This week on History Happy Hour: In 1993 two Black Hawk helicopters were shot down, and in the ensuing Battle of Mogadishu eighteen Americans and hundreds of Somalis were killed. But very few appreciate that this was just one day in a two-and-a-half-year operation—the most ambitious attempt in history to rebuild a nation. Why and how did it go so wrong?

In this encore episode we explore this with fellow Stephen Ambrose Tours historian Jonathan Carroll, author of Beyond Black Hawk Down: Intervention, Nation-Building, and Insurgency in Somalia, 1992-1995.

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Jonathan Carroll is an associate professor of military history at the British Army’s Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst. Dr. Carroll has taught courses on U.S. and European military history; leadership, combat, and command; air power in contemporary warfare; and U.S. social and political history from 1865 to the present. A major focus of his teaching is on the First and Second World Wars. A native of the Republic of Ireland, Dr. Carroll served in the Irish Army for 12 years. In 2023, he published his first book on contemporary Irish defense. He received his doctorate in military history from Texas A&M University in College Station.