On Wings of Eagles

"On Wings of Eagles" (OWOE) is a real life story that feels like a fiction novel. My guess is that the author of the novel, Ken Follett, has introduced some amount of exaggeration/addition into the events to dramatize the whole sequence. Anyways, even if that is the case, it has only added to the attractiveness of the book.

The background of the story goes like this. EDS, one of the world's oldest IT outsourcing companies, was doing a project for the government of Iran. The government ran out of money to pay EDS and the company halted its work. Couple of EDS' top executives are arrested by the government in a bid to make EDS continue the project (A good example of game theory?). EDS' head Ross Perot uses his influence and network to try and get his men out of Iran, but the political turmoil in the government make his attempts fail. Ross then decides to take a big gamble by sending a group of men, lead by an ex-army general, to rescue the 2 prisoners by any means. For the rest of the story, I suggest reading the book.

The book has a good fiction-like real life story, a peek into the politics of the 1970s both in Iran and in the USA, and nice narration except for the parts where Follett goes into explaining the personalities of each character. I got a bit bored with the superfluous details in the descriptions. One other thing that I couldn't bear with is the excess adulation of Ross Perot. Something tells me that the novel would have been sponsored by him I can't believe that a capitalist could go to the extent of gambling his company and himself for the sake of two of his employees. The events in the novel were too much dependant on lady luck, but I guess most real life events could be attributed to just being in the right/wrong place at the right/wrong time.

The novel is called "On Wings of Eagles" as the employees (or just the high-flyers?) of EDS are called Eagles. It seems the novel came as a story -> IMDB Ofcourse, the novel has all the ingredients of a typical US army-based movie.