Showing results by author "Thomas Mallon" in All Categories

Set during the tumultuous middle of the George W. Bush years—amid the twin catastrophes of the Iraq insurgency and Hurricane Katrina—Landfall brings Thomas Mallon's cavalcade of contemporary American politics, which began with Watergate and continue with Finale, to a vivid and emotional...

"A religious fundamentalist, a political operative, a primitive sermonizer, and an accomplice of worldly secular powers. Her mission has always been of this kind. The irony is that she has never been able to induce anybody to believe her. It is past time that she was duly honored and taken at her word." Among his many books, perhaps none have sparked more outrage than The Missionary Position, Christopher Hitchens's meticulous study of the life and deeds of Mother Teresa.

In a world of bare-knuckled ideology and secret dossiers, Timothy Laughlin, a recent college graduate and devout Catholic, is eager to join the crusade against Communism. An encounter with a handsome State Department official, Hawkins Fuller, leads to Tim's first job and, after Fuller's advances, his first love affair.

From the author of the acclaimed novel Watergate comes a galvanizing new novel about the tumultuous administration of the most consequential and enigmatic president of modern times - Ronald Reagan. Finale takes listeners to the political gridiron of Washington in 1986, the wealthiest enclaves of Southern California, and the volcanic landscape of Iceland, where the president engages in two almost apocalyptic days of negotiation with Mikhail Gorbachev.

On the evening of Good Friday, 1865, Henry Rathbone and Clara Harris joined the Lincolns in the presidential box at Ford’s Theater, becoming eyewitnesses to one of the great tragedies of American history. In this riveting novel, Thomas Mallon re-creates the unusual love story of this young engaged couple whose fateful encounter with history profoundly affects the remainder of their lives.

When the brilliant Cynthia May—a Civil War widow whose beauty has been shadowed by worry and poverty—starts work as a human “computer” at the Observatory, astronomer Hugh Allison has found just the partner he needs for a radiant, half-crazed scheme that will make him live forever in the annals of science and space. But first the two scientists must overcome the very earthly obstacles presented by powerful Senator Roscoe Conkling of New York and a fraudulent astrologer who just might know their future.

A WASHINGTON POST BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR Through the curious life of Dick Kallman—a real-life celebrity striver, poisonously charming actor, and eventual murder victim—the unforgiving worlds of postwar showbiz and down-low gay sexuality are thrown into stark relief in this “page-turning...

A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR ONE OF NPR’S “BOOKS WE LOVE” From the renowned novelist and critic, an exquisite collection of journal entries from the 1980s and ’90s, tracking a young, gay author’s literary coming-of-age in New York during the AIDS crisis In 1983, Thomas...

Novelist and essayist Mallon talks with Freeman, critic and American editor of Granta, about the great, lost art of letter writing and the current frenzy of electronic messaging. A discussion with the audience ensues.