Wes Moore:The Other Wes Moore
- edizione con copertina flessibile 2011, ISBN: 9780385528207
St. Martin's Paperbacks. Very Good. 6.06 x 1.3 x 9.13 inches. Paperback. 2000. 384 pages. <br>The hero of six New York Times bestsellers by Step hen Coonts, author ofFlight of t… Altro …
St. Martin's Paperbacks. Very Good. 6.06 x 1.3 x 9.13 inches. Paperback. 2000. 384 pages. <br>The hero of six New York Times bestsellers by Step hen Coonts, author ofFlight of the Intruder and Fortunes of War, returns as the United States and Cuba engage in a terrifying game of brinksmanship, a gamble that could break the last military ta boo and destroy both countries. In Cuba, an ailing Fidel Castro lies dying. Across the Straits of Florida, an anxious US awaits t he inevitable power struggle, determined to have a say in who con trols this strategically invaluable island. And the American Pres ident has an added reason for concern: an Arms Control Conference has just begun in Paris and, unbeknownst to either the American public or Cuba, the US has hidden secret weapons inside the Ameri can base on Cuba's Guantanemo Bay. But no secret remains one for long, and when one of the Cuban factions finds out about the weap ons, the excitement begins. Only Admiral Grafton, on an aircraft carrier off the coast of Cuba, knows the impending danger. Only Grafton can save America from a disaster that would make the Bay of Pigs look like child's play. In Cuba, Stephen Coonts captures the ominous feel of a tropical powderkeg about to explode in a no vel filled with the action and drama for which he is famous. Edi torial Reviews Review Dramatic, diverting action...Coonts deliv ers. ?Booklist [A] gripping and intelligent thriller. ?Publisher s Weekly (starred review) Coonts manages to put together the var ious subplots into a satisfying climax that includes enough Tomah awk missiles, stealth bombers and staccato action to satisfy his most demanding fans. ?USA Today --This text refers to an out of p rint or unavailable edition of this title. About the Author Ste phen Coonts is the author of The Disciple, The Assassin, and the Deep Black and Saucers series, among many other bestsellers. His first novel, the classic flying tale Flight of the Intruder, spen t more than six months at the top of The New York Times bestselle r list. A motion picture based on the book was released in 1991. His novels have been published around the world and translated in to more than a dozen languages. In 1986, he was honored by the U. S. Naval Institute with its Author of the Year Award. He is also the editor of four anthologies, Combat, On Glorious Wings, Victor y and War in the Air. Coonts served in the Navy from 1969 to 1977 , including two combat cruises on the USS Enterprise during the l ast years of the Vietnam War. --This text refers to an out of pri nt or unavailable edition of this title. From Publishers Weekly The future of Cuba is up for grabs in this crackerjack speculativ e thriller by the author of Flight of the Intruder and Fortunes o f War. Coonts regulars Rear Admiral Jake Grafton and staff operat ions officer Toad Tarkington are providing military cover for a s hipment of American chemical and biological weaponsAweapons that should have been destroyed long agoAout of Guant namo Bay, where they have been in storage. When the shipment goes missing, it's G rafton's job to find it and get those weapons back. But that's th e least of his worries, because Cuba is developing its own biolog ical weapons; as soon as they are ready, they will be loaded onto missiles already aimed at American cities. Meanwhile, an aged Ca stro is dying of cancer, and even if he lives long enough to name a successor, Alejo Vargas, head of the Cuban secret police, has his own plans for the future of the country. While there's little doubt that Grafton will save the day, Coonts's sharply drawn cha ractersAincluding dapper CIA operative and biological weapons exp ert William Henry Chance and his safe-cracking sidekick, Tommy Ca rmelliniAand a plethora of intersecting plot lines take what one character calls another Cuban missile crisis to a rousing action finale. But the surprise pleasure here is how clearly Coonts pain ts a picture of Cuba by focusing on the three Soldano brothersAHe ctor, a Jesuit priest who may be Castro's chosen successor; Ocho, the handsome ballplayer who has the chance to sail to Florida wi th the woman he got pregnant; and Maximo, the finance minister wh o is more interested in money than the revolution. This gripping and intelligent thriller is a standout for Coonts, taking the dea th of Castro as a starting point for an all-too-possible scenario of political turmoil and military brinkmanship. $325,000 ad/prom o; author tour. (Aug.) FYI: In one of this season's more interest ing coincidences, Coonts chooses for his epigraph the same poem b y Jos? Mart! as does Amy Ephron in her book White Rose, reviewed above. