Tom Clancy: Debt of Honor

Somehow, I have always liked reading books by Tom Clancy. His books always contain a good deal of learning about things that you read superficially about in news articles, but when you read about them as he explains them, they make much more sense. So, for example, in this book by Tom Clancy that was published in 1995, you learn about trade, about the politics that drive bills in Congress, a lot about the stock market and the working of major financial institutions, and about the military (a pet subject of Tom Clancy), as well as about the effects of a fully laden plane flying into a building.
Now, in a book about a major trade war between the US and Japan, you would expect to see a lot of Japan bashing, but it is not so obvious actually. There are many people in Japan who are depicted as weak or with ill-will towards the US, but then you have major American politicians who are also shown as weak, or philandering. So, there is some Japan bashing, but very minimal, and I am pretty sure that from what I read earlier, the depiction of the influence of businessmen in Japanese political life is accurate to a large degree.
What appeals most about Tom Clancy is how he keeps several stories running at the same time, switching between the stories from time to time and still making sense. One problem of course is doing this, giving character to the novel makes it cumbersome and a bit big to read in terms of pages (this book itself being 900 pages), but I don't mind it too much. He also plays a lot on honor, considering that too be a core attitude in a person, and he has a set of core characters who are honorable, such as the lead man, Jack Ryan, the CIA operatives, the Russian head of the spy agency, his FBI friend, and so on.
The book starts 2 years from where the previous book (The Sum of All Fears) left off, with Jack Ryan getting called back into public life and getting appointed as the National Security Advisor. He has a couple of initial successes, and then the story takes a twist on its own. A car accident and a botched gas tank leads to politics that leads to a trade war as a politician leverages on the public outrage; this action leads a disaster in terms of the Japanese trade and economy getting badly affected. The Prime Minister has to resign and a hardliner takes over, being guided by a businessman who has visions of Japan regaining old glory. The businessman has also influenced an attempt by the Japanese to develop nuclear weapons, with old Russian missile bodies being used for the delivery mechanism (ostensibly for space launchers).
The trade war escalates, with the Japanese businessman coordinating a melt-down of the storage of American stocks records, leading to a disaster as with no records, there are no established trades. In the midst of this, a planned naval exercise with Japan turns ugly for the Americans when the Japanese sink 2 submarines with all the personnel on board, and America is now at war, with a nation that also has nuclear capability.
In addition, the Americans do not have current nuclear missile capability, they do not have naval assets to take back some islands that the Japanese have taken over. In the midst of all, there is a sexual criminal scandal against the Vice-President. Jack Ryan has to deploy all his skills to win back the initiative for the Americans, and he eventually does that. The description of the military battles as well as the stock mechanisms are very detailed. The only weak point was the sudden termination of the scandal involving the Vice-President.
At the end of the book, with the Vice-President having resigned, Jack Ryan is called to be the Vice-President, at which a time a disgruntled Japanese pilot puts his fully fuel loaded plane into the Capitol Hill, killing most of Congress, the President and the Supreme Court. Jack Ryan will have to be President now.

Harry Potter Paperback Box Set (Books 1-6)

I have always thought that because these books are so popular, there would be a large number of reviews, and I am sure that there; but these first 6 books have been out for quite some time and I have enjoyed reading them, so thought about writing this review for the first 6, available in a boxed set for all the 6 books available in paperback (the last one, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is only available in hard cover).
Most people know the story of the author, JK Rowling, when she was a single mother in hard times and wrote these books when she would be sitting in a coffee house. It makes these books all the more special because of these circumstances. Most kids I know, and a lot of adults (including me), really like these books and the way that the story pans out. It gets progressively darker with each book, but I would still recommend this for children to read.

The collection contains the following books with their release dates:
1. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (26 June 1997) (titled Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in the United States)
2. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2 July 1998)
3. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (8 July 1999)
4. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (8 July 2000)
5. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (21 June 2003)
6. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (16 July 2005)
The books have been evenly spaced in their release, keeping most fans waiting with nervous excitement, only to be replaced by a buying frenzy when the book (after the first one) was finally released. I was initially skeptical, but then I read the first book around the year 2000, and then bought the others as they were released, being a firm fan after that.
For me, even when you describe the events as happening in a magical world, with dragons, wizards, witches, etc., overall the concept of emotions in the life of Harry Potter and his close friends Hermione Ganger and Ron Weasley seem to ring true and lifelike. You find yourself engrossed in the book, and actually involved in their life in terms of wishing for good things to happen to them.
The concept of camadrie and friendship described in the book are worthy to be emulated, also the parts of how the close-knit Weasley family (with the exception of Percy) stick together supporting each other. Even the attitude of Harry in terms of dealing with various types of animals in terms of caring for them is a positive attitude for growing up children. And his feelings for the opposite sex and how he lives with these feelings as he slowly matures was pretty tender reading.

