U.S. soldiers who served in overseas conflicts—from World War II, Korea, and Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan—share true stories of the actions that earned them some of America’s most distinguished military medals, up to and including the Medal of Honor. They never acted alone, but always in the spirit of camaraderie, patriotism, and for the good of our beloved country. There has never been a better time for all of us to think about duty, sacrifice, and what it means to be an American hero.

400 Things Cops Know shows police work on the inside, from the viewpoint of the regular cop on the beat - a profession that can range from rewarding to bizarre to terrifying, all within the course of an eight-hour shift. Written by veteran police sergeant Adam Plantinga, 400 Things Cops Know brings the listener into life the way cops experience it - a life of danger, frustration, occasional triumph, and plenty of grindingly hard routine work.

Steve Osborne has seen a thing or two in his 20 years in the NYPD - some harmless things, some definitely not. In "Stakeout" Steve and his partner mistake a Manhattan dentist for an armed robbery suspect and reduce the man down to a puddle of snot and tears when questioning him. In "Mug Shot" the mother of a suspected criminal makes a strange request and provides a sobering reminder of the humanity at stake in his profession.

When Bill Bratton became a Boston street cop after his return from serving in Vietnam, he was dismayed by the corrupt old guard, and it is fair to say the old guard was dismayed by him, too. But his success fighting crime could not be denied. Propelled by extraordinary results, Bratton had a dazzling rise, and ultimately a dazzling career, becoming the most famous police commissioner of modern times. The Profession is the story of that career in full.

Six thousand New Yorkers shot and 2,000 killed each year. This was the way of life in New York City during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Having worked in Southeast Queens during the crack era, George Norris witnessed firsthand the decay brought to the community. NYPD True is told through a series of anecdotes and short stories, ranging from comical to dangerous. This autobiography combines the history of the Southeast Queens crack trade, the NYPD, and war stories from one of the NYPD’s most decorated officers.

He landed his dream job pursuing the guilty, but two decades of horrific violence and a steady stream of death left him scarred...From the streets of South Los Angeles to the elite homicide bureau, former sheriff’s detective Danny R. Smith saw some of LA’s darkest hours: A crack cocaine epidemic, unprecedented gang warfare, a spike in homicides that stunned the nation, the Rodney King riots. In this no-holds-barred memoir, Smith offers a rare, unfiltered view of a career in law enforcement.

More than 175 years of true crimes culled from the city's police blotter, told through an insightful text by two NYPD officers and a NYC crime reporter. From atrocities that occurred before the establishment of New York's police force in 1845 through the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in 2001 to the present day, this audio is an insider's look at more than 80 real-life crimes that shocked the nation, from arson to gangland murders, robberies, serial killers, bombings, and kidnappings.

Joe Kenda investigated 387 murder cases during his 23 years with the Colorado Springs Police Department and solved almost all of them. And he is ready to detail the cases that are too gruesome to air on television, cases that still haunt him, and the few cases where the killer got away. These cases are horrifyingly real, and the detail is so mesmerizing you won't be able to turn it off.

This gripping memoir vividly recounts Al Moreno’s rise as a gifted and fearless Los Angeles police officer, surviving gangs and homicidal situations in urban war zones as he strove to achieve his personal and professional dreams. Packed with unforgettable scenes of both beauty and despair, it culminates in his vocal stand against corruption within the LAPD, and the political retribution that ensued - a dirty internal investigation that unleashed the murderous vendetta of a violent ex-con from the Aryan Brotherhood.

New Jack City meets Serpico in this provocative memoir of a crack dealer-turned-decorated NYPD officer - a timely reflection on the complex relationship between the police and the communities they are meant to protect.

From the streets of Iraq to the mountaintops of Afghanistan and to the third floor of Osama Bin Laden's compound, operator Mark Owen of the U.S. Naval Special Warfare Development Group - commonly known as SEAL Team Six - has been a part of some of the most memorable special operations in history, as well as countless missions that never made headlines. No Easy Day puts listeners alongside Owen and the other handpicked members of the 24-man team as they train for the biggest mission of their lives.

