Vigilance: My Life Serving America and Protecting Its Empire City

"Powerful ... the longest-serving police commissioner in New York City's history sketches a remarkable arc. This is the inspirational story of a milkman's son who worked as an elevator operator to help pay for his college education and then methodically crafted a 43-year career with the NYPD that eventually included a law degree, a master's from Harvard's Kennedy School, two different tenures running the NYPD and, most significant, a sustained and successful record defending New York from global terrorism in the aftermath of 9/11." --- Washington Post

Ray Kelly grew up on New York City's Upper West Side, a middle-class neighborhood where Irish and Puerto Rican kids played stickball and tussled in the streets. He served as a marine in Vietnam and soared through the NYPD ranks in decades marked by poverty, drugs, civil unrest, and a murder rate that, at its peak, spiked to over two thousand per year. In his first stint as commissioner, Kelly oversaw the police response to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and spearheaded programs that would help usher in the city's historic drop in crime.

Eight years later, in the chaotic wake of the 9/11 attacks, Mayor Michael Bloomberg tapped Kelly to be NYC's top cop once again. Believing that the city could not afford to rely solely on "the feds," Kelly succeeded in transforming the NYPD from a traditional police department into a resource-rich counterterrorism-and-intelligence force.

In this "blunt, proudly unapologetic memoir" (Wall Street Journal), Kelly reveals the inside stories of his life in the hot seat of "the capital of the world"--from the terror plots that nearly brought a city to its knees to his dealings with politicians, including Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama as well as Mayors Rudolph Giuliani, Bloomberg, and Bill DeBlasio.