The Goal: A Great Book

Have you ever read a business book that was so interesting that it made you turn pages to see what is going to happen next ? I have read a number of strategy books, books on what excellent companies do, books on what enterprising leaders do, but I have never read a business book such as this one.
The Goal takes a somewhat familiar concept of a loss making unit being told that his unit can no longer be afforded by the parent company due to its losses and will have to be shut down, with the loss of its entire work-force and him personally as well, unless, the plant can be turned around and show profits. In addition, the time and pressures involved in the job is causing incredible pressures in the marital life of the Plant Manager Alex Rogo (the book is written from his perspective), with the marriage showing strong signs of breaking down.
Now Alex knows that he has to increase profits, for which he has to show better sales and reduce inventories, but neither nor his managers are able to figure out how to. In addition, with the way that the plant is working, they are not able to execute orders on a proper ordered schedule, and when a major customers calls, they have to execute a rush order that in turn causes costs to go up. At this time, Alex remembers an old college mate of his who is a college professor in the area of operational effectiveness, but he is a very busy person and his mechanisms are also radical, going against most cost accounting. In the midst of all this, his wife goes back to her parent's house.
And then comes the change around. Based on the long-distance and 1 visit by the professor, Jonah, which causes Alex to push for the concept of using the Theory of Constraints to figure out what the changes are needed in the plant. He needs to increase throughput, reduce inventory and reduce operational expense, seemingly very logical steps, but extremely difficult to bring out.
And the real hard conceptual part starts, where Alex and his team figure out what constraints and bottlenecks actually mean, and have to try and overturn traditional accounting. They need to overcome the bottleneck, since the bottleneck decides the speed of throughput through a system. If work items are lined up at a bottleneck and are piling up, then the throughput of the system is slowed down. In addition, a good learning from the book was that a bottleneck can be a dynamic system, in the sense that any machine can be a bottleneck depending on how work items are getting piled up. This could even involved getting an older machine if it helps break up the bottleneck.
Once they are able to resolve this system, they find that the system starts to move more smoothly, order scheduling and predictability becomes more accurate and much shorter. The harder part is in convincing the management and cost accounting department about this new system, but even they are convinced by the new figures and sales starting to emerge.
At the same time, Alex Rogo is saving his marriage by starting again, giving time to his wife and starting the romance again. The book finally ends by everything getting solved, and leaves a long thought in the head about how to use this great system to help resolve things.

Asimov: Pebble in the sky

I really liked this book, and was even more amazed to discover that this was Asimov's first published novel, in the year 1950. I became a late fan of Asimov, well into the 10th year of my life before I picked up the first novel, and now I have read so many of them that I can be counted as a bona fide Asimov junkie. Pebble in the Sky is a novel that I have read so many times that it is a wonder that the book I own is not in tatters. This book is part of the Empire series, so called because these are a series of books published with happenings just before the Empire was formed.
Earth is a pretty down-trodden place, with a nuclear war in the past having confined large sections of the earth to be nuclear contaminated wastelands. Earthlings who had emigrated earlier had become spacers, living in large new worlds, with lifelines expanded to 4 times the regular. They detest Earth as a place of squalor, and it would be very difficult for a person from Earth to visit any of the spacer worlds. Even when traveling on Earth, they consider themselves superior.
Earth is ruled by a council with a Minister and his Secretary (a very ambitious person indeed and portrayed as extremely evil). Earth is not free, with an outpost of the Spacers holding actual power, although they don't interfere too much.
Like any other place without enough resources, and under the control of a foreign power who Earthlings know detest them, the local politicians want to be free of the spacers, and actually, in a far fetched idea, destroy them. This seems far-fetched since there are many millions of spacers to every Earthling, and their technology and resources are vastly superior. And yet, the politicians have a secret weapon, actually 2. There is the knowledge that because of their hardier constitution and with the changes in genetics due to nuclear devastation, there can be made bugs that will affect the spacers, and not the Earthlings (1950 is very early to be talking about biological warfare). The second secret weapon is more about a bit of fanciful science fiction, a device called the Synapsifier that can enhance the mental capability, but the device is not production ready and could adversely affect anybody using it. The final explosive mix to all this is the knowledge that Earth is rumoured to be the starting home of all of humanity, something that Earthlings believe in, but not the Spacers.
Into this cauldron of emotions come 2 different individuals. Joseph Schwartz is a tailor from 1949 who one day becomes the victim of a strange molecular ray from a science experiment. The ray takes him and dumps him many many years in the future, in the time period of the novel. The other is an archaeologist from the Sirius sector (a hotbed of anti-Earth feelings) who believes in the Earth is the Origin theory and wants proof.
On Earth, the Society of the Ancients, the governing body is suspicious of his goals and refuses to give him permission to dig in the holy areas. He also wants to see the Synapisifier, and the Society is very suspicious, but lets him meet the inventor. The inventor has been collaborating with the Society since he wants an exemption to the 60, a policy that decrees that all individuals over the age of 60 will be euthanized in order to conserve resources. He needs an individual to test his device, and he picks Schwartz, who is after all unknown. This device gives Schwartz many superior mental capabilities, including the ability to start to read other person's thoughts and make them do simple things.
The rest of the story is about how these gentlemen thwart the Society of the Ancients, destroy the plan of the Ancients and save humanity. In the meantime, Schwartz gets time to romance the daughter of the inventor, and eventually for the debt that humanity owes them, gets started a shipment of clean earth in order to make the Earth a bountiful place again.
The prose is very good, the narration of the mental battle near the end is extremely gripping.

