Promise of Joy The Presidency of Orrin Knox Advise and Consent edition by Allen Drury Mystery Thriller Suspense eBooks
Download As PDF : Promise of Joy The Presidency of Orrin Knox Advise and Consent edition by Allen Drury Mystery Thriller Suspense eBooks 
The Advise and Consent series is a landmark of political fiction, displaying a depth of insider Washington knowledge and a canvas of compelling characters that catapulted each novel to the top of the bestseller lists. At the end of the previous novel, Preserve and Protect, Allen Drury left his readers with one of the greatest cliffhangers of all time. After an assassin’s bullet rings out, we are left to wonder who was killed—the Liberal Vice President Ted Jason, or staunch Conservative Presidential Candidate Orrin Knox? The answer to that question was so large that Pulitzer-Prize winner Drury had to write two novels, one exploring the full ramifications of each outcome.
In The Promise of Joy, with his Vice President Ted Jason and his wife Beth Knox dead at the hands of an assassin, newly elected President Orrin Knox contends with a game of one-upmanship between the Soviet Union and China. The United States, guided by Knox’s inflexible will, begins to assist rebels seeking to break away from their Communist overlords, despite mounting pressure from the international community and within the U.S.
When nuclear war breaks out between Russia and China, President Orrin Knox, aided and opposed by the media, senators, congressmen, cabinet officials, ambassadors, and the people, must act to safeguard peace and democracy in America and the entire world.
Promise of Joy The Presidency of Orrin Knox Advise and Consent edition by Allen Drury Mystery Thriller Suspense eBooks
Oldie but goodie...read the series when it first came out and was excited about rereading them with new printing. Still exciting and still as true today as it was back then even though some of the characters (media-wise) are out of date. Still makes for very good political reading, especially for today's conservatives.Product details
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Promise of Joy The Presidency of Orrin Knox Advise and Consent edition by Allen Drury Mystery Thriller Suspense eBooks Reviews
Allen Drury, wrapping up his six-novel "Advise and Consent" series, writes what is basically a palinode to his dystopic "Come Nineveh, Come Tyre". In this book, Orrin Knox, his hero and viewpoint character, finally does make it to the Presidency, only to see the world situation spiral out of control when the Soviet Union and China unexpectedly go to nuclear war with each other, and Knox is put into the unexpected position of peacemaker.
I want particularly to address the point of the ending of the book, which at least one reviewer has complained of as having cheated the readers. At the end of the novel, with the Chinese having launched the mother of all human-wave invasions into Russia, Knox is coming under intense pressure from all sides, some of it racially motivated and some by residual sympathies with the now-defunct Soviet regime (which had been overthrown, along with the Maoist regime in China, in the wake of the first nuclear exchange), to intervene on the Russian side. He finally comes to a decision and makes a major speech to inform the nation and the world of his decision, which is...
Well, what, exactly? Knox never says, though he lays out the factors that contributed to making his own decision, and commands the audience (and the reader) to "Think about it. THINK ABOUT IT!" A predictable uproar ensues, with the media, Congress, foreign allies and the public at large (and some reviewers!!) accusing Knox of copping out. Then...the intervention begins. And, from hints dropped in the last few pages of the book, it seems to be succeed - or at least, is beginning to succeed. We leave Knox with his thoughts, hopeful that when spring comes, he can finally really begin working toward peace and "the promise of joy".
So...on which side, if any, did Knox intervene??
My own guess is...neither one. I think the reviewers who speculated that Knox was moving to destroy Communism once and for all are incorrect, because the two great Communist regimes had ALREADY been destroyed - as I said, they'd been overthrown after the first nuclear exchange (with some prodding from the U.S. and the United Nations). I believe that what was actually going on - and some remarks by various characters in the novel seem to back this up - is that command and control has broken down, and the Chinese attack into Russia had gone way out of the control of the new, and still very weak, regime in Beijing; in one scene, we see a TV going in the background, reporting on the Sino-Russian war, and the crowd of people we see on the screen looks a lot more like a mob than an organized military body. It's quite possible, in fact, that due to the disruptions of the nuclear exchanges, there _is_ in fact no organized military control anymore on the Chinese side of the front.
This regime - as you will discover when you go back and re-read the "shuttle diplomacy" part of the novel - was actually more amenable to Knox's "Ten Demands" peace proposals than the new military junta in Russia, but could not (perhaps reasonably) move forward as long as the Russian generals remained stubbornly unwilling to accept the core parts of Knox's peace plan. Knox's problem, therefore, is to stop the war without siding openly with either combatant and risking nuclear attack on the United States.
