Download or read book Gore Vidal written by Fred Kaplan and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2013-04-23 with total page 775 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This “fascinating” biography of an iconic American author and public intellectual “is so full of incident and celebrity . . . a pageant of entertaining stories” (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution). Few writers of recent memory have distinguished themselves in so many fields, and so consummately, as Gore Vidal. A prolific novelist, Vidal also wrote for film and theater, and became a classic essayist of his own time, delivering prescient analyses of American society, politics, and culture. Known for his rapier wit and intelligence, Vidal moved with ease among the cultural elite—his grandfather was a senator, he was intimate with the Kennedys, and one of his best friends was Tennessee Williams. For this definitive biography, Fred Kaplan was given access to Vidal’s papers and letters. The result is an insightful and entertaining portrait of an exceptional and mercurial writer.
Download or read book Lincoln written by Gore Vidal and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-04-13 with total page 673 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 a ramshackle White House in the center of a proslavery city, Lincoln presides over a fragmenting government as Lee's armies beat at the gates. In this profoundly moving novel, a work of epic proportions and intense human sympathy, Lincoln is observed by his loved ones and his rivals. The cast of characters is almost Dickensian: politicians, generals, White House aides, newspapermen, Northern and Southern conspirators, amiably evil bankers, and a wife slowly going mad. Vidal's portrait of the president is at once intimate and monumental, stark and complex, drawn with the wit, grace, and authority of one of the great historical novelists. With a new Introduction by the author.
Download or read book In Bed with Gore Vidal written by Tim Teeman and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Biography.
Download or read book United States Essays 1952 1992 written by Gore Vidal and published by Crown. This book was released on 2018-09-25 with total page 1732 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A compilation of 114 classic essays from Gore Vidal. "A marvelous compendium of sharp wit and independent judgment that confirms his status as a man of letters." —Publishers Weekly From the age of Eisenhower to the dawning of the Clinton era, Gore Vidal’s United States offers an incomparably rich tapestry of American intellectual and political life in a tumultuous period. It also provides the best, most sustained exposure possible to the most wide-ranging, acute, and original literary intelligence of the post–World War II years. United States is an essential book in the canon of twentieth-century American literature and an endlessly fascinating work.
Download or read book Burr written by Gore Vidal and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-08-31 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For readers who can’t get enough of the hit Broadway musical Hamilton,Gore Vidal’s stunning novel about Aaron Burr, the man who killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel—and who served as a successful, if often feared, statesman of our fledgling nation. Here is an extraordinary portrait of one of the most complicated—and misunderstood—figures among 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. But he is determined to tell his own story, and he chooses to confide in a young New York City journalist named Charles Schermerhorn Schuyler. Together, they explore both Burr's past—and the continuing civic drama of their young nation. Burr is the first novel in Gore Vidal's Narratives of Empire series, which spans the history of the United States from the Revolution to post-World War II. With their broad canvas and sprawling cast of fictional and historical characters, these novels present a panorama of American politics and imperialism, as interpreted by one of our most incisive and ironic observers.
Download or read book Washington D C written by Gore Vidal and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2018-08-22 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "May well be the finest of contemporary novels about the capital." THE NEW YORKER From the New Deal to the McCarthy era, follow the lives of Blaise Sanford, the ruthless Washington newspaper tycoon...his son, Peter, a brilliant liberal editor both fascinated and repelled by the imperial city...Peter's beautiful and self-destructive sister, Enid...her husband, Clay Overbury, a charismatic and ambitious politician...and James Burden Day, the powerful conservative senator. In WASHINGTON, D.C., the incomparable Vidal presents the life of politics and society in the nation's capital in the final stages of "the last empire on Earth."
Download or read book Creation written by Gore Vidal and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2018-08-22 with total page 592 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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
Download or read book Sexually Speaking written by Gore Vidal and published by Cleis Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A best-seller in hardback, this extraordinary collection of fourteen essays and other previously unpublished material will now be available in paperback edition to a wider readership. Vidal has an international reputation as a best-selling author and is perhaps best known for his groundbreaking classic Myra Beckingridge. Often compared to writers such as Edmunda White, Christopher Hitchens and Christopher Isherwood, and still maintaining a high public profile in the US and abroad, Vidal is one of the most profilic social commentators and is at his best on the suse
Download or read book Thieves Fall Out written by Gore Vidal and published by Titan Books (US, CA). This book was released on 2015-04-07 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ON THE EVE OF REVOLUTION, EGYPT IS A TINDERBOX. WILL ONE AMERICAN LIGHT THE SPARK THAT SETS IT ABLAZE? 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.
Download or read book Hollywood written by Gore Vidal and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-03-23 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hollywood marks the fifth episode in Gore Vidal's "Narratives of Empire," his celebrated series of six historical novels that form his extended biography of the United States. It is 1917, and President Woodrow Wilson is about to lead the country into the Great War in Europe. In California, a new industry is born that will irreversibly transform America. Caroline Sanford, the alluring heroine of Empire, discovers the power of moving pictures to manipulate reality as she vaults to screen stardom under the name of Emma Traxler. Just as Caroline must balance her two lives--West Coast movie star and East Coast newspaper publisher and senator's mistress--so too must America balance its two power centers: Hollywood and Washington. Here is history as only Gore Vidal can re-create it: brimming with intrigue and scandal, peopled by the greats of the silver screen and American politics. "Hollywood shimmers with the illusion of politics and the politics of illusion," wrote the Chicago Sun-Times. "A wonderfully literate and consistently impressive work of fiction that clearly belongs on a shelf with Vidal's best," said The New York Times Book Review. With a new Introduction by the author.
