Rating: 
Summary: Pretty darned basic and filled with mistakes
Review: It's a good thing that this book is [inexpensive], as this may mitigate some of the displeasure that you might have when reading it. First off, it has a definite agenda to it. It is very pro Army SF. Hey, nothing wrong with that. However, he slaps the Navy SEALs on at least a couple of occasions amoung others, which is unwarranted. In real life, most members of units like the Navy SEALs, Army SF, USMC Recon, AF PJ's and CT's respect each other and feel little need to denigrate each other. So, strike 1.Strike 2 is how cursory the information is. Read Walker's "Commandos" for a much better over-view of the SF. This book goes into detail over the components of the MRE or what have you but glosses over things like the missions of the SF. Heck, the average TLC or Discovery Channel documentary has more information about these units than this book. Actually, there's more good information on-line at Socnetcentral.com than here. Very disappointing. For interests sake check how many details don't jibe with what is published in better books or just by asking a SF member. We're not talking altered for OPSEC here, it's just poorly researched. Strike 3? The paper is barely newsprint and the pictures are grainy [...]. In sum, if you know nothing at all about the US Army's SF, maybe this book is worth a look see if better books like "America's Special Forces : Weapons, Missions, Training" by David Bohrer or
"U.S. Army Special Forces" by Fred Pushies are out of stock. If you are hoping to learn more about them than are in these books, I'd recommend enlisting and practicing your land navigation skills. You sure won't find it here.
Rating: 
Summary: Timely and informative
Review: Right now, as the air campaign in Afghanistan nears completion, there is little doubt that these are the folks who will be hitting the ground,(they may in fact already be there). This book gives a good overview of how these forces are organized and how they operate. I found it very enlightening as we enter this new era of warfare.
Rating: 
Summary: Maybe he should stick to fiction...
Review: Special Forces could be a great book, however Clancy's style of writing is not suited to non-fiction as much as it is to fiction. He tends to let his points of view\arguments come forward in an poor way (an example being his use of the word stupid a number of times) and is sometimes overawed by what he sees. Moreover, he does go a litle overboard with the acronyms, which can interfere with the presentation nof information and clutters the flow of reading. The book's strongpoint lies in the information it does posess after the reader strips away all the p.o.v's, acronyms and bracketed text. The photographs are good, however the point of showing unit emblems and some other photos are lost as they are printed in greyscale. While this is the last in his series of "tours," lets hope that maybe a revision could be in the works that would make it easier to read.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: Special Forces is a cut and paste book production. I was sorely disappointed at the apparent lack of effort put into this project. Where is the information about selection and training of a Special Forces soldier or how about some information that focuses on the various SF Groups? At least Mr. Clancy could have done was relayed the exploits of past SF missions to demonstrate where the special comes from in Special Forces. He could have spoken about the effects of UW/FID, Direct Action, etc...missions. Granted this book touches on all of those things, but it is wider than it is deep meant to complete a book series with no real sense of conveying the heart and mind of a Special Forces soldier. Who are these men? Bowden's Blackhawk Down, although not meant to be a definitive reference, gives superior insight into which the soldier on the ground is. Bowden's work demonstrates that he has done his homework. Conversely, it is quite obvious that Mr. Clancy has not done the same.
Rating:
Summary: Beyond the Beret: Clancy's book dispels myths about SF....
Review: Special Forces, the seventh and final entry in Tom Clancy's nonfiction Guided Tour series about America's armed forces, sets its sights on the shadowy -- and often misunderstood -- roles and missions of the men the author calls "the quiet professionals" of the Army's Special Forces command. Although the public image of the Special Forces stems from such movies as John Wayne's 1968 cornball classic The Green Berets and the Rambo trilogy (Stallone's John Rambo is a former SF veteran who served in Vietnam) and Sgt. Barry Sadler's once-popular "Ballad of the Green Berets," Clancy and his co-author John D. Gresham point out that far from being hell-for-leather, shoot-first-ask-questions-later killing machines, SF soldiers are actually among the best troops in the U.S. Army. They have to be, because their missions -- ranging from blowing up a bridge or weapons factory far behind enemy lines to organizing, training, advising, and assisting foreign armies and police forces of "host" countries "to protect their societies or free them from subversion, lawlessness, insurgency, and terrorism." This means that in addition to their combat roles in Afghanistan and Iraq, SF teams are among the busiest of America's soldiers. One of the more interesting insights I got from reading Special Forces is related to the role played by SF deployments in El Salvador during the darkest days of that Central American nation's long-running civil war. The Reagan Administration, knowing that any major American military intervention would be very unpopular at home and abroad (a Vietnam II in our own back yard, to put it bluntly), was caught in a decision-making dilemma. Clearly they did not wish El Salvador to "go Red" as Cuba and Nicaragua had in the past, yet they knew the ruling class -- derived from the wealthy class of landowners and other top honchos -- was also very indifferent about the conditions of the Salvadoran poor, particularly those in the countryside. Using the army and national guard -- themselves derived from El Salvador's small middle class -- in repressive and counterproductive ways, El Salvador's government just made