Critics have praised Bug Jack Barron for its sharp insights into media shaping of politics and public opinion. It reflects television's growing influence in the decade it was written, a decade that opened with the televised Kennedy-Nixon debates. But the novel also uncannily predicted some things to come. So many major events in the 1992 presidential election occurred on Larry King's prime-time program that it was compared to Jack Barron's. Televised talk shows and call-in radio forums flourish — and sometimes change political and business fortunes — long after this novel first focused on them.

The book also pays more than passing attention to television methods.

Through split screens, zoom shots, camera angles, and other techniques, Barron is able to manipulate his subjects' impact on viewers. These details, along with his loaded questions, provide a primer in how to manage media images.

The political situation in Bug...