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This tex t refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. Review When a North Korean freighter carrying a carg o of biological weapons runs aground in international waters off Cuba--Rear Admiral Jake Grafton wants go aboard, taking just one other man with him. His new chief of staff, Capt. Pascal, is skep tical and suggests that he takes along a half-dozen well-armed ma rines. Jake's reply is patient and succinct: I don't know what's on that ship.... It just makes sense to have a point man explore the unknown before we risk very many lives. I am going to be the point man because I want to personally see what is there, and I m ake the rules. Understand? Had Capt. Pascal been one of the milli ons of readers of Coonts's six previous books about Grafton, he w ouldn't have raised the issue. Jake is a take-charge guy, the kin d of believable hero trusted by his military superiors (if occasi onally viewed as a loose cannon by politicians), and not even the possibility of an all-out war with Cuba is going to make him sta rt playing it safe. Fidel Castro is very close to death from can cer, and his chief aide plans to win the hearts of the Cuban popu lation and gain control of the government by using a 40-year-old secret weapon against an American city. Meanwhile, Adm. Grafton a nd his carrier fleet have been sent to GuantÃ¥namo Bay in Cuba to supervise the removal of some U.S. biological weapons there. Very soon, Grafton and other Coonts regulars are up to their helmets in action on the air, land, and sea. Along the way, we meet a lar ge cast of vivid supporting players: a Cuban family whose fate is closely linked to Castro's rise and fall and a CIA agent with th e perfect cover--a lawyer for giant tobacco companies who want to make cigarettes in Cuba. We also increase our knowledge of milit ary jargon: strangling the parrot means turning off a radar trans ponder. Cuba is an intriguing and surprisingly compassionate scen ario, in which superb military action alternates with high family drama and political in-fighting. --Dick Adler --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From B ooklist The popular Coonts mines the original Cuban missile crisi s for source material in his latest military-techno thriller. Wit hout preamble, he introduces the threat: a half-dozen ballistic m issiles Castro and the Russians secretly stashed in silos after t he crisis. Forty years on, Castro is at death's door, his associa tes jockeying for the succession. Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy is cov ering the extraction from Guantanamo Bay of a chemical/biological weapons stockpile, a task that facilitates Coonts folding in the specs on high-tech military iron (he was a navy pilot before tak ing up scrivening). He gets to operate the equipment through a sn afu: the navy loses track of the toxic warfare weapons. While it searches, a pistol-packing, safe-cracking CIA duo in Havana disco ver what the Cubans have been developing in their lab (creating a polio warhead for their missiles), and, with gunslinging panache , the CIA guys slickly egress hostile territory, carrying critica l targeting information. The winner of the succession struggle kn ows the Americans have found him out, thus setting the table for novel-ending battles around the missile sites, featuring appearan ces by seemingly every weapon in the U.S. armory short of the Bom b. Inevitably, the details about the V-22 Osprey and its kindred overshadow the characters flying the planes, but readers gun for Coonts' books because of their dramatic, diverting action. Settin g the genre's conventions in a post-Castro context, Coonts delive rs the anticipated excitement. Gilbert Taylor --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From th e Publisher [A] gripping and intelligent thriller. -Publishers We ekly (starred review) --This text refers to an out of print or u navailable edition of this title. From Kirkus Reviews Coonts, mi litary-combat thrillermeister, pits his series character, Jake Gr afton, against a power-mad Cuban bureaucrat armed with Soviet ICB Ms aimed at the U.S. As Fidel Castro lies dying of cancer in Hava na, returning Cuban migrs, government sleazies, radicals, former revolutionaries, CIA smoothies, and even a local baseball hero al l find themselves ensnared in power plays. Just offshore, former Navy flyboy Jake Grafton, now a rear admiral with an aircraft car rier to call his own, and his sidekick, Toad Tarkington, supervis e a routine transfer of empty chemical-bacteriological warheads f rom the American base at Guantánamo Bay. Alas, scheming Cuban Sta te Security head Alejo Vargas and his sadistic sidekick Colonel S antana have cut deals with the notorious gangster El Gato as well as with some North Koreans, so that enough of those warheads wil l end up in a secret laboratory where mad American scientist Olaf Swenson is cooking up a lethal, quick-killing version of the pol io virus. Meanwhile, the Sedano family, with relatives at almost every strata of Cuban society, have their hands full: greedy fina nce minister Maximo Sedano wants to pocket Castro's $54 million S wiss bank account and dig up 47 tons of gold that Castro and Che Guevara supposedly hid when they overthrew Batista; his wife Merc edes, Castro's mistress, fears that Vargas is up to no good; brot her Hector, a somewhat fallen Jesuit priest, wants to preserve Cu ba from those who would exploit it; and youngest brother Ocho, th e baseball star, joins a group of boat people when he finds out h is girlfriend Dora is pregnant. But wait--there's more: ancient b ut still operational Soviet ICBMs, a crack Cuban MIG pilot and th e Mission Impossible high jinks of CIA operatives. Grafton himsel f is less action hero here than cool, seasoned commander who stoi cally accepts the President's impossible order to invade Cuba and stop the next missile crisis without antagonizing the native pop ulation. An overplotted slog of snarling Latinos and everything-y ou-never-needed-to-know about Cuban social history--until the sho oting starts and Coonts delivers some of his best gung-ho suspens e writing yet. (325,000 ad/promo; author tour) -- Copyright ®1999 , Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. Excerpt . ® Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Cuba CHAPTER ON EGuantánamo Bay, on the southeast coast of the island of Cuba, is the prettiest spot on the planet, thought Rear Admiral