Time on My Hands

Here's a genre you don't run into every day--a political time-travel novel. If you enjoyed A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, or Back to the Future you'll definitely want to give this a tumble. A brilliant physicist has discovered a time machine from the 22d century languishing in an obscure Paris technical museum, but is too old to try it out himself. Fortunately he meets up with a bored travel writer (our hero) who is up for the mission. The physicist, a political liberal, has only one request of him: when you go back in time, divert B-movie actor Ronald Reagan from becoming president. The writer makes the trip (several times), meets Reagan (several times), but ... well, let's just say changing the entire course of modern American politics isn't easy. And there's the additional problem of falling in love with a luscious blonde who's been dead since 1938.