Ed Ruggero is a fascinating writer who I met and interviewed at Boucheron in late 2019. In his video below, Ed reveals the difference between the service and writing as it relates to him.
Another military man that knew he wanted to write at a young age, Ed started with military nonfiction and moved to fiction. He shares a brief synopsis of two of his books and what he had to take out of the novel.
Ed expresses the dilemma his character works through as he is working a murder investigation where just miles down the road good men are getting killed in battle. He talks about writing while at West Point and how it impacted his writing life. He also shares advice for new authors.
Check out his full-length interview below as well as his Facebook Live video below!
Learn more about Ed
Ed Ruggero has studied, practiced, and taught leadership for more than 25 years, helping organizations develop the kinds of leaders people want to follow.
His client list includes the FBI, the New York City Police Department, CEO Conference Europe, the CIA, the Young Presidents Organization, Forbes, the SAS Institute, Hugo Boss USA, CitiFinancial, and Time, among many others.
He has appeared on CNN, The History Channel, the Discovery Channel, and CNBC and has spoken to audiences around the world on leadership, leader development and ethics. Ed is a senior advisor to McKinsey & Company and has been a panelist for The Washington Post’s On Leadership series. He also has been a guest speaker at Harvard Business School and the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business.
Ed is the author of 11 books including Duty First: West Point and the Making of American Leaders, a study of leader development at the US Military Academy; and Combat Jump: The Young Men Who Led the Assault Into Fortress Europe, July 1943, which became a one-hour docudrama on The History Channel.
Ed is also the co-author of The Leader’s Compass, a fictional story of how one leader developed a personal leadership philosophy. His most recent book is The First Men In: US Paratroopers and the Fight to Save D-Day.
After his graduation from West Point, Ed received his commission in the U.S. Army and served as an infantry officer in a variety of leadership positions, followed by an assignment teaching at West Point. After his service, Ed continued to share his insights about leadership, leading to his career as an author, public speaker, and trainer.
Ed is the founder and principal of The Gettysburg Leadership Experience, The Concord Leadership Experience, The Valley Forge Leadership Experience and the Normandy Leadership Experience, four distinct experiential learning programs in which participants walk the grounds of great military struggles and learn battle-tested leadership lessons that will help them meet today’s business challenges.
About his book
Blame the Dead
The nurses of the US Army’s Field Hospitals, mobile units that operate just behind the battle lines, contend with heat, dirt, short-handed staffs, the threat of German counterattack and an ever-present flood of horribly wounded GIs. At the 11th Field Hospital near Palermo, Sicily in the bloody summer of 1943, nurses also live with the threat of violent assault by one of their own―at least until someone shoots Dr. Myers Stephenson in the head.
Enter Eddie Harkins, a tough former Philadelphia beat cop turned Military Police lieutenant, who is first on the scene. Although he has never been a detective, Harkins soon finds himself the lone investigator, either because the Military Police are under-staffed or because someone in power thinks this rank amateur will never get close to the real killer. When the hospital commander tries to derail Harkins’ investigation by transferring or harassing key witnesses, it becomes clear to Harkins that the unit is rotten to its core, that the nurses are not safe, and that patients who have survived Nazi bullets are still at risk after they arrive at this place that is supposed to save them.
Harkins fights―and worries that he is losing―multiple battles. He is driven to give hope to nurses who just want to do their life-saving work, to right at least a few of the wrongs around him, and to do penance for sins in his own past. The one bright note for Harkins is a rekindled relationship with Kathleen Donnelly, a nurse from Harkins’ old neighborhood; but even that is complicated when Donnelly becomes a victim.
Connect with Ed
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