Don't spend any time reading the other two. I did enjoy many of the ideas in the series, but it was a lot of work to get to each of those crunchy bits of goodness. "The Last President" nearly made me put Barnes on my "don't bother reading" list - and he's historically been one of my favourite authors. This is a shame, as the bones of some really good stories lay there - he just fleshed them out with dull, repetitive politicking about who would be the powerless figurehead of a dwindling population of desperate survivors.

I do have to say that I only found the books dull, and not offensive. So many of my formerly favourite authors have become racist, sexist idiots, but happily Barnes is not one of them.