I grew up with books, particularly Landmark history books written for young readers. I loved my English classes and devoured the historical novels written by Leon Uris and James Mitchener. I was captivated by the idea of Man at his Brink, and military books such as The Red Badge of Courage that dramatized man’s life-and-death struggle on the battlefield. The early James Bond novels and The Godfather grabbed me, and the intrigue / spy world opened up to me with Forsyth’s The Day of the Jackal, LeCarre’s Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy, and Follet’s Eye of the Needle.