SOURCE: Valiunas, Algis. “Improving on History.” American Spectator 33, no. 5 (June 2000): 68-70.

In the following review, Valiunas discusses the current popularity of historical fiction and notes how Mallon's Two Moons differs from other works within the genre.

Even in the age of democracy, those men whose names win so much as a line in the history books are a precious few; so who speaks for the rest of us? It has been the traditional prerogative of the historical novelist, who portrays real men in imaginary circumstances and imaginary men in real circumstances, to assert the significance of those whom history cut out of the picture, to render momentous events from the viewpoint of men too small to deserve the historian's notice. Stendhal, Hugo, Thackeray, Tolstoy all wrote of crucial battles in the Napoleonic Wars, and they made sure to tell that part of the tale which historians almost invariably...