Inside SEAL Team Six

My Life and Missions with America's Elite Warriors

By: Don Mann, Ralph Pezzullo

Narrated by: Peter Ganim

Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins

Publisher's summary

The ultimate story of America's dominant warriors....

When Osama bin Laden was assassinated, the entire world was fascinated by the men who had completed the seemingly impossible mission that had dogged the US government for over a decade. SEAL Team 6 became synonymous with heroism, duty, and justice. Only a handful of the elite men who make up the SEALs, the US Navy's best and bravest, survive the legendary and grueling selection process that leads to Team 6, a group so classified it technically does not even exist. There are no better warriors on Earth.

Don Mann knows what it takes to be a brother of this ultra-selective fraternity. As a member of Seal Team Six for over eight years, and a SEAL for over 17 years, he worked in countless covert operations, operating from land, sea, and air, and facing shootings, decapitations, and stabbings. He was captured by the enemy and lived to tell the tale, and he participated in highly classified missions all over the globe, including Somalia, Panama, El Salvador, Colombia, Afghanistan, and Iraq. As a current training coordinator for several civilian SEAL training programs, and as a former Training Officer of SEAL Team 6, he was directly responsible for shaping the bodies and minds of SEALs who carried out the assassination of Osama bin Laden.

But to become a SEAL, Mann had to overcome his own troubled childhood and push his body to its breaking point - and beyond. Inside SEAL Team 6 is a high-octane narrative of physical and mental toughness, giving unprecedented insight to the inner workings of the training and secret missions of the world's most respected and feared combat unit.

©2011 Don Mann (P)2011 Hachette Audio

Tone

The tone used to mark redacted content is obnoxious and could have been done differently

Skip it until you've read EVERY OTHER spec ops

First and foremost, there's no denying Don Mann is a complete, total and utter badass. He's the epitome of "badass"...and he knows it.

In fact, this book is more about his "HOO RAH! I'M SUCH A BADASS" attitude in life than about anything pertaining to the SEALS. It's nothing but "I immediately INSERT AWESOME ACTION, thus proving that I'm the greatest INSERT ANY JOB FROM MEDIC TO COOK that has ever lived. I trained in INSERT ANYTHING FROM MEDICAL TO DOG GROOMING and loved every minute of INSERT ANY CRAPPY SITUATION THAT PROVES YOU ARE AWESOME. I overtrained so many times that I recieved INSERT ANY INJURTY THAT ONLY PROVES YOU ARE EVEN MORE OF A BADASS, SUCH AS RUNNING WITH A BROKEN FOOT, OR PUSH UPS WITH BROKEN SHOULDER! I ROCK SO HARD IT'S AMAZING MY HEAD HASN'T EXPLODED FROM THE AWESOME!!!"

There's nothing really pertaining to SEAL missions, and really only focuses on various stories that took place during a few training missions. These are the type of stories you'd tell your buddies while playing poker, except they're filled with so much "I'M SUCH A TOTAL AWESOME BADASS THAT I SHOULD BE GIVEN EVERY MEDAL...EVER!" that even your best friends would kick your ass and stop hanging with you.

On top of that, the book is filled with "confidential" parts that have to be bleeped, as required by "3 govermental agencies".

In actuality, it's bleeped as a gimmick to make you think there was really something confidential written in the book, but everything that is bleeped is freely written about in other books.. the term "Delta Force" is bleeped, the nicknames of the teams within SEAL TEAM 6, like Redmen, and Apaches, even the names of weapons and air force teams are bleeped. It's obvious there was NOTHING confidential written in this book. Hell, there are books that are titled 'DELTA FORCE' and this book bleeps that. It would be almost laughable, were it not so frustrating.

The stories Mann tells are "ok" at best. There's nothing in here worth really listening to. I've read MANY spec ops books, and honestly, this is the worst one I've ever found. don't get me wrong, if you're a spec ops junkie, you'll get some enjoyment from this, but on a scale of 1 to 10, if "INSIDE DELTA FORCE" or "ROGUE WARRIOR" would be considered a 10 (which I dont consider them a 10), this doesn't even rank. it's really bad.

