13 Hours

By Mitchell Zuckoff w/ Annex Security Team

 

A Review for Amazon

“This book documents the last hours of an American diplomatic outpost in one of the most dangerous corners of the globe. Based on exclusive firsthand accounts, it describes the bloody assault, tragic losses, and heroic deeds at the US State Department Special Mission Compound and at a nearby CIA base called the Annex in Benghazi, Libya, from the night of September 11, 2012, into the morning of the next day. It is not about what officials in the United States government knew, said, or did after the attack, or about the ongoing controversy over talking points, electoral politics, and alleged conspiracies and cover-ups. It is not about what happened in hearing rooms of the Capitol, anterooms of the White House, meeting rooms of the State Department, or green rooms of TV talk shows. It is about what happened on the ground, in the streets, and on the rooftops of Benghazi, when bullets flew, buildings burned, and mortars rained. When lives were saved, lost, and forever changed.”  So says Mitchell Zuckoff in “A NOTE TO THE READER”, at the beginning of the book.

 

The book is exciting.  It reads like a novel, except it is all true.  It introduces you to the people who lived and died that day.  It honors them, as it should.  It introduces some reality into a subject that is superficially discussed and manipulated to serve agendas.  It presents a picture of the Arab Spring and the tribal culture that is usually ignored in discussions of our policy in this part of the world.  I loved the book and hope you will read it and find it as meaningful as I did.

 

I found Google Earth to be helpful in reading and understanding this story.  I easily found both the annex and the Diplomatic Compound.  It made it easier to understand the physical and geographical descriptions in the account.  I could find, for instance, the building from which the attackers studied the layout of the compound and, therefore, have a sense of what the observer could see.  It helped.