Stalling for Time: My Life as an FBI Hostage Negotiator

The author has had a very, very impressive career helping to champion the art of hostage negotiation within the FBI.

It goes into detail on both Ruby Ridge and Waco, which has coincidentally been mentioned in a couple of other books I have recently read (like Educated) so it's been good to get that additional context on American history.

Obviously Gary Noesner's done a lot of great things and has saved a lot of people but I felt at times he was patting himself on the back a bit too much. There was a lot of “I'm right and you're wrong” which I wanted to take seriously but at the same time felt like I had to take with a grain of salt due to the heavy bias throughout the book.

Pretty good book. The cases were interesting and the author developed some of the most important guidelines to approaching violent people in siege situations. Unfortunately, the middle of the book is spent almost entirely bemoaning the incompetence of a group of influential but ill-advised “rambos”, leading, tragically and predictably, to loss of lives. A little less repetition on that point might have sufficed.