1989: Clear and Present Danger by Tom Clancy

The Author:

Tom Clancy (1947-2013) was born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland.  He attended Loyola College.  While there, Clancy joined the ROTC, but was unable to serve due to poor eyesight.  He graduated in 1969, and married Wanda Thomas King, with whom he had four children.  Throughout the 1970s, he worked as an insurance agent, eventually buying a small firm from his wife's grandfather.  A military history buff, Clancy began writing a novel, The Hunt for Red October, which was published by the Naval Institute Press in 1984, to unexpected commercial success.  His second novel, Red Storm Rising (1986), and his third novel, Patriot Games (1987) were the second-bestselling novels of their years of release.  His fourth and fifth novels, The Cardinal of the Kremlin and Clear and Present Danger, respectively, took the number one spot.   

Since then, Clancy has written or co-written fourteen novels, ten of which have ended up on the annual top ten list.  He has also written or co-written thirteen books of non-fiction.  As well as creating series bearing his name, written by other authors. 

Clancy and his wife separated in 1996, divorcing in 1999.  Later in 1999, he married Alexandra Marie Llewellyn, whit whom he had one daughter. Clancy died at Johns Hopkins in 2013.

The Book:

Length: 656 pages
Subject/Genre: International Drug Trade/ Military Thriller

Clear and Present Danger details a covert war between the U.S. government and the Colombian drug cartels, who have enlisted the services of former Cuban spy Felix Cortez.  The plan is put into motion by the president amid reelection concerns and with pressure from the new national security advisor, James Cutter.  Jack Ryan is promoted to Deputy Director (Intelligence) after his superior/mentor is diagnosed with terminal cancer.  Much of the novel is split between the details of the campaign against the cartels, and Ryan's attempts to uncover evidence thereof.  

The campaign itself mostly follows Clancy staple John Clark, and a young light infantry soldier, Domingo Chavez.  Domingo is part of an elite crew air-lifted in to the Colombian mountains, at first only identifying drug planes (which are later shot down by the American fighter jets), but then moves to destroying drug production sites and everyone in them, and even later, full-on missile strikes against cartel strongholds.    

More so than The Cardinal of the Kremlin, Clear and Present Danger gets bogged down by its own attention to detail.  This can be annoying, but generally only lasts for short periods at a time.  It also gets didactic at points.  The novel ends with a character basically asking Jack Ryan to tell him the moral of the story.  As a military/political thriller, though, it's a fun read.

After the fall of Berlin Wall in 1989, and the close of the Cold War in general, a new enemy was needed for a Clancy novel.  Rather than imagine a shadowy conspiracy a la Ludlum, Clancy looked to the U.S.  Clear and Present Danger was written near the end of what's become known as the crack epidemic, the period from 1984 until the early 90s

On the one hand, Clancy does a good job of explaining the difficulty in launching full scale military action against the cartels, on the other, he ignores U.S. involvement in the international drug trade.  The Kerry Committee Report, published in 1989, found strong evidence of U.S. intelligence agencies providing money to drug traffickers. In another case of historical irony, similar to that of the funding of the Mujaheddin in The Cardinal of the Kremlin, the US Army School of the Americas (now known as WHINSEC) trained two of the founders of the notorious Los Zetas cartel.  As with the previous Clancy novel on the list, he tends here to portray the U.S. government as being exclusively composed of well-intentioned individuals, who occasionally act in error.

In 1994, Clear and Present Danger became the third Clancy novel to receive a film adaptation.

 Harrison Ford plays Jack Ryan (reprising his role from 1992's Patriot Games.  Ryan was played by Alec Baldwin in 1990's The Hunt for Red October.  In 2002's The Sum of All Fears, he would be played by Ben Affleck, and is played by Chris Pine in 2014's Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit).  John Clark is played by Willem Dafoe (and played by Liev Schreiber in The Sum of All Fears).  The film was directed by Phillip Noyce, best known for his action movies (most recently Salt (2010) and The Giver (which, I know, wasn't action-packed in the books, and probably shouldn't have been an action-ish movie at all).   The film was a major financial success.

Overall, Clear and Present Danger, like The Cardinal of the Kremlin, is a book for people who are already fans of the action/military thriller genre.  It's got its flaws, but remains an entertaining read.

Bestsellers of 1989:

1. Clear and Present Danger by Tom Clancy

2. The Dark Half by Stephen King

3. Daddy by Danielle Steel

4. Star by Danielle Steel

5. Caribbean by James Michener

6. The Satanic Verse by Salman Rushdie

7. The Russia House by John le Carré

8. The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett

9. California Gold by John Jakes

10. While My Pretty One Sleeps by Mary Higgins Clark

Also Published in 1989:

A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters by Julian Barnes

Geek Love by Katharine Dunn

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

Hyperion by Dan Simmons

The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

Sources:

Clancy, Tom. Clear and Present Danger. New York: Putnam, 1989. Print.

"Tom Clancy." Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2014. Literature Resource
      Center. Web. 

