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Lone Survivor, is perhaps one of the best books I have come across in a very long time. The book begins like many movies do at the end of the story and back home in the States, with Marcus on a mission to meet with all the families who lost a loved one during Operation Redwing, a mission from which (as the name implies) Marcus was the sole survivor of.

Maricus was one of 4 Seals on Seal Team 10, that went into the mountains of Afghanistan that day, and while 4 sounds like a small number of men to lose you will later discover that the rescue party also suffers a significant loss too. What is more, after reading this book the mantra that one is one too many to lose will take on all new meaning, as you become familiar with and emotional invested in the fate of each member on the team.

Marcus Luttrell Photo by Rob Curtis/Navy Times

Through out the first half of the book Marcus takes you through the brutal Navy Seal training, giving you a brand new perspective on pain in the process. During the second half of the book he shows how the training is implemented in the teams valiant action against insurmountable odds.

After a number of missions coming up empty in their search for a particular high ranking Taliban leader whom they had been tracking for quite sometime, they finally have reason to believe on this last mission that they are on the verge of finally locating and taking him out this time. The mission gets off to kind of a rocky start, but then quickly goes South after an unplanned encounter with some locals.

Suddenly, they find themselves vastly out numbered, occupying the low ground, and without a means to call for support. With no other options left they literally fall back several times, tumbling down the mountain as they go, and amazingly they still maintained their weapons and fighting form while falling down the mountain. What is more, they time and again mange to establish decent fighting positions and rhythm enabling the 4 of them to take out quite a substantial number of Taliban fighters before finally making their last stand around the base of the mountain.

After the epic battle on the ridge, the then wounded Marcus faces an equally harrowing ordeal in order to just survive and come out alive. Eventually, his journey brings him to relative safety, only to find himself caught in a brutal tug-a-war between the locals and the Taliban while he awaits rescue. As if all this is not enough for a great war story, during Marcus’s ordeal we simultaneously learn of a massive vigil occurring back at Marcus’s home in Texas.