Thunder Run: The Armored Strike to Capture Baghdad

David Zucchino

Dec 2007 · Open Road + Grove/Atlantic

About this ebook

“A Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter provides a brilliant account of the harrowing drive into Baghdad by an American armor brigade.” —Seattle Post-Intelligencer
 
Based on reporting that was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Thunder Run chronicles one of the boldest gambles in modern military history: the surprise assault on Baghdad by the Spartan Brigade, the Second Brigade of the Third Infantry Division (Mechanized). Three battalions and fewer than a thousand men launched a violent thrust of tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles into the heart of a city of five million people—and in three days of bloody combat ended the Iraqi war.
 
More than just a rendering of a single battle, Thunder Run candidly recounts how soldiers respond under fire and stress and how human frailties are magnified in a war zone. The product of over a hundred interviews with commanders and men from the Second Brigade, it is a riveting firsthand account of how a single armored brigade was able to capture an Arab capital defended by one of the world’s largest armies.
 
“The best account of combat since Black Hawk Down.” —Men’s Journal

Ratings and reviews

Know a few of the people mentioned in this book. I served in this Brigade prior to the build up for the invasion into Iraq. One of the Battalion Commanders in this book was my Brigade Commander in Iraq and he went on to Command 1st Armor Division.

This book is accurate and has many different perspectives one of my old drill sergeants was in this brigade when they made the run on BIAP ( baghdad international airport, for all you civies out there)

Wow. 6-Stars. So MANY different perspectives of the events, because SO MANY of the participants were interviewed. A heart-wrenching at times, Honest account of warfare. THANK YOU to All who Served.

About the author

David Zucchino, a national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, was embedded with the Second Brigade during the Iraqi war and has covered wars in more than a dozen nations. A four-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, he was awarded the 1989 Pulitzer for feature writing for his dispatches from apartheid South Africa. He shared, with his Los Angeles Times colleagues, Overseas Press Club awards in 2001 for reporting on Al Qaeda terrorist cells in Europe and in 2002 for coverage of Afghanistan. He is also the author of Myth of the Welfare Queen and editor of the Philadelphia Enquirer “Black Hawk Down” and “Killing Pablo” newspaper serials that became the best-selling books.