874 pages of pure drivel. 2 good story possibilities involving rebuilding a government and biological warfare using Ebola and Clancy managed to make it boring. Can't wait for him to write a tight well-written 200 page novel. Not!

Actually listened to the audio book before getting to the book itself. Excellent Tom Clancy tale. ( )

Events laid out by famous author Tom Clancy in Executive Orders could indeed have been the work of a journalist. That's the feeling you get from reading the words of this man who was undoubtedly one of the sharpest literary wits of his time.

Star character, President Jack Ryan, had not aspired to become leader of the United States. He was propelled into that position by a tragic suicide attack on the U.S. Capitol. The jumbo jet crash killed not only President Roger Durling, but also almost anyone else who was of any major significance in government. Ryan immediately assumed the leadership role of a nation in crisis.

One of many twists and turns in the book relates to an outbreak of Ebola. It didn't come naturally. The death-dealing outbreak of disease was unleashed in major cities across the nation. The dreaded virus was spread on the orders of the leader of the recently formed United Islamic Republic. Iran and Iraq had become united as a single country. It wasn't long after the first cases of Ebola in the United States started being reported before experts correctly surmised that the outbreak was the result of an enemy attack.

The First Lady is employed at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, where she is an eye surgeon. She comes close to the Ebola story in that capacity. She is whisked off to her daily work by helicopter.

There are three young children in the White House, one of whom is a preschooler. You're kept on pins and needles when this youngest child of President Ryan is targeted by terrorists who swoop in on the Giant Steps Day Care Center. Heroic efforts are taken to protect the child. There is much gunfire. Things become very bloody.

War erupts in the Persian Gulf region near the end of this long yarn. President Ryan is personally moved by news of the first deaths of American personnel. The new president is faced with the unenviable personal task of writing letters to survivors of soldiers killed in this outbreak of hostilities. This is a war that has no match to previous ones that have occurred throughout history. Very precise enemy targeting is made possible by global positioning system technology. Individual war battles are very short in duration. Because of the fuel and ammunition carried by modern military tanks, the targeted vehicles can burn for days on end.

Dated references that give clue to the time frame in which the novel was written. One of the people called upon by President Ryan when he appears before the press corps is simply referred to as Helen, an obvious allusion to the late Helen Thomas, the long-time White House journalist who died in 2013. The hardcover edition of the book appeared in 1996. There are mentions of the Rolodex, which was an office tool used to keep phone numbers on file for quick and easy reference. I understand that some people still use this device. Close office friends of mine are certainly not among them. The book is continues to be available at Amazon, and I suspect that this fascinating work by the brilliant Tom Clancy will continue to be on the market for a very long time to come. It's hard to believe that he's been gone for almost a decade. ( )

Given my current country of residence's complete incompetence and the news that my native land is trying to be the world leader in everything including incompetence, I needed to escape to a world where real problems are met and dealt with by leaders with integrity and the skills to think through issues rationally with a view towards the long-term.

In other words, a fantasy.

I have always been and will always be, an unapologetic fan of Clancy's works - the ones he wrote himself - so falling back into Jack Ryan's world was, if not a comfort, at least familiar and comfortable. It's been 2 decades since I last read this, and it generally holds up perfectly. The first half of the book is a bit overly idealistic, but what struck me about it is that Tom Clancy showed a startling degree of prescience not just in some of his major plot lines, but in his story arc.

Executive Orders is the story about a non-politician ending up as President of the United States, vowing to eject the political riff-raff out of Washington, and appointing business sector executives to the cabinet to get things done.

Sound familiar? Of course, Jack Ryan wasn't a paranoid narcissist and he was highly educated and qualified regardless of his lack of political savvy. He also had more integrity than your garden variety black widow spider. But Clancy imagined the world we live in today twenty years ago, with startling accuracy, albeit in the most idealistic light.

His idealism extended to America's response (and only America because his plot extended no further) to the epidemic that grips the country in Executive Orders; his national lockdown works flawlessly; almost nobody ignores the mandate, there are no rushes on grocery stores, and there's no general panic. Of course, I'd like to think that any country's population would react to an epidemic of ebola exponentially better than they're reacting (or not) to the corona pandemic, so maybe my faith in humanity hasn't been completely snuffed out.

Either way, it was good to revisit a world that works, even when everything is pear-shaped. ( )

OMY, what a long book. 1400 pages later, I'm finally done. Good story however, way too much detail. ( )