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    Ranger Games: A Story of Soldiers, Family and an Inexplicable Crime
    Unavailable
    Ranger Games: A Story of Soldiers, Family and an Inexplicable Crime
    Unavailable
    Ranger Games: A Story of Soldiers, Family and an Inexplicable Crime
    Audiobook16 hours

    Ranger Games: A Story of Soldiers, Family and an Inexplicable Crime

    Written by Ben Blum

    Narrated by Johnathan McClain

    4/5

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    Unavailable in your country

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    About this audiobook

    A tense and layered true-crime story about an all-American soldier boy turned bank robber

    Alex Blum was a clean-cut all-American kid with one unshakeable goal in life: to serve his country in the military. He was accepted into the elite Rangers regiment, but on the first day of his leave before deployment to Iraq, Alex got into his car with two fellow soldiers and two strangers, drove to a local bank in Tacoma, and committed armed robbery.

    The Blum family was devastated and mystified. How could he have done such a thing?

    Alex’s attorney presented a defence based on the theory that trainee Rangers are indoctrinated on a level akin to the brainwashing in an extreme religious cult, and Alex insisted that he had believed the robbery was just another exercise in the famously daunting Ranger program. But Luke Elliot Sommer, the charismatic soldier behind the robbery, maintained that Alex knew exactly what he was doing, and had, in fact, planned it all with him.

    Who was lying? What had happened to Alex during those gruelling months of training? How accountable was he?

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins Publishers
    Release dateSep 12, 2017
    ISBN9780008243746
    Unavailable
    Ranger Games: A Story of Soldiers, Family and an Inexplicable Crime

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    Reviews for Ranger Games

    4/5

    20 ratings4 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Thoroughly enjoyed this book. Well written and extremely interesting. Congrats to Ben for the way he has assembled the book.
    • 3/5
      This book caught my eye because my son is a Ranger, after reading what it was about I was intrigued to find out what had happened. It is a crazy story! I did find that Blum was over-descriptive at times in areas that did not add to the story and actually took away from the flow of the book. Overall, I'm glad I read it.
    • 5/5
      Absolutely brilliant.
    • 4/5
      Alex Blum had dreams of becoming a Army Ranger, since he was five years old. Growing up in a close-knit family, in Colorado, he was a popular, good-looking kid, who became a hockey star in high school. He joined the Army, immediately after finishing school and was accepted into the elite Ranger program, achieving his lifetime goal.Just before his deployment to Iraq, he entered a personal vehicle, along with two other Rangers, drove into downtown Tacoma, Washington and robbed a bank.Why would Alex participate in this unimaginable crime, just before fulfilling his dream? This question haunted the entire Blum family, for years to come.The author, a first cousin of Alex's, attempts to answer this baffling question, in this excellent exploration of a federal crime and it's crushing aftermath. Was Alex brainwashed? Was he completely swayed by his team leader, Corporal Luke Elliot Sommer and manipulated into joining this crime, under the guise of a “training exercise”? Or was Alex simply lying, covering up the fact that he made a terrible decision?It took Ben Blum many years to write this book and he ended up having a very close friendship with Alex, while Alex was in prison. Ben also had conflicting feelings about Alex and his honesty, making for a very compelling read.