takes readers onto the field of battle in America’s ongoing War on Terror and details the selection and training process for one of the most elite units in the military. Owen’s story draws on his youth in Alaska and describes the SEALs’ quest to challenge themselves at the highest levels of physical and mental endurance. With boots-on-the-ground detail, Owen describes numerous previously unreported missions that illustrate the life and work of a SEAL and the evolution of the team after the events of September 11. In telling the true story of the SEALs whose talents, skills, experiences, and exceptional sacrifices led to one of the greatest victories in the War on Terror, Mark Owen honors the men who risk everything for our country, and he leaves readers with a deep understanding of the warriors who keep America safe.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780525953722
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	09/04/2012
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.20(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

MARK OWEN, author of No Easy Day and No Hero, is a former member of the U.S. Naval Special Warfare Development Group, commonly known as SEAL Team Six. In his many years as a Navy SEAL, he has participated in hundreds of missions around the globe, including the rescue of Captain Richard Phillips in the Indian Ocean in 2009. Owen was a team leader on Operation Neptune Spear in Abbottabad, Pakistan, on May 1, 2011, which resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden. Owen was one of the first men through the door on the third floor of the terrorist mastermind's hideout, where he witnessed Bin Laden's death.

KEVIN MAURER has covered special operations forces for nine years. He has been embedded with the Special Forces in Afghanistan six times, spent a month in 2006 with special operations units in east Africa, and has embedded with U.S. forces in Iraq and Haiti. He is the author of four books, including several about special operations.

Table of Contents

Author's Note 9

Prologue: Chalk One 15

Chapter 1 Green Team 27

Chapter 2 Top Five/Bottom Five 45

Chapter 3 The Second Deck 64

Chapter 4 Delta 78

Chapter 5 Point Man 96

Chapter 6 Maersk Alabama 116

Chapter 7 The Long War 133

Chapter 8 Goat Trails 154

Chapter 9 Something Special in D.C. 180

Chapter 10 The Pacer 200

Chapter 11 Killing Time 227

Chapter 12 Go Day 249

Chapter 13 Infil 269

Chapter 14 Khalid 283

Chapter 15 Third Deck 293

Chapter 16 Geronimo 299

Chapter 17 Exfil 321

Chapter 18 Confirmation 329

Chapter 19 Touch the Magic 347

Epilogue 363

Confirming Sources 375

About the Authors 379

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"This harrowing, minute-by-minute account by one of the highly trained members of Navy SEAL Team Six is narrative nonfiction at its most gripping, taking the reader through the mountains of Afghanistan and inside the slightly dilapidated-looking family compound in Pakistan." - Entertainment Weekly

“The bin Laden story is the marquee event in No Easy Day, of course. But the formative steps in the author’s own story are just as gripping. Mr. Owen’s new information about the Abbottobad attacks adds a human element to much of what has been previously reported. There is no better illustration in No Easy Day that SEALs are ruthless pragmatists. They think fast. They adapt to whatever faces them. They do what they have to do.” –Janet Maslin, New York Times

“The book is a stomach-twisting close-up look at that historic mission in Abbottabad, told from the point of view of a super-elite member of SEAL Team Six who fired a bullet into bin Laden and helped carry away the corpse. Written in clean, polished prose... No Easy Day often reads like a gripping novel as the author recounts remarkably vivid details... No Easy Day puts you right there for every tense moment.” –Entertainment Weekly

" ...A cast of characters, including Owen himself, artfully drawn, yet painfully human, passionate descriptions of a lifestyle that few are privy to, as well as its breathlessly paced, inexorable march toward an inevitable ending…it's a remarkably intimate glimpse into what motivates men striving to join an elite fighting force like the SEALS — and what keeps them there.” -Associated Press

“Make no mistake: No Easy Day is an important historic document. Think if we had a first-person account of the last minutes of Hitler in his bunker. No Easy Day is brisk and compelling in its telling of the training, execution and immediate aftermath of the Bin Laden mission by the elite Seal Team Six.” -Los Angeles Times
 
“[Mark Owen] has given us a brave retelling of one of the most important events in U.S. military history.”  -People Magazine
 
“The writing is fast-paced, and Owen and Maurer tell some good yarns in a conversational style. They also neatly capture the camaraderie, the pranks, the constant training and the evident love that the men of SEAL Team 6 have for their jobs." -Washington Post

