Lone Survivor by Marcus Luttrell
Lone Survivor by Marcuss Luttrell
Marcus Luttrell grew up big and strong in east Texas, wanting to be a Navy SEAL. Lone Survivor is his account not only of how he became one of the world's elite warriors, but also of the battle in the Afghanistan mountains that claimed the lives of those fighting with him and those who came to rescue them. Early on, Luttrell offers plenty of bluster and brag about how the SEALs are the best of the best of the best, and how no one else on the planet even comes close to their level of training and expertise. Just past the point of this seeming like a lot of hot air and chest thumping with little evidence to support it (beyond the reader's own understanding and respect), Luttrell takes the reader through the training process for becoming a SEAL-- a harrowing journey that few are able to complete. We get a nearly blow-by-blow account of each step of the process as recruit after recruit drops out. Following these accounts, the machismo seems well-earned. The book begins with descriptions of Luttrell and his SEAL team being deployed to Afghanistan, and the first half of the book builds the foundation for the action-packed second half where Luttrell describes the battle between the four SEALs and a substantially larger Taliban fighting force.
This is a book that I've been recommending to students for several years based on their response to it. I've added a number of copies of the title to the library over the years, and still it is almost always checked out. Only when an electronic copy in our eLibrary came available did I finally get the chance to read it. I'm glad I did. Luttrell's ghost-writer comes through only occassionally, primarily in the narrative structure of telling the divergent pieces of the story. It is Luttrell's voice that we hear throughout, the voice of a warrior rather than a writer, and in that we hear the supreme confidence of an elite fighting force.
Marcus Luttrell grew up big and strong in east Texas, wanting to be a Navy SEAL. Lone Survivor is his account not only of how he became one of the world's elite warriors, but also of the battle in the Afghanistan mountains that claimed the lives of those fighting with him and those who came to rescue them. Early on, Luttrell offers plenty of bluster and brag about how the SEALs are the best of the best of the best, and how no one else on the planet even comes close to their level of training and expertise. Just past the point of this seeming like a lot of hot air and chest thumping with little evidence to support it (beyond the reader's own understanding and respect), Luttrell takes the reader through the training process for becoming a SEAL-- a harrowing journey that few are able to complete. We get a nearly blow-by-blow account of each step of the process as recruit after recruit drops out. Following these accounts, the machismo seems well-earned. The book begins with descriptions of Luttrell and his SEAL team being deployed to Afghanistan, and the first half of the book builds the foundation for the action-packed second half where Luttrell describes the battle between the four SEALs and a substantially larger Taliban fighting force.
This is a book that I've been recommending to students for several years based on their response to it. I've added a number of copies of the title to the library over the years, and still it is almost always checked out. Only when an electronic copy in our eLibrary came available did I finally get the chance to read it. I'm glad I did. Luttrell's ghost-writer comes through only occassionally, primarily in the narrative structure of telling the divergent pieces of the story. It is Luttrell's voice that we hear throughout, the voice of a warrior rather than a writer, and in that we hear the supreme confidence of an elite fighting force.
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