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 naïv...

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 unite a disintegrating nation. Isolated in ...

Once again the incomparable Gore Vidal interprets and animates history -- this time in a panoramic tour of the 5th century B.C. -- and embellishes it with his own ironic humor, brilliant insights, and piercing observations. We meet a vast array of historical figures in a staggering novel of love, war, philosophy, and adventure . . ."There isn't a page of CREATION that doesn't inform and very few pages that do not delight."-- John Leonard, The New York Times

This New York Times bestseller offers "an unblinking view of our national heroes by one who cherishes them, warts and all" ( New York Review of Books).In Inventing a Nation, National Book Award winner Gore Vidal transports the reader into the minds, the living rooms (and bedrooms), the convention halls, and the salons of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and others. We come to know these men, through Vidal's splendid prose, ...

Gore Vidal's classic novel of Aaron Burr - the man who shot Alexander Hamilton.In 1804, Colonel Aaron Burr, Vice-President of the United States, shot and killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel. Three years later, on the order of President Thomas Jefferson, he was tried for treason: for plotting to dismember the United States.Gore Vidal, romping iconoclastically through American history, debunks, in this historical novel of Burr's life, the common and casually ...

Julian the Apostate was the nephew of Emperor Constantine the Great. Julian ascended to the throne in A.D. 361, at the age of twenty-nine, and was murdered four years later after an unsuccessful attempt to rebuke Christianity and restore the worship of the old gods. Now this historical tapestry is brought to vibrant life by the dazzling talent of Gore Vidal.

Continuing what has been dubbed his 'revenge on two hundred years of American history', Gore Vidal locates this novel in Washington. But this is 1917, and Hollywood is now competing with America's capital as the nation's power-base, just as it fights for centre-stage in this book. Caroline Sanford, erstwhile newspaper magnate, launches herself into the West Coast land of celluloid dreams and becomes, overnight, an international star. Not for nothing, on the dawn of World War One, is Caroli...

The Golden Age is the concluding volume in Gore Vidal's celebrated and bestselling Narratives of Empire series-a unique pageant of the national experience from the United States' entry into World War Two to the end of the Korean War.The historical novel is once again in vogue, and Gore Vidal stands as its undisputed American master. In his six previous narratives of the American empire-Burr, Lincoln, 1876, Empire, Hollywood, and Washington, D.C.-he has created a fi...

Pubblicato per la prima volta nel 1964, Giuliano è uno dei romanzi di maggiore successo di Gore Vidal. La fortuna ininterrotta che i lettori gli hanno tributato dalla sua uscita e gli apprezzamenti favorevoli della critica letteraria lo fanno annoverare tra le opere di narrativa più importanti della letteratura americana del Novecento. Il romanzo racconta la vita privata e politica di Giuliano, l’imperatore romano del quarto secolo, nipote di Costantino, che durante i brevi anni del suo re...

When a mortician appears on television to declare that death is infinitely preferable to life, he sparks a religious movement that quickly leaves Christianity and most of Islam in the dust.Gore Vidal's deft and daring blend of satire and prophecy, first published in 1954, eerily anticipates the excesses of Jim Jones, David Koresh, and the Heaven's Gate suicide cult.-Print ed.

From the poignant realisation as an adult of the cruel brutality of childhood in 'The Robin', man then comes face to face with himself as a boy in 'A Moment of Green Laurel': both stories combining the nostalgia and fear that haunt us all in old age. Meanwhile, in 'Erlinda and Mr Coffin', Southern etiquette is unashamedly turned upside down in a tale of amateur theatricals reminiscent of Dickens and Victorian melodrama.Yet it is in 'Three Stratagems', 'The Zenner Trophy', 'Pages fr...

A literary cause célèbre when first published in 1948, Gore Vidal's now-classic The City and the Pillar stands as a landmark novel of the gay experienceJim Willard, former high-school athlete and clean-cut boy-next-door, is haunted by the memory of a romantic adolescent encounter with his friend Bob Ford. As Jim pursues his first love, in awe of the very same masculinity he possesses himself, his progress through the secret gay world of 1940's America unve...