A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

(C) 1997 Berkley Books and Jack Ryan Limited Partnership On November 1, 1997, Berkley Books (G.P. Putnam's Sons' paperback division) published Airborne: A Guided Tour of an Airborne Task Force. Co-written by the top-billed Tom Clancy and his researcher John D. Gresham, this was the fifth book in a series of non-fiction works devoted to specific unit types of America's armed forces.  Clancy, of course, is best known to readers as the creator and principal author of the long-running Jack Ryan series of novels. He also co-wrote (with former Navy officer and wargame designer Larry Bond) Red Storm Rising, one of the 1980s top-selling novels and his most popular work of fiction that's not set in the still-expanding "Ryanverse." In addition, he was also a respected conservative commentator and self-taught expert on military and intelligence matters, a successful entrepreneur who turned his name into one of the most recognizable names in American mass media.  ...

(C) 1996 Berkley Books and Jack Ryan Limited Partnership On November 1, 1996, Berkley Books (which at the time was the paperback division of G.P. Putnam's Sons but has since been folded into the larger Penguin Random House conglomerate) published Tom Clancy's Marine: A Guided Tour of a Marine Expeditionary Force. Co-written by Clancy's researcher and defense expert John D. Gresham, Marine is the fourth volume in what is now billed as The Tom Clancy Military Library but was originally known as the Guided Tour series.  Fans of the late novelist and conservative commentator know that Clancy was an unabashed admirer of the United States Marine Corps. His best known fictional character, John Patrick Ryan, Sr. started his career in government as a second lieutenant in the Marines, a fact that has been mentioned in three of the five "Jack Ryan" films and Amazon's Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan, as well as in several of Clancy's novels.  "Marine." S...

(C) 1995 Berkley Books Before his untimely death on October 1, 2013, the late Tom Clancy wrote 16 best-selling novels which focus on many aspects of America's national security community. Starting with his now-classic The Hunt for Red October (1984) and continuing all the way to his final Jack Ryan novel (2013's Command Authority ), Clancy's cast of characters included soldiers, airmen, sailors, Marines, Coast Guardsmen, and special operations troops, not to mention a certain CIA analyst who eventually becomes President of the United States. All of these books - including Red Storm Rising, one of only two novels that are not set in Clancy's "Ryanverse" - are not only successful because they tell great stories, but also because they are the result of a lot of research and Clancy's ability to network with many people in the military and other branches of government. In addition to his works of fiction, Clancy wrote a seven-book series of non-fiction bo...

(C) 2001 Rubicon Inc. and Berkley Books Special Forces: A Guided Tour of U.S. Army Special Forces , the seventh and final entry in Tom Clancy's nonfiction Guided Tour series about America's armed forces, sets its sights on the shadowy -- and often misunderstood -- roles and missions of the men the author calls "the quiet professionals" of the Army's Special Forces command. They are sent to the world's hot spots-on covert missions fraught with danger. They are called on to perform at the peak of their physical and mental capabilities, primed for combat and surveillance, yet ready to pitch in with disaster relief operations. They are the Army's Special Forces Groups. Now follow Tom Clancy as he delves into the training and tools, missions and mindset of these elite operatives. Special Forces includes: The making of Special Forces personnel: recruitment and training A rare look at actual Special Forces Group deployment Exercises Tools of...