Tom Clancy: Patriot Games

This novel was written in 1987, after The Hunt for Red October became a major success. It is supposed to be set before that book, and in here is described the series of events that would turn Jack Ryan into a major character, and get him to enter the CIA. The book is pretty tautly written, and I have read it a number of times.
This time when I was reading it, there are so many passages in this book that are relevant now. The description of terrorism, human rights, how society should fight terrorism without becoming a ruthless instrument itself, all these are very eloquently mentioned in this book. It was worth reading just to get a feel of all this discussions, and the book talks about Irish Republican terrorists, who are not known for mass murders. In the current context, we deal with terrorists who are inspired by the more violent teachings of Islam and do not shirk from mass murder, on a scale not seen before from terrorism.
In addition, there are passages about how to counter international terrorism, with an event where there is cooperation between French, British and American intelligence to hunt down terrorism, and how such international cooperation is necessary. There is also a mention of a French military tribunal secretly convicting some anti-French terrorists whose capture was also a secret, and even though this sounds illegal, it seems necessary. When the French had tried to do an open trial, the terrorists had subverted the trial through illegal means, and hence the tribunal. Sounds somewhat similar with the current plans to have a military tribunal to convict the Al-Qaeda detainees. And this is where we have a clash - the concept of rule of law and justice is deeply ingrained, but it is also realistic that the terrorists do not respect any of these. As the movie 'The Siege' so eloquently put it, you need information to stop a bombing, there is a guy who knows it but is not going to disclose, and as per current law, you cannot force him to do this. I am sure that no one would want to be a decision maker in such a case, what do you do ?
This book is about Jack Ryan, a historian and former marine, also involved with CIA in a small way. He is in London for research, when he sees an attack by terrorists. He jumps in, kills one, wounds another and the third escapes. Jack also gets injured. Turns out he saved the Prince, Princess of Wales and their baby from a kidnapping plot by the ULA (Ulster Liberation Army), an offshoot of the IRA. After some time, the wounded terrorist escapes while being transported.
After being much feted, he returns to the US and back to his regular job; somewhat uneasy about the terrorists coming to the US to get back to him. However, logic says that foreign terrorists have never attacked the US inside the country (thanks to the FBI as well) and their funding will be impacted if they do so.
Well, they do, and Jack's wife and daughter are severely injured, but recover. This pushes Jack over to the CIA for getting back at the terrorists the way he can, and soon makes a name for himself. In another major section of the book, the Prince and Princess want to visit Jack at his home when they are in the US. The terrorists, aided by a local terrorist group, manage to attack the heavily guarded home and kill off most of the defenders and temporarily capture all the inhabitants. However, they manage to get free and are chased by the terrorists over water, eventually reaching a naval base where the terrorists are all captured.
This is a very gripping book, and the section about Jack's unease with regard to society and its interaction with the terrorists is very gripping indeed.

