Foreign Enemies And Traitors [Perfect Paperback]

Matthew Bracken (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 6, 2009

"Foreign Enemies And Traitors" is set in the near future in an America that is creeping steadily toward socialist tyranny, in the midst of the second Great Depression. A year after earthquakes have devastated the Tennessee Valley, survivors are resisting demands by the federal government to relocate to FEMA refugee centers. United States National Guard units have proven ineffective at forcing these survivors out of the earthquake-damaged regions, due to their reluctance to employ deadly force against fellow Americans. As a result, the president has invited so-called foreign peacekeeping battalions to do the work of forcibly relocating the holdouts. The novel follows a small group of determined survivors in their resistance to the foreign enemies, and the American traitors who are their allies.

Editorial Reviews

Review

The Enemies List: review of Foreign Enemies And Traitors by David Codrea GUNS Magazine, June 2010 I have a rule I tell every author who sends me a book to review: I only write good ones. If I don't care for it, I'll decline to say anything. I figure it's not my place to crush someone else's labor of love. So I ventured into Matthew Bracken's latest offering, Foreign Enemies and Traitors, with a bit of trepidation. After all, I'd written reviews in this magazine for the two prior volumes in his trilogy, Enemies Foreign and Domestic (Nov. 2005) and Domestic Enemies: The Reconquista (Feb. 2007). I called the former a thrilling first novel, one that engages, grips and doesn't let up, and the latter a brave book [that] nails the probability of near-future disintegration of the Republic with terrifying prescience. And then there was Matt's handwritten note to me on the cover page of his latest: This is my best effort, it's all I can give. I hope it makes a difference. What if I didn't care for it? What if I was let down because it couldn't match the expectations the first two books instilled in me? No worries. This is the best of the bunch, and that's saying a lot. As always, Bracken writes a page-turner involving main characters you care about deeply or hate to their evil cores. This third volume is mainly Phil Carson's story, the Viet Nam veteran we met as a major supporting character in the first two novels. A hurricane has shipwrecked him in Mississippi while smuggling cargo from Central America into a vastly different country than the one he was born into. It's the Greater Depression. Following massive earthquakes, the Deep South is under the military rule of a general who is an authority unto himself. The federal government is hopelessly corrupt, presided over by a charismatic subversive who has placed fellow Marxist travelers in key positions of great power. The Northeast and Midwest reflect his socialist centralized federal control. Tennessee has been in rebellion, and the president, anxious to subdue the insurrection so he can turn his attention to the resource-rich Free States of the Northwest, has brought in foreign mercenaries. But it's not my place to tell you Matt's story. I want you to watch it unfold for yourself. It reads like a movie. Bracken paints scenes with a master's touch, so you can see where his characters are. You can feel their emotions. And when it comes to technical details, explanations of weapons systems, military protocols, intelligence capabilities--nobody does it better. Still, it's not an easy book. The details require us to pay attention. And there's much ugliness: the degradation of some, the racism, the evil (and tell me Bob Bullard, the soulless, ambitious Director of Rural Pacification doesn't qualify as a great villain!). If you haven't read the first two novels, don't let that stop you from getting this one. It reads well as a standalone book, and I can't think of a better introduction and inducement to discover the earlier works. You've given enough, Mr. Bracken. Your best is superb. Well done, sir. --GUNS Magazine, June 2010

About the Author

Matt Bracken was born in 1957 in Baltimore Maryland, and graduated from the University of Virginia in 1979 with a degree in Russian Studies. He was commissioned as a Naval officer, and served on east coast SEAL teams during the 1980s as a Special Warfare officer, including leading a SEAL detachment to Beruit Lebanon in 1983. He is also the author of "Enemies Foreign And Domestic" and "Domestic Enemies: The Reconquista."

