Lincoln is the cornerstone of Gore Vidal's fictional American chronicle, which includes Burr, 1876, Washington, D.C., Empire, and Hollywood. It opens early on a frozen winter morning in 1861, when President-elect Abraham Lincoln slips into Washington, flanked by two bodyguards. The future president is in disguise, for there is talk of a plot to murder him. During the next four years there will be numerous plots to murder this man who has sworn to...

Presents twenty-three new essays that examine the leadership of present-day America, from presidents to born-again Christians, as well as Vidal's thoughts on writers of today and yesteryear.

In a witty and elegant autobiography that takes up where his bestelling Palimpsest left off, the celebrated novelist, essayist, critic, and controversialist Gore Vidal reflects on his remarkable life.Writing from his desks in Ravello and the Hollywood Hills, Vidal travels in memory through the arenas of literature, television, film, theatre, politics, and international society where he has cut a wide swath, recounting achievements and defeats,...

The Last Empire is a collection of provocative, witty, and eloquent essays by Gore Vidal about all things USA. In more than two dozen essays, Vidal brings his keen intellect, experience, and razor-edged wit to bear on an astonishing range of subjects, offering incisive observations about terrorism, civil liberties, the CIA, Al Gore, and the Clintons - interwoven with a rich tapestry of personal anecdote, critical insight, and historical detail. Erudite,...

William Russell, the ex-Secretary of State, is a wit and scholar with high liberal principles, beloved of the eggheads and suspected by practical politicians. Joseph Cantwell is a ruthless and hard-driving young man, a dirty fighter who will let no scruples stand in the way of his ambitions. And Arthur Hockstader is an ex-President, who loves politics for their own sake, admires a rough-and-tumble battler more than a chivalrous one, and is determined...