<div>The &ldquo;unexpectedly moving&rdquo; story of dumb luck and the American Dream set in South Philly from the # 1 New York Times&ndash;bestselling author (Entertainment Weekly). What would you do if you found a million dollars? When Joey Coyle did, he was a twenty-eight-year-old drug-dependent, unemployed longshoreman living with his ailing mother in a tight-knit Philadelphia neighborhood. While cruising the streets just blocks from his home, fate took a turn worthy of a Hollywood caper when he found $1.2 million in unmarked bills&mdash;casino money that had fallen off an armored truck. It was virtually untraceable. Coyle? Not so much. Over the next seven days, fueled by euphoria, methamphetamine, and paranoia, Coyle shared his windfall with everyone from his eight-year-old niece to total strangers to a local mob boss who offered to &ldquo;clean&rdquo; it. All the while, Det. Pat Laurenzi and members of the FBI were working around the clock to find it. No one was prepared for how Coyle&rsquo;s dream-come-true would come tumbling down, or what would happen when it did. From &ldquo;a master of narrative journalism&rdquo; comes the incredible true-life thriller of an ordinary man with an extraordinary dilemma, and the complicity, concern, and betrayal of friends, family, and neighbors that would prove his undoing (The New York Times Book Review). &ldquo;A miniature serio-comedy about life in the city.&rdquo; &mdash;The Washington Post &ldquo;Masterfully reported and artfully paced.&rdquo; &mdash;Entertainment Weekly &ldquo;A taut, fast-paced tale.&rdquo; &mdash;The Baltimore Sun</div>

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Finders Keepers

<div>The NFL championship game that changed football forever: a New York Times&ndash;bestselling sports history classic by the author of Black Hawk Down. Yankee Stadium, December 28, 1958. What was about to go down on this Sunday evening in front of sixty-four thousand fans and forty-five million home viewers&mdash;the largest viewership ever assembled for a live televised event&mdash;was the first sudden death overtime in NFL history. This one battle between the league&rsquo;s best offense, the Baltimore Colts, and the best defense, the New York Giants, would propel professional football from a moderately popular pastime into America&rsquo;s favorite sport. On the field and roaming the sidelines were seventeen future Hall of Famers, including Colts stars Johnny Unitas, Raymond Berry, and Gino Marchetti; and Giants greats Frank Gifford, Sam Huff; and assistant coaches Vince Lombardi and Tom Landry. But they were opposing teams in more ways than one. It was a contest between Baltimore blue-collars, many of whom worked off-season taking shifts at Bethlehem Steel, and the trendy, New York glamour boys of splashy magazine ads and TV commercials who mingled with politicians, Broadway stars, and even Ernest Hemingway. Mark Bowden &ldquo;dives into the trenches of the 1958 NFL Championship game&rdquo; for a riveting play-by-play account, the stories behind the key players, the effect it had on the league, the sport, and the country (Entertainment Weekly). &ldquo;Bring[s] the contest so alive that you find yourself almost wondering . . . years later, how it will turn out in the end.&rdquo; &mdash;The New York Times &ldquo;The Best Game Ever is sure to become an instant Sacred Text.&rdquo; &mdash;Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post</div>

