num_pages: 462
description: Adding to a fiction chronicle that has already spanned American history from the Lincoln assassination to the Watergate scandal Thomas Mallon now brings to life the tumultuous administration of the most consequential and enigmatic president in modern times. Finale captures the crusading ideologies blunders and glamour of the still-hotly-debated Reagan years taking readers to the political gridiron of Washington 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. Along with Soviet dissidents illegal-arms traders and antinuclear activists the novels memorable characters include Margaret Thatcher Jimmy Carter Pamela Harriman John W. Hinckley Jr. (Reagans would-be assassin) and even Bette Davis with whom the president had long ago appeared onscreen. Several figuresincluding a humbled crafty Richard Nixon; the young brilliantly acerbic Christopher Hitchens; and an anxious astrology-dependent Nancy Reagan (on the verge of a terrible realization)become the eyes through which readers see the last convulsions of the Cold War the beginning of the AIDS epidemic and a political revolution. At the center of it allbut forever out of reachis Ronald Reagan himself whose genial remoteness confounds his subordinates his children and the citizens who elected him. Finale is the book that Thomas Mallons work has been building toward for years. It is the most entertaining and panoramic novel about American politics since Advise and Consent more than a half century ago.A New York Times Notable Book One of the Best Books of the Year: The Washington Post San Francisco Chronicle The Daily Beast The Miami Herald St. Louis Post-Dispatch
language: English
title: Finale: A Novel of the Reagan Years
publisher: Pantheon