Protect and Defend

Rating:
Summary: An ambitious effort. Intense.
Review: Richard North Patterson's newest is a follow-up to his excellent "No Safe Place" published several years ago. Kerry Kilcannon is now the recently elected Democratic President, and things begin to fall apart on his very first day in office. During Kilcannon's inaugural address to the nation, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court dies from a stroke while on the stage. Kilcannon's nominee for Chief Justice is a controversial female federal judge from California, Caroline Masters (also from his earlier novels).

In the midst of the intensely partisan confirmation process, a volatile late-term abortion case is moving its way up through the California courts and appears headed for the Supreme Court. Patterson gives us a look at the interesting inner workings of the federal courts and the Senate as they wrestle with difficult issues.

This book is a good read. I got a little tired of what seemed like overemphasis on the pros and cons of abortion, but I guess it was necessary in order to provide a balanced view. Nevertheless, this is one of those big, sprawling novels that you can really sink your teeth into. BUY IT.

Rating:
Summary: Too bad there are only 5 stars
Review: I read this latest Patterson book as the country was going through the nightly reports on the John Ashcroft Confirmation Hearings for Attorney General. What a timely work ! In Protect and Defend, immediately after the new President is sworn in, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court has a fatal stroke. Newly elected President Kilcannon now has the opportunity to nominate a liberal candidate of his choice to take over this spot on the court. The big issue in the confirmation hearings, just as in the Ashcroft hearings, is abortion. The plot of Protect and Defend involves the right of a young girl, and the bitter fight that ensues, to have a late term abortion against her parents wishes. This work presents the thinking of the pro-choice forces and the pro-life forces with a great deal of sensitivity and information. It also gives much needed information on late term abortions and the rationale, if such is possible, for allowing them to be performed. Whatever your personal beliefs and value system require in your thinking regarding roe v. wade, this book will give you reason to think and reflect on one of the most difficult political issues that face Americans today.

The characters become real people with the emotions and difficulties that each reader will find somewhere in his own family. Most of them were introduced in prior novels by Patterson, so for the Patterson fan, it's like revisiting some old friends with new problems. However, if this is your first Patterson book, the background is filled in whenever necessary. This, in my opinion, is Richard North Patterson's best yet in a long list of great books.

Rating:
Summary: strong work, excellent research but needed editing
Review: This was my first exposure to Patterson's work and I was very impressed. His knowledge of the dynamic and process of politics makes this a compelling read. His presentation of the contentious debate about Women's Reproductive Rights is very fair. My only quible is that the book is just too long. When a sentence would have worked, he gives us a paragraph. When a paragraph would have sufficed, we get a chapter. A tighter narative would have given greater momentum to the last third of the book.

Rating:
Summary: Captivating from beginning to end
Review: Protect and Defend is a captivating book that investigates the inner workings of the judicial, legislative, and executive branches of government, combining fictional characters with real issues to create a thrilling twist on the battle between good and evil: the fight between Pro-Choicers and Pro-Lifers, Democrats and Republicans, and Females and Males. The events in the novel are on opposite sides of the country, in Washington D.C. and San Francisco. In Washington, immediately after the inauguration of Kerry Kilcannon, a democrat, the Chief Justice, a conservative, has a stroke and drops dead. The vice president is a female. With the death of Chief Justice Bannon, the president must start searching immediately for a replacement, only one day into his term, against a strikingly Republican senate led by MacDonald Gage a vicious man whose main desire and ambition is to become president. In San Francisco, Mary Ann Tierney, just fifteen years old, is seeking an abortion at five months pregnant. Without parental consent, she cannot abort the fetus, which is hydrocephalic and if delivered, could ruin her chances to have children in the future. Her parents are famous Pro-Lifers and her father is a law professor, well-known and respected for his consistent, anti-abortion views, so she gets a lawyer, young Sarah Dash to represent her in a case suing her parents for permission to get an abortion, challenging the Supreme Court in their recent rulings on late-term abortions. Also from San Francisco is Caroline Masters, a female liberal whom Kilcannon nominates. Patterson's novel examines many different perspectives on abortion an different political views taken by members of the government. Giving an in-depth look at both the Pro-Life and Pro-Choice movements, the book shows the effect of the issue on different lives and the struggles it causes families internally. It also demonstrates the ruthlessness of politicians and the extremes they will go to in order to get their ways. Patterson's extensive research on the subject shows and his realistic sketches of the characters are enthralling, keeping the reader's attention with every flip of perspective and countryside.