The Best Game Ever

<div>&ldquo;Painstakingly reported stories about losers, oddballs and con men&rdquo; from the #1 New York Times&ndash;bestselling journalist and author of Black Hawk Down (The New York Times Book Review). This riveting anthology collects the most diverse and far-reaching of Mark Bowden&rsquo;s award-winning nonfiction&mdash;&ldquo;with fascinating features on Norman Mailer, the war against terror, and even a Philadelphia Zoo gorilla, Bowden&rsquo;s range is broad&rdquo; (Entertainment Weekly). Whether traveling to Rhode Island where one of the largest cocaine rings in history is uncovered, or to the Luangwa Valley in Zambia where anti-poachers fight to save the black rhino, Bowden takes us down rough roads previously off-limits: the top-secret world of Guantanamo Bay; Saddam Hussein&rsquo;s post 9/11 days on the run; a pimp&rsquo;s inside track on police corruption in Philadelphia; and Al Sharpton&rsquo;s campaign trail. Bowden also invites readers along to meet a small-town high school football team, farmers who make bras for cows, the Rocky Balboa statue in Philadelphia, and to see Disney World with a wide-eyed group of terminally ill children. In Road Work, Mark Bowden &ldquo;fashion[s] prose that reads like good fiction, with the bonus that his stories are true&rdquo; (The New York Times Book Review). &ldquo;Astute character reading and solid research combine with ingenious and stylish prose: a superior portfolio from a journalist who stays at the top of his game.&rdquo; &mdash;Kirkus Reviews, starred review &ldquo;Bowden is unlike any other journalist . . . Superb reporting, a fine mind conceiving the story line, and a compelling writing style lead to something approaching immortality.&rdquo; &mdash;St. Louis Post-Dispatch</div>

Road Work

<div>From the bestselling author of Black Hawk Down, the gripping story of the Conficker worm&mdash;the cyberattack that nearly toppled the world. The Conficker worm infected its first computer in November 2008, and within a month had infiltrated 1.5 million computers in 195 countries. Banks, telecommunications companies, and critical government networks&mdash;including British Parliament and the French and German military&mdash;became infected almost instantaneously. No one had ever seen anything like it. By January 2009, the worm lay hidden in at least eight million computers, and the botnet of linked computers it had created was big enough that an attack might crash the world. In this &ldquo;masterpiece&rdquo; (The Philadelphia Inquirer), Mark Bowden expertly lays out a spellbinding tale of how hackers, researchers, millionaire Internet entrepreneurs, and computer security experts found themselves drawn into a battle between those determined to exploit the Internet and those committed to protecting it. </div>

Worm

<div>From the # 1 New York Times&ndash;bestselling author of Black Hawk Down: The &ldquo;shocking&rdquo; story of the country&rsquo;s unlikeliest drug kingpin (The Baltimore Sun). By the early 1980s, Larry Lavin had everything going for him. He was a bright, charismatic young man who rose from working-class roots to become a dentist with an Ivy League education and a thriving practice, and a beloved father with a well-respected family in one of Philadelphia&rsquo;s most exclusive suburbs. But behind the fa&ccedil;ade of his success was a dark secret: Lavin was also the mastermind behind a cocaine empire that spread from Miami to Boston to New Mexico, catering to lawyers, stockbrokers, and other professionals, and generating an annual income of $60 million for the good doctor. Now, Mark Bowden, a &ldquo;master of narrative journalism&rdquo; (The New York Times Book Review) tells the harrowing saga of Lavin&rsquo;s rise and fall in &ldquo;a shocking American tragedy . . . [that] shoots straight from the hip&rdquo; (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette). &ldquo;An engrossing crime story and a compelling morality tale.&rdquo; &mdash;The Arizona Republic &ldquo;Has all the elements of a chilling suspense thriller . . . A smoothly crafted, exciting, can&rsquo;t-put-it-down book.&rdquo; &mdash;The New Voice (Louisville)</div>

