Remembering novelist Tom Clancy

Tonight on the NewsHour Gwen Ifill will talk with author Alan Cheuse, who is also a popular book reviewer on NPR's "All Things Considered" and an English Professor at George Mason University, about bestselling novelist Tom Clancy's work and legacy. Clancy died Tuesday at the age of 66.

Cheuse remembered Clancy with us earlier today in an interview.

"There are few really popular American writers who have done what he's done. He doesn't write by the sentence or by the paragraph but by the scene and he writes intensely riveting dramatic scenes. And that is what the popular reader is hungry for. It is solid dramatic entertainment, and I would compare him to Stephen King in that regard."

"The paradox is he was a guy who convinced millions that they know something about military technology and he wasn't in the military. It shows you can make people know about it if you're a terrific writer and do lots of research, you can make it work. It's a big loss to the American reading public."