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The United States has been engaged in what the great historian
Charles A. Beard called "perpetual war for perpetual peace." The
Federation of American Scientists has catalogued nearly 200
military incursions since 1945 in which the United States has been
the aggressor. In a series of penetrating and alarming essays,
whose centerpiece is a commentary on the events of September 11,
2001 (deemed unpublishable in this country until now) Gore Vidal
challenges the comforting consensus following both September 11th
and Timothy McVeigh's bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma
City: these were simply the acts of "evil-doers." "None of these
explanations made much sense, but our rulers for more than half a
century have made sure that we are never to be told the truth about
anything that our government has done to other people, not to
mention our own. That our ruling junta might have seriously
provoked McVeigh and Osama was never dealt with. We consumers don't
need to be told the why of anything. Certainly those of us who are
in the why-business have a difficult time in getting through the
corporate-sponsored American media, so I thought it useful to
describe here the various provocations on our side that drove both
bin Laden and McVeigh to such terrible acts." "The awesome physical
damage Osama and company did us is as nothing compared to the
knock-out blow to our vanishing liberties: the Anti-Terrorism Act
of 1991 combined with the recent request to Congress for additional
special powers to wiretap without judicial order; to deport lawful
permanent residents, visitors and undocumented immigrants without
due process." Could it be that the greatest victim of the September
11th terror attackswill be American liberty?"Once alienated, "
Vidal writes, "an 'unalienable right' is apt to be forever lost."
Gore Vidal is the author of twenty-two novels, five plays, many
screenplays, more than two hundred essays, and a memoir. The Times
Literary Supplement (U.K.) noted that Vidal's "United States
(Essays 1952-92) is one of the great American books of the
twentieth century." It won the 1993 National Book Award."Gore Vidal
is the master essayist of our age." Washington Post "Our greatest
living man of letters." -- Boston Globe"Vidal's imagination of
American politics is so powerful as to compel awe." Harold Bloom,
New York Review of Books
This is the fascinating autobiography of a society heiress who
became the bohemian doyenne of the art world. Written in her own
words it is the frank and outspoken story of her life and loves:
her stormy relationships with such men as Max Ernst and Jackson
Pollock, and her discovery of new artists. Known as 'the mistress
of modern art', Peggy Guggenheim was a passionate collector and
major patron. She amassed one of the most important collections of
early twentieth-century European and American art embracing Cubism,
Surrealism and Expressionism. A must-read for anyone with an
interest in these major-league artists, this seminal period of art
history, and the ultimate self-invented woman. Includes a foreword
by Gore Vidal.
Gore Vidal was one of America's greatest and most controversial
writers. The author of twenty-three novels, five plays, three
memoirs, numerous screenplays and short stories, and well over two
hundred essays, he received the National Book Award in 1993.In
1953, Vidal had already begun writing the works that would launch
him to the top ranks of American authors and intellectuals. But in
the wake of criticism for the scandalous content of his third
novel, The City and the Pillar, Vidal turned to writing crime
fiction under pseudonyms: three books as "Edgar Box" and one as
"Cameron Kay." The Edgar Box novels were subsequently republished
under his real name. The Cameron Kay never was.Lost for more than
60 years and overflowing with political and sexual intrigue,
Thieves Fall Out provides a delicious glimpse into the mind of Gore
Vidal in his formative years. By turns mischievous and deadly
serious, Vidal tells the story of a man caught up in events bigger
than he is, a down-on-his-luck American hired to smuggle an ancient
relic out of Cairo at a time when revolution is brewing and heads
are about to roll.One part Casablanca and one part
torn-from-the-headlines tabloid reportage, this novel also offers a
startling glimpse of Egypt in turmoil - written over half a century
ago, but as current as the news streaming from the streets of Cairo
today.
