Worth Dying For: A Navy SEAL’s Call to a Nation
In a fast-paced and action-packed narrative, Navy SEAL commander Rorke Denver tackles the questions that have emerged about America’s past decade at war—from what makes a hero to why we fight and what it does to us.
Heroes are not always the guys who jump on grenades. Sometimes, they are the snipers who decide to hold their fire, the wounded operators who find fresh ways to contribute, or the wives who keep the families together back home. Even a SEAL commander—especially a SEAL commander—knows that. But what’s a hero, really? What do we have a right to expect from our heroes? How should we hold them accountable? Amid all the loose talk of heroes, these questions are seldom asked.
As a SEAL commander, Rorke Denver is uniquely qualified to answer questions about what makes a hero or a leader, why men kill, how best to serve your country, how battlefield experiences can elevate us, and most importantly, why we fight and what it does for and to us. In Worth Dying For, Denver tackles many of these issues by sharing his personal experiences from the forefront of war today.
Denver applies some of his SEAL-sense to nine big-picture, news-driven questions of war and peace, in a way that appeals to all sides of the public conversation. By broadening the issues, sharing his insights, and achieving what civilian political leaders have been utterly unable to, Denver eloquently shares answers to America’s most burning questions about war, heroism, and what it all means for America’s future.
Vigilance: My Life Serving America and Protecting Its Empire City
Two-time New York City police commissioner Ray Kelly opens up about his remarkable life, taking us inside fifty years of law enforcement leadership, offering chilling stories of terrorist plots after 9/11, and sharing his candid insights into the challenges and controversies cops face today.
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The son of a milkman and a Macy’s dressing room checker, Ray Kelly grew up on New York City’s Upper West Side, a middle-class neighborhood where Irish and Puerto Rican kids played stickball and tussled in the streets. He entered the police academy and served as a marine in Vietnam, living and fighting by the values that would carry him through a half century of leadership-justice, decisiveness, integrity, courage, and loyalty.
Kelly soared through the NYPD ranks in decades marked by poverty, drugs, civil unrest, and a murder rate that, at its peak, spiked to over two thousand per year. Kelly came to be known as a tough leader, a fixer who could go into a troubled precinct and clean it up. That reputation catapulted him into his first stint as commissioner, under Mayor David Dinkins, where Kelly oversaw the police response to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and spearheaded programs that would help usher in the city’s historic drop in crime.
Eight years later, in the chaotic wake of the 9/11 attacks, newly elected mayor Michael Bloomberg tapped Kelly to be NYC’s top cop once again. After a decade working with Interpol, serving as undersecretary of the Treasury for enforcement, overseeing U.S. Customs, and commanding an international police force in Haiti, Kelly understood that New York’s security was synonymous with our national security. Believing that the city could not afford to rely solely on “the feds,” he succeeded in transforming the NYPD from a traditional police department into a resource-rich counterterrorism-and-intelligence force.
In this vital memoir, Kelly reveals the inside stories of his life in the hot seat of “the capital of the world”-from the terror plots that nearly brought a city to its knees to his dealings with politicians, including Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama as well as Mayors Rudolph Giuliani, Bloomberg, and Bill DeBlasio. He addresses criticisms and controversies like the so-called stop-question-and-frisk program and the rebuilding of the World Trade Center and offers his insights into the challenges that have recently consumed our nation’s police forces, even as the need for vigilance remains as acute as ever.
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How to Catch a Russian Spy: The True Story of an American Civilian Turned Double Agent
The fascinating story of a young American amateur who helped the FBI bust a Russian spy in New York—sold in ten countries and in a major deal to 20th Century Fox.
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For three nerve-wracking years, Naveed Jamali spied on America for the Russians, trading thumb drives of sensitive technical data for envelopes of cash, selling out his own beloved country across noisy restaurant tables and in quiet parking lots. Or so the Russians believed. In fact, this young American civilian was a covert double agent working with the FBI. The Cold War wasn’t really over. It had just gone high-tech.
How to Catch a Russian Spy is the one-of-a-kind story of how one young man’s post-college adventure became a real-life US counter-intelligence coup. He had no previous counter-espionage experience. Everything he knew about undercover work, he’d learned from Miami Vice and Magnum P.I. reruns and movies like Ronin, Spy Game, and anything with Bond or Bourne in the title. And yet, hoping to gain experience to become a Navy intelligence officer, he convinced the FBI and the Russians they could trust him. With charm, cunning, and a big load of naiveté, he matched wits with a veteran Russian military-intelligence officer who was recruiting spies on American soil, out-maneuvering the Russian spy and his secret-hungry superiors. Along the way, Jamali and his FBI handlers cast a rare light on espionage activities at the Russian Mission to the United Nations in New York and earned a solid US win in the escalating hostilities between Moscow and Washington.
Now, Jamali reveals the whole engaging story behind his double-agent adventure—from coded signals on Craigslist to the Russian spy’s propensity for Hooters’ Buffalo wings. Cinematic, news-breaking, and wildly entertaining, How to Catch a Russian Spy is an armchair spy fantasy brought to life.
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New York Times Bestseller
Amish Confidential
“Lebanon” Levi Stoltzfus, star of the hit Discovery Channel reality show Amish Mafia, delivers a sizzling tell-all about Amish life today. From the forbidden joyrides to the senseless shunnings to the colorful family feuds, he shares his frank insider’s view of this fascinating and secretive society.
