Executive Orders [Hardcover]

Tom Clancy (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons (2002)
• ASIN: B000TMFYNM
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (532 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,068,202 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Tom Clancy is America's, and the world's, favorite international thriller author. Starting with THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER, all thirteen of his previous books have hit #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. His books, THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER, PATRIOT GAMES, CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER and THE SUM OF ALL FEARS have been made into major motion pictures. He lives in Maryland where he is a co-owner of the Baltimore Orioles.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

50 of 57 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Reconsidering Tom Clancy as the major prophet of our time, September 22, 2001

By 

Lawrance M. Bernabo (The Zenith City, Duluth, Minnesota) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Executive Orders (Jack Ryan) (Mass Market Paperback)

At the end of "Debt of Honor" a jet airplane slams into a Joint Session of Congress, pretty much wiping out the American government and suddenly putting Jack Ryan into the Presidency. While Clancy's book was at the top of the Best Seller list someone crashed a small plane into the White House, yet I heard nothing on the news about how life was imitating art. Now, of course, this is headline news and Clancy's books are suddenly being hailed as dire prophecies that are suddenly coming true. In "Executive Action" as Islamic leader assassinates the President of Iraq, forges Iran and Iraq into the United Islamic Republic, attacks the United States with biological weapons, and invades Saudi Arabia to grab the oil fields. Suddenly Tom Clancy has become the prophet of the moment as his fiction became fact with the terrorist attacks of September 11th. Of course, Clancy has not been alone telling such tales, but the focus is certainly on his writings at this pivotal moment in history.

A few have suggested that Clancy was actually providing a blueprint for the terrorists and I seem to remember that there had never been a skyjacking until Robert Serling wrote about it in a novel. But writers just look at the world around them and find creative opportunities, which is certainly no different from what terrorists do in planning operations. However, the reason I feel compelled to reread and review "Executive Orders" is because I think that there are some important things that Clancy has to say about the moment that goes beyond terrorist attacks. First, as Jack Ryan repeatedly points out in the novel, the actions of terrorists for are fundamentalist Muslims do not reflect on the vast majority of the followers of Islam around the world. A war on terrorism is not a war on Islam, no matter what the terrorists claim, and no matter what ignorant and bigoted jerks in this country might want to believe. Second, another Jack Ryan mantra, that human agents are invaluable in trying to gather intelligence on terrorist organizations. Finding terrorists leaders is going to require human agents on the ground and not spy satellites or unmanned drones. Third, secrets are important for the government/military to respond effectively to terrorist attacks. We have the right to know, but the first thing enshrined in the Jefferson's trilogy is "life" and not freedom of the press. Besides, Congress provides oversight in such matters so the intrusive snooping of the press is unwarranted. A corollary of this, as Jack Ryan finds out repeatedly in the novel, is that you cannot trust the press to do the right thing. This particular point was made more strongly in "Debt of Honor," where news networks had to be convinced that reporting certain facts the government was trying to keep secret would result in the deaths of American military personnel (and that this was a bad thing).

"Executive Orders" is a story well told, and what is important about it today is not just what it says about what might happen in the days to come, but what it says about us as Americans. Clancy's books touch on all aspects other the current situation and not just the acts of terrorists. Reading the Jack Ryan novels should do more than engender the fear that there will be a biological attack as in "Executive Orders" or "Rainbow Six" or a nuclear device as in "The Sum Of All Fears" and "The Bear and the Dragon." The bottom line here is that when you read any of Tom Clancy's novels, do not throw out his emphasis on what is good with your fascination with what is bad.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars President Ryan has as much to learn as Clancy has to teach, November 23, 2001

By 

Erin O'Brien (Toronto, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Executive Orders (Jack Ryan) (Mass Market Paperback)

Tom Clancy's longtime hero, former CIA analyst Jack Ryan, has managed to assume the Presidency, Gerald Ford-style, without ever having been elected on a presidential ticket.

Unlike Ford, however, Ryan had never been elected to any public office at all. Asked by President Durling to serve as Vice President, after the previous Vice President is forced to resign in the wake of a sex scandal, Ryan reluctantly agrees to take on a largely ceremonial office. The catch for the non-politician Ryan, however, is that the Vice-Presidency is only a heartbeat away from the most burdensome job in the world, and one which Ryan shivers at the thought of undertaking.

Then the incredible happens, when a grief-striken Japanese pilot who lost family in a brief Japanese-American shooting war, mans a jumbo jet during Ryan's swearing-in ceremony and crash lands into the Capitol, thereby all but obliterating government. The President, First Lady, the entire Supreme Court, nearly all the Cabinet and most Senators and members of Congress are killed in a few calamitous moments.

