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Allen Drury

Author profile

born

September 02, 1918 in Houston, Texas, The United States

died

September 02, 1998

gender

male

genre

Literature & Fiction, Politics

About this author

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In late 1943, Allen Drury was a 25-year old army veteran looking for work. A position as the United States Senate correspondent for United Press International provided Drury not only with employment, but with an insider's knowledge of the United States Senate.

In addition to fulfilling his duties as a reporter, Drury also kept a journal of his views of the Senate and individual senators. In addition to the Senates personalities, Drury's journal captured the events, large and small, of the Seventy-eighth and Seventy-ninth United States Congress Congresses.

Although written in the mid-1940s, Drury's diary was not published until 1963. ''A Senate Journal'' found an audience in part because of the great success of ''Advise and Consent'', Drury's...more In late 1943, Allen Drury was a 25-year old army veteran looking for work. A position as the United States Senate correspondent for United Press International provided Drury not only with employment, but with an insider's knowledge of the United States Senate.

In addition to fulfilling his duties as a reporter, Drury also kept a journal of his views of the Senate and individual senators. In addition to the Senates personalities, Drury's journal captured the events, large and small, of the Seventy-eighth and Seventy-ninth United States Congress Congresses.

Although written in the mid-1940s, Drury's diary was not published until 1963. ''A Senate Journal'' found an audience in part because of the great success of ''Advise and Consent'', Drury's 1959 novel about the Senate's consideration of a controversial nominee for Secretary of State.

Drury greatest success was ''Advise and Consent'', which was made into a film in 1962. The book was partly inspired by the suicide of Wyoming Senator Lester C. Hunt. It spent 102 weeks on the ''New York Times'' best-seller list

Drury followed ''Advise and Consent'' with several sequels. ''A Shade of Difference'' is set a year after ''Advise and Consent''. Drury then turned his attention to the next presidential election after those events with ''Capable of Honor'' and ''Preserve and Protect''. He then wrote two alternative sequels based on a different outcome of an assassination attack in an earlier work: ''Come Nineveh, Come Tyre'' and ''The Promise of Joy''.

In 1971, Drury published ''The Throne of Saturn'', a science fiction novel about the first attempt at sending a manned mission to Mars. He dedicated the work "To the US Astronauts and those who help them fly." Political characters in the book are archetypal rather than comfortably human. The book carries a strong anti-leftist/anti-communist flavor. The book has a lot to say about interference in the space program by leftist Americans.

Having wrapped up his political series by 1975, Drury began a new one with the 1977 novel ''Anna Hastings'', more a novel about journalism than politics. He returned to the timeline in 1979, with the political novel ''Mark Coffin U.S.S.'' (though the main relationship between the two books was that Hastings was a minor character in ''Mark Coffin U.S.S.'''s sequels). It was succeeded, by the two-part ''The Hill of Summer'' and ''The Roads of Earth'', which are true sequels to ''Mark Coffin U.S.S.'' He also wrote stand-alone novels, ''Decision'' and ''Pentagon'', as well as several other fiction and non-fiction works.

Drury's political novels have been described as page-turners, set against the Cold War, with an aggressive and determined Soviet Union seeking to undermine the U.S.

Drury lived in Tiburon, California from 1964 until his 1998 death of cardiac arrest. Drury had completed his 20th novel, ''Public Men'' set at Stanford, just two weeks before his death. He died on 2 September 1998 at St. Mary's Medical Center in San Francisco, California, on his eightieth birthday. Drury was never married.

Excerpted from Wikipedia(less)

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Books by Allen Drury

Average rating: 3.89 · 2,113 ratings · 95 reviews · 23 distinct works

	Advise and Consent 4.01 avg rating — 1,633 ratings — published 1959 — 9 editions	My rating:
	Preserve And Protect; A Novel 3.73 avg rating — 78 ratings — published 1968 — 7 editions	My rating:
	Capable Of Honor: A Novel 3.69 avg rating — 70 ratings — 5 editions	My rating:
	A God Against the Gods 3.83 avg rating — 63 ratings — published 1976 — 5 editions	My rating:
	Come Nineveh, Come Tyre: The Presidency of Edward M. Jason 3.60 avg rating — 55 ratings — published 1973 — 2 editions	My rating:
	A Shade of Difference 3.75 avg rating — 53 ratings — published 1962 — 4 editions	My rating:
	Return To Thebes 3.76 avg rating — 42 ratings — published 1977 — 2 editions	My rating:
	The Promise Of Joy 3.50 avg rating — 36 ratings — 2 editions	My rating:
	The Throne of Saturn 3.64 avg rating — 28 ratings — published 1971 — 2 editions	My rating:
	Decision 3.32 avg rating — 28 ratings — published 1983 — 2 editions	My rating:

More books by Allen Drury…

Series by Allen Drury

Advise and Consent (6 books)
by Allen Drury

3.96 avg rating — 1,925 ratings

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