Product Details

• Perfect Paperback: 576 pages
• Publisher: Steelcutter Publishing; First edition (May 6, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0972831037
• ISBN-13: 978-0972831031
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (63 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #59,659 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Matthew J. Bracken was born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1957, and graduated from the University of Virginia and UDT/SEAL Training in 1979. Besides writing novels, he has also built a steel sailboat and has made several major ocean voyages. He lives in Florida with his wife and two teenage children. Matt is currently working on a new novel that will be a departure from the Enemies Trilogy.

A hundred pages of each novel may be read on his website at www.EnemiesForeignAndDomestic.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

54 of 61 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Treason from the Left!, May 23, 2009

By 

Nelson Hultberg (Dallas, TX United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Foreign Enemies And Traitors (Perfect Paperback)

Will America survive the upcoming years as a "sovereign nation," or will the hideous dream of one-world government be our fate? This is the paramount issue facing America in the 21st century; it transcends all other concerns.

In Foreign Enemies and Traitors, Matt Bracken has created a brilliant Atlas Shrugged like narrative of how this issue might play out amidst the economic meltdown now consuming us. Conservatives and libertarians throughout America will take to this tale like the colonists took to Tom Paine in 1776.

As the story begins, the Second Great Depression (what Bracken has dubbed the "Greater Depression") rages throughout America. The country is splitting up geographically with several secessionist movements in response to a radical leftist administration recently ushered into power in Washington. But the country has also been struck with a horrific earthquake that levels Memphis, TN and the surrounding Mississippi River valley. This causes massive panic made all the worse by hordes of refugees, pillaging war lords, and the inevitable reversion to barbarism that such societal collapses bring.

In response to the chaos resulting from the economic depression, the secessionist movements and the earthquake, America's President has invited "foreign troops" under the aegis of U.N. control into the country to try and suppress the rebels and establish a powerful centralized government again under Washington's grip.

Mr. Bracken thrusts into this mix a cast of heroic characters with names like Boone Vikersun and Phil Carson (think Daniel and Kit if your historical memory is sluggish) -- to fight a guerrilla war in, of all places, the state of Tennessee against the overweening powers of a grotesquely corrupt Washington. Pure gold! Boone and Carson in the 21st century fighting for the Republic.

The female lead, Jenny McClure, is a winsome, feisty teenager -- just waking up to the cruelty of an adult world turned upside down -- and about as courageous as humans get. Upon reading of her trials and how she measures up to them, the emotion felt is twofold: immense awe and the hope that if life's tribulations ever presented such dilemmas to ourselves, our reactions would be equally as spirited in manner.

The book's galvanic plot is tension-packed and unfolds with startling surprises right up to the end. Numerous scenes occur throughout in which courage, patriotism, and honor come into play in such emotionally riveting ways as to bring a physical tingling sensation to the back of one's neck.

At stake is a clash of governing philosophies between the socialist left and the free-enterprise right, between the "new Constitution" illegally rammed through in a panicky Constitutional Convention and the "old Constitution" which spawned America from the beginning and was the law of the land for 125 years until collectivists degraded it into a "living document" to be reinterpreted with Mad Hatter's logic.

Overlying all this is the defense backbone of the nation -- our military forces -- and what side they must choose in this epic clash between the treasonous forces of the new-world order in Washington and the loyalist forces of freedom amidst the patriotic states. The former trumpets the "new" Constitution and its implementation, while the latter fights for the "old" Constitution and its restoration. Which Constitution do we uphold? The military's leading generals must decide which to defend, and it makes for a crackerjack story that will keep you reading late into the night as Bracken's trio of Americanist heroes -- Boone, Carson, and Jenny -- are drawn into one escapade after another to defend the rebellious states and attempt to take the country back from a quisling President and his perverse entourage of socialist apparatchiks.

Bracken writes vividly and integrates all the subtle nuances of today's leftist media / academy brainwash into the dialogue. His grasp of their pernicious semantic twistings is impeccable. Moreover the didacticism of the book is written into the scenes perfectly. No long-winded lectures to take away from the pace of the story; but numerous pithy and powerful expressions of what freedom, the Constitution, and America are all about come forth from his characters.

