"Watergate: A Novel" (Encore presentation.)

(Please note: This program originally aired earlier this year.) On this installment of our show, we speak by phone with the writer, critic, and journalist Thomas Mallon, whose critically acclaimed novels include "Henry and Clara" and "Dewey Defeats Truman." Mallon frequently writes for The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, and The Atlantic, and his newest novel, now out in paperback, is "Watergate." Hailed as "wildly entertaining from beginning to end" (Fort Worth Star-Telegram) and "a brilliant presentation, subtle and sympathetic but spiked with satire" (The Washington Post), this novel was named a New York Times Notable Book as well as a St. Louis Post-Dispatch Best Book of 2012. And as a reviewer of "Watergate" noted in The New York Times Book Review: "We [as readers] are propelled forward and kept highly entertained by the colorful characters, the delicious insider details, the intelligence of the dialogue.... What Mallon captures particularly well is the fundamental weirdness and mystery at the center of the scandal.... It appears that Mallon's primary goal, one he achieves with great finesse, is to make the portrayals of his characters as believable as possible."