Rating: 
Summary: Transparently liberal
Review: Unlike a reader from Potomac, Maryland I was not fortunate enought to have read a review of A God In Ruins before picking up a books-on-tape copy. If I had not already invested three hours of listening to get to the crux of the story, I would have trashed it. Leon beats the idea of repealing the 2nd amendment to death, going so far as to coining a pro-gun organization known as Amerigun. In his book, a so-called conservative, Republican organization smuggles thousands of machine pistols into the US , but are stopped by the heroics of an orphan Russian who switched from Republican to Democrat to become the Governor of Colorado and who is raised Catholic only to discover he is really Jewish on the eve of being elected President, this setting off riots of skinheads, the KKK, and black muslims. (I know, don't ask)As if this was biased enough, the Russian Catholic Jewish Presidential candidate laments how Bill and Hillary Clinton had had their careers destroyed by the unfair sniping of the GOP and the media. Poor Bill was faced with describing oral sex with an intern as a non-issue before the nation. Give me a break. On second thought, 2 stars may have been too high a rating. Leon has gone on to his reward and I can't confront him in this world and won't waste my time in the next. I can, however, warn you away from this book unless Bill and Hillary are heros of yours.
Rating: 
Summary: A Terrible Boo-Boo.
Review: "A God in Ruins" is a stunningly bad novel, and a complete waste of time in all respects. This novel also demonstrates that an author's once-immense talent can leave him in the cold. I am being brutal to Mr. Uris because he is one of my favourite authors of all time, and it is horrible to see the man who wrote brilliant, haunting novels like "Exodus", "Mila 18", and "Trinity" produce such a lifeless piece of trash. The writing is poor and amateurish, the characters are uninteresting, and the pro-liberal, anti-conservative tone almost made the book feel like propaganda. You should feel ashamed of yourself, Mr. Uris!! You have done your fans (myself being one) and your reputation a great disservice by writing this novel.
Rating:
Summary: An Author in Ruins is more like it.
Review: After reading Leon Uris since I was in High School more than 25 years ago, I was so grossly disappointed by this book that I had to rethink my feelings of all of the Uris books of my past. I actually wonder if he really wrote this book or if some liberal pupil of his from Columbia conned him into letting him use his name for this worthless, poorly edited, cartoonishly poor work of strawman arguments. The "author" (yeah, right) is obvious in his desire to grind his politically liberal axe in the face of the average western American male. Mixed metaphor? Of course. Every character becomes a sterotypical caricature. The liberal politics are obvious. The editing is amateurish. And the story isn't even very interesting. Pretend Mr. Uris stopped writing after Redemption. Pretend he died with thoughts of the Irish free of politcal and religious turmoil and his notoriety will be saved.
Rating: 
Summary: Entertaining but . . .
Review: I had the good fortune of reading all of the bad reviews before picking up this book. My expectations were thus quite low. I agree with the other readers on many points: the book was very poorly edited (i.e. reference to eastern time zone being three hours behind the pacific time zone, reference to one of the main character's children having to be rescued twice from the flower-child land of Height Ashbury when such kids weren't even born until the late 70's), the story line was all over the lot, the characters were often caricatures of themselves, Uris' political views were rammed down the readers' throats, and the plentiful representations of the Clintons as misunderstood and victims of the media was just plain laughable. HOWEVER, even with all of these problems, I still could not put down the book once I got to page 200. While certainly not even close in quality to Uris' other books, I still found God in Ruins to be entertaining and a nice escape. It is certainly no worse than the tripe offered by many of today's fiction writers.
Rating:
Summary: an absolute waste of time
Review: I would have given this less than one star were that an option. There is nothing kind I can say about this pointless book. I question if Leon Uris even read this book let alone wrote it. I did finish it and kept waiting for something to catch my interest but that never happened.
Rating:
Summary: WAS IT URIS?
Review: Very weak and very plain. Why did you write Mr. Uris? Where are the passion, knowledge, ideas, and characters. What happened? Take it back, Mr. Uris, and pretend that it never happened.
Rating:
Summary: Say you didn't right this, Mr. Uris.
Review: ...I checked this audiotape out at the library. But I do a lot of purchasing here and I also rely heavily on Amazon.com customer reviews in making my book purchasing choices. Unfortunately, somehow I didn't consult them when selecting Ruins. Man I sure should have. After listening to Ruins, I honestly felt betrayed. I haven't anything new to add that hasn't already been covered in the other reviews. I would like to offer a challenge though. I challenge anyone to find a book from an author as great as Leon Uris that is as bad as this one. I grew up on Leon Uris. He is the reason I became a historical fiction devotee. For that I will forgive him (maybe not his editor), and I can only hope we will see a return to the writing standard of his previous works.
Rating:
Summary: A good idea in ruins
Review: I was definitely intrigued when I saw this book. I have heard wonderful things about Uris' other books and was excited, first by the premise and then by the early descriptions of Quinn's character. I have never been more disappointed. This book was horrendous. The characters were completely unbelievable, the plot was completely inane and random and I have never been so disgusted by the sexual references in a book. My God, was this book over the top. I figured there must be some kind of saving grace to come at the end, or else Uris would never have won his many accolades. There wasn't...in fact, it only got worse. So I caution all of you to stay away from this book, for your own good.
Rating:
Summary: Who use Leon Uris' name?
Review: I think Mr. Uris needs to find whoever used his name when writing this book and publicly flog them. I can't believe that the same person who wrote Trinity and QBVII wrote this drivel. The plot is poor, the characters are ill-defined and the pacing is absolutely horrendous. The book leaps from the past to the future and back and often times left me wondering what era am I reading about? I think I'm going to bury this book in my garden as it should serve well as a load of manure.
Rating:
Summary: Undeserving of Leon Uris
Review: I have read a number of Mr. Uris's books, including Exodus, Trinity, Mila 18, Topaz, and The Haj. Mr. Uris has previously been one of my favorite authors. With eager expectation I picked this book to read. However, I find nothing in this book of redeeming value. I would classify it as a piece of trash. The writing is poor, the plot is poor, and the book is filled with extremely foul language, sexual situations, and political bias. I don't often throw away books, but I am tossing this one in the dumpster so no one else in my family is tempted to absorb its filth.
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