I am honored beyond words to be a part of the Simon & Schuster family and to speak at the Simon & Schuster 100^th Anniversary Event in New York with such luminaries as Bob Woodward, Doris Kearns Goodwin, John Irving, Ruth Ware, Walter Isaacson, Judy Blume, Stephen King, Colm Tóibín, Lisa Jewell, William Kent Krueger, Angela Duckworth, Fredrik Backman, Anthony Doerr, Jennifer Egan, Jerry Seinfeld, Zakiya Dalila Harris, Brad Thor, Susan Orlean, Judith Viorst, and Jeannette Walls.

On January 3, 1924, Richard L. Simon and Max Lincoln Schuster affixed their sign – SIMON & SCHUSTER, PUBLISHERS – to an office door at 37 West Fifty-Seventh Street in New York City. Their mission: publish great books.

“Time machines exist. They exist in stories. All that is necessary to open the portal is to turn to the first page. You don’t even need to buy a book. You can take a trip to your local library, browse the shelves, select your title, and settle in to be transported into history.

The first stories told around fires passed on lessons of battle and of the hunt in an effort to keep the family, the tribe, the community, and even the species alive. We are all here today because our ancestors listened to those stories, heeded their lessons, and in turn, passed them on to the next generation. We all share this connection to the past. We are all here today because of the power of story.

The last century has been no different, though the technology has certainly changed. Richard Connell’s “The Most Dangerous Game,” first published 100 years ago in 1924, takes us back to the early decades of the 20th century. Geoffrey Household’s “Rogue Male” delivers us to the eve of World War II. These stories are fascinating for how they dealt or didn’t with the war that engulfed the planet.

Ian Fleming brings us to international locations of the 1950s and early ’60s through the lens of the British position in the post-war world. Jean Le Carré takes us on missions of the early Cold War in all its moral ambiguity. David Morrell transports us back to the early 1970s to an America divided over Vietnam in “First Blood.” We continue into the 1980s with Rambo’s creator as he brings together the most compelling elements of US and UK espionage thrillers in his “Brotherhood of the Rose” trilogy.

Starting in the 1970s, Nelson DeMille, Robert Ludlum, and Frederick Forsyth begin to immerse us in the worlds of crime and spycraft. This same time machine takes us beneath the waves with the young Jack Ryan in Tom Clancy’s “The Hunt for Red October” and a showdown with the Soviet Navy in what was to be their final decade. We meet Pulitzer Prize winner Stephen Hunter’s Bob Lee Swagger in the ’90s and see the world through the eyes of a Vietnam veteran, 20 years removed from the conflict in Southeast Asia.

The novels of my youth transported me back to World War II, the Cold War, Vietnam, and others were contemporary thrillers that now facilitate my time travel back to the 1980s and ’90s. It was Simon & Schuster, Atria, and Emily Bestler Books’ author, the late great Vince Flynn, who gave us the legendary Mitch Rapp in thrillers that I would read on my way to Iraq and Afghanistan. His books bridge the divide between the pre-and post-9/11 worlds, ultimately giving us a hero for the 21st century. A hero who resonated not just with Americans, but readers around the world.

Vince’s books are now a time machine, bringing readers and listeners back to the years of the global war on terror. A post-war on terror phase in the thriller genre began following the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. This era is still being defined, but future readers and listeners will one day turn to the thrillers of today to be transported back to this time.

Thank you to Simon and Schuster for a century of connecting readers and now listeners with authors and their work and for being the conduit through which the authors of today build the time machines of tomorrow. Congratulations on 100 years of publishing. Thank you for welcoming me into the fold and allowing me to be a part of it. I am humbled and I can’t wait for what’s ahead. Thank you.”