Gore Vidal's reputation as America's finest essayist is an enduring
one. This collection, chosen by the author from 40 years of work,
contains about two-thirds of what he published in various magazines
and journals. He has divided the essays into three categories, or
states. State of the art covers literature, including novelists and
critics, bestsellers, pieces on Henry James, Oscar Wilde,
Suetonius, Nabakov and Montaigne (a previosly uncollected essay
from 1992). State of the union deals with politics and public life:
sex, drugs, money, Abraham Lincoln, Eleanor Roosevelt, The Holy
Family (his essay on the Kennedys), Nixon, and finally Monotheism
and its Discontents , a scathing critique of Christianity, Judaism
and Islam. In state of being, we are given personal responses to
people and events: recollections of his childhood, E. Nesbit,
Tarzan, Tennessee Williams and Anais Nin.
The seventh volume of what Vidal has entitled the "Narratives of
Empire". In "The Golden Age", which offers a fictionalized version
of American politics from 1940 to 2000, his main charge is that one
of the most revered of all 20th-century presidents, Franklin D.
Roosevelt, provoked, and then failed to warn his commanders about,
the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. His deception was brought
about by a poll which revealed that 60 per cent of Americans were
opposed to any foreign war. The author uses a series of episodes to
show how the US, through its leaders and not through events, became
the most influential country in the world, as he reveals
(imaginary) conversations in the White House, in newspaper offices
and around Washington DC.
The remarkable bestseller about the fourth-century Roman emperor who famously tried to halt the spread of Christianity, Julian is widely regarded as one of Gore Vidal’s finest historical novels.
Julian the Apostate, nephew of Constantine the Great, was one of the brightest yet briefest lights in the history of the Roman Empire. A military genius on the level of Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great, a graceful and persuasive essayist, and a philosopher devoted to worshipping the gods of Hellenism, he became embroiled in a fierce intellectual war with Christianity that provoked his murder at the age of thirty-two, only four years into his brilliantly humane and compassionate reign. A marvelously imaginative and insightful novel of classical antiquity, Julian captures the religious and political ferment of a desperate age and restores with blazing wit and vigor the legacy of an impassioned ruler.
Here is the story of arguably America’s finest hour; of the time when the twentieth century dawned, Queen Victoria died, and America, basking deliciously in excess wealth, rather thought it might snap up an empire of its own. Yet while politicians muse over the potential of China or the Philippines – even Russia – empires are being built at home; railway empires; industrial empires; newspaper empires. Into this arena float the delectable Caroline Sanford, putative heiress and definite catch. Caroline is an oddity; she has been raised in France where they teach rich girls to talk and think. American society women, required only to think of themselves as the most interesting beings on earth, are rather alarmed. American men are amused – until Caroline shirks from marriage, sues her brother, buys a newspaper, and becomes that even greater oddity – a powerful woman. Mingling with the movers and shakers of the day – with President McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, William Randolf Hearst, Henry James, the Astors, Vanderbilts and Whitneys – Caroline Sanford echoes the glorious passage of the United States as it sweeps into a new century, reaching boldly for the world.
Jim Willard, former high-school athlete and clean-cut
boy-next-door-, is haunted by the memory of a romanctic adolescent
encounter with his friend Bob Ford. As Jim pursues his first love,
in awe of the very same masculinity he possesses himself, his
progresss through the secret gay world of 1940's America unveils
surreptitious Hollywood affairs, the hidden life of the military in
the Second World War and the underworld bar culture of New York
City. With the publication of his daring thrid novel The City and
the Pillar in 1948, Gore Vidal shocked the American public, which
has just begun to hail him as their newest and brightest young
writer. It remains not only an authentic and profoundly importatnt
social document but also a serious exploration of the nature of
idealistic love.
A sweeping novel of politics, war, philosophy, and adventure–in a restored edition, featuring never-before-published material from Gore Vidal’s original manuscript–Creation offers a captivating grand tour of the ancient world. Cyrus Spitama, grandson of the prophet Zoroaster and lifelong friend of Xerxes, spent most of his life as Persian ambassador for the great king Darius. He traveled to India, where he discussed nirvana with Buddha, and to the warring states of Cathay, where he learned of Tao from Master Li and fished on the riverbank with Confucius. Now blind and aged in Athens–the Athens of Pericles, Sophocles, Thucydides, Herodotus, and Socrates–Cyrus recounts his days as he strives to resolve the fundamental questions that have guided his life’s journeys: how the universe was created, and why evil was created with good. In revisiting the fifth century b.c.–one of the most spectacular periods in history–Gore Vidal illuminates the ideas that have shaped civilizations for millennia.
