Other Sellers on Amazon
100% positive over last 12 months
& FREE Shipping
95% positive over last 12 months
+ $3.99 shipping
92% positive over last 12 months

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required. Learn more
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle Cloud Reader.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.


The Only Thing Worth Dying For: How Eleven Green Berets Forged a New Afghanistan Hardcover – January 19, 2010
Eric Blehm (Author) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |
Price | New from | Used from |
Audible Audiobook, Unabridged
"Please retry" |
$0.00
| Free with your Audible trial |
Enhance your purchase
Eric Blehm, author of the award-winning The Last Season, is back with another true adventure story, The Only Thing Worth Dying For. Set in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, The Only Thing Worth Dying For chronicles the untold story of the team of Green Berets led by Captain Jason Amerine that conquered the Taliban and helped bring Hamid Karzai to power in Afghanistan. In the tradition of Black Hawk Down, The Only Thing Worth Dying For is, in the words of former Congressman Charlie Wilson (from Charlie Wilson's War), "the one book you must read if you have any hope of understanding what our fine American soldiers are up against in Afghanistan."
- Print length384 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherHarper
- Publication dateJanuary 19, 2010
- Dimensions6 x 1.25 x 9 inches
- ISBN-100061661228
- ISBN-13978-0061661228
Frequently bought together
- +
- +
Customers who viewed this item also viewed
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
“The Only Thing Worth Dying For is not only brilliant, it’s the one book you must read if you have any hope of understanding what our fine American soldiers are up against in Afghanistan.” — Former Congressman Charlie Wilson
“A skillfully reported and masterfully written account of one of the most crucial moments of the War Against Terror. Blehm reminds us of the perils, the triumphs and the sacrifices made in the name of freedom.” — Bob Woodruff, ABC News correspondent
“Through careful reporting and crisp narrative pacing, Eric Blehm has given us a thrilling, forgotten drama from the opening chapter of the war in Afghanistan. The Only Thing Worth Dying For will become an enduring classic of this extraordinary theater, where so much hangs in the balance.” — Hampton Sides, bestselling author of Ghost Soldiers and Blood and Thunder
“Blehm provides powerful and unflinching insight into a real-life mission that ended in tragedy but left an indelible mark on history. From the comic moments to the bleakest hour, it’s a testament to how a small team of well-trained men can shape a nation’s destiny.” — Stephen Grey, award-winning author of Ghost Plane and Operation Snakebite
“Eric Blehm has written a literary masterpiece about modern war. The whole witches’ brew is here: valor, honor, heroism, cowardice, incompetence, stupidity, triumph, blood, death and despair. That America has soldiers like these should fill every American heart with pride. Read this book!” — Stephen Coonts, bestselling author of Flight of the Intruder and The Disciple
“No other book has gone to such depths in research, nor been so descriptive in recounting this critical mission during the earliest days after 9/11 when the US Army Special Forces successfully waged unconventional warfare in Afghanistan.” — Sergeant Major Billy Waugh, author of Hunting The Jackal and Isaac Camacho
“The greatest story of a small unit’s battle through an untamed land since Lawrence of Arabia.” — Adam Makos, editor of Valor Magazine
“A captivating account of our heroic warriors-a remarkable U.S. Army Special Forces unit’s hard-fought success against incredible odds. It reads with the thrill of fiction—but this is the damned deadly real deal.” — W.E.B. Griffin & William E. Butterworth IV, best-selling authors of The Traffickers and The Honor of Spies
“[A] stirring account of American Special Forces heroics… The author provides a minute-by-minute account of this dramatic campaign, and the page never flags… a gripping story of admirable men.” — Kirkus Reviews
From the Back Cover
On a moonless night just weeks after September 11, 2001, U.S. Special Forces team ODA 574 infiltrates the mountains of southern Afghanistan with a seemingly impossible mission: to foment a tribal revolt and force the Taliban to surrender. Armed solely with the equipment they can carry on their backs, shockingly scant intelligence, and their mastery of guerrilla warfare, Captain Jason Amerine and his men have no choice but to trust their only ally, a little-known Pashtun statesman named Hamid Karzai who has returned from exile and is being hunted by the Taliban as he travels the countryside raising a militia.
The Only Thing Worth Dying For chronicles the most important mission in the early days of the Global War on Terror, when the men on the ground knew little about the enemy—and their commanders in Washington knew even less. With unprecedented access to surviving members of ODA 574, key war planners, and Karzai himself, award-winning author Eric Blehm cuts through the noise of politicians and high-level military officials to narrate for the first time a story of uncommon bravery and terrible sacrifice, intimately exposing the realities of unconventional warfare and nation-building in Afghanistan that continue to shape the region today.
About the Author