1988: The Cardinal of the Kremlin by Tom Clancy

The Author:

Tom Clancy (1947-2013) was born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland.  He attended Loyola College.  While there, Clancy joined the ROTC, but was unable to serve due to poor eyesight.  He graduated in 1969, and married Wanda Thomas King, with whom he had four children.  Throughout the 1970s, he worked as an insurance agent, eventually buying a small firm from his wife's grandfather.  A military history buff, Clancy began writing a novel, The Hunt for Red October, which was published by the Naval Institute Press in 1984, to unexpected commercial success.  His second novel, Red Storm Rising (1986), and his third novel, Patriot Games (1987) were the second-bestselling novels of their years of release.  His fourth and fifth novels, The Cardinal of the Kremlin and Clear and Present Danger, respectively, took the number one spot.  

Since then, Clancy has written or co-written fourteen novels, ten of which have ended up on the annual top ten list.  He has also written or co-written thirteen books of non-fiction.  As well as creating series bearing his name, written by other authors.

Clancy and his wife separated in 1996, divorcing in 1999.  Later in 1999, he married Alexandra Marie Llewellyn, whit whom he had one daughter. Clancy died at Johns Hopkins in 2013.

The Book:

1st Edition Cover

Length: 543 pages
Subject/Genre: Cold War Espionage/Military Thriller

The Cardinal of the Kremlin takes place during the Cold War, as the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. both try to develop laser-based missile defense systems, the success of which would change the balance of power in regards nuclear or ICBM warfare.  Meanwhile, the USSR has invaded Afghanistan, and the CIA is funding a group of Mujaheddin, led by a former teacher known as The Archer.   The CIA supplies weapons in return for information taken from Soviet planes and camps.  

The main body of the narrative details the cat and mouse game between Soviet and U.S. intelligence, especially as regards Colonel Filitov, a high ranking Soviet war hero who has been feeding information to the U.S. for decades under the codename Cardinal (hence the title). Along with lengthy descriptions of the nature and consequence of the defense projects, Clancy spends a lot of time detailing methods of spycraft and political maneuvering.  

In the U.S., the intelligence community, including Clancy's recurring characters Jack Ryan and Mr. Clark, is set into action when Filitov's identity is compromised.  And on the other side of the iron curtain, Gerasimov, the head of the KGB with dreams of ruling the USSR, is trying to consolidate power.

The technology and the procedures of the nations' military and intelligence agencies take priority in the novel, the characters mainly only important in regards to the type of people they represent, and how those people fit into the aforementioned agencies.  The descriptions of military equipment or spycraft techniques are often digressive, but not too much so.  Clancy's understanding of how much information is too much is better than Michener's or Auel's.  Whereas the latter two would (and have) spent pages discussing the nature of the dirt the characters are standing on, Clancy might write just a paragraph, and only then to discuss how it affects the tactical strategy of the terrain.   When reading Michener or Auel, it always seems like what they really wanted to do was write a textbook, and while Clancy does occasionally get like this, it happens far less often.

Overall, though, The Cardinal of the Kremlin is a lot like a high-tech chess match.  Each side is trying to think several moves ahead, but plans constantly shift with the circumstances.  Like a chess match, there are dull moments, the players stopping to fortify their positions, or regroup, and some quite exciting moments when pieces get taken off the board in rapid succession.  But, since I've already set up a chess metaphor and might as well drive it into the ground, unlike chess,  not everything is black and white.

Clancy's novel is a product not only of the cold war, but of the last years of the cold war.  A shift from offensive to defensive warfare, the decreasing power of the KGB, and a power struggle between Western friendly and nationalist government leaders are all important trends throughout the book.  Like le Carré's The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, the Soviet officials aren't depicted in the typical red menace villain formula.  Some are ideologues, some are honestly interested in improving the lives of the soviet people, some are power hungry.  Unlike le Carré, Clancy doesn't really give the same treatment to the U.S. intelligence officials, the worst of whom are depicted as misinformed but with good intentions.  (If I had to choose one, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is the superior novel.)

Clancy's novel is interesting for another, unintentional reason: historical irony.  Typically, historical irony refers is a specific type of situational irony, that specifically requires the passage of time.  For example, the U.S. supplying the Mujaheddin with weapons to fight our mutual enemy, only for those weapons to be used against the U.S.  Although a form of situational irony, I would argue that it also functions as a form of dramatic irony (the former indicates only that the situation is ironic, whereas the latter refers to how one reads a text with knowledge the characters don't have).  Clancy portrays the Mujaheddin as noble freedom fighters protecting their country from enemy invaders.  That the Mujaheddin developed into the Taliban is something that Clancy couldn't have known, and unintentionally provides the counter-balance between U.S. and Soviet tactics in the close days of the Cold War.

The Cardinal of the Kremlin's legacy is less prestigious than other Clancy novels.  No movie was made, but it is the first book on my list to get a video game adaptation.  It was a resource management game released for the Amiga in 1990.

Title Screen

The Cardinal of the Kremlin was an entertaining read.  If you're interested in military/spy thrillers, well, you've probably already read a bunch of Clancy, but if you haven't give this one a look.  If it's not a genre you enjoy, you probably won't like this one (although I do recommend The Spy Who Came in from the Cold).

