A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

(C) 2001, 2006 Sony Pictures/Sony Home Entertainment On February 10, 1999, the Atlantic Monthly Press published Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War by Mark Bowden, a staff writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer .  Based on a 29-part series of articles Bowden wrote for the newspaper in the late '90s, Black Hawk Down was the first in-depth book about Operation Gothic Serpent, the mission that pitted 150 Army Rangers, Delta Force operators, and helicopter crews from the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR) against thousands of Somali gunmen in the infamous First Battle of Mogadishu (October 3-4, 1993), which the Somalis refer to as Maaliniti Rangers (Day of the Rangers). The original hardcover edition. (C) 1999 Atlantic Monthly Press Bowden's book earned critical acclaim for its vivid description of the most ferocious fighting American forces were involved with since Vietnam; 19 U.S. servicemen were killed, 73 were wounded, and Michael Durant, a helic...

In the early morning of November 4, 1979, a crowd of around 500 Iranian university students gathered around the U.S. Embassy in the capital city of Tehran. They were members of several radical Muslim student groups that supported Iran’s Islamic Revolution and its spiritual leader, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The sight of such a large group outside the embassy compound was no novelty to the U.S. Marine guards or to the 60 or so Americans assigned to America’s diplomatic outpost in the heart of a nation now governed by radical Islamic theocrats such as Khomeini and other ayatollahs. Demonstrations in Tehran were an everyday occurrence, and this one seemed no different than the anti-shah and anti-American protests of the past few days. They were mistaken. The protestors were members of a group called Muslim Student Followers of the Imam’s Line, and they intended to break into the embassy compound and, according to one of the organizers,   "Our aim was to object agai...