Overall I enjoyed this book and recommend it for anyone interested in the history of the military Special Forces (Rangers, SEALS etc). The narrator (audiobook) was excellent.

The first part, where the author discusses his upbringing, was kinda boring and annoying - if I could have skipped it without missing some Special Forces history it would have been just fine. It was a story of classic "white privilege " but Mr Carney isn't given to introspection and never reviews anything. It's this total lack of introspection that makes this part of the book boring; he's given totally undeserved grades and jobs - for example, he was given a passing grade in a class he failed so that he could play football - and he never even considers how that might *not* be the case for other people. He thinks it's totally "deserved" and shows how others saw his potential before he even did. Uh... yah...

Anyway... fast forward through that junk and then it gets good: the author describes various special operations in military history, how Spec Ops grew, how each branch developed their own versions, the problems and hiccups they've had along the ways trying to mesh using forces together... basically, how Spec Ops "grew up". I'd guess that the book will be more interesting for older people, as like me, they remember some of the operations and can compare what they remember to what he describes. ( )