A gruff Navy SEAL commander doesn’t expect a gorgeous writer to bring him to his knees… Navy SEAL Commander Slate “Striker” Hutchinson never expects a beautiful blonde to crash his weekend in a remote cabin. He can’t send her off alone in a snowstorm, so he lets her stay the night—and ignores a temptation he hasn’t felt in years. Her feminine curves and innocence aren’t what a man like him needs—not when he’s dedicated his life to the Navy. Novelist Ashleigh Moore is looking forward to a peaceful weekend retreat. The gruff and commanding man who emerges from the woods after a hike isn’t supposed to be at the cabin—or send her heart racing with his piercing green eyes and tall, muscular frame. She can ignore the sparks of electricity between them, but when she’s injured, Slate proves gentler than she imagined. When a domestic terrorist group tracks Slate to Washington, he realizes Ashleigh’s life is in danger as well. He’ll protect her while she’s under his care, but will he be able to let her go when their time together is over? SEAL’s Command, a standalone novel, is book seven in the addictive Alpha SEALs Coronado series.
In Never Enough, Mike Hayes—former Commander of SEAL Team TWO—helps readers apply high-stakes lessons about excellence, agility, and meaning across their personal and professional lives. Mike Hayes has lived a lifetime of once-in-a-lifetime experiences. He has been held at gunpoint and threatened with execution. He’s jumped out of a building rigged to explode, helped amputate a teammate’s leg, and made countless split-second life-and-death decisions. He’s written countless emails to his family, telling them how much he loves them, just in case those were the last words of his they’d ever read. Outside of the SEALs, he’s run meetings in the White House Situation Room, negotiated international arms treaties, and developed high-impact corporate strategies. Over his many years of leadership, he has always strived to be better, to contribute more, and to put others first. That’s what makes him an effective leader, and it’s the quality that he’s identified in all of the great leaders he’s encountered. That continual striving to lift those around him has filled Mike’s life with meaning and purpose, has made him secure in the knowledge that he brings his best to everything he does, and has made him someone others can rely on. In Never Enough, Mike Hayes recounts dramatic stories and offers battle- and boardroom-tested advice that will motivate readers to do work of value, live lives of purpose, and stretch themselves to reach their highest potential.
Based on a Navy SEAL's inspiring graduation speech, this #1 New York Times bestseller of powerful life lessons "should be read by every leader in America" (Wall Street Journal). If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed. On May 17, 2014, Admiral William H. McRaven addressed the graduating class of the University of Texas at Austin on their Commencement day. Taking inspiration from the university's slogan, "What starts here changes the world," he shared the ten principles he learned during Navy Seal training that helped him overcome challenges not only in his training and long Naval career, but also throughout his life; and he explained how anyone can use these basic lessons to change themselves-and the world-for the better. Admiral McRaven's original speech went viral with over 10 million views. Building on the core tenets laid out in his speech, McRaven now recounts tales from his own life and from those of people he encountered during his military service who dealt with hardship and made tough decisions with determination, compassion, honor, and courage. Told with great humility and optimism, this timeless book provides simple wisdom, practical advice, and words of encouragement that will inspire readers to achieve more, even in life's darkest moments. "Powerful." --USA Today "Full of captivating personal anecdotes from inside the national security vault." --Washington Post "Superb, smart, and succinct." --Forbes
Frankie doesn’t need a hero... But can she fight her attraction to Nate? Paramedic Frankie Bryce is finally over her crush on her late brother’s best friend, former navy SEAL Nate Oliver—but he returns to their hometown acting as if she’s still the wild child teenager he has to protect (he promised her brother he would!). Frankie’s all woman now, and definitely doesn’t need rescuing! Trouble is, this super-sexy hero is impossible to ignore...
