Hunting Che: How a U.S. Special Forces Team Helped Capture the World’s Most Famous Revolutionary

The duo behind 2012’s No Way Out: A Story of Valor in the Mountains of Afghanistan team up again to recount the capture and execution of America’s primary Cold War-era bête noire and the world’s most recognizable rebel: Che Guevara. Along with Fidel Castro, Che helped orchestrate the Cuban Revolution and the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista in 1959. His efforts would make him an idol for 1960s left-wing youth. But when Che and his guerillas turned their attention in the mid-’60s to bringing communism to U.S.-backed Bolivia, the United States decided enough was enough. A U.S. military Special Forces team was sent south to guide a battalion of Bolivian soldiers through a four-month-long crash course in fighting the insurrection. Weiss (a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist) and Maurer (coauthor of No Easy Day) focus primarily on the American operation to take down Che, detailing the tactics and personnel involved, as well as the dramatic play-by-play leading up to the rebel’s execution. The authors are palpably unsympathetic to Che and his cause, and they take a novelist’s license in recreating dialogue and inner thoughts. Fans of by-the-book nonfiction will be skeptical of the docudrama prose, but for more tolerant readers, this offers an entertaining new perspective. Agent: Scott Miller, Trident Media Group. (July 2)