SOURCE: "Red Storm Rising," in Time, August 11, 1986, p. 64.

In the following review, Isaacson offers a generally favorable assessment of Red Storm Rising.

"What modern combat lacks in humanity, it more than makes up for in intensity," observes a reporter aboard an American frigate that has just repelled a Soviet missile attack. The same could be said of Tom Clancy's new military thriller, Red Storm Rising. In this version of blocs in conflict, the most compelling actors are the high-tech weapons that Clancy portrays with deadly accuracy.

The author, a Maryland insurance broker with a passion for military hardware, blipped onto the national radar screen with his 1984 novel, The Hunt for Red October, a tale of a defecting Soviet nuclear submarine and its conflicted crew. Published by the Naval Institute Press, known primarily for academic and technical journals, the book was praised by Ronald Reagan as "the perfect yarn...