Michael Lee Lanning, graduated from Texas A&M and served more than twenty years in the U.S. Army, including in Vietnam, where he commanded an infantry platoon, a recon platoon, and a rifle company. He went on to serve as public-affairs officer for Norman Schwarzkopf. He has written twenty-four nonfiction books, with more than 1.1 million copies in print in fifteen countries and twelve languages, and has appeared on NPR, CBS, and the History Channel. Lanning lives in Lampasas, Texas, just west of Fort Hood.