Rating: 
Summary: Highly disturbing, but necessary and insightful
Review: Like it or not, this work accurately and powerfully portrays the current feelings in many parts of America. Both sides of the political spectrum would be well advised to read this fictional account of what could be and learn the serious lesson embedded within. Only the courageous from the left or right will benefit from reading this book, all others need not waste their time.
Mr.Ross deserves a round of applause for poking this hornets nest and the publishers deserve an equal amount of thanks for shining the light of controversy on the subject of an American government out of control.
Hopefully, this will remain a work of fiction, but if any portion of this book should come true, we cannot say we weren't warned.
Rating: 
Summary: A compelling book, full of contradictions
Review: Since my politics are, if anything, more extreme than Ross's, I don't think my perspective suffers from bias. This book is worth reading, but barely. While I enjoyed the lessons in the technology of firearms, as well as the history of firearms control, there was too much of the former. When I pick up a novel, I expect interesting ideas and situations. U.C. provides that, but tacks on a lot of fundamentally unnecessary tech-specs. Here are some of the contradictions I referred to. The characters in the book make frequent reference to the Constitution and Declaration of Independence. But the latter document specifies that the right to life is *inalienable*, which means that it cannot even be forfeited. This renders the actions of Bowman and company ipso facto immoral, since they abrogate an inalienable right. Question for Ross: would the assassinated feds have been justified in using firearms to defend themselves? Or are they morally equivalent to condemned criminals, whom we punish for attempting to avoid their fates? My point here is that Ross' characters profess loyalty to the Constitution and other founding documents, but they take actions which contravene the spirit (and letter) of those documents. They can't have it both ways. Either we have inalienable rights and the D of I is correct, or we don't and it's not. However, the book has many redeeming features. No one can deny that governments have been responsible for tremendous evils throughout history, and only the naive would deny that citizens need arms to defend themselves from those evils. These are the worthwhile messages of the book.
Rating:
Summary: A needed and important book
Review: This book is important enought that I have two copies, one to keep and one to lend. If you value a Constitutional Republic and the Constitution, read this book and then read it a second time. After reading it pass it on to somebody else to read. Heck, buy copies and give 'em as gifts, donations to libraries and schools and send one to your local "we know better than you" politician. The lessons in John's book do not just relate to the gun culture, they relate to everyone that has had to face unheeding hacks in dealing with governmenal agencies, local, state and federal.
Rating:
Summary: READ THIS BOOK!
Review: If you value The Bill of Rights, read this book. UC hits the nail right on the head.
Rating:
Summary: Staggeringly Informative book... You learn about yourself!
Review: In John Ross' amazing work "Unintended Consequences" The reader will be forced to deal with some startling concepts. Whether based entirely on fact or completely made up, Ross has assembled a complex masterpiece of charcters and events that will keep any reader driving through all 850+ pages! Non-stop information and just enough action to keep the pages turning quickly are just two of the reasons that everyone will enjoy this book. The only wrong step this book takes is in its too frequent (which for me is usually ONCE) use of graphic sexual situations. My advice to John Ross is, "Publish a PG-13 version so that every 10th grade Civics teacher can use this book to inspire students to really consider the things that are important to being a free individual in America." That said, I highly recommend this book to all American Adults who care about their country's systematic decline towards a statist society over the last 100 years, one potential result of this decline, and (most importantly) how they are going to react to any further attempts by our government to stifle individual freedoms.
Rating:
Summary: Unintended Consequences is the best book I have ever read.
Review: "10" doesn't do it, but "35" would be closer to the mark. My father didn't understand my interest in firearms, and detested my fondness for them until he read U.C. If you have any heart at all, this book will bring you to tears. --MCS
Rating:
Summary: One of the Best books I've read in thirty years!