Rating:
Summary: Patterson triumph: Protect and Defend
Review: I had never heard of Richard North Patterson until I read this book. I am a 65 year old Gynecologist who does not read a lot of fiction, but since reading Protect and Defend (P&D), I have read two other works by Patterson: the newly retitled Caroline Masters and No Safe Place. While these are not so fine as Protect and Defend, which I consider on a plane with The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver and The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevski, they are also compelling books of their genre. Back to P&D - As a close observer of the political scene for the past 50 years and one with an extensive and hardwon knowledge of the abortion issue and its advocates on both sides, this book is a like a college course in current American political life and mores as well as the highly complex and agonizing partial birth abortion controversy. I was surprised and pleased that someone who was neither a physician nor a politician could "get it right" on so many levels: current day partisan political infighting over a supreme court nominee, campaign finance and the serious consequences of its current practice, the highjacking of the once responsible Repubilcan Party by special interests and the Religious Right, the extreme difficulty of adhering to principle by politicians dependent on the hugh sums of money poured into the politican system by one issue interest groups on both the left and the right, and last but not least, the complexity of the compelling legitimate arguments on both sides of the abortion issue. While North might seem to favor the Pro-choice forces, he demonstrates admirably the compelling arguments and the sincerity of many in the rank and file on the Pro-life side in his portrayal of the Tiernay parents and Senator Chad Palmer, while portraying accurately the crassness and insensitivity of radical partisans on both sides in his picture of the Christian Committment's attorney's (Pro-life) and the Anthony's Legions' leader's (Pro-choice) willingness to destroy anyone unwilling to march the last mile with them. I have recommended this book to every friend and aquaintance and patient I have seen in the last month, since I bought and read it, and will continue to do so.

Rating:
Summary: Protect and Defend: An Intellectual Read to be Enjoyed
Review: Protect and Defend by Richard North Patterson is a book that intertwines politics and ethics, career goals and the instinct to do what's right. It begins with Democrat Kerry Kilcannon narrowly winnning the office of Commander in Chief. When Kilcannon first assumes position in the Oval Office, he faces choosing a replacement for the Chief Justice for the United States Supreme Court. The president selects Caroline Masters, not only a liberal, but a woman. Republican opposistion includes Senator MacDonald Gage who searches to find the well hidden secret on this Californian judge to stop her from assuming office. Meanwhile, a recent law passed has sparked a historical case regarding abortion. Young lawyer Sarah Dash fights for 15-year-old Mary Ann Tierney not only against the church and pro-life supporters, but against the pregnant girl's parents. As the case battles forward, secrets and deceit are revealed on others besides Caroline Masters and Mary Ann Tierny. The fight for truth against ambition can be encountered by many characters in Patterson's masterpiece. Protect and Defend leads up to a riviting decision that will forever effect the United States.

I am a teenager, yet I found Protect and Defend very interesting and revealing of politics. The plot and characters are easily grasped, and the reading is relatively easy with the short chapters. However, the actually length of the book left a little to be desired, after awhile it felt like the numerous pages were bogging me down and halting me from enjoying the book's true potential. I have no other complaints, I know I will have to read the book again to search for details missed, but I can honestly say I will not mind doing so.

Rating:
Summary: an good book
Review: I just found this book and I was blown away by it, it is a very good book and everyone should read it.(it about abortion rights)

Rating:
Summary: Disclaimer! Amazons scale requires this book to be overrated
Review: A work can be slanted, biased, and intellectually compelling, but not here. Patterson's CONTRIVED PROPAGANDA for the feel-good masses should be a disappointment for all admirers of his early novels.

How do you create a book Bill Clinton calls a must read? Lift characters from current events, vilify mainstream opponents of your views, and white wash your own extremist positions. Go to far and you end up with, as an earlier reviewer notes, a Masters and Killcannon... "so saintly and self-righteous, they are nauseating."

If you're comfortable with the views of gun violence and reproductive rights advocates like Patterson, that to use weapons to defend your family and your life is wrong but killing partially delivered babies is right, buy this book.