Doctor Dealer

<div>&ldquo;An ambitious, remarkably frank&rdquo; chronicle of the Philadelphia Eagles&rsquo; bid for the NFL championship by the #1 New York Times&ndash;bestselling author (Kirkus Reviews). In 1992, the Philadelphia Eagles&mdash;a team assembled in the image of their iconoclastic, controversial former head coach, Buddy Ryan&mdash;were known for their ferocious defense led by Reggie White, Seth Joyner, and Andre Waters, and for the otherworldly talents of quarterback Randall Cunningham. Now was the time for the Eagles&rsquo; campaign for the championship. But as the season progressed, it disintegrated into an ugly flurry of greed, racism, violence, personal and professional feuds, one tragic death, and a very wild face-off in the stands between a player&rsquo;s wife and mistress. By midseason, the sentiment of both fans and press was the same: &ldquo;shut up and play.&rdquo; Told through the personal stories of the teammates themselves, as well as the coaches, managers and owner, Bringing the Heat spares nothing&mdash;and no one&mdash;in &ldquo;a phenomenal feat of reportage, perfect for football fans coast to coast&rdquo; (H. G. Bissinger, author of Friday Night Lights). &ldquo;Overflows with stories of pro football dreams, of bravery in the face of injury. Yet it also unflinchingly tells of the darker side of life in the NFL: uncontrollable egos, ruined families, marital infidelity.&rdquo; &mdash;The New York Times Book Review &ldquo;There are now four mandatory books on football: Dan Jenkins&rsquo;s Semi-Tough; George Plimpton&rsquo;s Paper Lion; H. G. Bissinger&rsquo;s Friday Night Lights, and the hilarious, incorrigible son of them all, Mark Bowden&rsquo;s Bringing the Heat.&rdquo; &mdash;Michael Bamberger, Sports Illustrated</div>

Bringing the Heat

<div>New York Times bestseller: The true behind-the-scenes story of the manhunt for the 9/11 mastermind is &ldquo;a page-turner&rdquo; (Minneapolis Star-Tribune). From the author of Black Hawk Down and Hue 1968, this is a gripping account of the hunt for Osama bin Laden. With access to key sources, Mark Bowden takes us inside the rooms where decisions were made and on the ground where the action unfolded. After masterminding the attacks of September 11, 2001, Osama bin Laden managed to vanish. Over the next ten years, as Bowden shows, America found that its war with al Qaeda&mdash;a scattered group of individuals who were almost impossible to track&mdash;demanded an innovative approach. Step by step, Bowden describes the development of a new tactical strategy to fight this war&mdash;the fusion of intel from various agencies and on-the-ground special ops. After thousands of special forces missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, the right weapon to go after bin Laden had finally evolved. By spring 2011, intelligence pointed to a compound in Abbottabad; it was estimated that there was a 50/50 chance that Osama was there. Bowden shows how three strategies were mooted: a drone strike, a precision bombing, or an assault by Navy SEALs. In the end, the president had to make the final decision. It was time for the finish. &ldquo;In-depth interviews with Obama and other insiders reveal a White House on edge, facing top-secret options, white-knuckle decisions, and unforeseen obstacles . . . Bowden weaves together accounts from Obama and top decision-makers for the full story behind the daring operation.&rdquo; &mdash;Vanity Fair &ldquo;The most accessible and satisfying book yet written on the climactic event in the United States&rsquo; long war against al Qaeda.&rdquo; &mdash;San Francisco Chronicle</div>

The Finish

<div>&ldquo;A Pulitzer Prize&ndash;winning reporter provides a brilliant account of the harrowing drive into Baghdad by an American armor brigade.&rdquo; &mdash;Seattle Post-Intelligencer Based on reporting that was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Thunder Run chronicles one of the boldest gambles in modern military history: the surprise assault on Baghdad by the Spartan Brigade, the Second Brigade of the Third Infantry Division (Mechanized). Three battalions and fewer than a thousand men launched a violent thrust of tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles into the heart of a city of five million people&mdash;and in three days of bloody combat ended the Iraqi war. More than just a rendering of a single battle, Thunder Run candidly recounts how soldiers respond under fire and stress and how human frailties are magnified in a war zone. The product of over a hundred interviews with commanders and men from the Second Brigade, it is a riveting firsthand account of how a single armored brigade was able to capture an Arab capital defended by one of the world&rsquo;s largest armies. &ldquo;The best account of combat since Black Hawk Down.&rdquo; &mdash;Men&rsquo;s Journal</div>