It really gets disturbing how much Mann talks about how awesome he is. He even talks about his awesomness rubbing off on other people. Stories where he sits down, talks with his brother, who's hard into drugs, boozing, neglecting and abusing his family and beyond help, but after just one conversation with Don Mann, his brother goes on the wagon for 30 years, is now a sucessful business man and he owes it all to his wonderfully badass SEAL brother.

He talks about how he trained people, and then he tells THEIR stories of badassary, and takes credit. since, after all, he taught them whatever they used to be a badass. Even if they didn't use whatever he taught them.

The book reads like someone who is so desperate to be a Navy SEAL, that he makes up and lies about all the awesome SEAL stuff he's done, when in fact, he's done none of it.

I'm not suggesting Mann isn't a NAVY SEAL hero, or, obviously, a badass, but it's just so over the top, it's difficult to take seriously, especially when there's isn't more than 2 stories of actual SEAL missions. It's mostly training missions where something went wrong, he sprang into awesome action, saved millions of lives, taught hundreds of people who saved trillions of lives, and would be accepted into Hogwarts school of wizardry, if he wasn't so busy calling Chuck Norris a wuss to his face.

On top of all that, on top of all the nonsense stories and self ego stroking, he tells the story of the killing of Osama Bin Laden, and actually GETS THE FACTS WRONG!

I swear, think back to that kid you knew growing up that lied about everything. that kid that was a constant "one upper" and had to do one up on anything you did, or at least tell a story where he had done one better, but never could do it when you were watching. Thinking of that kid? Good. Now imagine he wrote a book about being a SEAL, but instead of telling SEAL stories, he talks about all the marathons, iron mans and physical endurance contests he participated in while being a NAVY SEAL.

As I write this, i realize just how awful this book was. I'm surprised I even finished it.

Bleeping is infuriating

The contents of this book is actually very very good and contains lots of entertaining and interesting material, however the bleeping of classified information ruined the experience for me. It seems that a lot of the bleeps are place names, dates, exact weapon, vehicle/aircraft models and other stuff that could be easily rewritten to not include specifics instead of bleeping out. The bleeping seems to be performed by an over-careful bureaucrat and I'm pretty many of the details censored here are mentioned in other SEAL related books and are fairly general knowledge and I'm surprised a guy like Don approved of this bullshit! Other than the narration and the story otherwise is good enough to resist shooting your speakers out during the bleeps.

More bragging than anything...

I made the mistake of not listening to the preview before buying and downloading. Seems like Don likes to tell everyone how great he is. Lots of great deal stories out there, this is lower end in my opinion.

Only made is about 20 mins. BLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP

What would have made Inside SEAL Team Six better?

NO BLEEPING!!!! It just stupid and not needed. Write the story around classified materials.

I hated the darn Bleeping!

They keep bleeping supposedly National Security information in the audio every minute, this drove me nuts in the first couple of minutes, just make the story around it or generalize it but do not put a bleeping sound that will drive the person listening nuts!

Couldn’t *BLEEP* make it *BLEEP* the *BLEEP* Chapter

I couldn’t even listen to this book. I made it less than 10 minutes. In that time 1/4 of the book was unnecessarily bleeped. In some cases you knew what was supposed to have been said (things that have been spoken about at length in other books, so no need to bleep), and other times the bleeping was so invasive you’d miss an entire paragraph of information because it was so heavily “redacted”. I agree with another reviewer, I believe the bleeping to be a terrible gimmick to make the book seem like it’s LOADED with confidential government info to make it seem more interesting.

Very disappointing. Expected ST6 but instead got bragging and bravado. I would not recommend this to anyone looking for ST.

Very disappointing. Expected ST6 but instead got bragging and bravado. I would not recommend this to anyone looking for ST.

BEEP!!!

The beeping because of the redacted parts of the story is so annoying, I only made it through the first 10-15 minutes before I had to take a "break.

I completely understand that due to the sensitive nature of the topic, things need be redacted but it seems like they are just beeping random words!

I hated the darn Bleeping!

They keep bleeping supposedly National Security information in the audio every minute, this drove me nuts in the first couple of minutes, just make the story around it or generalize it but do not put a bleeping sound that will drive the person listening nuts!