SOURCE: Mandelson, Edward. “The President That Never Was.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 4921 (25 July 1997): 22.

In the following review, Mandelson lauds the comedic elements in Dewey Defeats Truman, but notes that the novel is “lighter” than Henry and Clara.

Thomas Mallon's fourth novel takes its title from the Chicago Tribune's 1948 election-night headline trumpeting the victory of the candidate favoured for president by the Tribune and virtually every other American newspaper. Exactly as all the opinion polls had predicted, the early returns showed that stiff-necked Thomas Dewey, the Republican Governor of New York, had trounced Harry Truman, the “accidental president”, a plain-spoken former haberdasher, who had inherited the office from Franklin Roosevelt in 1945. The only thing wrong with the Tribune's headline was the fact that, when all the votes had been counted the next morning, Truman defeated Dewey.

Dewey Defeats Truman is a romantic comedy of reversals set in...