Houdini Club

Mir Bahmanyar earned a BA in History from UC Berkeley, enlisted in the Second Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, and attained an MA in War Studies from King’s College London. He served on the Board of Directors for the 75th Ranger Regiment Association and was an Associate Historian of the World War Two Ranger Battalions Association. He has been a military technical advisor on such films as The Good German, Black Hawk Down, and We Were Soldiers; a German language coach; and a producer and writer in Hollywood. He co-wrote and produced the award-winning independent historical film Soldier of God and has authored numerous books and articles from ancient history to modern war, which have been translated into Arabic, German, Japanese, Polish, and Spanish, and have featured on several US Army reading lists. Holding dual US and Canadian citizenship, he lives in Toronto.

Praise for The Houdini Club: “A propulsive account of the 1st Ranger battalion . . . With a warts-and-all approach, Bahmanyar brings to vivid life Darby’s elite soldiers, from ‘soft-spoken’ executive officer Herman Dammer . . . to Second Lt. Charles Shunstrom, recalled by his comrades as both ‘the bravest of the brave’ and a ‘psychopath.’ . . . Bahmanyar also spotlights the (astonishingly frequent) escapes made by Darby’s rangers from POW camps, which got them nicknamed the ‘Houdini Club.’ This will enthrall WWII history buffs.”—Publishers Weekly “From their inception in World War II, U.S. Army Rangers have earned a reputation for doing the difficult. Mir Bahmanyar’s fresh look at their exploits in that war shows they’ve done the impossible as well. . . . The Houdini Club is a must-read for anyone interested in Ranger history and fans of special operation troops.”–Jim DeFelice, best-selling author of Rangers at Dieppe, Every Man a Hero, and Omar Bradley: General at War Praise for Mir Bahmanyar: “For those readers looking to become SEALs, I suggest you read this book cover to cover and then read it again…. For those readers just wanting to gain knowledge and an understanding about the SEALs and the SEAL community, there is no other book you need to read.” –Marcus Luttrell, U.S. Navy SEAL, and New York Times bestselling author of Lone Survivor “In the tradition of soldier classics like All Quiet on the Western Front, Nicholas Moore and his co-author Mir Bahmanyar unfold Moore’s raw war story of a decade of over 1,000 special operations missions and a dozen deployments into the war on terror in Iraq and Afghanistan. Run to the Sound of the Guns is the engrossing drama of Army Rangers—the training, the fighting, the brotherhood of young men in combat, of high adventure and darkest tragedy.” –Charles W. Sasser, U.S. Army Special Forces, Author, Association of the United States Army   "Ugly, brutal, and straightforward. . . . " –Matt Eversmann, Author of Walk in My Combat Boots: True Stories from America’s Bravest Warriors with James Patterson, and Editor of The Battle of Mogadishu “A riveting foxhole level view of more than a decade of modern war. . . . [A] candid, but mature, account that is as entertaining as it is informative.”–General (Ret.) Stanley McChrystal