Clear and Present Danger: Book Review
The book ‘Clear and Present Danger’ is a novel written by Tom Clancy in 1989 and published in 1990 by Thorndike-Magna Publisher (Beetz 824). This book has one thousand one hundred and forty pages, with the latest edition published by Berkley Books having six hundred and eighty eight pages. This novel like most of Clancy’s writings relies on a basic formula of good versus evil where the United States is represented as a nation that is on the right side (Sharp 398). In this novel, a United States ambassador and the visiting chief of the Federal Investigation Bureau are assassinated by Colombian drug lords. This assassination prompts a mystifying underground response and a series of investigations of the actions by the United States and the Colombian drug lords by Jack Ryan, the main character in the book (Clancy 524). This paper is review of this literary work by Tom Clancy.
The Author
Thomas Lanier Clancy was born on April 1947 at Baltimore, Maryland and grew up in a middle class Irish Catholic dominated neighborhood (Sharp 382). In his childhood years, Clancy was a voracious reader especially of science fiction and military adventure stories. After graduating from Loyola High School in Towson, Maryland in 1965, he joined Loyola College in Baltimore to study English Literature. He had hopes of becoming a writer, and he occasionally submitted short stories for publication, but they were never accepted.
His college years took place during the height of the Vietnam War, which he personally supported. Subsequently, he joined the United States Army Reserve Officer Training Corps, but unfortunately his military career was short-lived due to his poor eyesight. After graduating in 1969 with a b...
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... the need of government to act whenever an issue threatens national security. Mechanisms should be put in place to ascertain the extent of the threat, and the acceptable measures of dealing with it.
Works Cited
Beetz, Kirk. Beacham’s Encyclopedia of Popular Fiction, Volume 13. Osprey, FLA: Beacham Publishing, 1996. Print.
Clancy, Tom. Clear and Present Danger. New York, NY: Thorndike-Magna, 1990. Print.
Garson, Helen. Tom Clancy: A Critical Companion. San Francisco, CA: Greenwood Press, 1996. Print.
Hamilton, Geoff, and Brian Jones. Encyclopedia of American Popular Fiction. New York, NY: Infobase Publishing, 2009. Print.
Pohlman, Lee. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes: Free Speech and the Living constitution. New York, NY: New York University Press, 1993. Print.
Sharp, Michael. Popular Contemporary Writers. Tarrytown: Marshall Cavendish, 2005. Print.
Guilford, CT: Dushkin/ McGraw-Hill, 1997. Chiatkin, Anton. A. Treason in America. Washington DC: Executive Intelligence. Review, a review of the book, Divine, Breen, Frederickson, and Williams. America Past and Present.
Tim O’Brien was born in Austin, Minnesota and completed his bachelor’s degree in Political Science at Macalester College. In 1968, when he graduated, O’Brien was drafted into the United States Army and was sent to Vietnam in 1969. He served from 1969 to 1970 in 3rd Platoon, Company A, 5th Battalion, 46th Infantry Regiment. He was part of the division that had a unit involved in My Lai Massacre, and his unit was sent to contain the situation afterwards. After he returned home, he attended Harvard University for graduate school and then interned for the Washington Post.
It seemed as if he had found his place while in ROTC. The discipline along with the structure, it was as if he had found people who were like him. He had fallen in love with the Army and after forty years of service, he retired. He was ask, what would have you done if you had not come in the Army? I’d probably be a bus driver, I don't know.
Because his father was moving around cause of military dues he attended Central High School in Cleveland, Ohio. He graduated from there in 1929. He first went to college at Western Reserve University for one year then moved to go to the University of Chicago. But he still wanted to be a military pilot so he contacted the only black serving in the congress and he got him a spot at West Point in New York. But at the school he faced challenges no one in at the school would talk to him, sit with him and eat, and no one was his roommate. But he graduated 35th in his class of 278. After that he got second lieutenant he became one of only 2 every black officers in the army the other one being his father.
As we move steadfast into the twenty-first century we are confronted with more complex and compromising issues affecting the intricately connected global system. New forms of aggression and threat are the faces that greet policy-makers as they spend countless hours configuring ways to counter future attacks such as terrorism or massive drug trafficking within and across national borders. Instead of submitting ourselves to the tyranny of chance, which cruelly deals out futures blighted with catastrophes that can remain vivid in our memories, President George W. Bush has issued a mandate in an attempt to regain control over future acts of aggression such as terrorism in the United State; he issued the Executive Order of Homeland Security as that initial step.
After high school he attended Pennsylvania State College for Pre-law from 1896 to 1898, then later attended Columbia Law School from 1898-1901. After graduating he became a lawyer at the age of 22. He lived during an interesting time he missed both world wars, the first one because of his wealth, and the second one because he was too old. He would have been eligible to take part in the first world war, just barely but would have been eligible.
After the war he returned to Smith College before moving to Cornell University in 1949. He retired in 1972 from Cornell University.
There are several significant, as well as less significant, themes that are put forth by the author. Some themes that are not as meticulously elaborated on, but still contribute to the book, include the idea that war can corrupt the government and it’s actions, police brutality was part of the norm of the 1960s, and the word “power” had more than one meaning during the civil rights era. All these themes are important to take into consideration upon reading this book; however th...
a normal life for all of Clancy's childhood. After graduating from high school in Baltimore, Clancy attended Loyola College in his hometown, where he majored in English. Tom graduated from college in 1969 and soon thereafter married Wanda Thomas. Wanda was an insurance agency manager and Tom joined in the business. Although Clancy wanted a career in the military, he was denied due to very poor eyesight. He became an insurance broker in the city of Baltimore and then in Hartford, Connecticut. In 1973 Tom joined the O.F. Bowen Agency, and later became part owner in 1980. Throughout his life Clancy maintained an interest in the armed forces.
After the war, he returned to Tuskegee and completed his degree in Commercial Industries and Tailoring and graduated Cum ...
Escaping Peril a fictional book in the Wings of Fire series, by Tui T. Sutherland, was prodigious, a truly marvelous augment to the other sequels.
Military school opened the door to many opportunities for Wes as he joined the army, met influential people, and was accepted into Johns Hopkins University, despite his low
When choosing an author for my paper, I chose international suspense because I am very interested in foreign relations and the technology of modern day war. I have read stories by Edgar Allen Poe, with suspense and vivid imagery, which reminded me of Clancy's work. I decided to choose Tom Clancy because of his talent to weave such realistic tales of international suspense. Clancy creates the scenes in his books with such detail, it makes the reader feel like he/she is there. My first choice for this paper was Dr. Suess, but because he has passed away, I had to keep looking. I knew very little information about my author before writing this paper. I had read two of his books, but had no real knowledge of his personal life or past history. Tom Clancy, a successful American author of international suspense, has captured his love of military and technology and profitably employed it in the books he writes.
Woodward, Bob. Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA 1981-1987. Simon And Schuster. New York -- London -- Toronto -- Sydney -- Tokyo. 1987
extent in the United States Army. He time in the military was unsuccessful. Because of his