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Mark Bowden

Born: 1951 in St. Louis, Missouri
Pen Name: None

Connection to Illinois: Mark grew up in Glen Ellyn, Illinois.

Biography: Mark Bowden is a bestselling author, journalist, educator, and film producer. He is the author of ''The Best Game Ever'', ''Bringing the Heat'', ''Killing Pablo, and Guests of the Ayatollah''. His book ''Black Hawk Down; A Story of Modern War'', is an international bestseller, which spent more than a year on The New York Times bestseller list and was a finalist for the National Book Award. It is a story of the bloody 1993 battle American soldiers fought in Mogadishu, Somalia. In 2001, it was made into a feature film directed by Ridley Scott.For 22 years, he wrote a weekly column for ''The Philadelphia Inquirer''. Over the years he has written for ''Vanity Fair'', ''The Atlantic Monthly'', ''The New Yorker'', ''Men's Journal'', ''Sports Illustrated'' and ''Rolling Stone''. He also teaches creative writing and journalism as an adjunct professor at Loyola College of Maryland. Bowden currently resides in Oxford, Pennsylvania.


Awards:
  • Overseas Press Club's Cornelius Ryan Award as the best book of 2001 for ''Killing Pablo'' Finalist, National Book Award in 1999 for ''Black Hawk Down

Primary Literary Genre(s): Non-Fiction

Primary Audience(s): Adult readers

Mark Bowden on WorldCat : http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=mark+bowden


Selected Titles

Black Hawk down :
ISBN: 0871137380 OCLC: 40135273

An operation to abduct a Somali warlord in 1993 Mogadishu leaves 18 Americans dead, 70 wounded and several helicopters destroyed. Filled with imagery--a Somali gunman attacks, riding a cow, a gunwoman fights with a baby on her arm--the book is based on interviews with participants on both sides. The testimony illustrates the military's arrogance and the hate it engendered in the population. By a reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer, author of Bringing the Heat.

  Black Hawk down :
ISBN: 9781442353442 OCLC: 1086307546

An operation to abduct a Somali warlord in 1993 Mogadishu leaves 18 Americans dead, 70 wounded and several helicopters destroyed. Filled with imagery--a Somali gunman attacks, riding a cow, a gunwoman fights with a baby on her arm--the book is based on interviews with participants on both sides. The testimony illustrates the military's arrogance and the hate it engendered in the population. By a reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer, author of Bringing the Heat.

Bringing the heat /
ISBN: 0871137720 OCLC: 42296427

Atlantic Monthly Press, New York : 2000.

Bringing the Heat is the story of one team's season-long campaign for the NFL championship, told through the personal stories of the men on the field and the coaches, managers, and owner on the sidelines. The team is the 1992 Philadelphia Eagles, a group of players assembled in the iconoclastic image of their former head coach Buddy Ryan. They are known throughout the league for their ferocious defense and for the otherworldly talents of their quarterback Randall Cunningham. Award-winning journalist Mark Bowden gets deep inside the world of professional football in a way no writer has ever done before, with an insightful and hilarious portrait of one of the most exciting teams ever to play the game. He spares none of the game's ugliness - the greed, the racism, and the often sadistic violence - while capturing the beauty of athleticism at its highest level, the courage of men who face each play knowing that one bad hit can end a career, and above all the exultant glory of victory that inspires their struggle to be the best.

  Bringing the Heat.
ISBN: 1322357277 OCLC: 897501776

Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 2007.

Doctor dealer
ISBN: 9781555846060 OCLC: 652379201

Grove Press., New York : ©2001.

Doctor dealer /
ISBN: 0802137571 OCLC: 43992564

Grove Press., New York : ©2001.

Finders keepers
ISBN: 1843541106 OCLC: 972691823

Atlantic Books, London : 2002.

"When Joey Coyle found two containers lying in the street ... he thought he had broken his run of bad luck. They had just fallen off the back of an armoured van and contained $1.2 million in cash. Finders Keepers tells the story of what happened to Coyle and his secret cache: how he struggled to keep his find a secret, all the time terrified he was going to be killed by the money's true owners."--Back cover.

