It is estimated that every year 400,000 to 500,000 Americans use a firearm to defend themselves from violent attacks. Often lost in the statistics, however, is the dynamic of what happens when ordinary, law-abiding citizens are assaulted. What thoughts and feelings go through their minds as the events unfold? How do they react when suddenly thrust into life-or-death situations?

The Best Defense is a collection of fascinating human interest stories of people who successfully used firearms to defend themselves and others against violent assaults. From Ohio, Florida, and Virginia to...

Informed by thousands of pages of newly released FBI files, The Kidnapping and Murder of Little Skeegie Cash tells the gripping story of the only crime investigated by J. Edgar Hoover himself, the sensational 1938 murder of a five-year-old boy from the Florida Everglades.
In his long and storied career, J. Edgar Hoover investigated only one case personally, the 1938 kidnapping and murder of five-year-old Floridian James Skeegie Cash. What prompted the director himself to fly from Washington, DC, to a rain-drenched hamlet on the edge of the Everglades? Congress had slashed FBI...