This leaves Ryan, who survived by a sheer fluke, to assume an office which he frankly dreads approaching. A complete political outsider, Ryan has an excellent working knowledge of the government, but close to zero political instincts. A populist and technophile of the sort both idolized and unelected by America, Ryan must bumble through his grief and shock at the horror which has befallen his nation and attempt to lead it. His hostility toward any form of ideology that appears other than starkly pragmatic, however, is ultimately disappointing. In the guise of non-partisan vigor, Clancy has Ryan deliver a series of startlingly conservative speeches praising a flat tax and denouncing abortion rights.

If Ryan's syrupy claims to integrity are occassionally enough to set one's teeth on edge, Clancy establishes a magnificent character in "India", the Prime Minister of the world's largest democracy. Referring to her only by the name of the country she represents, Clancy cleverly harkens back to the medieval language of kings, who refer to one another by the name of their countries. India is a nearly Picassoan study in minimalism. Only a few lines here and there richly summon up the mental image of the face of Benazir Bhutto masking the mind of Indira Gandhi. India's supernaturally beautiful English conveys all at once the history of her nation, her class origins and educational background, her exquisite mendacity and diplomatic sophistication.

One masterpiece is a conversation between India and Ryan in which he attempt to secure her promise of safe passage of American vessels through the Indian ocean. India effortlessly evades Ryan's direct request a number of ways, each time protesting offense and hurt feelings on behalf of her nation. While India is written as a villain in Clancy's novel, conspiring against America, her delicious sophistication elevates her far above the supposedly well-intentioned lummox that is America. India's protests on behalf of her "sovereign nation", as Ryan attempts to shove her military around, will resonate deeply amongst Clancy's international audience, as he is surely aware.

In the meantime, America's vulnerability is a huge source of inspiration to any number of enemies, both foreign and domestic. Ryan's forte, and Clancy's as well, is in the field of international relations, and an array of hostile nations (India, China, Iran and Iraq) plan intricate attacks on the American homeland and its new President.

Clancy has a speechwriter inform Jack Ryan that his use of language, while correct and to the point, is far from poetic. Clearly, the same can be said of Tom Clancy. But what Clancy lacks in artful turns of phrase, he makes up for in scholarship. None of the attacks dreamed up by foreign powers against America are, in themselves, totally unbelieveable: it is only their sheer number and simulteneity that gives "Executive Orders" a far-fetched quality.

Tom Clancy's immense learning about weapons systems, military manoeuvers, Pentagon and CIA operations, is put to superb use. Even an outbreak of the Ebola virus in Zaire, which is quickly capitalized upon by the new United Islamic Republic (composed of former enemies Iran and Iraq), is described with striking and quite remarkable clinical accuracy. The governmental institutions he describes are entirely real. Clancy's gift is for taking the world of politics as he expertly knows it to be, and rearranging a few pieces on the chessboard to suggest fictional events evolving from familiar institutions.

A large amount of the pleasure derived from a Clancy novel comes from simply being able to follow it. The acronyms are endless, yet largely accurate and non-fictional. Clancy is the ultimate man's man, sharing his war stories in warmly confidential tones, allowing the reader the great vicarious pleasure of merely comprehending: testing each piece of data and finding most to be accurate and real.

While many readers will note a kind of "jump the shark" quality to Ryan's extraordinary assumption of the Presidency---for where else had he to go in Clancy's imaginary career trajectory?---the book has an indisputably educational quality for students of geopolitics. World leaders use subjective impressions gleaned at diplomatic receptions to decide upon military gambits. Everyone in politics and in the military has an agenda, noble or not, and all leaders use a range of discursive strategies to communicate with the public, the international community, their cabinets, and with other leaders. None of these 'voices' is entirely sincere or truthful, and some are not a bit of either.

Clancy will establish in his readers the important instinct toward looking for the ever-present subtext behind every public speech and pronoucement, and for this reason alone, at least one or two of his novels should be attempted by any serious student of politics.

19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Wow., September 20, 2001

By 

Amy C. (MI) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Executive Orders (Jack Ryan) (Mass Market Paperback)

I think that this is seriously one of the best books that I've ever read. The scary part is that this book starts with a plane crashing into the Capitol building, and I began to read this book on Monday, September 10th, the day before the planes crashed into the WTC and the Pentagon. That was truly bizarre. I think this book is a good read, although it did make me kind of scared to wake up in the morning, hoping that the book was not coming true.