Fearless: The Undaunted Courage and Ultimate Sacrifice of Navy SEAL Team SIX Operator Adam Brown

Adam Browns legacy has and will continue to motivate me to be a better servant of Christ, a better father, a better husband, and a better soldier. To know that there are people like Adam in our country gives me hope. What an amazing book. This will always be at the top of my list.

This book is hard to put down. This is the fastest read I’ve done in a while. Adam’s story is unique in that he overcame much adversity, and rose to a tier 1 operator. Wow! Seriously great story, and I wish we had more men like Adam. Great book for young men looking to better themselves, or someone struggling with something they find hard to overcome.Through faith in Christ, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” Phil 4:13

A very good book about a true American Hero. I couldn’t put it down.

There are many books available today about uncommon warriors fighting the global war on terrorism and, given that we remain in the long war against violent Islamic extremists, there are likely to be many more. Adam Brown, a son of the South from rural Arkansas, was a warrior on another level altogether, and we should thank Eric Blehm, the author of Fearless: The Undaunted Courage and Ultimate Sacrifice of Navy SEAL Team SIX Operator Adam Brown, for shining a bright but even-handed light on not only a remarkable warrior, but an extraordinary human being.Fearless is absolutely worth the read.Blehm adeptly brings to life a complex, flawed Adam Brown, indeed, a gentle soul battling insatiable demons. An all-too-common story, after graduating from high school and struggling to find himself, Adam instead finds an unrelenting crack cocaine addiction. Finally sick and tired of being sick and tired and facing the downward spiral of life as an addict, Adam gives his life to Christ. And on his way out of this vortex of despair, he hears the call to serve and not as a minister or missionary, but as a U.S. Navy SEAL! With the blessing of his beautiful and loving wife, Kelley, his second strongest supporter, Adam enters SEAL training at age 25, the oldest of 145 students to begin phase I of his Basic Underwater Demolitions / SEAL (BUD/S) class.BUD/S proves only a speed bump for Adam as he overcomes one obstacle after another along his newfound path to success in the Navy. Those challenges prove easily surmounted with his faith in God and what can only be described as ‘otherworldly’ mental toughness, strength and endurance. Despite suffering multiple injuries in training and on deployments, the right-handed (and right-eye-dominant) Adam seems to grow even stronger. Undaunted and, well, fearless, he seeks ever greater challenges, eventually volunteering for U.S. Naval Special Warfare Development Group (NSWDG), or DEVGRU (SEAL Team Six), the elite and highly secretive counterterrorism unit.Hobbled by his injuries, but as determined as ever, a now one-eyed (left eye) and left-hand-shooting Adam makes it through the grueling DEVGRU selection process and then deploys into the fight as a Tier One operator. Pursuing the worst of hardened Taliban fighters on what would be his final mission, he and his teammates find their adversary holed up in a compound in the Pech River Valley in eastern Afghanistan, inarguably the most dangerous corner of the most dangerous country on earth. Adam characteristically volunteers to move to the very tip of the spear and is killed almost instantly in a hail of gunfire.Another American warrior felled by an insurgent’s bullet.To simply view Adam’s death as that of another intrepid special operator killed in action, though, is to ignore so much of what made this man special. His Christian faith and his devotion to his family truly set him apart. And he refused to include the word ‘can’t’ in his lexicon, even studying for an undergraduate degree into the wee hours of the morning before going to work as a SEAL, and then aspiring to one day attend Harvard Business School!When he was home, Adam was always 'there' for his wife and children but, being the committed SEAL he was, he wanted to be 'there' for his teammates. On that direct action raid, deep in the Hindu Kush mountains, on March 17, 2011, Adam demonstrated the extent of that commitment. In a selfless act, he diverted the fire being directed at his teammates towards himself and, as a result, died fighting for his last breath.He laid down his life for his friends.Synthesizing research and interviews into a deeply engaging story while treating us to an insider's view of the SEAL Team Six brotherhood, Eric Blehm deserves much praise. But it is God who ultimately deserves the credit for allowing us to bear witness to Adam Brown, to see him model his faith, and to be inspired by him. Yes, an angel walking the earth in human flesh and readily exposing those flaws that made him human, but always, always striving to overcome them to be the man God wanted him to be. Finally, in an age when we are starved for real heroes to look up to, Adam Brown comes along and reminds us that we need look no further than those angels among us.We are only left to eulogize this man who offered us so much. Dead at 36, Chief Special Warfare Operator Adam Lee Brown's legacy lives on in his lovely wife and children… and of course, his SEAL teammates.Thank you, Eric Blehm.We must never forget.