Review: Unintended Consequences could very well be the blueprint for a bloody entry into the 21st Century or, an 861 page warning to the feds, 3Back Off or Die!2 In this exciting combination action-adventure, history and plea, author John Ross has written a major piece of libertarian literature not to be forgotten. It tells the story of Henry Bowman, born in the Midwest in our times. He grows up with middle class values, learns gun handling at a very earlier age and grows up to be a first class marksman, pilot, peaceful and financially independent individual. The reader follows the major events of the 20th Century as we learn about his father, his uncles, the Warsaw Ghetto in WWII, and every federal gun law which gradually begins to strangle legitimate gun owners and, literally, to kill and maim us as we are given highly dramatic and accurate accounts of Ruby Ridge and Waco and other government blunders. Ross inspects the American gun culture with a microscope and the reader is educated as the plot unfolds. Ross succeeds in his first novel by taking what could be dry, technical facts and integrating them into the conversations of his heros. In this manner, we are lead through many of the major pieces of gun legislation, BATF and FBI screw ups and outright butchery that these agencies have perpetrated against innocent Americans. When Bowman is still a teenager, on a canoe trip with a friend he is scouting miles ahead, alone. He comes across a scene where four hillbillies are raping and about to murder a young women. He yells at the men to get them to stop. They leap for their guns. Bowman takes out three of the four with his .44, takes the glasses of the fourth and scares him into assisting the girl back to her home. When Bowman returns to his friend, he encourages him to see how far they can canoe downstream on the river so that night they camp about 70 miles from where the incident took place. Bowman has the presence of mind to refrain from telling his friend about what happened. This lesson is later used as a strategy later on in a big way. Don1t blab and you wont be involved. As the reader observes Henry Bowman growing up, learning how to handle a gun and an aircraft, go to school and deal with the world, we are treated to what a middle class boy sees and hears of the real and political world about him. Perhaps I am biased as a fellow Midwesterner, but the values Bowman learns are the values I learned in much the same way, in the same time period. Thus I am predisposed to identify with Bowman from the start and sympathetic to his problems as the feds begin to close in around his life. At a turning point in the novel, Bowman and his friend Kane are discussing what they should do in response to the feds coming to kill him and Bowman instead ventilating all ten of them. They discuss the moral aspects of their coming actions, how they can do what needs to be done. Then they go about the task of doing them. From this point on the action is non-stop and totally exciting! But the novel has its flaws, many of them, all minor and tolerable. In a technically detailed novel such as this, we never learn how Bowman learns to fly a Citation, a sophisticated twin jet, how he learns to teach self defense classes. We are not told why a certain women is offed. She just gets it in a quick, businesslike manner. Bowman, like Dagny Taggert in Atlas Shrugged, steals a light aircraft in order to get away from the feds. Unlike Taggert, he never offers the owner any compensation. Certain cliches are used by both the good guys and the bad guys. 3In a New York Second2 comes to mind. It1s used four times. The technical level and frequency of gun descriptions and their interior workings are slightly too detailed for the average reader. I have shot and taken apart my guns in Alaska for years and I felt that the level of detail was almost too much. If I feel this way, what does the non-gun owner think? One critic mentioned that the first edition was full of typos. I read the second edition. It had a number of them also, not enough to be distressing but perhaps the third edition will delete the last few. The President of the US who plays an ongoing role in the novel is not properly developed. He wants the bloodshed to end and takes steps to do so but at no point are we told what his record and philosophy toward guns are. By the time a man becomes President of the US, this part of his mind and his record on the issue would be well known. But Ross does not tell us and the character of the President is thus 3/4 missing, relative to the story. However these minor points don1t get in the way of becoming totally rapped up in the action and the implications of the words in front of you! Perhaps Ross makes up for his minor deviations by creating a believable character in Henry Bowman. We observe the major points of his boyhood and adolescence. We see him educated at Amherst. We see his flaws, why he becomes an alcoholic and how he recovers. When the lead starts flying, his strengths and moral purpose are clear to us. This is an extremely controversial novel. It dramatizes and warns the feds that they will be killed if they continue to rape and pillage their way through middle America. It provides a moral defense for a distinct, selective civil war. Unintended Consequences could be the blueprint for future self defense against the alphabet agencies who carry guns and use them too frequently. The author in his preface writes that he hopes they get the message and back off. The terrible thing about this situation is that they do not appear to be doing so! That1s why when I read this book a powerful sense of foreboding came over me. Unintended Consequences is a great book, one of the best I have read in the last thirty years! Ross1 detailed prose and accurate history make for a extremely believable and mighty novel. I urge you to read and heed this major piece of fiction! Fred James Palmer, Alaska November, 1997
Rating:
Summary: The Greatest Gift to Freedom Loving Americans
Review: As a 19 year veteran of the US Army and an avid gun enthusist this book says what gun/freedom loving Americans have been therorizing/prophesying about for the last 10 years. Mr Ross's inspiring research of historical facts with regards to weapons and events within the US is exceptional. However this book deals not only with the second ammendment but all ammendments and thier planned extinction by the government and powerful private sector. Most notable is the historical value of the book and the chronological way that it is presented. Unintended Consequences will both freighten and exilirate anyone who is familiar with current politics. This book is definity a "must read" for anyone who values thier individual rights and freedoms. Prospective readers should order it immediately as it is a prime candidate for censor by "Big Brother"
Rating:
Summary: A great literary work, and a warning . . .
Review: This was a great novel. I know Mr. Ross (initially) had a hard time finding a publisher. And, believe me, the comments about Missouri are dead-on correct. The warning aspect, In My Opinion, is that if the U.S. governemnt does not turn away from increasing attacks on firearms ownership, some people will resist. As a peace lover, I hope this never happens. To that end, I believe I'll purchase the 30% discounted version here and donate it to my local campus library (which, sadly, has not acquired this book).
Rating:
Summary: BUY IT NOW BEFORE IT BECOMES ILLEGAL
Review: This is a very thought provoking story. I found myself doing more in depth research on some of the little known historical events that aren't very well known. This is one book that I'll be reading again and inviting my friends to read. It's truly a chronology documenting how our freedoms have become eroded to the point that we are now in the midst of a government out of control. At the rate we're going, one day this book won't be allowed to sold or possessed.
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