Michael A. Sheehan's new book gets crazy-good praise from Mark Bowden, Lawrence Wright, Peter Bergen, Richard Clarke, Richard Holbrooke, Madeleine Albright, John Lehman, and others.

Written by a man who is arguably the country’s most authoritative voice on counterterrorism, Crush the Cell demolishes, with simple logic, the edifice of false “terror punditry” that has been laid, brick by brick, since 9/11. A veteran of special ops, international diplomacy, and bruising clashes with federal law enforcement agencies, Michael Sheehan delivers in this book a two-part message: First, that we’ve wasted–and are continuing to waste–billions of dollars on the wrong protective measures, and second, that knowing the bad guys’ next move is paramount.

Somewhere in America, Sheehan maintains, are a number of terrorist cells, their members’ heads filled with schemes of mayhem and destruction. Motivated not, as some believe, by feelings of disenfranchisement, disdain for freedom, or economic envy but by a compelling ideological hatred, these individuals plot not just terror but paralyzing terror–the kind that can shut down a country.