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Title: Ranger Games
Subtitle: A Story of Soldiers, Family and an Inexplicable Crime
Author: Ben Blum
Narrator: Johnathan McClain
Format: Unabridged
Length: 16 hrs and 3 mins
Language: English
Release date: 09-12-17
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Limited
Genres: Nonfiction, True Crime

Publisher's Summary:
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?

Critic Reviews:
"Ben Blum's achievement in this relentlessly gripping book is to make an incredible story entirely credible. If many of the serial revelations and twists are subtle and nuanced rather than spectacular that only adds to the sense of his narrative command and assurance." (Geoff Dyer)
"Ranger Games is a rare and totally original work of nonfiction. The odd characters and dangerous situations live vibrantly in these pages and the stakes are always high. Ben Blum's search for truth leads him down many paths into an inner turmoil and boil about family, fidelity, identity, good and evil, and military service. Once you start reading you won't put it down." (Anthony Swofford)
"Ranger Games is one of those rare books that illuminates its subject beyond what you thought possible - and then transcends its subject to become something more. In this case, the subject is engaging and disturbing all on its own; the 'inexplicable crime' of the title is fascinating, the fall-out from it is heart-breaking and suspenseful. But the book is not only about the crime or the family it tears apart, it is about the strange pathologies of North American culture, a particularly masculine form of madness, and the mysterious, timeless relationship of charm and evil." (Mary Gaitskill)

Members Reviews:
A shorter story would have been better
An interesting story that gave a behind the scenes look at what it requires to be made into an Army Ranger. It also gave a good perspective of how a person can be loyal to a superior even when that means doing the âwrong thing.â

Fantastic
This is an incredibly compelling story. It's written well and told in a way that I found impossible to put down. I felt like I really saw the events through Ben's eyes as facts changed and his mind changed and it left me thinking about the nature of truth and morality. This story is especially relevant for 2017 America.

One of those suggested "On Killing" as a good book on the psychological effects of military training
I am about 80% of the way through this book and have a hard time putting it down. The author's attempt to uncover the mind set of the people involved follows a torturous but very interesting path that involves family, perpetrators, friends, parents and girlfriends.