Finders keepers :
ISBN: 087113859X OCLC: 49750530

Atlantic Monthly Press, New York : ©2002.

Chronicles the true story of a longshoreman from South Philadelphia who found $1 million lost from a casino and promptly shared it with everyone he knew.

Guests of the Ayatollah :
ISBN: 0871139251 OCLC: 62738726

Atlantic Monthly Press, New York : ©2006.

A chronicle of the Iran hostage crisis, America's first battle with militant Islam. 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 52 Americans hostage, and kept nearly all of them hostage for 444 days. Journalist Bowden tells the story through the eyes of the hostages, the soldiers in a new special forces unit sent to free them, their radical, naïve captors, and the diplomats working to end the crisis. Bowden takes us inside the hostages' 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.--From publisher description.

Guests of the ayatollah :
ISBN: 9781555846084 OCLC: 881685809

A chronicle of the Iran hostage crisis, America's first battle with militant Islam. 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 52 Americans hostage, and kept nearly all of them hostage for 444 days. Journalist Bowden tells the story through the eyes of the hostages, the soldiers sent to free them, their radical captors, and the diplomats working to end the crisis. Bowden takes us inside the hostages' 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.--From publisher description.

Killing Pablo :
ISBN: 0142000957 OCLC: 45086854

Atlantic Monthly Press, New York : ©2001.

"Killing Pablo is the inside story of the brutal rise and violent fall of Colombian cocaine cartel kingpin Pablo Escobar, whose criminal empire held a nation of thirty million hostage - a reign of terror that would end only with his death. In an intense, up-close account, best-selling author and award-winning journalist Mark Bowden exposes the never-before-revealed details of how U.S. operatives covertly led the sixteen-month manhunt." "Drawing on unprecedented access to the soldiers, field agents, and officials involved in the chase, as well as hundreds of pages of top-secret documents and transcripts of Escobar's intercepted phone conversations, Bowden creates a gripping narrative that reads as if it were torn from the pages of a military technothriller. At every phase, he brings to life the men who brought the drug lord down. There is the Colombian president, Cesar Gaviria, afraid for his life and the future of his nation, who is forced to do the unthinkable: allow a foreign military to operate within his country's borders. There is the U.S. ambassador, Morris D. Busby, who brings in the most sophisticated surveillance team in the world, code-named Centra Spike, and the best team of manhunters, the mysterious Delta Force. And there is the leader of the Colombian forces, Colonel Hugo Martinez, an incorruptible man who lives under constant threat during the drug lord's reign - and whose own son plays a critical role on the fateful day when Pablo is finally found."--Jacket.

  Killing Pablo :
ISBN: 9780802127730 OCLC: 999549834

A tour de force of investigative journalism, Killing Pablo is the story of the violent rise and fall of Pablo Escobar, the head of the Colombian Medellin cocaine cartel. Escobar's criminal empire held a nation of thirty million hostage in a reign of terror that would end only with his death. In an intense, up-close account, award-winning journalist Mark Bowden exposes details never before revealed about the U.S.-led covert sixteen-month manhunt. With unprecedented access to important players--including Colombian president Cesar Gaviria and the incorruptible head of the special police unit that pursued Escobar, Colonel Hugo Martinez--as well as top-secret documents and transcripts of Escobar's intercepted phone conversations, Bowden has produced a gripping narrative that is a stark portrayal of rough justice in the real world.--Provided by publisher.

Our finest day :
ISBN: 0811830500 OCLC: 47056395

Chronicle Books ; San Francisco : ©2002.

Road work :
ISBN: 0143036734 OCLC: 65196134

Penguin Books, New York : 2006.