matters worse, using indiscriminate tactics and the infamous death squads. Surely, Washington couldn't be too closely linked to a small group of wealthy "patrones" whose only interest was to maintain their lock on power and to ignore the people's legitimate demands for justice and social reform. The solution? To use Special Forces to gradually change the mindset of the Salvadoran army. It took time, and quite a few of the SF advisers lost their lives in the crossfire between leftist forces and the army. Nevertheless, the Salvadoran officers and soldiers were "re-educated" and, as Clancy writes, "the Salvadoran Army tried acting in other than brutal and repressive ways toward their fellow countrymen, they began to halt activities of their death squads and to actually show respect for basic human rights. As a result, the rebels lost a lot of support, the Army started winning hearts, minds, and territory, and "by the end of the Cold War [a] peace treaty was a done deal, the civil war had ended, and today there is a coalition government...." Granted, the SF deployments alone were not responsible for this achievement, but they had a major effect in getting the Salvadoran people to see that the way things were being handled by both the government and the rebels were just leading to more bloodshed and chaos. As in all the Guided Tour series, which are being updated to reflect changes in technology, doctrine, and world realities, Special Forces gives the general reading audience a look at the equipment, training, organization, and the soldiers themselves. There is an interview with Gen. Henry H. Shelton USA (Ret) former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and an experienced Special Operations veteran who served with the Special Forces and also commanded Special Operations Command from 1996 to 1998. There are also overviews of the larger Special Operations Command and, finally, a short fictional account of SF personnel in action. (Oh, and while the Special Forces troops are proud of their famous headgear, they really don't like to be called "Green Berets." As one of them told the authors, "We are NOT hats!")
Rating:
Summary: Pretty darned basic and filled with mistakes
Review: The thing I kept thinking when I read this book was -- why does Tom Clancy put his name on this? It was very obvious through the whole thing that his research assistant did all the travel, research, and probably wrote everything, too. Is Tom Clancy just a brand now, and not really an author? I wish they would explain that better. And as other reviewers have mentioned, it seemed awfully "patched together" with no flow between the force descriptions, travelogues, and the mini novel in the back. The book has a lot of info about the Army Special Forces ("Green Berets") and what their specific role is in realm of special forces. I definitely understand a lot more about how SF teams work, think, and act. It was NOT one of those books I "couldn't put down" I found myself wanting to finish it and just get the info. After reading it, I understand a lot better about how the special forces operate. The mini-novel at the back was kind of weak. It was just a quick fictionalized example of all the info in the rest of the book. That felt pretty thrown together, too.
Rating:
Summary: Kind of dry...not really written by Clancy
Review: The thing I kept thinking when I read this book was -- why does Tom Clancy put his name on this? It was very obvious through the whole thing that his research assistant did all the travel, research, and probably wrote everything, too. Is Tom Clancy just a brand now, and not really an author? I wish they would explain that better. And as other reviewers have mentioned, it seemed awfully "patched together" with no flow between the force descriptions, travelogues, and the mini novel in the back. The book has a lot of info about the Army Special Forces ("Green Berets") and what their specific role is in realm of special forces. I definitely understand a lot more about how SF teams work, think, and act. It was NOT one of those books I "couldn't put down" I found myself wanting to finish it and just get the info. After reading it, I understand a lot better about how the special forces operate. The mini-novel at the back was kind of weak. It was just a quick fictionalized example of all the info in the rest of the book. That felt pretty thrown together, too.
Rating: 
Summary: Informative for the uneducated in SF
Review: This book is a good short civilianized view of Special Forces. The author goes through his steps of traveling from Middle East to South America. If your just becoming interested in SF units, operatives, etc this is the book for you. However do not plan to see tactics and techniques. The book is basicly a generalization of SF and what they do from dealing with Bio Weapons, to plain old humanitain intereaction. For all the wanna be's out there that already know there stuff this is not a book for you. I having been around a whole load of operatives have had the pleasure of knowing all this. However pound for pound a good book on basic SF.
Rating:
Summary: Summary of Other Books
Review: This book seems more like a concantenation of other books. With the exception of the interview and the organization outline, the book's contents are summaries of other books on SF. If one wants in depth coverage they should get Simmons', Waller's, and/or the Power Series' books on SF. Another problem with this book is that it is often more of a list rather than discussion or narration. Many of one paragraph summaries exists and are highly insufficient. Lastly, it talks way too much about SF's parent organizations such as SOCOM and Army SOC rather than SF itself, with the added over-praising already metioned by other reviewers. You won't gain much knowledge of SF through this book.
Rating:
Summary: A Very Technical Guide
Review: This book was clearly not written by Tom Clancy. It was very difficult to read and follow after the first 150 pages. The book had so many abbreviations it was confusing. This would have been a better read if it were condensed to about 100 pages. It was informative, but it was too detailed. It reads more like a traing manual. The mini novel at the end was very entertaining.
| 
