The Only Thing Worth Dying For: How Eleven Green Berets Fought for a New Afghanistan
Written by Eric Blehm
Narrated by P.J. Ochlan
4.5/5
()
About this audiobook
""The one book you must read if you have any hope of understanding what our fine American soldiers are up against in Afghanistan.” —Former Congressman Charlie Wilson
From the author of the award-winning THE LAST SEASON, the untold story of the U.S. Army Special Forces team that conquered the Taliban against overwhelming odds while protecting Hamid Karzai, viewed at the time as the country’s best hope for a successful, democratically-elected leader.
On a moonless night just weeks after September 11, 2001, a U.S. Special Forces team of Green Berets known as ODA 574 infiltrated the mountains of southern Afghanistan with a seemingly impossible mission: to foment a tribal revolt and force the Taliban to surrender. Armed solely with the equipment they could carry on their backs, shockingly scant intelligence, and their mastery of guerrilla warfare, Captain Jason Amerine and his ten men had no choice but to trust their only ally, a little-known Pashtun statesman named Hamid Karzai. Having returned from exile, Karzai—on the run from the Taliban—was traveling the countryside to raise a militia.
The Only Thing Worth Dying For chronicles the most important mission in the early days of the Global War on Terror, when the men on the ground knew little about the enemy—and their commanders in Washington knew even less. With unprecedented access to surviving members of ODA 574, key war planners, and Karzai himself, award-winning author Eric Blehm cuts through the noise of politicians and high-level military officials to narrate for the first time a story of uncommon bravery and terrible sacrifice, intimately exposing the realities of unconventional warfare and nation-building in Afghanistan that continue to shape the region today.
Eric Blehm
Eric Blehm is the award-winning author of the New York Times bestsellers Fearless (soon to be a major motion picture) and The Only Thing Worth Dying For. His book The Last Season won the 2007 National Outdoor Book Award and was named by Outside magazine as one of the ""greatest adventure biographies ever written.""
More audiobooks from Eric Blehm
Fearless: The Undaunted Courage and Ultimate Sacrifice of Navy SEAL Team SIX Operator Adam Brown Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Darkest White: A Mountain Legend and the Avalanche That Took Him Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related to The Only Thing Worth Dying For
Related audiobooks
Full Battle Rattle: My Story as the Longest-Serving Special Forces A-Team Soldier in American History Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Foxtrot in Kandahar: A Memoir of a CIA Officer in Afghanistan at the Inception of America's Longest War Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5American Heroes: In the Fight Against Radical Islam Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Kill Bin Laden: A Delta Force Commander's Account of the Hunt for the World's Most Wanted Man Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5American Spartan: The Promise, the Mission, and the Betrayal of Special Forces Major Jim Gant Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Outlaw Platoon: Heroes, Renegades, Infidels, and the Brotherhood of War in Afghanistan Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Call Sign Extortion 17: The Shoot-down of Seal Team Six Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Operation Pineapple Express Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Modern Warriors: Real Stories from Real Heroes Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Odyssey of Echo Company: The 1968 Tet Offensive and the Epic Battle to Survive the Vietnam War Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5In The Company of Soldiers: A Chronicle of Combat in Iraq Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Swords of Lightning: Green Beret Horse Soldiers and America's Response to 9/11 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Back in the Fight: The Explosive Memoir of a Special Operator Who Never Gave Up Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hill 488 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Ashley's War: The Untold Story of a Team of Women Soldiers on the Special Ops Battlefield Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pale Horse: Hunting Terrorists and Commanding Heroes with the 101st Airborne Division Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Thunder Run: The Armored Strike to Capture Baghdad Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lions of Kandahar: The Story of a Fight Against All Odds Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/512 Strong: The Declassified True Story of the Horse Soldiers Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Level Zero Heroes: The Story of U.S. Marine Special Operations in Bala Murghab, Afghanistan Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Last Punisher: A SEAL Team THREE Sniper's True Account of the Battle of Ramadi Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Trigger Men: Shadow Team, Spider-Man, the Magnificent Bastards, and the American Combat Sniper Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Roughneck Nine-One: The Extraordinary Story of a Special Forces A-Team at War Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Run to the Sound of the Guns: The True Story of an American Ranger at War in Afghanistan and Iraq Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Operator: Firing the Shots that Killed Osama bin Laden and My Years as a SEAL Team Warrior Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Night in the Pech Valley: A memoir of a member of the 75th Ranger Regiment in the Global War on Terrorism Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Marine Sniper Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Wars & Military For You
77 Days of February: Living and Dying in Ukraine, Told by the Nation’s Own Journalists Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Valiant Women: The Extraordinary American Servicewomen Who Helped Win World War II Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of September 11, 2001 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel: Genius, Power, and Deception on the Eve of World War I Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Book of Five Rings Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Last Kingdom Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Nazi Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Kill Anything That Moves Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5On Palestine Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5You're Stepping on My Cloak and Dagger Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Unbroken Bonds of Battle: A Modern Warriors Book of Heroism, Patriotism, and Friendship Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Korean War: A History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dirty Tricks Department: Stanley Lovell, the OSS, and the Masterminds of World War II Secret Warfare Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Diary of Anne Frank Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Invisible Generals: Rediscovering Family Legacy, and a Quest to Honor America's First Black Generals Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5When I Come Home Again: 'A page-turning literary gem' THE TIMES, BEST BOOKS OF 2020 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ghosts of Honolulu: A Japanese Spy, A Japanese American Spy Hunter, and the Untold Story of Pearl Harbor Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Rape of Nanking: The History and Legacy of the Notorious Massacre during the Second Sino-Japanese War Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin - Book Summary: How U.S. Navy SEALS Lead And Win Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Saved: A War Reporter's Mission to Make It Home Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Countdown 1945: The Extraordinary Story of the Atomic Bomb and the 116 Days That Changed the World Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Shortest History of Israel and Palestine: From Zionism to Intifadas and the Struggle for Peace Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for The Only Thing Worth Dying For
68 ratings5 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Fantastic book that gives wonderful insight into what our military troops go through while trying to fight a war. Should be required reading.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Great book. On the. Story. Of. The. Green. Berets. In Afghanistan. Book. Made. The. Characters. Alive
BookMade. Me. Feel. . Like. I was. There. In. Agfa niston. WithEitherMThem - Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5As per the author standards, or so is my impression having read Fearless, this one is right there on the verge of reading like a hagiography of 9/11 American heroes. Not as bad as a Fox News broadcast but deeply suspect of concealing the more obscure parts of the story ... almost everything is way too perfect, with just a couple of characters carrying all the blame when things go wrong. Who knows how things really happened on the ground.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Karzai was brought to power by a little-known group of 12 men. This is their story. These are the guys you want around when things go bad, the kind of men that nations are built upon. It is also a story of ham-handed bureaucratic mistakes (CIA and Air Force) and a terrible event that killed or maimed many of the men in the picture.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A trilling story about war and the good fight but also a touching story about brotherhood, loss and grief.Elaborates on both the exciting part of war but also about the very, very awful parts of it.