Road work :
ISBN: 9781555846091 OCLC: 881684062

This book offers the best of Bowden's award-winning nonfiction, from his breakout stories for The Philadelphia Inquirer, where he was a reporter for twenty-four years, to his significant pieces in The Atlantic on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. From activists fighting black rhino poachers in Zambia, to interrogation of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, to the world of Saddam Hussein, to the private and public lives of unique, fascinating Americans such as Al Sharpton and Norman Mailer, reporter Bowden is capable of putting us in the heat of a story in a way few others can.--Publisher.

  The best game ever :
ISBN: 0802144128 OCLC: 259266587

Grove Press, New York : ©2009.

Recreates the drama of Johnny Unitas's heroics in the 1958 sudden-death classic between the Baltimore Colts and the New York Giants.

The Best Game Ever :
ISBN: 9780857899118 OCLC: 809768959

Atlantic Books Ltd, New York : 2012.

This is the remarkable story of the 1958 NFL Championship game between the Colts and the Giants - considered by many to be the greatest American football game ever played - from Mark Bowden, bestselling author of Black Hawk Down. On December 28, 1958, the New York Giants and Baltimore Colts met under the lights of Yankee Stadium for the American NFL Championship game. Played in front of sixty-four thousand fans and millions of television viewers around the country, the game would be remembered as the greatest in football history. On the field and roaming the sidelines were sevente.

The finish :
ISBN: 0802120342 OCLC: 795759627

Atlantic Monthly Press : New York : ©2012.

This work is a dramatic account of the hunt for and defeat of Osama bin Laden draws on unprecedented access to primary sources to trace how key decisions were made, revealing events from the perspectives of an adept President Obama and an increasingly despondent bin Laden. After masterminding the attacks of September 11, 2001, Osama bin Laden managed to vanish. Over the next ten years, as the author shows, America found that its war with al Qaeda, a scattered group of individuals who were almost impossible to track, demanded an innovative approach. Step by step, the author describes the development of a new tactical strategy to fight this war, 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. The author 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.

  The finish :
ISBN: 9781611855753 OCLC: 851700186

Worm :
ISBN: 0802119832 OCLC: 701810742

Atlantic Monthly Press, New York : ©2011.

Journalist Mark Bowden delivers a look at the ongoing and largely unreported war taking place literally beneath our fingertips. When the Conficker computer worm was unleashed on the world in November 2008, cybersecurity experts did not know what to make of it. Was it a platform for criminal profit, or a weapon? The worm, exploiting security flaws in Microsoft Windows, grew at an astonishing rate, infecting millions of computers around the world within weeks. Once the worm infiltrated one system it was able to link that system with others to form a single network under illicit outside control, a situation known as a "botnet," soon capable of overpowering any of the vital computer networks that today control banking, telephone service, energy flow, air traffic, health-care information, even the Internet itself. This book reports on the battle between those determined to exploit the Internet and those committed to protect it.--From publisher description.

  Worm :
ISBN: 9781611855845 OCLC: 812073160

Grove ; New York : 2013.

Worm: The First Digital World War tells the story of the Conficker worm, a potentially devastating piece of malware that has baffled experts and infected more than twelve million computers worldwide. When Conficker was unleashed in November 2008, cybersecurity experts did not know what to make of it. Exploiting security flaws in Microsoft Windows, it grew at an astonishingly rapid rate, infecting millions of computers around the world within weeks. Once the worm infiltrated one system it was able to link it with others to form a single network under illicit outside control known as a ?botnet.? This botnet was soon capable of overpowering any of the vital computer networks that control banking, telephones, energy flow, air traffic, health-care information ? even the Internet itself. Was it a platform for criminal profit or a weapon controlled by a foreign power or dissident organization? Surprisingly, the U.S. government was only vaguely aware of the threat that Conficker posed, and the task of mounting resistance to the worm fell to a disparate but gifted group of geeks, Internet entrepreneurs, and computer programmers. But when Conficker's controllers became aware that their creation was encountering resistance, they began refining the worm's code to make it more difficult to trace and more powerful, testing the Cabal lock's unity and resolve. Will the Cabal lock down the worm before it is too late? Game on.

 

 

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