SOURCE: "Very Popular Mechanics," in The New Yorker, September 16. 1991, pp. 91-2, 94-5.

In the following review, Menand provides analysis of The Sum of All Fears and Clancy's popularity.

I counted fifty-six references to coffee in Tom Clancy's new thriller, The Sum of All Fears. It's a long book, nearly eight hundred pages; still, that's a lot of coffee. Clancy's people need the caffeine, though, because freedom needs their vigilance. They are the intelligence analysts, fighter pilots, submariners, air-defense monitors, radar and sonar operators, secret-service agents, and other military, paramilitary, and civilian personnel on whose alertness the national security depends.

To describe Clancy's feeling for these people as respect is inadequate. He loves them; and his love includes an attentive sympathy for the special demands that a constant state of readiness, and the many cups of coffee needed to maintain it, can make. It is not unusual for one...