Tuesday, May 31, 2016

The MAN - Irving Wallace



The MAN - is a book written by best selling author Irving Wallace. I was suggested to read this book by many of my acquaintances including my father and brother and a well wisher.

About a month ago, I started with the painstakingly long book(again on Kindle) and could finish only now. Its about a Negro man who gets to become the president of America accidentally.

It so happens that the old president and the vice president would be dead in a building collapse in Germany.  Back in America, there is a senator negro man selected as the new president as he is the pro tempore of the president.

The book is the journey of this new guy as the president in the White House. There are aspects as to how he deals with the racism against him and the racism that he is inflicting the people of America, how unbiased he is, how wise he is when he tackles issues related to his children etc.

He is challenged by the white racists and the black men seeking freedom from racism. He is impeached with false charges of dismissing one of his board members, harassment and others. His fights the impeachment trail with the help of his friend lawyer and wins over. At the same time, the Russians who are trying to capture a small piece of land backed by America - called Amboko also suspend their operations by which the Negro man wins popularity back and there is no re-election held due to these reasons.

As said by all else, I was expecting the book to give me some lines of definition of THE MAN, probably all MEN on earth. But it failed to keep up my expectation as I knew better MEN than this Negro Douglass Dilman - Men who are wiser, more intelligent and courageous.

Piece of advice: Do not set expectations before picking it up. A big book indeed with a lot of pages of repetitive text(like the charges of impeachment, I almost knew those lines by heart when it was over). Douglass Dilman was the MAN of 1960s and does not hold good for current society. He may prove to be inspirational in terms of beings unbiased. But everything else, I expect him to be updated. 

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