NO EASY DAY by Mark Owen and Kevin Maurer (non-fic)

This book has been in the news and has been widely commented on.  Most people know it is a Navy Seal's first-hand account of the killing of Osama Bin Laden.  While Mark Owen is a pen name fabricated to protect the author, the real name of the author is now a matter of public knowledge.  This information is pretty easy to find, although the anonymity was designed to protect his family. By the way, the author give no information on whether he is married or has children.  Owen does mention that these men, who appear superhuman in the book, arrive home from dangerous missions and still have lawns to take care of as well as tending to other mundane suburban tasks.
I wanted to read this book because I was interested in finding out what factors would cause a person to live such a dangerous life. The book is neatly divided into two sections.  One tells the story of Owen's background and youth growing up in Alaska.  It includes his intense training with the Navy Seal Team 6.  The other is a detailed account of the raid on the Bin Laden compound in Abbottabad in Pakistan.  While the details of the preparation are interesting including an actual mock up of the compound in South Carolina and a kill house, the account of the mission is as exciting as an action movie.  Even though the reader knows the outcome of the mission, one is still on edge as the Seals land and begin their assault.  The details of the assault are brutal.
Having no experience with this kind of activity, the reader may find the book no more real than an action movie might be seen at the local cinema.  These kind of films abound in the States in movies and on t.v. and when you begin to realize that what seems to be fantasy in  a movie actually happened in real life, it is difficult to absorb that this mission was very very real.  That the deed was done in a little over an hour doesn't seem possible.  Even to the men involved, the idea that the mission was accomplished is real only when they are on the way back to Afghanistan with Bin Laden's body in tow.
The account is well written and dramatic.  What to make of warfare and violence of this kind is a personal response based on ones own beliefs.  I am currently reading a book on World War I and it hardly seems possible that warfare could have such differing faces.