---
title: "Book Review: No Easy Day"
date: 2012-10-12
description: "$( document ).ready(function() { // Handler for .ready() called. $("
canonical_url: https://idratherbewriting.com/2012/10/12/book-review-no-easy-day/
---
# Book Review: No Easy Day
The book generated a fair amount of controversy, because Navy SEAL missions are usually confidential, but the writer, Mark Owens, clearly explains that he has included nothing in the book that hasn't already been published in some form or another.

*No Easy Day* saw huge sales in the marketplace, exceeding even the sales of *Fifty Shades of Gray*. I'm not entirely sure why. The book is a military action account, but there's not much philosophical thought or reflection in the book. There doesn't seem to be much controversy either. The fascination driving the book is the inside look at the life of a Navy SEAL, especially in context of the mission to get bin Laden.

In general, the author tells how SEALs undergo rigorous physical conditioning, have die-hard dedication to their country, care for guns and other weapons with the greatest detail, have strong loyalty to their team, sometimes joke around with each other and play pranks, focus singularly on their mission, and get to travel to a lot of different hotspots on secret missions. As an autobiography, the narrator also tells a bit about his upbringing in Alaska. But the core of the book focuses on the mission to kill Osama bin Laden.

The navy SEALs execute their missions with the utmost determination to succeed, preparing and hunting and exerting 110% effort to find and capture/kill bin Laden. Their mission drives them more than anything else.

When the SEALs storm bin Laden's compound, bin Laden -- awoken in the night from his bed where he was presumably sleeping with his family -- peers around the corner to see who is down the hall when one of the seals pops a round and hits him in his head. bin Laden doesn't put up a fight or even try to escape -- he seems somewhat dazed from having just woken up when he is shot. He never says a word. He comes across as a silent, minimal, even a bit sympathetic figure in the book.