Known for his potboiling thrillers with political, military, and espionage themes, author Tom Clancy's influence on American popular culture has been incalculable. Within the high-tech action adventure that has proved so beguiling to the movie industry and its audiences, as well as to a vast number of people who buy books of escapist fiction, Clancy evokes a disturbing picture of the world we live in, and has come to be regarded as the spokesman for the American nation's growing mistrust of those who govern them. If his name is instantly identified with the best-selling The Hunt for Red October (1984) and the creation of his Cold Warrior hero Jack Ryan (incarnated on screen by Harrison Ford) in a series beginning with Patriot Games (1992), his work is considered to have a serious significance that transcends the merely entertaining.

On February 28, 1983, the Naval Institute Press (NIP) received...