American journalist and author Allen Drury is best known for Advise and Consent, a 1959 political novel about a scandalous Secretary of State nomination process. It won the 1960 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, spent 102 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, spawned five sequels and made into a 1962 movie directed by Otto Preminger and starring Henry Fonda. Drury was the United States Senate correspondent for United Press between 1943 and 1945, which heavily inspired his novels. After the success of Advise and Consent, Drury wrote A Shade of Difference (1962), Capable of Honor (1966) and Preserve and Protect (1968), all set same in the same political universe. Preserve and Protect ends on a presidential assassination cliffhanger. Come Nineveh, Come Tyre (1973) and The Promise of Joy (1975) are alternate sequels, each imagining a different outcome of the assassination attempt. Drury also wrote two novels set in ancient Egypt and a trilogy following fraternity brothers over the courses of their lives. He died in 1998 at age 80.
The title of Advise and Consent comes from the U.S. Constitution, which says the president "shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the Supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States." When fictional Secretary of State nominee Robert Leffingwell is accused of once belonging to a communist cell, his nomination hearings take a dark turn in a story based on the real Alger Hiss nomination scandal. Advise and Consent was republished by WordFire Press in 2017 ($29.99, 9781614755746). --Tobias Mutter