We need Washington DC To Serve These Heroes with as much Character!

Adam Brown was one of the elite of the elite, a member of SEAL Team SIX, the counterterrorism unit that has among its accomplishments the capture of Osama bin Laden. Brown was also a man with a history of addiction and all that attends it--theft and broken relationships and devastation. Most important of all, Brown was a man who had experienced grace and forgiveness through a relationship with Jesus Christ. His story, told by Eric Blehm in the book Fearless, is making waves today, having established itself on the New York Times list of bestsellers.In many ways Fearless is typical for the biography of a warrior. It tracks Brown through his childhood and then, once he had made up his mind to join the Navy, through bootcamps, other forms of training, and eventually, through deployment in South America, Afghanistan and Iraq. Along the way we read of his brutal battle with addiction to crack cocaine, an addiction that followed him and haunted him even years after he had been through recovery. We also read of how he came to faith, eventually following the example of his parents and mentors, giving his life in service to Jesus Christ.Brown's life came to an end on March 17, 2010, the day he was gunned down in the mountains of Afghanistan, losing his life in service to his country while destroying a dangerous terrorist cell. Of course his story continues in this book and in the lives of his wife and children and friends.Eric Blehm has penned a powerful book in Fearless. It is well-written and tells an intriguing story of a fascinating individual. I would suggest that the main reason for the book's appeal is in Brown's quirky character. He was a fearless warrior and one with an impossibly high pain threshhold. He was one of those people who seemed to live his life in overdrive, doing things that appear to be fool-hardy or near-impossible or, in all likelihood, both. He was an eminently likeable guy.A second reason for its success is that it has been written to appeal to both men and women. Sure, there is a fair bit of military action, a component that men tend to enjoy more than women, but so much of what SEAL Team SIX did remains classified that Blehm has had to focus less on missions and more on the colorful cast of characters that always surrounded Brown. This makes it a character-driven book led by Brown but pausing as well to introduce other fascinating people.And then there is the appeal of a story of redemption, a man emerging from the depths to become a real man, one who had learned to cast off the utter selfishness of addiction so he could love and serve others. He was able to do this only after encountering the God who is so much stronger and more powerful than the addiction that had gripped him for so many years.I feel as if I am sticking my neck out a little in expressing the one disappointment I had with this book: the lack of spiritual depth. Yes, Brown and his family are Christians, but the faith the author describes is as much about platitudes ("Adam is watching us from heaven and smiling...") than the beautiful depths of the Christian faith. Don't hear me say that I doubt Brown's faith; I do not doubt it at all. But I guess I am always on the look-out for the biography of the Christian soldier (or Christian athlete or...) who has a really deep faith, who does more than express that "Jesus has a plan for my life" and repeat basic Christian truths. There are very few like that and I have often wondered why that is. In this case, it is notable that Eric Blehm is not a Christian (saying in the Afterword that he has not opened a Bible in twenty-five years), so perhaps he just does not understand what Christians are telling him about their faith. Perhaps he has distilled what people have said into convenient catchphrases. I don't know. In reading Fearless you will encounter a genuine conversion story, but you will not encounter a great depth of truth beyond that. It's a little bit disappointing in that regard.Fearless is a story that had to be told, and though it is a difficult story to hear, passing as it does through terrible addiction and ending in death, it is both powerful and inspiring, and I am glad to recommend it to you.Do note that there is some rough language in the book--this is the navy after all. There is nothing outrageous, but it still contains words you would not want your children to repeat.