The title No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of The Mission That Killed Osama Bin Laden was derived from that Navy SEAL philosophy “the only easy day was yesterday”

It was written under the pseudonym Mark Owen, a retired navy seal, and co author Kevin Maurer. Owen took part in Operation Neptune Spear, the mission that killed Osama Bin Laden at a compound in Abbottabeb, Pakistan. This book was not what I expected. I thought it would be a boring military book describing a mission that every American already knows.
I was wrong. In the first chapter Owen grabs your attention. The mission code named Neptune Spear was underway and was already going horrible wrong. Wanting to know more I turned the page and Owen pulls a Suzanne Collins and leaves a cliffhanger. Don’t get me wrong I know the ending. We all do. It’s even in the title. Doesn’t mean we truly know what happened.
In the next 200 pages Owen gives us a highlight of his career and his childhood in Alaska. He had an interesting career long before Bin Laden. He took part in the 2009 rescue of Richard Phillips Captain of Maersk Alabama who was captured by Somali pirates, countless successful missions taking out terrorist that never made headlines.  He gives an account of his training to become apart of SEAL Team 6, a small tight-knit covert unit that prides itself on being the “quiet professionals,” and his many deployments to Afghanistan.

Finally at the very end he goes into great detail retelling  how he became apart of the 26 man SEAL team chosen for the mission. Getting the green light from President Obama and finally the 40 minute mission that ended the 10 year long man hunt. There is a lot of controversy concerning this book. I could care less, this book was so brutally honest and wasn’t boring in the least. Even if you’re not a history buff or military person I feel you would still like it.

Even if all you like is the practical jokes the SEAL’s played on each other to blow of steam.

I will admit the down side of this book was that of course that it was a military book. Every thing had another name for something, like HSAC, (Homeland Security Advisory Council) and EOD (Explosive ordnance disposal), after a while it gets annoying and you forget what they stood for. Besides that I don’t have anything bad to say about this book.