SOURCE: Mitgang, Herbert. “Master of Detail.” Chicago Tribune Books (26 January 1997): 1, 6.

In the following review, Mitgang compliments Mallon's use of historical detail in Dewey Defeats Truman.

It takes a vivid imagination to turn the most famous presidential headline in modern newspaper history—“Dewey Defeats Truman”—into a work of fiction. Did the Chicago Daily Tribune editor develop an Excedrin headache the morning after that Page 1 banner appeared below the masthead, prematurely and incorrectly, when President Harry Truman was re-elected in November 1948?

The reader won't find the answer in Thomas Mallon's new novel [Dewey Defeats Truman]. Surprisingly, this isn't a newspaper or political novel, as the clever, attention-grabbing title suggests. Instead, it's a charming, small-town story about a group of decent characters whose lives intersect in the Midwestern tradition of Booth Tarkington, Sherwood Anderson and Theodore Dreiser, but without any underlying American Tragedy.

The town is a real one: Owosso...