Here's what I think Knox did at the end of the book. He ordered the U.S. armed forces to conduct limited nuclear strikes on the fighting forces of both the Chinese and the Russians, including the remnants of their nuclear arsenals, to deprive them of the ability to continue fighting each other, and also limited strikes to stop the Chinese "human wave" from advancing any further into Russia. However, NO strikes would take place on any population targets (read cities) in either the Chinese or Russian homelands. Having done this, and once he is certain that the fighting has stopped, Knox will put his "Ten Demands" back on the table and invite the Chinese and Russian regimes once again to negotiate on the basis of those proposals.
Whether it will work or not, of course, is still an open question at the end of the book...but as I said, the hints in the last paragraphs are that it _will_ work.
Promise of joy was ok. But when I received the pkge that should have 6 books in it there was only one. I was told that it was ordered from a third party and the only thing could do was give me a credit - which they did. However I really wanted the books so I got them from someplace else.
Alan Drury, a great writer when he gave us Advise and Consent nearly 45 years ago, then wrote another 5 books in the same series, two of which are seriously flawed and one of which -- this, the final one -- is absolutely the most upsetting book I have ever read.
Let me ruin it for you, the potential reader, so that you will *never* think of buying it or reading it. After 500 pages of tension in which nuclear wars are fought and negotiated over (between the Russians and Chinese, not the U.S.) the American President, Orrin Knox, reluctantly in the final 20 pages of the book decides that he is going to have to intervene in the still on-going war in order to save Western civilization such as it still exists. Twenty pages of on-going anguish and discussions ensue in which he agonizes over the necessity of doing so. Finally he goes onto worldwide TV to tell the anxiously awaiting world (and reader) that the missiles are in the air and that the troops are on the march.
And Drury doesn't tell us against *whom*! Is it the Russians? Is it the Chinese? We don't know. The book *ends*.
Yes, the book ends, and after 1,500,000 words, and approximately 3,000 pages, the series ends. And we DON'T KNOW HOW IT ENDS!
Talk about a rip-off!
As a professional writer of novels and short-stories for 30 years now (you can find 16 to 18 of my books available here at depending on when you read this review), I have never been so outraged in my life by this total thumbing of the author's nose at the reader. The first thing a professional writer learns, or ought to, is GIVE THE READER WHAT HE WANTS!
Drury gives him a kick in the pants.
That's no surprise, however, since he also did it in two earlier books in the series.
In the final paragraph of book number 4, there is an assassination attempt against the book's two main characters, the Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates of the same party. One of them is killed, one survives. But Drury doesn't tell us WHICH ONE! End of book....
Book number 5 then starts off with Ted Jason, the wishy-washy liberal from California, as the man who survived, while Orrin Knox, the heroic conservative, has been killed. In the ensuing chaos Jason goes on to be elected President. In two quick weeks he then manages to destroy the United States, to turn it into a Hitlerian dictatorship, and to have it taken over by the Soviets. All the characters that we sympathize with from the previous four books are now either dead or in insane asylums. Five hundred pages of downer, nihilist gloom. And then the book ends. Happy reading!
Book number 6, this one, begins with *Orrin Knox* being elected President, having survived the assassinations of number 4, not Ted Jason. He is clearly Drury's hero, and has been since book 1. In this book, he stands for, and fights for, everything Drury believes in. Nevertheless, by page 250, he is in deep, deep, *deep* political trouble. Impeachment looms. Is there a way out?
Yes!
The Chinese and Russians suddenly go to atomic war with each other! The Chinese have probably had 40 words devoted to them in the previous 1,400,000 words of this series. But now they suddenly pop up in order to get Orrin Knox out of his jam.
The last 250 pages are devoted to Knox trying to negotiate a world-wide peace -- and failing.
And then deciding to intervene in the resumed war between China and Russia. But not telling *anyone* on which side he is intervening....
If you want to read a book as blatantly contemptuous of the reader as this, go ahead.
Don't say that I didn't warn you....
Happy.
It was an interesting read but not that great.
Like all of the books in this series it really held your interest and kept you on edge.. Can't wait to read the last one "Come Nineveh, Come Tyre The Presidency of Edward M Jason.
I received the book fairly quickly and it was definitely a good read. I could hardly put it down.
Oldie but goodie...read the series when it first came out and was excited about rereading them with new printing. Still exciting and still as true today as it was back then even though some of the characters (media-wise) are out of date. Still makes for very good political reading, especially for today's conservatives.
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