Download or read book Gore Vidal Snapshots in History s Glare written by Gore Vidal and published by . This book was released on 2009-10 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vidal's visual memoir of his remarkable and famously well-lived life focuses on a collection of photographs, letters, manuscripts, and other selections from his vast personal archives. Written with his legendary wit and literary elegance, this book reveals not only the personal reflections of one of the last of the great generation of American writers, but is a captivating social history of the 20th century told by one of its greatest raconteurs.
Download or read book 1876 written by Gore Vidal and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2018-08-22 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The third volume of Gore Vidal's magnificent series of historical novels aimed at demythologizing the American past, 1876 chronicles the political scandals and dark intrigues that rocked the United States in its centennial year. ------Charles Schermerhorn Schuyler, Aaron Burr's unacknowledged son, returns to a flamboyant America after his long, self-imposed European exile. The narrator of Burr has come home to recoup a lost fortune by arranging a suitable marriage for his beautiful daughter, the widowed Princess d'Agrigente, and by ingratiating himself with Samuel Tilden, the favored presidential candidate in the centennial year. With these ambitions and with their own abundant charms, Schuyler and his daughter soon find themselves at the centers of American social and political power at a time when the fading ideals of the young republic were being replaced by the excitement of empire. ------"A glorious piece of writing," said Jimmy Breslin in Harper's. "Vidal can take history and make it powerful and astonishing." Time concurred: "Vidal has no peers at breathing movement and laughter into the historical past." ------With a new Introduction by the author.
Download or read book Kalki written by Gore Vidal and published by Penguin Classics. This book was released on 1998 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bestselling author Gore Vidal joins the ranks of Penguin Classics. To satisfy a public that longs for a savior, Vidal's eponymous hero of KALKI, born and bred in America's Midwest, establishes himself in Nepal, puts out the word that he is the last incarnation of the god Vishnu, and predicts an imminent apocalypse meant to cleanse the planet.
Download or read book Inventing a Nation written by Gore Vidal and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2008-10-01 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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, in ways we have not up to now—their opinions of each other, their worries about money, their concerns about creating a viable democracy. Vidal brings them to life at the key moments of decision in the birthing of our nation. He also illuminates the force and weight of the documents they wrote, the speeches they delivered, and the institutions of government by which we still live. More than two centuries later, America is still largely governed by the ideas championed by this triumvirate. The author of Burr and Lincoln, one of the master stylists of American literature and most acute observers of American life, turns his immense literary and historiographic talent to a portrait of these formidable men
Download or read book Point to Point Navigation written by Gore Vidal and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2007-10-09 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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, friends and enemies made (and sometimes lost). From encounters with, amongst others, Jack and Jacqueline Kennedy, Tennessee Williams, Eleanor Roosevelt, Orson Welles, Johnny Carson, Francis Ford Coppola to the mournful passing of his longtime partner, Howard Auster, Vidal always steers his narrative with grace and flair. Entertaining, provocative, and often moving, Point to Point Navigation wonderfully captures the life of one of twentieth-century America’s most important writers.
Download or read book The Golden Age written by Gore Vidal and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2001-09-18 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Golden Age is Vidal's crowning achievement, a vibrant tapestry of American political and cultural life from 1939 to 1954, when the epochal events of World War II and the Cold War transformed America, once and for all, for good or ill, from a republic into an empire. The sharp-eyed and sympathetic witnesses to these events are Caroline Sanford, Hollywood actress turned Washington D.C., newspaper publisher, and Peter Sanford, her nephew and publisher of the independent intellectual journal The American Idea. They experience at first hand the masterful maneuvers of Franklin Roosevelt to bring a reluctant nation into the Second World War, and, later, the actions of Harry Truman that commit the nation to a decade-long twilight struggle against Communism—developments they regard with a decided skepticism even though it ends in an American global empire. The locus of these events is Washington D.C., yet the Hollywood film industry and the cultural centers of New York also play significant parts. In addition to presidents, the actual characters who appear so vividly in the pages of The Golden Age include Eleanor Roosevelt, Harry Hopkins, Wendell Willkie, William Randolph Hearst, Dean Acheson, Tennessee Williams, Joseph Alsop, Dawn Powell—and Gore Vidal himself. The Golden Age offers up U.S. history as only Gore Vidal can, with unrivaled penetration, wit, and high drama, allied to a classical view of human fate. It is a supreme entertainment that is not only sure to be a major bestseller but that will also change listeners' understanding of American history and power.
Download or read book Selected Essays written by Gore Vidal and published by Abacus (UK). This book was released on 2007 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new selection brings together the best of Gore Vidal's essays, comment and criticism from his fifty-year writing career. With mercurial intelligence and often courageous - and outrageous! - forthrightness, Vidal explores his keystone subjects: primarily the worlds of literature and US politics; but also showbiz, sexuality and modern manners. His gaze ranges from the fiction of Calvino and Updike to the politics of pornography to the Clinton and Bush administrations, America post-September 11 and contemporary imperial ambitions. These essays are a witty and brilliant assessment of our times from the most memorable of American literary masters.
