Stephen Coonts (born July 19, 1946) is an American thriller and suspense novelist.
Coonts grew up in Buckhannon, West Virginia, a small coal-mining town and earned an B.A. degree in political science at West Virginia University in 1968. He entered the Navy the following year and flew an A-6 Intruder medium attack plane during the Vietnam War, where he served on two combat cruises aboard the USS Enterprise (CVN-65). He accumulated 1600 hours in the A-6 Intruder and earned a number of Navy commendations, including the Distinguished Flying Cross. After the war he served as a flight instructor on A-6 aircraft for two years, then did a tour as an assistant catapult and arresting gear officer aboard USS Nimitz (CVN-68). His navigator-bombardier wa
A Florida native, Jim Stavridis attended the US Naval Academy at Annapolis, and spent 37 years in the Navy, rising to the rank of 4-star Admiral. Among his many commands were four years as the 16th Supreme Allied Commander at NATO, where he oversaw operations in Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, the Balkans, and counter piracy off the coast of Africa. He also commanded US Southern Command in Miami, charged with military operations through Latin America for nearly three years. He was the longest serving Combatant Commander in recent US history. Following his military career, he served for five years as the 12th Dean of The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.
In the course of his career in the Navy, he served as senior military
David Dean Barrett is a military historian, specializing in World War II. He has published work in WWII Quarterly Magazine, U.S. Military History Review, and Global War Studies. He is the Consulting/Producer for Lou Reda Productions' two-hour documentary, tentatively titled "The Real Mighty Eighth," which will air as a primetime global event on National Geographic in late 2020. David has been a frequent guest speaker for more than a decade on the use of the atomic bomb in the final days of WWII and the end of the Pacific War.
Mr. Barrett began his career as a professional historian late in life, after spending nearly thirty years in Information Technology. David was awarded his Master's Degree in History from the University of Colorado, Denv
