The plot (which is something that actually happened) is absolutely interesting and unusual. However, there are far too many irrelevant details in the beginning. You can skip those as they have no impact on the story. Not the author's best book but still worth a read.

great read and enjoyed it more because of the fact that it's a true story.

3.5 stars. Take away the clear pro Ross Perot, Pro GOP aspects and there is a crazy good story here. The plot is pure Follett, and if not for the announcement that it's a true event, you'd think it was fiction. Great thriller, when you strip put the jingoism.

In On Wings of Eagles, Follett has written an exciting account of the rescue of two employees of Electronic Data Systems (EDS), then helmed by H. Ross Perot. Though it is about real events, it reads with all the excitement and intensity of a spy novel. In 1978, two EDS employees, Paul Chiapparone and Bill Gaylord, were arrested in Tehran (Iran) on trumped-up charges of bribery, with bail set at $13 million!

In the book, Follett carries us through the capture of the EDS employees, the U.S. governments fumbling and ultimately ineffectual efforts to secure their release, and the selection and training of the recovery team, led by retired U.S. Army Col. Arthur D. Simons. Follett digs deep into the teammember's military backgrounds and experience, their personal motivations for agreeing to the job, and similar revelations about the civilians who were involved, even if peripherally. Ultimately, the team succeeds, but only after a harrowing escape overland to Turkey. Themes of leadership, commitment, loyalty, and compassion are found throughout the the book. Great read!

Thoroughly enjoyed this nonfiction account of how in 1978 Ross Perot put together a team of in-house EDS executives, lead by a Vietnam Colonel to get two EDS executives out of prison in Tehran after EDS threatened to pull from the project they were working on when the Iranian government failed to pay the bill. Just affirmation for me of my vote for Perot when he made his presidential run in 1992.

Possibly just not my sort of book. As it is claimed to be heavily based on the actual events I forgave some clunkiness and enjoyed some of the detail. However I accidentally came across a few articles questioning key elements of the story telling.
This article cast significant doubt on the whole story:
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1992-07-09-9203020097-story.html
The writing - perhaps with the constraints of its goal of being supposedly fact based does not have the story telling power of his fictional books. Once I could see so much doubt cast on the actual story I could not be bothered finishing the last half of the book.

Great book! Ignore the somewhat cheesy title. The book tells the incredible true story of how Ross Perot and his EDS employees got two innocent EDS executives out of an Iranian prison in the late 1970’s, while the country descended into chaos. Ken Follett did a fantastic job researching and telling their story.