Ratings4
Average rating3.5
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The incredible untold story of World War II’s greatest secret fighting force, as told by the modern master of wartime intrigue—coming soon as a limited series on Epix! “Reads like a mashup of The Dirty Dozen and The Great Escape, with a sprinkling of Ocean’s 11 thrown in for good measure.”—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times ONE OF NPR’S BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • “Rogue Heroes is a ripping good read.”—Washington Post (10 Best Books of the Year) Britain’s Special Air Service—or SAS—was the brainchild of David Stirling, a young aristocrat whose aimlessness belied a remarkable strategic mind. Where most of his colleagues looked at a World War II battlefield map and saw a protracted struggle, Stirling saw an opportunity: given a small number of elite men, he could parachute behind Nazi lines and sabotage their airplanes and supplies. Defying his superiors’ conventional wisdom, Stirling assembled a revolutionary fighting force that would upend not just the balance of the war, but the nature of combat itself. Bringing his keen eye for detail to a riveting wartime narrative, Ben Macintyre uses his unprecedented access to the SAS archives to shine a light on a legendary unit long shrouded in secrecy.
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This is a fairly thrilling account of the founding and actions of Britain's special forces during World War II. It is, by the very nature of its source material, gripping and exciting stuff. Macintyre is thorough (perhaps a bit too much), but the book seems determined to make sure that all who fought and died are remembered as much as possible; so while the account might drag on a bit at times, it certainly feels complete and, to an extent, definitive. I wouldn't be able to give you an accurate accounting of everything that happened (because of the wide range of activities described over a good third of the earth's surface), but I bet I could keep you enthralled a while.