Leon Uris: Exodus

This is a very dated book, in the sense it was released in 1958, and was not Leon's first book. That book was Battle Cry, about the US marines in the Pacific theatre of WW2. Exodus was published in 1958 and was a tremendous best-seller, being translated into 50 languages. I read this book, and soon after read the book 'O Jerusalem' by Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins, together giving me a very vivid picture of the struggles and tribulations involved in the creation of the state of Israel.
Exodus is the name of a ship used in trying to get a bunch of Jewish refugees to British controlled Palestine, over the quota allowed and with the British refusing to allow the refugees enter. At the end of the second World War, the Jewish population of middle and Eastern Europe had been decimated in the holocaust, and the true horrors of the Final Solution policy of the Nazis had been revealed.
In the early part of the 20th century, Jewish scholars and leaders had started seeing the land of Palestine as their god given destiny, and started movements to this land from the Jewish communities all over Europe and America. By the 30's and 40's, this movement had taken root, and more and more Jews were settling and buying land from the Arabs living there. A number of militant Jewish organizations formed, such as the Hagannah, Irgun, Stern, all with the purpose of getting the Jews to being treated as people with strength, and to aid in the establishment of a Jewish homeland in the Middle East.
Exodus is the story of a few principal characters such as Ari Ben Canaan (modeled on Moshe Dayan; who served in the British army during WW2, and after that devising means to get Jews to Palestine by breaking the British quota), Kitty Fremont (an American nurse, she has been recently widowed; she develops an attachment to a German refugee, Karen Clement and eventually to Ari), Bruce Sutherland (a British army officer with a Jewish mother who witnesses the horrors of the concentration camps at the end of the war and eventually becomes an advisor to Ari), Karen Clement (who was a refugee having lost most of her family in the concentration camps, and who eventually is killed right at the end of the book by Arabic invaders), and Dov Landau (another refugee who lost his family to the Nazis, he has become an expert forger (using that to prevent death in the concentration camps; he falls in love with Karen and has a thirst for revenge).

Mario Puzo: The Godfather

I guess more people would have seen the Godfather movies rather than read the book; but let me start by saying that this is a great book. The book is a fairly gripping book, establishing both the history of why the godfather became the godfather (Vito Corleone), and also the birth of the next Godfather, Michael Corleone. It does meander a bit in between when trying to explain various things, but overall is a very taut book.
The book takes the Corleone family, one of the 5 mafia crime families and the tensions between them. The book explains the motives and the development of characters for some of the main characters of the book, Vito Corleone, Sonny Corleone, Michael Corleone, Connie, Kay (Michael's wife), Tom Hagen, and a few others, but whose characters are not so well developed.
The book also explains numerous mafia activities to people who may not be well-enough acquainted with some of these terms, terms such as button man, hitting the matresses, omerta, La cosa nostra, etc.
The story explains how a poor Italian immigrant, a man of quiet nature, but internally a very powerful individual, slowly starts to be seen as a man of power, a man of stature and one who can influence things. He can get his people justice, deferment from the army, rough justice against anyone who has harmed them and so on. While reading this book, it would not seem strange at all that all these activities are illegal :-), they just seem natural. Slowly, he starts to build an empire consisting of political connections, book-keeping, races, and many other vices including the illegal running of alcohol. However, even such people have their own scruples, such as being against prostitution and drugs.
And this is what brings him down and decides the rest of the book. Vito refuses help to another family seeking to expand in the drugs field, and provokes an assassination attempt in which he is injured, and which brings his violent son Sonny into the field as the interim leader (his other son Michael is outside the family business, being a decorated soldier). Hence, in a quirk of fate, Michael gets involved, kills 2 people and escapes the country. In the ensuing gang warfare, Sonny is killed and Vito Corleone, The Godfather, gets up from his sick bed in an attempt to ensure the safe return of his son Michael back.
Vito makes a deal in which he accepts Sonny's death and foreswears all vengeance (although he is perceived as weak due to this lack of revenge) in order to get Michael back. The aim of course is long-term, to get Michael to take the revenge after setting him up as the Godfather. The latter part of the book is about this effort; how Michael gains the power of the family, how he turns from being a loyal American to the head of a major criminal family, and how he eventually carries out the revenge (by killing a number of the opposition families leaders, and also killing his own brother-in-law for the role he had in getting Sonny killed).
It is only at the end where the author puts a touch about that these people are bad people, when you see that the women of the family are praying for their souls. The book also depicts women and the African-American community in a bad light, thus depicting the inherent racism of the Italian (and maybe others) community as of that time.