SOURCE: Eder, Richard. “Triumph without Victory.” Los Angeles Times Book Review (5 January 1997): 2.

In the following review, Eder argues that Mallon is most successful in his description of individual details in Dewey Defeats Truman.

On the school picnic, one imagines, Thomas Mallon's sandwiches would be cucumber and sardine instead of peanut butter and jelly. On the museum trip, he would be found in the basement examining the air-duct moldings. On the treasure hunt, he would come back, not with the Walt Disney video hidden by the teachers, but with somebody's lost and badly missed pocket diary.

Mallon did, in fact, produce a splendidly antic book some years ago about diaries and how and why people keep them, as well as another about plagiarists and several novels. Although these last are not major works, each has some major minor memorable moments. If he were a wind-up toy, he would run...