Tom Clancy

Tom Clancy was an American novelist whose techno-thrillers about military hardware, intelligence operations, and geopolitical conflict made him one of the best-selling authors of the late twentieth century. Born Thomas Leo Clancy Jr. on April 12, 1947, in Baltimore, Maryland, he sold more than 100 million books before his death on October 1, 2013.

Clancy attended Loyola Blakefield, a Jesuit high school in Towson, then earned a bachelor's degree in English literature from Loyola College in Baltimore in 1969. Poor eyesight kept him out of military service, and he spent more than a decade selling insurance in Owings, Maryland, while reading avidly about defense technology.

He sold his first novel, The Hunt for Red October, to the Naval Institute Press in 1984 for an advance of 5,000 dollars. After President Ronald Reagan called it "the perfect yarn," the book reached the top of bestseller lists, and his fictional CIA analyst Jack Ryan became a long-running protagonist.

He followed with Patriot Games (1987), The Cardinal of the Kremlin (1988), Clear and Present Danger (1989), and The Sum of All Fears (1991), all of which became Hollywood films. Clancy lent his name to popular video game franchises including Rainbow Six, Ghost Recon, and Splinter Cell, and was a part-owner of the Baltimore Orioles. He continued publishing through 2013, with the posthumous Command Authority released that December.

The name Tom is a short form of Thomas, which originates from the Aramaic Ta'oma meaning "twin."