Executive Orders (Jack Ryan) (Mass Market Paperback)

by Tom Clancy (Author) "THE FBI'S EMERGENCY command center on the fifth floor of the Hoover building is an odd-shaped room, roughly triangular and surprisingly small, with room for..." (more)
Key Phrases: virus strands, decoy group, reconnaissance screen, Secret Service, White House, President Ryan (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Tom Clancy goes to the White House in this thriller of political terror and global disaster. The American political situation takes a disturbing turn as the President, Congress, and Supreme Court are obliterated when a Japanese terrorist lands a 747 on the Capitol. Meanwhile the Iranians are unleashing an Ebola virus threat on the country. Jack Ryan, CIA agent, is cast in the middle of this maelstrom. Because of a recent sex scandal, Ryan was appointed vice president, a slot he doesn't hold for long when he lands in the Chief Executive's chair. He goes after the Iranians and then tries to piece together the country and his life the only way he knows how--with a fury that we've grown accustomed to in Clancy's intricate, detailed, and accurate stories of warfare and intrigue. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal
Jack Ryan, Clancy's amazing upwardly mobile series hero, must put together a government from the wreckage left at the end of Debt of Honor (Putnam, 1994). While Jack, who assumed the U.S. presidency after the shocking deaths of the president and many congresspeople, attends to affairs of state, selecting a new Cabinet and arranging for special Congressional elections, enemies far and near continue to create nefarious plots against the United States. Political enemies prove themselves equally relentless, attacking the very legitimacy of Ryan's presidential role. While Clancy is, as always, chillingly up-to-date, he telegraphs too many plotlines here. Worse, Ryan has become something of a whiner, complaining at length about the miseries of living a political life. At almost 900 pages, the book includes too much minutiae and dwells overlong on Ryan's earlier adventures. However, with a two-million-copy first printing, Ryan's presence?at least for now?is assured in most public libraries.?Elsa Pendleton, Boeing Information Services, Inc., Ridgecrest, Cal.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 1376 pages
• Publisher: Berkley; Other Printing edition (August 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0425158632
• ISBN-13: 978-0425158630
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.2 x 2.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (511 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #65,574 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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• This is item 7 in The Jack Ryan Series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 34 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 (TOP 10 REVIEWER)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)

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.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

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

By	Amy C. (MI) - See all my reviews

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.

18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars So life does imitate fiction..., September 13, 2001

By A Customer

In the aftermath of the horrible tragedy that hit the US on September 11th, I keep hearing from everywhere in the world exclamations of the sort "Who would have thought they would strike like this!" and "Nobody could ever imagine what happened".

Well, someone did. The moment I heard the news of the first crash, I thought "this can't be happening, I've read this in a book with Jack Ryan, it's some kind of advertising trick for a movie based on this book". Sadly, it was true. And for this only, the book deserves 5 stars. I bet Mr. Clancy himself is right now staring aghast to the TV screen, seeing that life sometimes does imitate good fiction...

Let us just wish, for the sake of the planet who shares in US's sorrow, that the hard nationalistic, right-windish & purely capitalist outlook presented by Mr. Clancy in the book will not utterly prevail in reality, although I personally do not have very high hopes.