Jake Graf ton, USN.He was leaning on the railing on top of the carrier Unit ed States's superstructure, her island, a place the sailors calle d Steel Beach. Here off-duty crew members gathered to soak up som e rays and do a few calisthenics. Jake Grafton was not normally a sun worshiper; at sea he rarely visited Steel Beach, preferring to arrange his day so that he could spend at least a half hour ru nning on the flight deck. Today he was dressed in gym shorts, T-s hirt, and tennis shoes, but he had yet to make it to the flight d eck.Grafton was a trim, fit fifty-three years old, a trifle over six feet tall, with short hair turning gray, gray eyes, and a nos e slightly too large for his face. On one temple was a scar, an o ld, faded white slash where a bullet had gouged him years ago.Peo ple who knew him regarded him as the epitome of a competent naval officer. Grafton always put his brain in gear before he opened h is mouth, never lost his cool, and he never lost sight of the goa ls he wanted to accomplish. In short, he was one fine naval offic er and his superiors knew it, which was why he was in charge of t his carrier group lying in Guantánamo Bay.The carrier and her esc orts had been running exercises in the Caribbean for the last wee k. Today the carrier was anchored in the mouth of the bay, with t wo of her larger consorts anchored nearby. To seaward three destr oyerssteamed back and forth, their radars probing the skies.A set of top-secret orders had brought the carrier group here.Jake Gra fton thought about those orders as he studied the two cargo ships lying against the pier through a set of navy binoculars. The shi ps were small, less than eight thousand tons each; larger ships d rew too much water to get against the pier in this harbor. They w ere Nuestra Señora de Colón and Astarte.The order bringing those ships here had not come from some windowless Pentagon cubbyhole; it was no memo drafted by an anonymous civil servant or faceless staff weenie. Oh, no. The order that had brought those ships to t his pier on the southern coast of Cuba had come from the White Ho use, the top of the food chain.Jake Grafton looked past the cargo ships at the warehouses and barracks and administration building s baking in the warm Cuban sun.A paradise, that was the word that described Cuba. A paradise inhabited by communists. And Guantána mo Bay was a lonely little American outpost adhering to the under side of this communist island, the asshole of Cuba some called it .Rear Admiral Grafton could see the cranes moving, the white cont ainers being swung down to the pier from Astarte, which had arriv ed several hours ago. Forklifts took the steel boxes to a hurrica ne-proof warehouse, where no doubt the harbormaster was stacking them three or four deep in neat, tidy military rows.The container s were packages designed to hold chemical and biological weapons, artillery shells and bombs. A trained crew was here to load the weapons stored inside the hurricane-proof warehouse into the cont ainers, which would then be loaded aboard the ship at the pier an d transported to the United States, where the warheads would be d estroyed.Loading the weapons into the containers and getting thec ontainers stowed aboard the second ship was going to take at leas t a week, probably longer. The first ship, Nuestra Señora de Coló n, Our L, St. Martin's Paperbacks, 2000, 3, Random House Publishing Group. Very Good. 20.3 x 13.3 x 1.7 centimetres (0. Paperback. 2011. 272 pages.<br>NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the governor of Maryland, the compassionate (People), startling (Baltimore Su n), moving (Chicago Tribune) true story of two kids with the same name from the city: One went on to be a Rhodes Scholar, decorate d combat veteran, White House Fellow, and business leader. The ot her is serving a life sentence in prison.  Selected by Stephen Curry as his Underrated Book Club Pick with Literati The chilli ng truth is that his story could have been mine. The tragedy is t hat my story could have been his. In December 2000, the Baltimor e Sun ran a small piece about Wes Moore, a local student who had just received a Rhodes Scholarship. The same paper also ran a ser ies of articles about four young men who had allegedly killed a p olice officer in a spectacularly botched armed robbery. The polic e were still hunting for two of the suspects who had gone on the lam, a pair of brothers. One was named Wes Moore. Wes just coul dn't shake off the unsettling coincidence, or the inkling that th e two shared much more than space in the same newspaper. After fo llowing the story of the robbery, the manhunt, and the trial to i ts conclusion, he wrote a letter to the other Wes, now a convicte d murderer serving a life sentence without the possibility of par ole. His letter tentatively asked the questions that had been hau nting him: Who are you? How did this happen? That letter led to a correspondence and relationship that have lasted for several ye ars. Over dozens of letters and prison visits, Wes discovered tha t the other Wes had had a life not unlike his own: Both had had d ifficult childhoods, both were fatherless; they'd hung out on sim ilar corners with similar crews, and both had run into trouble wi th the police. At each stage of their young lives they had come a cross similar moments of decision, yet their choices would lead t hem to astonishingly different destinies. Told in alternating dr amatic narratives that take readers from heart-wrenching losses t o moments of surprising redemption, The Other Wes Moore tells the story of a generation of boys trying to find their way in a host ile world. ., Random House Publishing Group, 2011, 3<
