SOURCE: Drew, Bettina. “Gazing Clearly at ‘American Spectacles.’” Chicago Tribune Books (24 January 1993): 3, 7.

In the following review, Drew comments that, although the prose in Rockets and Rodeos and Other American Spectacles is fair-minded and objective, Mallon's nationalism can be overwhelming and needlessly enthusiastic.

Thomas Mallon's variegated collection of essays on American “spectacles,” [Rockets and Rodeos and Other American Spectacles,] outcome of his urge to cover the post-Challenger launching of the space shuttle Discovery, takes readers on a pleasantly idiosyncratic cross-country tour. Critic, novelist and literary editor of Gentlemen's Quarterly, Mallon leapfrogs across the 50 states to report on locales as wide-ranging and uniquely American as the Twentieth International Finals Rodeo in Oklahoma; Poker Flat, the world's only non-government rocket range, in Alaska; the 50-year commemoration of the Pearl Harbor attack in Hawaii; a New York courtroom; and Robert Redford's Sundance Film Festival in Utah.

A self-styled “silent spectator of the...