I previously read Rawles' Patriots and Survivors books so when I saw Founders was out I was interested in reading it.Patriots was a great book I'd recommend, Survivors took that formula ran with it but ruined it to a degree with the insertion of numerous Christianity references. Continuing on that path, Founders is basically 80% Christianity propaganda / waffle and 20% decent book - and that's being generous.I get the authors a Christian, I get that he likes to write about characters that reflect his beliefs, but really, do we need the majority of most chapters spent on the characters talking to each other about how great Christianity is and how tops is it they have God in their lives?According to this book, reading between the lines, I can summarise the two main points:a) unless you're a Christian, you're going to die;b) if you're a Christian but you haven't hoarded guns and food, you're the wrong sort of Christian following the wrong path, and, you're going to die.If you're interested in apocalyptic fiction do yourself a favour and read Patriots, Earth Abides, Black Monday, Alas Babylon or Without Warning and not Founders. This is an odd book. It is connected somehow to his 2 other books, but I don't know if this is a sequel, prequel, or just part of the same story. There is an overwhelming detail of trivia things - like details of (apparently) every gun he has ever seen at a gun show. If you took out the details that aren't needed for telling the story, you'd only have half the book. In the beginning there is a lot of details about religion, but then that goes away about a third of the way in - kind of a small course on religious variations in modern america. I almost stopped reading the book at about the 1/3 point. I don't really know what to think of this. On the positive side; I did learn a lot about the way preppers think, and got some good quotations from the beginning of each chapter. About half the story lines he opens up do not get closed - maybe they finish in the other books. In the same way, he would sometimes open a new story line with a familiarity like we were already supposed to know these people - maybe they started in another book.
Do You like book Founders (2012)?
The first in a series, and so far seems pretty good...
—Romo
Ben says ... Yep, you guessed it ... Still a fan!
—stundermann