Rating:
Summary: STACKED DECK
Review: Richard North Patterson is a compelling storywriter, and up to this point, I have found his books to be wonderfully executed and gripping. However, Patterson should return to the "thriller/murder cases" and get out of this pontification on abortion and seedy politicians. Caroline Masters and Kerry Killcannon, who I sincerely enjoyed in their previous appearances, are now given halos and are so saintly and self-righteous, they are nauseating.
First off, Kerry, being a Catholic insinuates that he is pro-life, but defends the rights of those who aren't. As a Catholic, he's forgetting that abortion is not condoned, and if he wants to walk the walk, he needs to stand behind that; otherwise, he becomes a hypocrite, as indeed he does in this book. He is not the vital force evidenced in "No Safe Place," and he merely appears smug, determined to do whatever he wants in the name of doing what is right. He even sends the FBI after information from a newspaper doing a story on the trial. It's okay, Kerry says, to break the law, if you're noble in doing it.
All of the political backstabbing gets extremely tiresome, and so overdrawn, it's cartoonish.
However, it is the Mary Ann Tierney story that proves Patterson's pro-choice stance, and in this book, everyone who is prochoice is either mentally ill, outright cruel, insensitive and wrong. Meanwhile the prochoice people behave so magnaimously, and they are portrayed as the victims. Heading this farce of a philosophy is young, FEMALE Sarah Dash, who takes in Mary Ann when her parents continue to force her into having her baby, even though it will probably be born dead, and Mary Ann may never have any more children. Stacked deck indeed.
First off, Mary is only 15; she had sex with her boyfriend in the back of his car; he didn't use a condom because it wasn't as much fun. She says her parents never told her anything about sex. Now, she's pregnant, and all of a sudden this fifteen year old girl is something like Joan of Arc; where did all this maturity come from? And why did she neglect to tell her lawyer that her mother DID talk to her about sex, but obviously mary Ann didn't listen? Seems that her mother became sterile after having Mary Ann. Stacked deck again. Also, is it really realistic that so many people have had abortions, as evidenced by Chad Palmer and Lara soon to be Mrs. Killcannon? The death of one of the other young people just to prove how heinous the press and abortion are, is totally manipulative and ultimately a cruel plot mechanism to advance Patterson's love of Masters and Killcannon. Also, when Mary Ann finally has the abortion, wouldn't it have been interesting if the baby (not the fetus, as Patterson keeps calling it!!) would have been normal? No, Patterson is not content to pull that kind of twist.
What a sad world where abortion is so prominent; granted, this was a tough choice for Mary Ann to make, but her total disregard of her parents (who were also portrayed as evil villains) left her to make that choice alone.
I really disliked this book; and I will not read any more of Mr. Patterson's treatises on abortion or gun control. If he sticks to his earlier works, I'll certainly continue to enjoy them, but I don't want to be exposed to such one-sided partisan views in my entertainment.
NOT RECOMMENDED.

Rating:
Summary: Pretty exhaustive, if biased coverage to two big issues
Review: I will first compliment the author on doing a pretty good job of trying to present MOST of the issues covering the topics of this book; namely abortion and political maneuvering. I say pretty good, not outstanding for a few reasons. First, the author, clearly liberal, does try to humanize most of his conservative opponents, which I doubt a conservative writer taking on something this big would do if the situation were reversed. Yet ALL the liberal characters portrayed are compassionate human beings, and ALL the really nasty people happen to be on the conservative side. There are also a few missing pieces in the abortion argument, which I'll address later. By the way, the author of this review leans slightly towards the left for his political camp.

The book builds up to interesting stories at once. First, the machinations involved in selecting a Supreme Court Chief Justice. The second is a challenge by a fifteen year-old pregnant girl who wants to have an abortion without her parents' consent.

Less compelling of the two is the Supreme Court story, only because it does leave a bad taste in one's mouth about how high-stakes politics works. No player is without blame in this story, which makes one wonder sometimes if we are doing it right. The argument for this centers around the practice that getting into power is by far the most important goal, much more than actually doing the best thing for the people they govern. So much so that they will do whatever they can to hinder the progress of government when the other guy is in power to show that your own side can do it better.

Both sides will also present extreme cases as the norm when trying to deface the other side, which the issues in this book do big time. The issues of smear campaigns and digging up personal dirt also get examined. I should point out that in the book it is the conservatives who publicly drag a liberal's sexuality through the mud, where the only real instance of this I can recall is the liberal smear campaign of Clarence Thomas. Just trying to play fair here.

The other story concerns the abortion story. I will give credit to the author by bringing most of the arguments both sides have on the issue, and going into great depth on both sides. The author clearly thinks abortion is the way to go, but he does give the pro-life ample time by describing the actual procedure of a so-called "partial birth" ( a media-generated term, we learn) abortion, the one the fifteen-year-old would have to have. But he leaves out two important issues, which tend to tip HIS argument in HIS favor.

First, while proclaiming that abortion is good because it prevents unwanted children from being born to parents that can't afford them, the fact remains that most abortions are done by middle and upper class women as a convenient form of birth control. Lower income women keep their babies more than upper class women. Second, the abortion doctor they present is a compassionate one who would only perform "partial-birth" when it will benefit the health of the mother. It doesn't bother to mention that most abortion clinics really are "mills", where the academic worst of the medical-school crop run businesses strictly based on the fact that the more abortions they perform, the more money they will make. This, and the fact that most of the pro-lifers in the trial do get there heads handed to them by the young feminist lawyer point out that all that is right and true seems to belong to the liberal world. As a left-leaner, I don't buy all of it.