Don Brown (author)

Donald Mitchell Brown, Jr. (born June 3, 1960) is an American author of thirteen published books, including eleven published novels, and two works of military non-fiction, Call Sign Extortion 17: The Shoot-Down of SEAL Team Six and the national bestseller,The Last Fighter Pilot: The True Story of the Final Combat Mission of World War II. He is perhaps best known for his bestselling novel, Treason released by Zondervan Publishing Company in 2005, and by his non-fiction military expose, Call Sign Extortion 17: The Shoot-Down of SEAL Team Six, released by Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Company in 2015. Treason explored the issues and dangers of radical Islamic infiltration in the US military.Call Sign Extortion 17 is a non-fiction account of the 2011 Chinook shootdown in Afghanistan of U.S.Navy SEAL Team, with Brown contending that the SEAL's deaths were caused, in part, because of "politically-correct" rules of engagement.

Early life and education
Born in Plymouth, North Carolina, United States, Brown is a Washington County, North Carolina native currently living in Charlotte, North Carolina, Brown received his Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and received a Juris Doctor degree from Campbell University's Norman Adrian Wiggins School of Law.

US Navy JAG officer
Brown spent five years in the U.S. Navy as an officer in the Judge Advocate General's Corps (JAG). He continued his studies at the United States Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, earning the Navy's nonresident certificate in International Law. While serving as a JAG officer in the Pentagon in 1992, Brown was published in the US Navy Law Review, drafting a legal position paper instructing United States Military Lawyers on defending against temporary injunctions filed against the military. The published article in the prestigious Naval Law Review would become Brown's very first publication. While serving as a U.S. Navy JAG officer, Brown was appointed Special Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of California.

Navy Justice series
Brown is author of Zondervan's Navy Justice Series: including Treason (2005), Hostage (2005), Defiance (2006), and Black Sea Affair, released in 2008. His fifth novel, Malacca Conspiracy, a novel in which terrorists launch attacks against oil tankers in the Malacca Straights, was released in 2010.

Brown's sixth novel, Thunder in the Morning Calm, a novel that explores the question of whether American servicemen who were listed as MIAs may still be alive in North Korea from the Korean War, was released in the summer of 2011.

Thunder in the Morning Calm was the first novel released in Zondervan's Pacific Rim Series, and Brown has stated in interviews that he penned the novel in part to bring attention to the issue of Americans left behind in North Korean prison camps at the end of the Korean War.

Brown's seventh novel, entitled Fire of the Raging Dragon, a geopolitical action-thriller set in the South China Sea, was released through HarperCollins publishers in November 2012.

Call Sign Extortion 17
On August 6, 2011, three months after members of Navy SEAL Team Six killed Osama Bin Laden, Taliban forces took down a United States helicopter, call sign "Extortion 17." The attack killed the Air National guard crew, along with seven unidentified members of the Afghan military, and seventeen members of Navy SEAL Team Six, warrior brothers from the same Team that had killed Osama Bin Laden just ninety days prior.

In the book, entitled Call Sign Extortion 17: The Shoot-Down of SEAL Team Six, published by Rowman & Littlefield in 2015, Don Brown retells the wartime action, explains the life stories of the service members killed that day, and examines the official military explanation of the incident contained in the infamous Colt Report. Don Brown asserts that the series of events reveal either gross incompetence or a massive cover-up.

The Last Fighter Pilot
On March 17, 2017, Regnery Publishing, an imprint of Salem Media Group announced the release of Brown's new work of non-fiction entitled The Last Fighter Pilot: The True Story of the Final Combat Mission of World War II. The book features the true story of Captain Jerry Yellin, U.S. Army Air Force, who flew the final combat mission of World War II over Japan on August 15, 1945, rom Iwo Jima, and focuses on the last six months of the air war against Japan, flown by American fighter pilots who were stationed on Iwo Jima, who arrived on the island in March 1945, and remained there until the war's end. On July 29, 2017, the New York Post included the book on its "must read" list for books. Brown and Yellin appeared together to kick off the book's release at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library on August 1, 2017. They appeared again together on August 3, 2017, at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda, California to discuss the book and Yellin's experiences in the war.

On August 14, 2017, Publishers Weekly announced that the book had been named to it national bestseller's list for hardcover nonfiction for the week ending August 7, 2017.

On March 23, 2018, Newsmax Media named Brown as among the "25 Best Nonfiction Military Authors" in the United States. On June 11, 2018, the popular magazine and website Townhall named Last Fighter Pilot as one of "10 World War II Books Every American Should Read."

Published works
Navy Justice Series
 * 1) Treason (Zondervan Publishing, 2005)ISBN 0310259339
 * 2) Hostage (Zondervan Publishing, 2006)ISBN 0310259347
 * 3) Defiance (Zondervan Publishing, 2007)ISBN 0310272130
 * 4) Black Sea Affair (Zondervan Publishing, 2007)ISBN 0310272149
 * 5) Malacca Conspiracy (Zondervan Publishing 2010) ISBN 0310272157
 * 6) Destiny (Mountainview Books, LLC, 2014)ISBN 9781941291061 (WWII historical Prequel to series)

Pacific Rim Series
 * 1) Thunder in the Morning Calm (Zondervan Publishing, 2011)ISBN 0310330149
 * 2) Fire of the Raging Dragon (Zondervan Publishing, 2012)ISBN 9780310410447
 * 3) Storming the Black Ice (Harper Collins Publishing, 2014)ISBN 9780310410454

Navy JAG Series Nonfiction
 * 1) Detained (Harper Collins Publishing, 2015)ISBN 9780310338055
 * 2) Code 13 (Zondervan Publishing, 2016)ISBN 0310338077
 * 1) Call Sign Extortion 17: The Shoot-Down of SEAL Team Six (Rowman & Littlefield Publishing, through Lyons Press - 2015) ISBN 1493007467
 * 2) The Last Fighter Pilot: The True Story of the Final Combat Mission of World War II (Salem Media Group, through Regnery Publishing - 2017) ISBN 1621575063

US Navy Publications
 * 1) ''Temporary Injunctions Aimed at the Military: A Rapid Response Plan for Government Lawyers, by Lieutenant Donald M. Brown, Jr. JAGC, USNR, 40 Naval L. Rev. 157 (1992)

Legal career
Don Brown is also an attorney licensed in North and South Carolina. He is the owner of Brown & Associates, PLLC, a law firm located in Charlotte, NC, where he practices law in the areas of Civil Litigation, Criminal Defense, Family Law, and Estate Planning.