experiences as a soldier in the Civil War and the night at Ford's Theater, where he suffers a near-fatal knife wound at the hands of Booth. Henry must also endure questions about his conduct that night and whether he could have saved the President.

The plot of Dewey Defeats Truman unfolds in presidential candidate Thomas E. Dewey's hometown of Owosso, Michigan, during the summer of 1948, when the heavily favored Dewey campaigned against Harry Truman for the presidency. Beguiled by the “certainty” of Dewey's election, the residents of Owosso make preparations for an onslaught of tourists and the reflected glory of their claims to their famous native son. Several subplots advance the narrative as well. In one, a young would-be writer named Anne Macmurray must choose between two suitors—a well-meaning union organizer or a wealthy, arrogant Republican. In another, an elderly resident named Horace Sinclair offers opposition to the town's tourist trappings because they will expose secrets from another era. The novel Two Moons (2000) is a somber meditation on science, mortality, and political power. The story features a love affair between a Civil War widow, Cynthia May, and a younger astronomer, Hugh Allison, whose dreams go beyond the mere charting of stars. Cynthia and Hugh work together at the United States Naval Observatory, paradoxically located in the swampy Foggy Bottom section of Washington, D.C. With the discovery of two moons in orbit around Mars, they hope to receive funding for a better facility and to be located beyond the reach of Foggy Bottom's mosquito population. Their work draws the attention of Republican power-broker Roscoe Conkling, whose attempts to help Hugh are motivated not by an interest in science, but rather by an attraction to Cynthia.

Mallon has also published a number of essay collections and nonfiction works. His first published work, Edmund Blunden (1983), creates a biographical portrait of the English World War I poet. A Book of One's Own surveys the work of more than one hundred diarists throughout history, including Samuel Pepys, Leonardo da Vinci, Virginia Woolf, and Lee Harvey Oswald. Mallon divides the writers into several different categories such as confessors, travelers, and apologists, using these to further examine the character of the authors. Stolen Words explores examples of plagiarism in academia, the sciences, and entertainment ranging from the seventeenth century to the 1980s. Mallon's 1993 book of essays, Rockets and Rodeos and Other American Spectacles, offers his take on certain distinctly American “spectacle” events, including a New York bank robbery trial, a rocket mission to study the Aurora Borealis, the Sundance Film Festival, and a vigil before an execution at the San Quentin penitentiary. In Fact: Essays on Writers and Writing presents a selection of essays and reviews that deal with the art of writing and the works of such modern authors as Don DeLillo, Tom Wolfe, Gore Vidal, and Siegfried Sassoon. In 2002 Mallon published Mrs. Paine's Garage and the Murder of John F. Kennedy, a nonfiction work that focuses on Ruth Paine, a woman who befriended Lee Harvey Oswald, the eventual assassin of President Kennedy. Using interviews and documented facts, Mallon creates a narrative portrait of the relationship between Ruth, Lee, and Lee's wife, Marina, as well as of Ruth's role in the criminal investigations after Kennedy's murder.

Critical Reception

Much of the critical discussion of Mallon's work has included debate over the validity of the genre of historical fiction, with several critics arguing that it is inappropriate for such authors as Mallon to speculate on the emotions and inner thoughts of historical figures. For example, some have debated whether Mrs. Paine's Garage and the Murder of John F. Kennedy should be considered a work of fiction or nonfiction because of Mallon's inclusion of conversations and events that deviate from the historical record. Other reviewers, however, have praised Mallon's narratives, noting that his fiction provides an emotional perspective to the objective details of history. Algis Valiunas has remarked, “Mallon's recurrent theme is the way men and events that will go down in history alter the trajectory of ordinary people's lives, as the gravitational field of a star or planet bends a passing beam of light.” Scholars have also commended Mallon for his ability to blend extensive historical research into the plots of his novels. James Kaufmann has stated, “When it comes to period detail, Mallon has perfect pitch.” Some reviewers have faulted Mallon's fiction for being overly nostalgic, but others have complimented his straightforward prose style and lack of pretense. Mallon's nonfiction works, particularly Stolen Words, have also received critical praise. Jon Saari has noted that, “At its best [Stolen Words] melds scholarship and detective fiction, assembling the evidence and showing the human drama that accompanies the act of plagiarism.”