Gore Vidal's Narratives of Empire series spans the history of the United States from the Revolution to the post-World War II years. With their broad canvas and large cast of fictional and historical characters, the novels in this series present a panorama of the American political and imperial experience as interpreted by one of its most worldly, knowing, and ironic observers.
Burr is a portrait of perhaps the most complex and misunderstood of the Founding Fathers. In 1804, while serving as vice president, Aaron Burr fought a duel with his political nemesis, Alexander Hamilton, and killed him. In 1807, he was arrested, tried, and acquitted of treason. In 1833, Burr is newly married, an aging statesman considered a monster by many. Burr retains much of his political influence if not the respect of all. And he is determined to tell his own story. As his amanuensis, he chooses Charles Schermerhorn Schuyler, a young New York City journalist, and together they explore both Burr's past and the continuing political intrigues of the still young United States.
Gore Vidal--novelist, playwright, critic, screenwriter, memoirist,
indefatigable political commentator, and controversialist--is
America's premier man of letters. No other living writer brings
more sparkling wit, vast learning, indelible personality, and
provocative mirth to the job of writing an essay.
This long-needed volume comprises some twenty-four of his
best-loved pieces of criticism, political commentary, memoir,
portraiture, and, occasionally, unfettered score settling. It will
stand as one of the most enjoyable and durable works from the hand
and mind of this vastly accomplished and entertaining immortal of
American literature.
The United States has been engaged in what the great historian
Charles A. Beard called "perpetual war for perpetual peace." The
Federation of American Scientists has cataloged nearly 200 military
incursions since 1945 in which the United States has been the
aggressor. In a series of penetrating and alarming essays, whose
centerpiece is a commentary on the events of September 11, 2001
(deemed too controversial to publish in this country until now)
Gore Vidal challenges the comforting consensus following September
11th and goes back and draws connections to Timothy McVeigh's
bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City. He asks were
these simply the acts of "evil-doers?" "Gore Vidal is the master
essayist of our age." -- Washington Post "Our greatest living man
of letters."--Boston Globe "Vidal's imagination of American
politics is so powerful as to compel awe."--Harold Bloom, The New
York Review of Books
* I exist to say, 'No, that isn't the way it is, ' or 'What you
believe to be true is not true for the following reasons.' I am a
master of the obvious. I mean, if there's a hole in the road, I
will, viciously, outrageously, say there's a hole in the road and
if you don't fill it in you'll break the axle of your car. One is
not loved for being helpful.
Gore Vidal, one of America's foremost essayists, screenwriters, and
novelists, died July 31, 2012. He was, in addition, a terrific
conversationalist. Dick Cavett once described him as the best
talker since Oscar Wilde. And Vidal was never more eloquent, or
caustic, than when let loose on his favorite topic, the history and
politics of the United States.
This book is made up from four interviews conducted with his
long-time interlocutor, the writer and radio host Jon Wiener, in
which Vidal grapples with matters evidently close to his heart: the
history of the American Empire, the rise of the National Security
State, and his own life in politics, both as a commentator and
candidate.
The interviews cover a twenty-year span, from 1988 to 2008, when
Vidal was at the height of his powers. His extraordinary facility
for developing an argument, tracing connections between past and
present, and drawing on an encyclopedic knowledge of America's
place in the world, are all on full display. And, of course, it
being Gore Vidal, an ample sprinkling of gloriously acerbic
one-liners is also provided.
Gore Vidal's Narratives of Empire series spans the history of the United States from the Revolution to the post-World War II years. With their broad canvas and large cast of fictional and historical characters, the novels in this series present a panorama of the American political and imperial experience as interpreted by one of its most worldly, knowing, and ironic observers.
