Gary Slaughter

The Man Who Saved the World

The man who saved the world, is how some people have described Gary Slaughter. Gary is a fellow author and during the Cuban Missile Crisis he was serving as a naval officer on the destroyer, USS Cony facing off a nuclear armed Soviet submarine. The events that had the world teetering on the brink of nuclear war are told in Slaughter’s book, Sea Stories: A Memoir of a Naval Officer. Under tremendous pressure, with time running out, horror was avoided—but only because of the decisions made by those on the front lines.

Slaughter is a participant along with Svetlana Savranskaya, and Modupe Akinola in a Choiceology podcast titled Under Pressure-- How can we make important decisions when time is scarce, and the stakes are high? Click on Choiceology to access the podcast.

Works by Slaughter include:

  • Sea Stories: A Memoir of a Naval Office

  • WW II POWs in America and Abroad: Astounding Facts about the Imprisonment of Military and Civilians During the War

  • The Journey of an Inquiring Mind: From Scholar, Naval Officer, and Entrepreneur to Novelist

  • The four book Series Cottonwood— Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall

  • And the 1979 work— Data processing training handbook: Cost justification, measurement, and evaluation (PBI series for the computer and data processing)

Gary also wrote a review of my book, The Language of Excellence for the literary magazine, 2nd & Church, In commenting on the book, he said:

“In my judgment, The Language of Excellence by Tom Collins is among the best five books I have ever read on this subject.

Tom Collins’ The Language of Excellence just may be the only guidebook to personal and business excellence you will ever need to read. Borrowing from a lifetime of achievement, Collins lays out clear guidelines that can help you find your own success while enabling you to offer others the same excellence that has marked both his life and career. A must-read for achievers.”


 All of my books are available from Barnes & Noble and Books-A-Million as well as your favorite neighborhood bookstore. Ebook and print editions are also available on Amazon, Google Play, Apple iBooks,  Smashwords, and other online bookstores. Audio editions are available on Amazon, iTunes and directly from Audible.com. The latest book, Exploring Asheville, was the winner of the Independent Press Award for its literary category.

What people are saying about The Language of Excellence.

I'm on the road, in Sacramento right now. But, I wanted to take time to share with readers what people are saying about The Language of Excellence. 

Gary Slaughter, author of Cottonwood Novels said "I can't tell you how many leadership and management books I have read in the past past 50 years or so, but yours fall in the top 5." He also said its like the "Joy of Cooking" that in the 50's and 60's became a standard in every home--The Language of Excellence is a cookbook for achieving success in business.

Robert Hicks, New Your Times best selling author of The Widow of the South and  A Separate Country said, "Tom Collins' The Language of Excellence just may be the only guide book to personal and business excellence you will ever need to read. Borrowing from a lifetime of achievement, Collins lays out clear guidelines that can help you find your own success while enabling you to offer others the same 'excellence' that has marked both his life and career. A must-read for achievers."

"Author Tom Collins is both left-brained and right-brained. His creative side has given birth to the Mark Rollins mystery series which features the author’s love of wine and mystery, set in and around the Nashville area. His logical side calls upon his vast business experience to offer the wisdom of his years in his latest book, “The Language of Excellence.”-- Donna O'Neil, Author and former Williamson Herald Managing Editor

# # #

Tom Collins’ books include his book on leadership, The Language of Excellence, and his mystery novels including Mark Rollins’ New CareerMark Rollins and the RainmakerMark Rollins and the Puppeteer and the newest mystery, The Claret Murders. For signed copies, go to the author’s online  store. unsigned print and ebook editions are available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other online bookstores. For an audio editon of The Claret Murders go tohttp://amzn.com/B00IV5ZJEI. The ebook edition for the iPad is available through Apple iTunes’ iBookstore.