Bestsellers of 1988:

1. The Cardinal of the Kremlin by Tom Clancy

2. The Sands of Time by Sidney Sheldon

3. Zoya by Danielle Steele

4. The Icarus Agenda by Robert Ludlum

5. Alaska by James Michener

6. Till We Meet Again by Judith Krantz

7. The Queen of the Damned by Anne Rice

8. To Be the Best by Barbara Taylor Bradford

9. One by Richard Bach

10. Mitla Pass by Leon Uris

Also Published in 1988:

The Hellbound Heart by Clive Barker

The Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo 

Matilda by Roald Dahl

Libra by Don DeLillo

Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco

The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris

A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking

Wittgenstein's Mistress by David Markson

The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie

Sources:

Clancy, Tom. The Cardinal of the Kremlin. New York: Putnam, 1988. Print.

"The Cardinal of the Kremlin." VideoGameGeek. BoardGameGeek, LLC. Web.

"Tom Clancy." Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2014. Literature Resource 
     Center. Web. 

1956: Don't Go Near the Water by William Brinkley

The Author:

           William Brinkley (1917-1993) was born in Custer City, Oklahoma.  Brinkley graduated from the University of Oklahoma in 1940 after which he worked for a couple years as a reporter for the Washington Post before becoming a commissioned officer in the US Navy, a position in which he dealt mostly with public relations.  After the war, Brinkley published his debut novel, Quicksand (1948) before going back to work at the Washington Post.  In 1951, Brinkley started working at Life Magazine, a position he retained until 1958.  In 1955 he published his only non-fiction work, a biography of a Slovakian nun titled The Deliverance of Sister Cecelia. 

            His best-selling work, Don’t Go Near the Water, was published in 1956.  He published six more novels between 1961 and his final novel, The Last Ship, in 1988.  In 1971, Brinkley moved to McAllen, Texas, where, in 1993, after a long bout of depression, he died from an overdose of barbiturates.

The Book:

Length: 373 Pages

Subject/Genre: Military/Humor

       Don't Go Near the Water focuses on a group of public relations officers stationed on the tropical Pacific island of Tulura during World War Two.  Structurally, the novel is episodic, each chapter dealing with a different problem and placing emphasis on different characters.  The 'episodes' range from the problems of an enlisted man dating a nurse (i.e., an officer), to blackmailing a self-absorbed war correspondent into building a schoolhouse for the island's children.  

         The novel's main character is Ensign Max Siegel, a burly Harvard grad who is the only one of the PR group to have learned to speak Tuluran.  The first episode of the novel deals with a very serious problem:  Edgar Rice Burroughs is coming to Tulura (NOTE: Burroughs actually volunteered to be, and served as, a war correspondent in WWII, despite being in his sixties at the time) and the PR people want to take some photos of Burroughs with the native Tulurans.  Unfortunately, the natives don't look native enough, so it's up to Siegel to convince them to dress like savages.  

     Reading Don't Go Near the Water is like watching an old sitcom that has aged remarkably well.  The humor is often predictable but generally sincere and the second to last chapter, focusing on everyone's reaction to the use of the nuclear bomb, is strangely touching, and perhaps presages Brinkley's post-nuclear-apocalyptic novel The Last Ship.  The humor is largely based on the absurdity of the PR division, the self-importance of its commanding officers, and the idiosyncrasies of the war correspondents.  From the novel:   

                                       

                 "[Siegel] foresaw the day when there would be one Public Relations officer 

                  for each combat man in the Navy, and the fleet commanded by the president 

                  of the Associated Press, with a six-star rank of Admiral-Admiral, who would 

                  decide on operations solely on the basis of their news value, with transmission 

                  ships occupied by nothing but correspondents, with no operation dispatches 

                  being permitted until the fleet was wiped out to provide a good news item." (p. 76)

In 1956, Don't Go Near the Water sold 165,000 copies, not including its book club sales.  The film rights were secured quickly, and a film adaptation starring Glenn Ford and Eva Gabor was released in 1957.

Don't Go Near the Water was reprinted in 2005, and TNT is apparently planning to release a made for TV version of Brinkley's The Last Ship next year.  

       I really like Don't Go Near the Water.  If you like humor, especially the type you'd find in good sitcoms, you should definitely give it a read.    

Bestsellers of 1956:

1. Don't Go Near the Water by William Brinkley

2. The Last Hurrah by Edwin O'Connor

3. Peyton Place  by Grace Metalious

4. Auntie Mame by Patrick Dennis

5. Eloise by Kay Thompson

6. Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor

7. A Certain Smile  by François Sagan

8. The Tribe That Lost Its Head by Nicholas Monsarrat

9. The Mandarins by Simone de Beauvoir 

10. Boon Island by Kenneth Roberts

Also published 1956:

James Baldwin - Giovanni's Room

Albert Camus - The Fall

Allen Ginsburg - Howl and Other Poems

Eugene O'Neill - Long Day's Journey into Night

Sources:

Brinkley, William. Don't Go Near the Water. New York: Random House, 1956. Print.

Burke, James Henry and Hackett, Alice Payne. 80 Years of Best Sellers: 1895-1975. New 

            York: R. R. Bowker Company, 1977. Print.