An updated edition of the blockbuster bestselling leadership book that took America and the world by storm, two U.S. Navy SEAL officers who led the most highly decorated special operations unit of the Iraq War demonstrate how to apply powerful leadership principles from the battlefield to business and life. Sent to the most violent battlefield in Iraq, Jocko Willink and Leif Babin’s SEAL task unit faced a seemingly impossible mission: help U.S. forces secure Ramadi, a city deemed “all but lost.” In gripping firsthand accounts of heroism, tragic loss, and hard-won victories in SEAL Team Three’s Task Unit Bruiser, they learned that leadership—at every level—is the most important factor in whether a team succeeds or fails. Willink and Babin returned home from deployment and instituted SEAL leadership training that helped forge the next generation of SEAL leaders. After departing the SEAL Teams, they launched Echelon Front, a company that teaches these same leadership principles to businesses and organizations. From promising startups to Fortune 500 companies, Babin and Willink have helped scores of clients across a broad range of industries build their own high-performance teams and dominate their battlefields. Now, detailing the mind-set and principles that enable SEAL units to accomplish the most difficult missions in combat, Extreme Ownership shows how to apply them to any team, family or organization. Each chapter focuses on a specific topic such as Cover and Move, Decentralized Command, and Leading Up the Chain, explaining what they are, why they are important, and how to implement them in any leadership environment. A compelling narrative with powerful instruction and direct application, Extreme Ownership revolutionizes business management and challenges leaders everywhere to fulfill their ultimate purpose: lead and win.
In the Way of the SEAL, ex-Navy Commander Mark Divine reveals exercises, meditations and focusing techniques to train your mind for mental toughness, emotional resilience and uncanny intuition. Along the way you’ll reaffirm your ultimate purpose, define your most important goals, and take concrete steps to make them happen. A practical guide for businesspeople or anyone who wants to be an elite operator in life, this book will teach you how to: · Lead from the front, so that others will want to work for you · Practice front-sight focus, the radical ability to focus on one thing until victory is achieved · Think offense, all the time, to eradicate fear and indecisiveness · Smash the box and be an unconventional thinker so you’re never thrown off-guard by chaotic conditions · Access your intuition so you can make “hard right” decisions · Achieve twenty times more than you think you can · and much more Blending the tactics he learned from America’s elite forces with lessons from the Spartans, samurai, Apache scouts, and other great warrior traditions, Divine has distilled the fundamentals of success into eight powerful principles that will transform you into the leader you always knew you could be. Learn to think like a SEAL, and take charge of your destiny at work, home and in life.
Divine, a retired Navy SEAL, presents his insights on how to forge mental toughness, develop mental clarity and cultivate an authentic warrior's spirit. By applying the tools he provides, you will be capable of more accomplishment, more productivity, more success as you develop discipline and build your team.
A hard-hitting exposé of SEAL Team 6, the US military’s best-known brand, that reveals how the Navy SEALs were formed, then sacrificed, in service of American empire. The Navy SEALs are, in the eyes of many Americans, the ultimate heroes. When they killed Osama Bin Laden in 2011, it was celebrated as a massive victory. Former SEALs rake in cash as leadership consultants for corporations, and young military-bound men dream of serving in their ranks. But the SEALs have lost their bearings. Investigative journalist Matthew Cole tells the story of the most lauded unit, SEAL Team 6, revealing a troubling pattern of war crimes and the deep moral rot beneath authorized narratives. From their origins in World War II, the SEALs have trained to be specialized killers with short missions. As the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan became the endless War on Terror, their violence spiraled out of control. Code Over Country details the high-level decisions that unleashed the SEALs’ carnage and the coverups that prevented their crimes from coming to light. It is a necessary and rigorous investigation of the unchecked power of the military—and the harms enacted by and upon soldiers in America’s name.