Seen through the eyes of four generations of a firefighter family, Five Floors Up the story of the modern New York City Fire Department. From the days just after the horse-drawn firetruck, to the devastation of the 1970s when the Bronx was Burning, to the unspeakable tragedy of 9/11, to the culture-busting department of today, a Feehan has worn the shoulder patch of the FDNY. The tale shines the spotlight on the career of William M. Feehan.

They were the DeMeo gang - the most deadly hit men in organized crime. Their Mafia higher-ups came to know, use, and ultimately fear them as the Murder Machine. They killed for profit and for pleasure, following cold-blooded plans and wild whims, from the mean streets of New York to the Florida Gold Coast, and from coast to coast. Now complete with personal revelations of one of the key players, this is the savage story that leaves no corpse unturned in its terrifying telling.

Enrique Prado found himself in his first firefight at age seven. The son of a middle-class Cuban family caught in the midst of the Castro Revolution, his family fled their war-torn home for the hope of a better life in America. Fifty years later, the Cuban refugee retired from the Central Intelligence Agency as the CIA equivalent of a two-star general. Black Ops is the story of Ric’s legendary career that spanned two eras, the Cold War and the Age of Terrorism.

Getting shot in the chest as a rookie ATF agent, bartering for machine guns, throttling down the highway at 100 miles per hour, and responding to a full-scale, bloody riot between the Hells Angels and their rivals, the Mongols - these are just a few of the high-adrenaline experiences Jay Dobyns recounts in this action-packed, hard to imagine, but true story of how he infiltrated the legendary Hells Angels.

During the height of the crack epidemic that decimated the streets of D.C., Ruben Castaneda covered the crime beat for the Washington Post. The first in his family to graduate from college, he had landed a job at one of the country’s premier newspapers. But his apparent success masked a devastating secret: he was a crack addict. Even as he covered the drug-fueled violence that was destroying the city, he was prowling S Street, a 24/7 open-air crack market, during his off hours, looking for his next fix.

In The Other Side of the River, his eagerly awaited new book, Kotlowitz takes us to southern Michigan. Here, separated by the St. Joseph River, are two towns, St. Joseph and Benton Harbor. Geographically close, they are worlds apart, a living metaphor for America's racial divisions: St. Joseph is a prosperous lakeshore community and 95 percent white, while Benton Harbor is impoverished and 92 percent black. When the body of a black teenaged boy from Benton Harbor is found in the river, unhealed wounds and suspicions between the two towns' populations surface as well.

Beautiful, bubbly, 20-year-old Kim Antonakos was returning to her New York City apartment after a night of clubbing with a friend. A business major with wild black hair, long polished fingernails, and a new Honda her loving father had bought her, Kim took good care of herself and looked forward to a bright future. But on her way home in the early morning darkness of that Ash Wednesday, Kim was abducted - and her mysterious kidnappers would be the last people to see her alive. Kim's father, wealthy computer executive Tommy Antonakos, launched a widespread search for his daughter.

For 31 years, a monster terrorized the residents of Wichita, Kansas. A bloodthirsty serial killer, self-named "BTK" - for "bind them, torture them, kill them" - he slaughtered men, women, and children alike, eluding the police for decades while bragging of his grisly exploits to the media. The nation was shocked when the fiend who was finally apprehended turned out to be Dennis Rader - a friendly neighbor...a devoted husband...a helpful Boy Scout dad...the respected president of his church. Written by four award-winning crime reporters who covered the story for more than 20 years, Bind, Torture, Kill is the most intimate and complete account of the BTK nightmare

Based on years of research and extraordinary access to former gang members, reporter Jonthan Green creates an epic character-driven narrative, drawing on first-person interviews, police reports, and court transcripts to offer a unique and engrossing work of gritty urban reportage. Magisterial in its scope, Sex Money Murder offers an extraordinary perspective on modern-day America.

In the early 1960s, uncertainty and menace gripped New York, crystallizing in a poisonous divide between a deeply corrupt, cynical, and racist police force, and an African American community buffeted by economic distress, brutality, and narcotics. On August 28, 1963 - the day Martin Luther King Jr. declared "I have a dream" on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial - two young white women were murdered in their Manhattan apartment. Dubbed the Career Girls Murders case, the crime sent ripples of fear throughout the city, as police scrambled fruitlessly for months to find the killer.

