If you have time to read only one book on Somalia, this should probably not be it, but set among the growing literature on the U.N.-U.S. intervention in the early 1990s, it adds new perspectives and opinions that some will find interesting. The author, a journalist who is not hesitant to make policy judgments, argues that Operation Restore Hope was a costly mistake (looking for an easy success, President Bush drew the United States into an imprudent adventure); that U.S. commanders misread the dire realities of Somali culture ("these are people born and immersed in a culture of treachery and reprisal"); and that the Somalia experience demonstrates the case for a permanent U.N. peacekeeping force. Along the way, what is often a sensible discussion of the events of 1992-94 gets nearly drowned in an unpalatable sauce of battlefront journalese.