"... One of those dazzling biographies that informs our modern life."—Susan Eisenhower, Chairman of the Eisenhower Group, author of Mrs. Ike “Today more than ever, Muslims and non-Muslims alike need to be reminded of the courage, compassion and intellect of Emir Abd el-Kader… Abd el-Kader’s jihad provides Muslims with a much- needed antidote to the toxic false jihads of today, dominated by anger, violence and politics.” -- His Royal Highness, Prince Hassan bin Talal (Prince of Jordan) "Abd el-Kader teaches the French and the world that to achieve success, moral authority is necessary, not simply military might...This fascinating revival of a 19th century world hero’s story holds valuable lessons for today’s Middle East Warrior. It would be a worthwhile addition to any reading list.”—Col. Jon Smythe, USMC ( ret.) “Abd el-Kader lived by a chivalric code steeped in the Arab concept of honor. When, in our own day al-Qaeda terrorists claim the title of 'knight,' it’s worth recalling a time when Arab warriors embodied the noblest attributes of knighthood: courage compassion and restraint.”—Steve Simon, research fellow, Council on Foreign Relations “John Kiser has not just given us an absorbing and beautifully written story of a great hero, he has written an important book. The reader is bound to be moved by the life of this remarkable man who was the very opposite of a fanatical jihadist.”—Jane Geniesse, former New York Times reporter and author of Passionate Nomad: The Life of Freya Stark “Kiser weaves the intricate tale of Abd el-Kader’s heroic life and spirit as deftly as the emir maneuvered his armies on the battlefield . . . the perfect elixir for the contemporary West’s chronic difficulties understanding the East.”—Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, author of What’s Right with Islam When Abd el-Kader died in 1883, The New York Times hailed him as “one of the few great men of the century.” The warrior/saint had won the heart of the French nation, his sworn enemy and the invader of his Algerian homeland. He reached the summit of his fame after he saved the lives of thousands of Christians during a Turkish rampage in Damascus. Elkader, Iowa, is named after the emir. www.truejihad.com John W. Kiser is the author of The Monks of Tibhirine (St. Martin’s Press, 2003), which won the French Siloe Prize. His articles have appeared in Foreign Policy Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. New York Times Review: Reviving a Novel-Worthy Tale of War and Religion PETER STEINFELS Published: November 21, 2008 For more than 40 years he was a world figure, his renown stretching from the American Midwest to Moscow to the Middle East. As he neared death in 1883, The New York Times wrote that he “deserves to be ranked among the foremost of the few great men of the century.” Earlier, he had received accolades and awards from France, Britain, Russia, the Ottoman sultan, the papacy and President Abraham Lincoln, who sent him not a medal but, in quintessentially American fashion, a matched pair of fancy Colt pistols. The man being honored was Abd el-Kader, a learned and fervent Muslim, who for 15 years had organized and led a jihad against a Western power. After he ceased hostilities, his four-year detention, in violation of a promise of safe passage into exile, became an international cause célèbre. Released and feted, even by his captors, he came to live in Damascus. There, in July 1860, el-Kader braved mobs and saved thousands of Christians from a murderous rampage through the city’s Christian quarter. In this, the bicentennial of his birth, el-Kader’s name is known to only a tiny fraction of Americans. That fraction includes those knowledgeable about modern Algeria, where his resistance to French colonization places him among the founding figures of an independent nation. And then there are the 1,500 residents of Elkader, a town in northeastern Iowa, founded and named in 1846 by a frontier lawyer who admired the freedom-fighting exploits of this “daring Arab chieftain.” Anyone interested in learning more should turn to “Commander of the Faithful” (Monkfish Book Publishing Company), a new book by John W. Kiser. Mr. Kiser had previously written “The Monks of Tibhirine” (St. Martin’s Press), about Trappist monks in Algeria whose quiet lives of prayer had bonded them with their Muslim neighbors but who were nonetheless taken hostage by Islamic extremists in 1996 and killed. Mr. Kiser learned about el-Kader (the name is sometimes transliterated from the Arabic in different ways, like al-Qadir or al-Kadir) because the Tibhirine monastery stood on the slope of a mountain where el-Kader had led one of his battles and where a steep cliff face was named after him. A book about a leader of jihad may seem like a strange sequel to a book about peaceful monks, but the more Mr. Kiser learned about el-Kader, the more he felt a spiritual kinship between the devout, ascetic Trappists and the pious, ascetic guerrilla leader. Both had found in their own religious codes and daily rituals the basis for a fraternity that defied religious boundaries. As the son of a celebrated holy man, tribal leader and head of a Sufi brotherhood, el-Kader was taught to read and memorize the Koran, tutored in all the details of the tradition but also in philosophy, history and other fields. At home and away, the young boy was also trained in horseback riding, public speaking and fighting skills. All would prove crucial. In 1832, with France increasingly encroaching on Algerian territory that was only nominally under Ottoman rule, the 25-year-old el-Kader emerged as the commander, the emir, of Muslim Arab resistance. Because el-Kader was just over five feet tall, Alexis de Tocqueville, the French political thinker, who took a great interest in Algerian affairs, called him a “puny Arab”; but Tocqueville also called him “a Muslim Cromwell.” Like Oliver Cromwell, he wielded strict religious beliefs to form a disciplined fighting force. Mr. Kiser insists on the religious dimension of what might otherwise be read as a story of military and political maneuvering. But “Commander of th