Gangster Squad chronicles the true story of the secretive police unit that waged an anything-goes war to drive Mickey Cohen and other hoodlums from Los Angeles after WWII. In 1946, the LAPD launched the Gangster Squad with eight men who met covertly on street corners and slept with Tommy guns under their beds. But for two cops, all that mattered was nailing the strutting gangster Mickey Cohen. Sgt. Jack O’Mara was a square-jawed church usher, Sgt. Jerry Wooters a cynical maverick....

On January 5, 1971, Sonny Liston was found dead in his home - of an apparent heroin overdose. But no one close to Liston believed that his death was accidental. Digging deep into a life that Liston tried hard to hide, Shaun Assael treats the boxer's death as a cold case. The result is a riveting whodunit that evokes a glorious and grimy era of Las Vegas.

From the best-selling author of Public Enemies and The Big Rich, an explosive account of the decade-long battle between the FBI and the homegrown revolutionary movements of the 1970s. The FBI combated these groups and others as nodes in a single revolutionary underground, dedicated to the violent overthrow of the American government. The FBI’s response to the leftist revolutionary counterculture has not been treated kindly by history, and in hindsight many of its efforts seem almost comically ineffectual, if not criminal in themselves.

On April 23, 1967, Prisoner #416J, an inmate at the notorious Missouri State Penitentiary, escaped in a breadbox. Fashioning himself Eric Galt, this nondescript thief and con man - whose real name was James Earl Ray -drifted through the South, into Mexico, and then Los Angeles, where he was galvanized by George Wallace's racist presidential campaign. With relentless storytelling drive, Sides follows Galt and King as they crisscross the country, one stalking the other, until the crushing moment at the Lorraine Motel.

During the Depression, economic anxieties found an outlet in a series of child murders that triggered an irrational nationwide hysteria: pedophiliac psychopaths were overrunning the country. As America was brought to rage and fury by the press and the FBI, lynch mobs took to the streets, reason gave way to doomsday scenarios, and one father was even driven to murder his three daughters to “save them” from a degenerate crime wave. A terrifying cautionary essay, Panic explores the combustible mix of unfounded fears, moral crusades, and the dangers of collective thinking.

The New England Mafia was a hugely powerful organization that survived by using violence to ruthlessly crush anyone that threatened it, or its lucrative gambling, loansharking, bootlegging, and other enterprises. From information based on newly declassified documents and the use of underworld sources, Boston Mob spans the gutters and alleyways of East Boston, Providence, and Charlestown to the halls of Congress in Washington, D.C., and Boston's Beacon Hill. Its players include governors and mayors, and the Mafia Commission of New York City.

Long before the specter of terrorism haunted the public imagination, a serial bomber stalked the streets of 1950s New York. The race to catch him would give birth to a new science called criminal profiling. Grand Central, Penn Station, Radio City Music Hall - for almost two decades, no place was safe from the man who signed his anonymous letters "FP" and left his lethal devices in phone booths, storage lockers, even tucked into the plush seats of movie theaters.

Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Roger "Butch" Karp has been around New York long enough to realize that the judicial system can be dirty and cynical. But he still believes in justice. So when a vicious sociopath tries to dodge a brutal murder charge by convincing the court he is incompetent to stand trial, Karp teams up with firecracker Assistant DA Marlene Ciampi to unleash the full force of their relentless energy, hardboiled wit, and passion for the truth to put the killer away for good. They will accept no lesser plea.

Rene "Boxer" Enriquez grew up on the violent streets of East L.A., where gang fights, robberies, and drive-by shootings were fueled by rage, drugs, and alcohol. When he finally landed in prison - at the age of 19 - Enriquez found an organization that brought him the respect he always wanted: the near-mythic and widely feared Mexican Mafia, La Eme. What the organization saw in Enriquez was a young man who knew no fear and would kill anyone - justifiably or not - in the blink of an eye.