Thunder Run

<div>The New York Times&ndash;bestselling author of Black Hawk Down delivers a &ldquo;suspenseful and inspiring&rdquo; account of the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979 (The Wall Street Journal). On November 4, 1979, a group of radical Islamist students, inspired by the revolutionary Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini, stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran. They took fifty-two Americans captive, and kept nearly all of them hostage for 444 days. In Guests of the Ayatollah, Mark Bowden tells this sweeping story through the eyes of the hostages, the soldiers in a new special forces unit sent to free them, their radical, na&iuml;ve captors, and the diplomats working to end the crisis. Bowden takes us inside the hostages&rsquo; cells and inside the Oval Office for meetings with President Carter and his exhausted team. We travel to international capitals where shadowy figures held clandestine negotiations, and to the deserts of Iran, where a courageous, desperate attempt to rescue the hostages exploded into tragic failure. Bowden dedicated five years to this research, including numerous trips to Iran and countless interviews with those involved on both sides. Guests of the Ayatollah is a detailed, brilliantly recreated, and suspenseful account of a crisis that gripped and ultimately changed the world. &ldquo;The passions of the moment still reverberate . . . you can feel them on every page.&rdquo; &mdash;Time &ldquo;A complex story full of cruelty, heroism, foolishness and tragic misunderstandings.&rdquo; &mdash;Pittsburgh Post-Gazette &ldquo;Essential reading . . . A.&rdquo; &mdash;Entertainment Weekly</div>

Guests of the Ayatollah

<div>The true story of a cold case, a compulsive liar, and five determined detectives, from the #1 New York Times&ndash;bestselling author and &ldquo;master journalist&rdquo; (The Wall Street Journal). On March 29, 1975, sisters Katherine and Sheila Lyons, ages ten and twelve, vanished from a shopping mall in suburban Washington, DC As shock spread, then grief, a massive police effort found nothing. The investigation was shelved, and the mystery endured. Then, in 2013, a cold case squad detective found something he and a generation of detectives had missed. It pointed them toward a man named Lloyd Welch, then serving time for child molestation in Delaware. The acclaimed author of Black Hawk Down and Hue 1968 had been a cub reporter for a Baltimore newspaper at the time of the original disappearance, and covered the frantic first weeks of the story. In The Last Stone, he returns to write its ending. Over months of intense questioning and extensive investigation of Welch&rsquo;s sprawling, sinister Appalachian clan, five skilled detectives learned to sift truth from determined lies. How do you get a compulsive liar with every reason in the world to lie to tell the truth? The Last Stone recounts a masterpiece of criminal interrogation, and delivers a chilling and unprecedented look inside a disturbing criminal mind. &ldquo;One of our best writers of muscular nonfiction.&rdquo; &mdash;The Denver Post &ldquo;Deeply unsettling . . . Bowden displays his tenacity as a reporter in his meticulous documentation of the case. But in the story of an unimaginably horrific crime, it&rsquo;s the detectives&rsquo; unwavering determination to bring Welch to justice that offers a glimmer of hope on a long, dark journey.&rdquo; &mdash;Time</div>

The Last Stone

<div>From the #1 New York Times&ndash;bestselling author of Black Hawk Down: &ldquo;a first-rate collection&rdquo; of long-form journalism on war, sports, politics, and more (Booklist). Mark Bowden has established himself as one of America&rsquo;s leading journalists and nonfiction writers. The Three Battles of Wanat collects the best of his long-form articles, including pieces from the Atlantic, Vanity Fair, the New Yorker, and the Philadelphia Inquirer. The titular article delves into one of the bloodiest days of the War in Afghanistan and the years-long fallout it generated within the United States military. In &ldquo;The Killing Machines,&rdquo; Bowden examines the strategic, legal, and moral issues surrounding armed drones. And in a brilliant piece on Kim Jong-un called &ldquo;The Bright Sun of Juche,&rdquo; he recalibrates our understanding of the world&rsquo;s youngest and most baffling dictator. Also included are profiles of newspaper scion Arthur Sulzberger; renowned defense attorney and anti-death-penalty activist Judy Clarke; professional gambler Don Johnson, who won six million dollars in a single night playing blackjack; and David Simon, the creator of the legendary HBO series The Wire. &ldquo;Mark Bowden marshals his finest for The Three Battles of Wanat.&rdquo; &mdash;Vanity Fair</div>

