Jim DeFelice
Author Jim DeFelice has written over fifty fiction and non-fiction books, including sixteen that have made the New York Times best-seller lists.
Among his recent nonfiction works are EVERY MAN A HERO, a memoir based on the World War II service of Combat Medic Ray Lambert. The book won the 2019 Army Historical Foundation Distinguished Writing Award. WHATEVER IT TOOK (2020) with Henry Langrehr, focused on the experienced of a D-Day paratrooper and showed the dark sides of the war as well as its triumphs.
An international blockbuster with over 5 million sales, AMERICAN SNIPER (2012) detailed the life and service of Navy SEAL Chris Kyle. Made into a record-breaking blockbuster movie of the same name (2015) starring Bradley Cooper and directed by Clint Eastwood, Sniper was followed by two more NY Times best-selling non-fiction works, CODE NAME JOHNNY WALKER (2014). A limited television series movie based on AMERICAN WIFE (2015) with Taya Kyle is under development in Hollywood with Jim as a consulting producer.
AMERICAN SPIRIT (2019), also with Taya Kyle, focused attention on the contributions of “regular people” as well as celebrities to their communities across America.
FIGHTING BLIND(St. Martin’s Press) was published in November 2016 and is the first-person story of U.S. Army Special Forces Major Ivan Castro. Severely injured and permanently blinded in Iraq, Castro became one of the world’s first blind marathon runners, and has competed in over fifty, including Boston (three times) and New York.
Jim’s biography of OMAR BRADLEY: GENERAL AT WAR (2011), the first critical biography of the important World War II general, was chosen to launch Regnery Publishing’s prestigious new line of history works in 2011. The book followed the publication by Berkley/Penguin of RANGERS AT DIEPPE(2008), a groundbreaking account of the Rangers’ and the U.S. Army’s first ground action in Europe during World War II.
Jim’s narrative history of the Pony Express titled WEST LIKE LIGHTNING (2018) was hailed as a “ground-breaking” work of popular history by critics and honored by the Western Writers Association as a Spur Finalist, marking it as one of the best works of the year. Besides his own fiction, Jim has collaborated with a number of other writers to produce long-running series, including SEAL Team 6 Commander and “Rogue Warrior”Richard Marcinko, Tom Clancy, and Dale Brown. His work in video games includes Afro Samurai: Revenge of Kuma, and Ace Combat: Assault Horizon, the number one selling air-combat franchise in the world.