Eric Blehm is the award-winning author of the New York Times bestsellers Fearless and The Only Thing Worth Dying For. His first book, The Last Season, was the winner of the National Outdoor Book Award and was named by Outside magazine as one of the "greatest adventure biographies ever written." He has dedicated his life to telling the stories of those who serve.
Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here, or download a FREE Kindle Reading App.
Product details
- Publisher : Harper; 1st edition (January 19, 2010)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 384 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0061661228
- ISBN-13 : 978-0061661228
- Item Weight : 1.27 pounds
- Dimensions : 6 x 1.25 x 9 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #235,631 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #219 in Afghan War Military History
- #444 in Intelligence & Espionage History
- #2,285 in American Military History
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzQKOOoIsCo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_L8ca7AKEA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuUTZZA2KH8
Eric Blehm is the award-winning author of the New York Times bestsellers Fearless and The Only Thing Worth Dying For. His first book, The Last Season, was the winner of the National Outdoor Book Award and was named by Outside magazine as one of the “greatest adventure biographies ever written.” He has dedicated his life to telling the stories of those who serve."
In 1999, Blehm became the first journalist to accompany and keep pace with an elite Army Ranger unit on a training mission. His access into the Special Operations community and reportage set an important milestone for American war journalism two years before reporters began to gain widespread embedded status with the U.S. military in the War Against Terror. Blehm’s immersion with the Rangers is what led him to the previously untold story of an elite team of eleven Green Berets who operated in the hinterland of Taliban-held Afghanistan just weeks after 9/11 (The Only Thing Worth Dying For), as well as to Fearless (Waterbrook/Multnomah; Random House), the heartrending and inspiring story of Naval Special Warfare Operator (SEAL) Adam Brown, who overcame tremendous odds in his rise to the top tier of the U.S. military: SEAL Team Six. FEARLESS is currently being adapted for film by Relativity Media.
Blehm’s current book, Legend (Crown Books, Penguin RandomHouse), tells the unforgettable story of the U.S. Army’s 240th Assault Helicopter Company and Green Beret Staff Sergeant Roy Benavidez, who risked everything to rescue a Special Forces team trapped behind enemy lines during the Vietnam War. Major General John K. “Jack” Singlaub, U.S. Army (ret.), commented on Legend: “I fought beside and led U.S. Special Operations soldiers, sailors, and airmen during three wars—WWII, Korea, and Vietnam—including the men [of SOG] depicted in LEGEND. Never have I read a more powerfully honest, realistic, or moving account of the war in Southeast Asia. Eric Blehm masterfully encapsulates the hearts of the men, their impossible mission, and the quagmire of politics of the era and wraps it up in a single bloody battle that portrays the American fighting man at his best.”
Blehm lives in Southern California with his wife and children.
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonTop reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
As you read through the chapters you begin to get an idea of this particular SF group of men. This is my first book about Green Berets and they seem to be different from other SF groups. They are very down to earth, quietly confident and no 'superman" stories.
SF group (ODA574) really are silent hero's, they have my upmost respect. Through the twists and turns of this book (really difficult to put this one down) you will be shocked at the outcome of the last battle and you will have much respect for these soldiers.
Well done Eric Blehm.
Top reviews from other countries

Eric Blehm's capture of the humility and professionalism of ODA 574, the team of Green Berets led by Captain Jason Amerine, is exceptional. There's just enough backstory on the strong characters of the team members to understand their personalities without delving into a portfolio of yawnsville biographies. This in turn really makes the guys real people to the reader, not just names on a page or possible characters in movie in the reader's mind.
I found the lack of swashbuckling contacts and firefights almost a relief, with the most interesting thing within the book being the forging of the relationships between the SF guys, Hamid Karzai and his Afghan fighters. Don't get me wrong, there is a good amount of detail on the contacts that happened but its not cover to cover fire and manoeuvre as some books rely on to sell. It highlights more of the patience and earning of trust that builds strong bonds exactly the way these elements should. When you stick to your trusted game plan, the results are what you strive for. If for whatever reason - or whoever's reason - you deviate from it, that's when things tend to start breaking down; as is painfully (and totally avoidably) illustrated in December 2001 when egos of certain bombastic higher ranks start throwing their weight around in environments they shouldn't even be in let alone giving commands in.
In short, a great piece of work detailing a true account of Special Forces soldiering on the highest level on a mission for all the right reasons. Its just unfortunate that as soon as the chest beating higher echelons get involved, it is as always, the lower ranks that come off worse.