The Three Battles of Wanat

<div>The #1 New York Times bestselling &ldquo;master of narrative journalism&rdquo; and author of Black Hawk Down presents a compelling collection of true crime stories (New York Times).Acclaimed investigative reporter Mark Bowden has ferreted out unbelievable-yet-true stories of wrongdoing, murder and mayhem for decades. His illustrious body of work has won him a lifetime achievement award from the International Thriller Writers organization, and a reputation as &ldquo;a Woodward that outdoes even Woodward&rdquo; (Malcom Gladwell, New Yorker).The Case of the Vanishing Blonde collects six of Bowden&rsquo;s most riveting stories&mdash;accounts spanning four decades of fascinating characters and unsettling tales to illustrate all manner of crimes and the ways technology has progressively altered criminal investigation. From a 1983 story of a University of Pennsylvania campus rape that sparked a national debate over the nature of consent, to three cold cases featuring the inimitable Long Island private detective Ken Brennan and a startling investigation into a murderer deep within the LAPD&rsquo;s ranks&mdash;shielded for twenty six years by officers keen to protect one of their own&mdash;these stories are the work of a masterful narrative journalist.</div>

The Case of the Vanishing Blonde

<div>&ldquo;Clears up some common misconceptions of the CIA . . . an insider&rsquo;s perspective on how covert action really works, or fails&rdquo; (Savannah Morning News). Covert action has been used as an instrument of statecraft by America&rsquo;s leaders since its earliest days. Some presidents have used it wisely, contributing to our success and security. Others have used it poorly, not understanding its limitations and weaknesses, with disastrous results. Surrounded by secrecy as it is, it&rsquo;s not surprising that covert action can provoke confusion, ambivalence, and strong feelings among the citizens of a democracy. Executive Secrets shines a light on the development and execution of foreign policy and the role covert action has played&mdash;forging a deeper and more nuanced understanding of both its value and its drawbacks in the ongoing project of keeping the United States safe from its adversaries and respected by its allies. &ldquo;A most informative study of covert action. . . . A valuable work that will be treasured by scholars and professionals in the field. Highly recommended.&rdquo; &mdash;Choice &ldquo;Daugherty has done us all a tremendous service by attempting to rescue the Agency from the myths, both well-meaning and malevolent, that shape our understanding of it. . . . This book ought to dispel some of the fog that obscures our understanding of the C.I.A. and that prompts the gigantic mood swings in our attitude toward intelligence gathering and covert actions.&rdquo; &mdash;Mark Bowden, from the foreword A History Book Club Selection</div>

Executive Secrets

<div>One woman’s moving firsthand account of her year spent teaching in one of Philadelphia’s worst schools. Told with striking humor and honesty, Christina Asquith’s story begins when the School District of Philadelphia, faced with 1,500 teacherless classrooms, instituted a policy of hiring “emergency certified” teachers to fill the void. Asquith, a twenty-five-year-old reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer, joined their untrained ranks. Assigned to a classroom known as “the Badlands,” she was told to “sink or swim.” More challenging than the classroom are the trials she faces outside it, including the antics of an overwhelmed first-year principal, the politics that prevent a million-dollar grant from reaching her students, and the administration’s shocking insistence that teachers maintain the appearance of success in the face of utter defeat, even if it means falsifying test scores. Asquith tells a classic story of succeeding against insurmountable odds. With a foreword by bestselling author Mark Bowden and an introduction by award-winning educator Dr. Harry K. Wong, The Emergency Teacher will inspire every teacher—be they first-timers or experienced professionals—to make a difference. “I loved The Emergency Teacher. . . . Christina Asquith has written a very poignant and important book, which fleshes out the scandal of urban education in America better than anything I have every read.” —Mark Bowden, author of Black Hawk Down</div>

Mark Bowden

Books By Mark Bowden (11 Books)