I'm reading "Executive Orders" by Tom Clancy ... [View all]

The basic premise is what might happen if the whole US government is destroyed in an instant.
It was written in 1996 and starts out with a 747 crashing into the Capital and killing the president, all of Congress and the Supreme Court. (It's done by a Japanese pilot who has a personal vendetta carried over from Clancy's previous novel, "Debt of Honor".)

It's a pretty extreme thriller but something that I found particularly interesting was how Clancy used his characters to express his personal conservative political viewpoints. I found it refreshing to hear conservative views explained in a reasoned way, it's been so long since I've heard anything like that. I disagree with most of his conclusions but many of the points he made I would agree with. They were arguments that could open up discussions as opposed to today's conservative viewpoints that simply close out any further thought.

Boy things have changed.