Foreign Enemies and Traitors could be one of those "turning point" books of American history. I only hope that someone like Glenn Beck or Patrick Buchanan will read it. It is a book that would explode on the charts if they started promoting it. Of course, the political left will come down on this tome like a blitzkrieg to try and kill the message of its talented author if it looks like widespread popularity is coming his way. But that goes with the territory when one writes of patriotism and honor in an era that worships acquiescence and popularity.

This is a book that all freedom-loving Americans will enjoy immensely -- not just because it is a cogent political accounting of what America's problems are and what the military's proper response to the constitutional implications must be, but also because it is a splendid, scintillating story. The author has combined the two areas of "message" and "plot" together in a most persuasive and entertaining manner. Move over Tom Clancy.

39 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best Book Of The Year!, May 18, 2009

By 

Lynn G. (Middleburg, FL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Foreign Enemies And Traitors (Perfect Paperback)

Matthew Bracken has exceeded my expectations with Foreign Enemies and Traitors! I just finished the third book of the trilogy and am amazed that he could write a third book that beats his first two! If you only read one book this year - this has to be the one you read! Matthew Bracken has provided another outstanding story that seems more real than fiction. It's a page-turner you can't put down! Wake up America and read what our future could hold for all of us! I can't compliment Bracken enough on the trilogy and this book makes me look forward to reading everything he writes! Bracken's books are in the "must read" category and I highly recommend them. Foreign Enemies and Traitors should make the Best Seller List!

27 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars FEAT, June 9, 2009

By 

Ruth E. Hiland - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Foreign Enemies And Traitors (Perfect Paperback)

Matt Bracken has done it again. Foreign Enemies and Traitors is the third in his 'Enemies' trilogy.

First was Enemies Foreign and Domestic. Shootings at a stadium result in a ban of all semiauto rifles. This leads to resistance and the story of several who participate to stop and expose the tyranny'

Those efforts are only partly successful. The situation gets worse.

In Domestic Enemies the Reconquista, we see the Southwest carved up by communist hispanics as the US continues to deteriorate. It is an intricate story of how people suffer much in order to be free.

Foreign Enemies and Traitors takes place in the aftermath of two catastrophic earthquakes in the Midwest. There have been further splits amongst the States. Foreign troops are enlisted to 'pacify' a rebellious West Tennessee. The rot is almost complete for the Republic and the country is on its way to take its place in a one world government.

Again, recurring and new characters resist. They are people of honor who willingly fight to begin restoring the Constitutional Republic.

They are folks with their own faults. These are true human beings.

Villains are shall I say, quite reminiscent of current real life traitors. The events are fictitious. But, they are plausible and illustrate what is happening re the destruction of our Freedom.

Socialism/communism is rotting the fabric that made us great. Traitors who have no regard for our Freedom have labored long to see to our demise and induction into worldwide socialism.

Matt has given us three great reads that are thought provoking and challenging.

'It is meant to leave people thinking, "What would I do? When do I have to make a decision?" Otherwise, our country is doomed to drift into permanent, hard core socialism.' So says Matt himself. I completely agree.

Also, he paints a picture of the cost of fighting for Freedom. There are no knights on white horses. There are no complete tidy answers. There is a lot of struggle, death and privation. War is indeed hell.

There are people who are committed to real justice, to righting wrongs, often in very graphic ways.

This challenges us in the real world to think about what we must do and the price. Are we willing to do the work so that one day the blood sweat tears and dirt are worth it?

Though Foreign Enemies and Traitors wraps up Matt's trilogy, it by no means gives a tidy end to what happens in his cautionary tale.

There will be much work ahead of us. And we may never be the same. But I believe we can again be free.

I'm willing to do my part to Restore the Republic. I hope those who read these books come to that same conclusion.

Then get the word out. Help spread hope and inspiration that we don't crumble in defeat. May we have a new birth of Freedom!

Thanks Matt. All the best for the future!

Michael Hiland