To most Americans, Abraham Lincoln is a monolithic figure, the Great Emancipator and Savior of the Union, beloved by all. In Gore Vidal's Lincoln we meet Lincoln the man and Lincoln the political animal, the president who entered a besieged capital where most of the population supported the South and where even those favoring the Union had serious doubts that the man from Illinois could save it. Far from steadfast in his abhorrence of slavery, Lincoln agonizes over the best course of action and comes to his great decision only when all else seems to fail. As the Civil War ravages his nation, Lincoln must face deep personal turmoil, the loss of his dearest son, and the harangues of a wife seen as a traitor for her Southern connections. Brilliantly conceived, masterfully executed, Gore Vidal's Lincoln allows the man to breathe again.
In "Death in the Fifth Position," dashing P.R. man Peter Sargent is
hired by a ballet company on the eve of a major upcoming
performance. Handling the press seems to be no problem, but when a
rising star in the company is killed during the
performance--dropped from thirty feet above the stage, crashing to
her death in a perfect fifth position--Sargent has a real case on
his hands. As he ingratiates himself with the players behind the
scenes (especially one lovely young ballerina), he finds that this
seemingly graceful ballet company is performing their most dramatic
acts behind the curtain. There are sharp rivalries, sordid affairs,
and shady characters. Sargent, though, has no trouble staying on
point and proving that the ballerina killer is no match for his
keen eye and raffish charm.
History is gossip,' says a protagonist in Washington, D.C., 'but
the trick is determining which gossip is history.' It is a trick
that Gore Vidal has mastered in his ongoing chronicle of that
circus of opportunism and hypocrisy called American politics and
which he plays with renewed vigour in this expose of the nation's
capital.Young Clay Overbury, Senator Burden Day's assistant, has
both a modest background and immense ambitions. Extremely handsome,
oozing charm and seemingly dedicated to the Senator's cause, he is
also duplicitous, conniving, and disloyal. But Enid Canford doesn't
think so: she marries him, so providing the Sanford newspaper
dynasty with a direct line to the Senator. Her father Blaise, at
first loathing his son-in-law, later learns to love him - for all
the wrong reasons. So begins this tale of lust and ambition set in
the Republic's high noon. From the late 1930s to Jo McCarthy's
reign of terror, Gore Vidal charts the seamy, sleazy side of
Washington. Mixing sober history with nakedly Gothic melodrama, he
provides an intoxicating cocktail of blackmail, betrayal, sexual
ambivalence, lunacy and conspiracy - or, in a word, politics.
In the hazardous fictional terrain of his historical novels, Gore Vidal is never especially kind to American history in general, or to its icons in particular. Yet in this brilliantly realised study of Abraham Lincoln, he paints a surprising and near-heroic picture of the man who led America through four of the most divisive and dangerous years of the nation’s history. Observed alternately by his loved ones, his rivals and his future assassins, Lincoln at first appears as an inept and naïve backwoods lawyer. People in this novel are not averse to turning up, getting drunk, and regaling the reader with details of Lincoln’s whoring activities and his seemingly inexhaustible supply of folksy stories. Yet gradually Lincoln the towering leader of deep vision emerges in a Washington engulfed by fear, greed and the horrors of the Civil War. Lincoln’s loving but mentally decomposing wife, his view from the White House on slavery and America’s bloodiest war, and his own, fierce personal ambition: all are portrayed with a vibrancy and an urgency that almost belies what they have now become ? history itself.
With the centennial year of the United States as the target of this historical novel, Gore Vidal again mounts a glorious expedition into that grimy and intricate activity called politics. And this is politics as it ought to be: gossip, corruption, money, dinner parties, more corruption, and all the tacky panoply of power. Into the rarefied atmosphere of a world where money has begun to talk very loudly ? usually through the mouths of people called Astor ? step Charles Schuyler and his daughter Emma. Charlie is the unacknowledged bastard son of Aaron Burr; Emma is rather beautiful; and both think it is prudent to return from penury in Europe and secure a fortuitous marriage for Emma. But America is no longer a young republic; it’s a fledgling international superpower with its attendant seedy administration, dubious election campaigns, snobbery, ‘popped corn’, ‘speaking tubes’ and ‘perpendicular railways’ (lifts). It’s a world that will welcome into its social and political bosom these two attractive exotics with the right names. And it’s a world whose every political peccadillo, social slip-up and irresistible intrigue is recorded in this, the journal of Charlie Schuyler.
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