We've collected all of our posts on Lone Survivor below. The most important post is "A List of the Mistakes and Differences Between Lone Survivor (Film), Lone Survivor (Book) and Reality" so read that first if you are new to the blog or this topic.
- Really!?! with Quotes from Lone Survivor Pt. 1
- Really!?! Quotes from Lone Survivor Pt. 2
- Really!?! Quotes from Lone Survivor Pt. 3
- He Got The Title Wrong? and 6 More Mistakes from Luttrell's Lone Survivor
- A Literary Review of Lone Survivor
- An Open Letter to Universal and Peter Berg
- BTW, Insurgents Have Rules of Engagement As Well
- The Rules of Engagement are Democratic, and Thank God For That
- Haters Want to Hate or...If You Haven’t Been to Afghanistan Then F*** You Hippy and Get Off My Internets!
- Shout Out to Ed Darack and a First Look at Lone Survivor!
- Marcus Luttrell Stands by His Mistakes: An Update to Our Lone Survivor Week
- The Tale of the Tape: The (Dis)Similarities Between Luttrell, Mortenson and Montalvan
- A New Game: Spot the Navy SEAL!
- Lone Survivor on Counter-Insurgency: Read It, Then Do The Opposite
- On V’s Thoughts on the New “Lone Survivor” Trailer
- Luttrell No Longer Stands By his Mistakes: Lone Survivor vs. the 60 Minutes Interview
- Bad, Bad Ahmad Shah...the Baddest Shah in the Whole Damn Valley
- Eric C’s Lone Survivor (Film) Review: I (Almost) Loved This Movie
- You’re Welcome, Peter Berg: Why the Lone Survivor Film is Better than the Lone Survivor Memoir
- A List of the Differences Between Lone Survivor (Film), Lone Survivor (Book) and Reality
- It’s Not Just "Hollywood”: Why the Accuracy of Lone Survivor (Film) Matters
- Is Operation Red Wings Important?
- The Worst Media Coverage of Lone Survivor (film and memoir)
- Why Fact Checking Matters: On V in Other Places, Slate "How Accurate is Lone Survivor?”
- The Missed Counter-Insurgency Lessons in Lone Survivor (Film)
- Our Favorite "Unique Takes" on “Lone Survivor” (Film)
- More Updates on Lone Survivor
- Our Thoughts on Newsweek’s Mohammad Gulab and Marcus Luttrell Article
- The Loudest Quiet Professionals: An Academic Take
- The Loudest Quiet Professional (Marcus Luttrell) Endorses Donald Trump
Since last December, Eric C has been diving into war memoirs. He's read the best of the best--O'Brien's The Things They Carried, Rooney's My War, Herr's Dispatches--and others that weren't quite as good, but none that were atrocious.
Until now. Marcus Luttrell's Lone Survivor is so over-the-top, so poorly written, and so bad, one review just won't cover it.

A quick synopsis. The story follows Marcus Luttrell--a right-wing, Christian, Texan-then-American--through his SEAL training, deployment to Iraq, and finally, deployment to Afghanistan. On a routine reconnaissance mission, a group of unarmed Afghan civilians walk onto his team's observation post. After releasing the civilians, Taliban fighters storm their position, eventually killing the three other SEALs. Luttrell escapes, only to be sheltered from the Taliban by a friendly village, and later rescued by Army Rangers.
Why spend an entire week on one book? Three reasons:
First, Lone Survivor is a terrible book on almost every level: historical, political, military, and literary. I believe I could find something wrong, misleading, idiotic or poorly written on every page, and probably one of each. How bad is it? For instance, Luttrell writes that...
...Iraq had WMD’s. (This book was published in 2007)
...Iraq had Al Qaeda training camps and Taliban fighters.
...the military upper brass personally called on Luttrell and his fellow SEALs to save Afghanistan from Taliban invaders, in 2005, because Navy SEALs are the greatest, toughest, most skilled war fighters in the entire military. (Seriously, he wrote this.)
...twins can literally read minds. (He’s not joking.)
...America’s God (Jesus) is at war with Islam’s God (Muhammad) and American soldiers are on the front lines waging this war. God personally intervenes to save Luttrell's life multiple times, despite letting 19 other service men die that same day.
...rules/laws should not apply to soldiers, and the media should not report on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. (We assume this doesn't apply to Navy SEAL veteran memoirists.)
...Afghanistan had/has a democratically elected government.
There are lots of terrible books on the military, but only one of them is ranked #343 on Amazon. (To compare, The Things They Carried ranks #402, Fick's One Bullet Away ranks #5,185, Mulaney's Unforgiving Minute ranks #7,805, The War I Always Wanted ranks over 100,000) Twice, total strangers recommended Lone Survivor to Eric C. Comment threads and reviews across the milblog community heap praise upon the book (take this example). And Universal Studios and Peter Berg (of Friday Night Lights fame) are adapting Lone Survivor into a major Hollywood film, scheduled for release in 2013.
That movie is my second reason; we want to stop it. This book should not be esteemed, should not be considered a paragon of the genre, and should not be recommended, ever. This book should be considered a joke, but instead will become a major motion picture. His story could be a good film, but the book Lone Survivor cannot.
My final reason is one of legacy, determining how we as a country will remember Afghanistan in our media, in our culture, and in our history. Like it or hate it, The Hurt Locker is the closest most Americans will ever get to Iraq. Many, if not most, veterans loathed that film for its awful portrayal of the war. But we were too late to stop it from winning the Best Picture Oscar. With Lone Survivor I won't make that mistake. It paints Soldiers, Afghans, ROE, counter-insurgency, and America in the worst possible light. I won't let another bad film define our current wars.
Unlike Marcus Luttrell, I didn't live on Bagram Air Field, I lived in Konar, Province. Marcus Luttrell flew in for missions, then flew right back out. I worked with Afghans everyday, meeting, talking and living with them. I came to respect them. Marcus Luttrell describes the people of Konar as peasants, evil, hate-filled and primitive; I dispute that. He called Konar a land of "hellish undercurrents and flaming hatreds." If your only interaction comes through a sniper scope, you won't understand Afghanistan or counter-insurgency, and that is why Lone Survivor deserves its own week.
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Yeah, we hated this book, but I’m looking forward to other readers opinions. I know a lot of bloggers and milbloggers liked this book, basically I’m curious to see someone try to defend it.