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You’ve seen the pretty postcards and the shiny tourist brochures. Now, Amish Confidential takes readers beyond the buggies, bonnets, and beards—into the hidden heart of back-roads Amish country. The all-night field parties. The prohibited automobiles. The nosy neighbors and prissy tattletales. It’s all here: the many “English temptations.” The stitch-and-bitch quilting bees. The sex, alcohol, and illicit Wi-Fi. And the random acts of kindness and remarkable forgiveness, too.
Interest in the Amish has never been greater. The tourist counts keep breaking new records. Amish Mafia is back for a fourth blockbuster season on TV, joined now by several spinoff shows. Amish Confidential taps right into America’s fresh fascination with the throwback Amish. Stoltzfus weaves his never-before-told personal story through some high-profile Amish episodes that rocked the news in recent years, including the Nickel Mines shooting massacre, the Amish sisters’ farm-stand kidnapping, and the Amish-Pagan drug gang. As America’s most famous Amish tough guy makes clear on every page, there is nothing plain or simple about the plain-and-simple life.
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“The perfect primer to remind Democrats what is at stake” – Jason Easley
The Party’s Over: How the Extreme Right Hijacked the GOP and I Became a Democrat
Charlie Crist, the former Republican governor of Florida, spent years in the party’s inner circle. In this no-holds-barred memoir, he shows why he switched sides and became a Democrat.
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After serving as a Republican governor—one who was on the short list for the vice presidency in 2008—Charlie Crist made headlines when he decided to run for the U.S. Senate as an Independent. He was on the front page again when he endorsed President Obama in 2012 and spoke at the Democratic National Convention—and yet again when he officially joined the Democratic Party later that year. In The Party’s Over, he’ll make even more news when he reveals:
The inside story of his 2010 Senate primary campaign against Marco Rubio, where he learned exactly how vicious the Republican leadership can be.
His journey from inner circle to persona non grata, thanks to his literal embrace of President Obama.
His very frank opinions on Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, and other top-tier Republicans.
Why he believes that Democrats have the right vision for Florida and the nation. • What he’s learned as a member of both parties and why he remains convinced that the two-party system can still work—with the right leadership.
Rather than just rehashing his career, in this book Crist offers a focused indictment of the failings of the Republican Party, naming names and identifying where things went wrong. The Party’s Over is as far from “politics as usual” as you can get.
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Doc: A Memoir
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A bruisingly honest memoir of addiction and recovery from one of the greatest pitchers of all time
With fresh and sober eyes, Dwight Gooden shares the most intimate moments of his successes and failures, from endless self-destructive drug binges to three World Series rings. Known for his triumphs on the baseball field and his excesses off of it, Gooden was a soft-spoken, dominating wunderkind who tallied a mountain of strikeouts while leading the 1986 bad-boy New York Mets to a World Series win. Even at that pinnacle, Gooden had already succumbed to a cocaine addiction that would short-circuit his career and personal life.
Gooden’s story transcends baseball, from his childhood in Atlanta raised by a father who was an alcoholic womanizer, to the recent experience of overcoming his own demons on the show Celebrity Rehab. Along the way, Gooden offers a unique perspective on Yankees owner and stalwart supporter George Steinbrenner and some of the greatest baseball players of all time. Doc is the definitive look at a life equal parts inspiring and heartbreaking.
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Damn Few: Making the Modern SEAL Warrior
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Rorke Denver trains the men who become Navy SEALs—the most creative problem solvers on the modern battlefield, ideal warriors for the kinds of wars America is fighting now. With his years of action-packed mission experience and a top training role, Lieutenant Commander Denver understands exactly how tomorrow’s soldiers are recruited, sculpted, motivated, and deployed.
Now, Denver takes you inside his personal story and the fascinating, demanding SEAL training program he now oversees. He recounts his experience evolving from a young SEAL hopeful pushing his way through Hell Week, into a warrior engaging in dangerous stealth missions across the globe, and finally into a lieutenant commander directing the indoctrination, requalification programs, and the “Hero or Zero” missions his SEALs undertake.
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In the Blink of an Eye: Dale, Daytona, and the Day that Changed Everything
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There was one lap to go in the 2001 Daytona 500. Michael Waltrip and Dale Earnhardt Jr. were running one-two. Junior’s legendary dad, the driver race fans called “The Intimidator,” was close behind in third, blocking anyone who might try to pass.
Waltrip was driving for Dale Earnhardt, racing as a team with his close friend and mentor. Yet as his car roared toward the finish line, ending that losing streak once and for all, Waltrip had no clue that the greatest triumph of his life could get mired in terrible tragedy. This is the story of that fateful afternoon in Daytona, a day whose echoes are still heard today.
For the first time ever, Michael Waltrip tells the full, revealing story of how he got to Daytona, what happened there, and the huge impact it had on so many in the racing world. He reveals for the first time how his own life changed as he dealt with guilt, faced his grief, and searched for the fortitude to climb into a race car again. It’s an inspiring and powerful story, told with Michael’s trademark humor, honesty, and irreverence.
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Home Team: Coaching the Saints and New Orleans Back to Life
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In the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, no symbol of disaster was more potent than New Orleans’ Superdome: it became a horrific shelter of last resort where the utterly desperate rode out the storm.
Four years later, in that very stadium, the New Orleans Saints won the NFC championship and earned their first-ever trip to the Super Bowl, where they defeated the favored Indianapolis Colts 31-17.
This is the inspirational true story of a city recovering from disaster and a team with a history of heartbreak, as seen through the eyes of the coach who would help elevate them both to long- forgotten greatness.
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