Tough Streets, Rough Skies, and Sunday Sidelines

Larry A. Wansley, Carlton Stowers

• Publisher: TCU Press
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN: 9780875659022
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies

Reading Tough Streets, Rough Skies, and Sunday Sidelines, readers may need to be reminded that it is a true story. From Larry Wansley’s days as a young police detective, dodging bullets while attempting to calm the Compton (California) race riots to his leadership of a staff that identified the 9/11 hijackers, this globally respected security figure has written an action-packed recollection of his foot-to-the-pedal career. 

As one of the FBI's first long-term undercover agents, Wansley aided with the search for kidnapped Patty Hearst and once organized a sting operation that resulted in the recovery of $42 million in stolen property. He used so many aliases that at times he had trouble remembering who he was supposed to be. While serving as Global Security Director for American Airlines, he coordinated the numbing turmoil that came in the wake of the 9/11 tragedy and walked among those searching Ground Zero. He dealt with drug cartels, arms smugglers, a shoe bomb, and more than a few Mafia wiseguys.

During his tenure as Director of Security and Counseling Services for the Dallas Cowboys, he shielded legendary Cowboys coach Tom Landry from a potential sniper hidden in the Monday Night Football crowd and spent a summer serving as pop singer Whitney Houston's bodyguard during her European tour.

Written with two-time Edgar Award winner Carlton Stowers, Wansley’s autobiography runs the emotional gamut from terrifying to heartbreaking to laugh-out-loud funny with the dangerous and high drama situations that are often only found in fiction. 

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Contents
• In Remembrance
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword
• Note to the Reader
• Preface
• Part One
• Part Two
• About the Authors
• Back Cover