Editorial Reviews

Even though we know the basics of the story, Bissonnette takes us on a great ride. This is a book of details. And though many of the specifics are left out—like the identities of Bissonnette and his comrades—there are enough here to bring the mission to life. No Easy Day amounts to a cinematic account of the raid to kill Bin Laden: you feel as if you're sitting in the Black Hawk as it swoops in, peering through the greenish haze of night-vision goggles, wending up the stairs to Bin Laden's lair.
—Dexter Filkins

The New York Times Book Review

The arch-terrorist's death was "just another job," according to this gung-ho memoir by a member of the U.S. Navy SEAL Team Six that dispatched him. The pseudonymous Owen's (revealed by Fox News to be Matt Bissonnette) story is “generalized" and scrubbed of “classified information" but authentic enough to provoke Pentagon legal threats and convey a compelling realism. His meticulous narrative of the raid adds new wrinkles to the conventional account—he insists that Bin Laden did not try to fight or hide behind his wives before he was shot, unarmed, while peeking through a doorway (Owen sneers at his unpreparedness)—along with atmospheric details, from the terror of an initial helicopter crash to his cleaning of blood from Bin Laden's face for identifying photos. The raid caps Owen's well-observed memoir of training ordeals, awesome gear, bonding and banter, and special ops in Iraq and Afghanistan; co-author Maurer shapes these missions into tense scenes of strategizing, stealth and action. This is not a reflective book; the righteousness of post-9/11 military adventures is self-evident to Owen, and he worries only about measuring up to the SEAL standard of lethal teamwork. Still, it paints an absorbing portrait of the work-a-day soldierly professionalism that proved Bin Laden's nemesis. Photos. (Sept. 4)

Publishers Weekly

This harrowing, minute-by-minute account by one of the highly trained members of Navy SEAL Team Six is narrative nonfiction at its most gripping....No Easy Day puts you right there for every tense moment.”—Entertainment Weekly

“Gripping....There is no better illustration in No Easy Day that SEALs are ruthless pragmatists. They think fast. They adapt to whatever faces them. They do what they have to do.”—The New York Times

“[Mark Owen] has given us a brave retelling of one of the most important events in U.S. military history.”—People

“Make no mistake: No Easy Day is an important historic document.”—Los Angeles Times

“A remarkably intimate glimpse into what motivates men striving to join an elite fighting force like the SEALS—and what keeps them there.”—Associated Press

From the Publisher

★ 01/01/2016
A gripping account of one of the highest-profile missions executed in modern warfare. The Navy SEAL is an international symbol of military excellence, and the story of this mission and their training is essential to understanding contemporary combat.

Library Journal

Books on Navy SEALs have poured off the presses for years, but this one has generated national interest and controversy for a reason the title makes clear. Sensibly, the author (a pseudonym of ex-SEAL Matt Bissonnette) works with military journalist Maurer (Gentlemen Bastards: On the Ground in Afghanistan with America's Elite Special Forces, 2012, etc.), and the result is a fast-paced, professional narrative that will appeal to military buffs as well as general readers. Raised in rural Alaska, Owen yearned to be a SEAL from childhood. He succeeded in 1998, passing the brutal screening and training. After several deployments, he passed another screening to join the SEAL's specialized anti-terrorism unit in 2004. This is a mostly traditional SEAL memoir filled with nuts-and-bolts descriptions of weapons, gear, training, tactics and short, nasty battles in which (unlike the movies) plenty goes wrong, but (like the movies) many bad guys pay the price. The book's second half delivers a precisely detailed, vivid account of the Osama bin Laden mission. Luck, good and bad, plays an essential role in any raid. One attacking helicopter crashed, but the veteran team worked around the mishap. On the bright side, the Pakistani hideout was feebly defended. The author does not deny that the SEALs shot every male on sight, bin Laden included. Since bin Laden was a significant figure, historians will consult this book as a primary source; they, as well as most general readers, will not regret it.

Kirkus Reviews

The emphasis of…No Easy Day…is not on spilling secrets. It is on explaining a SEAL's rigorous mind-set and showing how that toughness is created. The bin Laden story is the marquee event in No Easy Day, of course. But the formative steps in the author's own story are just as gripping…Mr. Owen's new information about the Abbottabad attack adds a human element to much of what has been previously reported. Even reporting like Peter L. Bergen's in his meticulous book Manhunt does not have this new book's perspective. Mr. Bergen knew what the men had done, but this author knows what at least one of them was thinking.
—Janet Maslin

The New York Times

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