It is not hyperbole to say that Act of Valor is the most unique movie ever made.  In much the same fashion, the novelization of this movie, Tom Clancy Presents: Act of Valor is also a unique novel.  The book was published on January and has enjoyed a steady presence on the New York Times best-seller list, residing in the top-ten for an extended period.  It has also been recognized with the Military Writers of America Book Award in the Thriller/Mystery category. you can visit Amazon.com to pick up your own copy.

While some novelizations bear little resemblance to the movies they purport to ‘novelize,’ due to our close coordination with Act of Valor directors Mike ‘Mouse” McCoy and Scott Waugh, as well as our first-person association with members of the Navy Special Warfare community, Tom Clancy Presents: Act of Valor is truly aligned with the movie Act of Valor and the two are virtually inseparable. This reader/viewer’s reaction is typical:

I was really glad I had read the book before I saw the movie. They did such a good job of pulling things together in the book. I think the movie is even more enjoyable after reading the book. I also liked how the book developed the family.

We believe the saga behind how we came to write the forthcoming Naval Institute book, The Kissing Sailor, is a story unto itself, really a “story within a story” that has enriched the experience of writing the book and also, we believe, has made this a vastly better book than it otherwise might have been.

In much the same way as the principals involved in this most famous photograph – Alfred Eisenstaedt, George Mendonsa, and Greta Zimmer Friedman – were drawn to that location, at that time, by forces in many ways outside control to make that photograph happen, the factors that brought us together to write this book were truly remarkable.

And like the links in a chain, if one of these events did not happen, there would be no book, this story might have remained forever untold, and this historical record would have remained unfinished.  Larry has been the prime mover in making this book happen during this over decade-and-a-half period so we’ll begin in his voice.

When Tom Phillips and I first conceived the book almost six years ago in a chance encounter at the 2003 Naval Helicopter Association Symposium, we had no idea what this journey would be like and no idea how enriched we would be hearing from and reading about the heroes who have risked their lives to rescue their comrades from the clutches of the enemy.

Nor did we have an idea how big the book would be. When we first contracted with Zenith publishers to do this book we all thought 100,000 words sounded like a “good number.” But the more stories we uncovered the more the book grew and to our editor’s and publisher’s great credit they allowed this saga to grow into the substantial book it is while pricing it competitively in a tough book market. You can get your copy of Leave No Man Behind on Amazon.com