Mitchell Zuckoff's 13 Hours: An Unprecedented Look at the Events of the Benghazi Attack

Darren: This is a must-read, full of images of the atrocities of that night.

United Kingdom on Jul 10, 2023

Abhinav: This is a review of the book as a physical entity. The quality of book is not upto the standards. It uses slightly black pages. I am disappointed.

India on Jun 09, 2022

inthewings: I actually purchased this book to give to a friend who watched my copy of the movie based on this story. The movie so impacted my friend that they said they wanted to read the book. Upon reading it, my friend remarked how it was a real 'page turner' and helped their understanding of so much more of the circumstances/history around the Benghazi tragedy. Now I have it on my long list to read.

Canada on Nov 03, 2020

Vince G: The people described in this book seem incredibly brave and admirable. Given the unbelievably awful situation, they appeared to have acted mostly heroically, but unwisely. I’m not criticizing the people; I’m criticizing the book and the author. Anyone who has ever watched reality TV knows serious subjects can be manipulated through misinterpretation and omission. That said, the book itself when compared to objective historic accounts by authors such as Michael Lewis or Doris Kearns Goodwin, “13 Hours in Benghazi” as a historic record is very poor. It’s incomplete, though seemingly successfully at manipulating the American jingoistic gene, yet fails to accomplish its self-proclaimed mission of providing, “the inside account of what really happened.”

Holes, Holes and more Holes:
1. Private soldiers who are paid to do soldering work are called mercenaries. Using euphemisms like “operator” is a deception. Private soldiers and armies have been called mercenaries from the beginning of time. Machiavelli expounded at length in “the Prince” regarding the limitations of mercenaries and why they are a poor substitute for actual state troops. I did not see the...

United States on Mar 23, 2016

Klabautermann: The interested reader already knows what this book is about. The U.S.ambassador to Libya at the time, J.Christopher Stevens was on a visit to Benghazi. He and an IT-specialist were killed when dozens of Libyan - presumably islamist motivated - terrorists attack the inadequately secured diplomatic compound.
The interesting part starts when private security contractors ignore a direct order to remain in their compound (located in the vicinity) and decide to come to the aid of the remaining personell. They deliberately put themselves into harms way and that is remarkable as it is. Sadly some of them lose their lives in subsequent attacks.
Those readers interested in the details of the fights will find what they are looking for. The book appears to be genuine although it becomes clear at the beginning that certain details had to be omitted for security reasons. (experts are used to this: see "Zero Dark Thirty" or "No Easy Day") Nevertheless the book delivers interesting details and makes for compelling reading!

Germany on Mar 02, 2016

Clarke Wood: This is a good read on the attack on US embassy staff in Benghazi, from the perspective of the security contractors who were at the sharp end. I think it is pretty sad the event has been seized on as a political football as the things that went wrong were more failures of mid level management than anything more sinister at the Clinton or Obama level. The embassy staff did not have enough security, the annex compound was not defensible, and a lot of security needs relied upon local organizations who were not up to the task. Again, hindsight is always 20/20 after one of these events and probably every state department in the region was asking for more security resources. The one villain of the piece, aside from the attackers is probably the CIA station chief, who seemed to make a lot of really bad decisions with respect to his desire to rely on local security elements and his delaying in sending the security team to retake the annex after the attack started. Interestingly, he got promoted and decorated after the attack. Another interesting thing was that two Delta Force operators got decorated but were only present after the shooting had stopped and mostly helped in retrieving the...

Canada on Jan 11, 2016

Craig Matteson: This is a book by Mitchell Zuckoff based on his interviews and input from a few of the members of the security team at the CIA Annex who recount the events at Benghazi the night of 9/11/12 and 9/12/12 based on their participation in them. This book does NOT solve all the issues surrounding the events at Benghazi or tell us what the CIA Annex was for. Lots of folks suppose they know, many speculate, they may or may not be correct, but this book tells us what happened to these men in the fight at the compound where Ambassador Stevens was and the CIA Annex. Some people actually know what was going on before the attack and the purpose of Stevens being there and the activities of the Annex, but so far, no one has officially revealed these classified activities. Are they being kept hidden because of real need that would harm an ongoing operation or because they would be embarrassing to America or, I think most likely, they would be embarrassing to those in office at the time.

The first third of the book explains the split history of West and East Libya, the bitter mistrust, and the disaster that was the Gaddaffi regime. We also get to know the main people in this story and how...

United States on Feb 17, 2015