New Releases by Gore Vidal

Robert Holton has returned from Europe and settled into a solitary existence working for a New York stockbroker. He suppresses memories of nights of love in Florence as he tries to succeed in the city, but when Carla turns up he has to choose between conventionality and the fraught path of love. (Goodreads)

The outrageous and immortal, gender-bending and polymorphously perverse, over-the-top, and utterly on-target comic masterpiece from the bestselling author of Burr, Lincoln, and the National Book Award-winning United States. With a new introduction by Camille Paglia "I am Myra Breckinridge, whom no man will ever possess." So begins the irresistible testimony of the luscious instructor of Empathy and Posture at Buck Loner''s Academy of Drama and Modeling. Myra has a secret that only her surgeon shares; a passion for classic Hollywood films, which she regards as the supreme achievements of Western culture; and a sacred mission to bring heteronormative civilization to its knees. Fifty years after its first publication unleashed gales of laughter, delight, and ferocious dissent ("Has literary decency fallen so low?" asked Time), Myra Breckinridge''s moment to instruct and delight has once again arrived.

Written by “America’s finest essayist” (New Statesman), At Home brings together twenty-four essays on subjects ranging from Henry James to Nancy Reagan, Oscar Wilde to Oliver North, Hollywood to Mongolia. From the leaders and lunacies of contemporary America to reminiscences of his own childhood, whether answering his own critics or excoriating the current state of literature, Gore Vidal is, as always, elegant, incisive, and brilliant. “As provocative and perceptive a social and literary critic as America has today.” –Newsweek “[Vidal’s] pieces grab one’s attention and refuse to let go. At once forthright and mendacious, smart and demented, they’re written…with panache, vigor and a caustic, often perverse wit…As a stylist he’s almost a national treasure.” –Wall Street Journal “I can’t think of any writer more certain to have exactly the right opinion on absolutely everything.” –Washington Post Book World

Fourty-four essays on literature, politicking in government and in literary circles, and such celebrated contemporary characters as Norman Mailer, Dr. David Reuben, and Susan Sontag by the man Alfred Kazin has called "one of the best-informed and most biting polemicists of our overgrown American way of life."

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.

An American smuggler in Egypt finds himself at the mercy of killers, femme fatales, and an escalating revolution—a lost pulp crime novel from one of the legends of the genre Lost for more than 60 years and overflowing with political and sexual intrigue, Thieves Fall Out provides a delicious glimpse into the mind of legendary writer 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 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.

"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.

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 fictional portrait of our nation from its founding that is unmatched in our literature for its scope, intimacy, political intelligence, and eloquence. Each has been a major bestseller, and some have stirred controversy for their decidedly ironic and unillusioned view of the realities of American power and of the men and women who have exercised that power. 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 Two 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, Washington, D.C., newspaper publisher turned Hollywood pioneer producer-star, 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 World War Two, and later, the actions of Harry Truman that commit the nation to a decades-long twilight struggle against Communism-developments they regard with a marked skepticism, even though they end 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 United States 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 will also change readers'' understanding of American history and power.

In Death Before Bedtime, dashing P.R. man Peter Sargent is invited to the home of a venerable senator to help strategize his imminent run for president. On the night before he’s to announce, though, the senator is murdered in his bed. No longer needed as a political publicist, Sargent finds himself helping the police find the killer. He deftly navigates an eccentric cast of characters, all of whom are suspects: the rebellious daughter; the sycophantic aide; the grieving widow; and the power-hungry governor with his eye on the senator’s job. Somehow, between charming the senator’s daughter and glad-handing Washington’s elite, Sargent still manages to methodically put the pieces into place and sees that politics truly is a cut-throat business.

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.

When Gore Vidal''s recent New York Times bestseller Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace was published, the Los Angeles Times described Vidal as the last defender of the American republic. In Dreaming War, Vidal continues this defense by confronting the Cheney-Bush junta head on in a series of devastating essays that demolish the lies American Empire lives by, unveiling a counter-history that traces the origins of America''s current imperial ambitions to the experience of World War Two and the post-war Truman doctrine. And now, with the Cheney-Bush leading us into permanent war, Vidal asks whose interests are served by this doctrine of pre-emptive war? Was Afghanistan turned to rubble to avenge the 3,000 slaughtered on September 11? Or was "the unlovely Osama chosen on aesthetic grounds to be the frightening logo for our long contemplated invasion and conquest of Afghanistan?" After all he was abruptly replaced with Saddam Hussein once the Taliban were overthrown. And while "evidence" is now being invented to connect Saddam with 9/11, the current administration are not helped by "stories in the U.S. press about the vast oil wealth of Iraq which must- for the sake of the free world- be reassigned to U.S. consortiums."

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.

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

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.

A boat of the Army Transportation Corps fights through the fierce wind of the Williwaw, carrying two officers and a chaplain with its crew. Human nature and the elements move the men through their uncertain destiny.

Almost sixty years ago, Gore Vidal burst onto the literary landscape with his World War II novel Williwaw. He never looked back. To date he has published twenty-nine novels, one short story collection, six theatrical plays, and numerous books of nonfiction. His novel The City and the Pillar was a groundbreaking work in the history of homosexual literature. In Myra Breckinridge Vidal created a ribald parody of sexual morality and identity. In 1967 Vidal published Washington, D.C. It would be the first of seven novels that have come to be known as the American Chronicles, a sprawling history of the empire filled with a cast of the most significant social, literary, and political figures of the United States. Conversations with Gore Vidal features provocative and intriguing interviews with one of America''s most prolific authors. Vidal was an enfant terrible in the 1940s and a marginalized homosexual in the 1950s. As Edgar Box he wrote mysteries, and as a screenwriter he penned the script for Ben-Hur. In 1960 he ran for Congress. In the 1990s, he appeared in films such as Gattaca, Bob Roberts, and Shadow Conspiracy. His essay collection United States: Essays 1952-1992, which features 114 pieces on everything from Howard Hughes to French literature, won the National Book Award. Vidal proves himself here to be a witty, acerbic, cantankerous conversationalist, one who is willing to-and often eager to-defy conventional wisdom and lacerate the tired clich s inherent in both politics and literature. A defiant political insider who is related to both the Gores and the Kennedys, he is a proud Leftist who nevertheless does not hesitate to slash at party orthodoxy when he deems it necessary. Richard Peabody and Lucinda Ebersole are the editors of the literary journal Gargoyle, based in Washington, D.C.

Presents a series of articles and essays criticizing recent developments in American government and foreign policy, especially during the administration of George W. Bush.

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.

Like his National Book Award—winning United States, Gore Vidal’s scintillating ninth collection, The Last Empire, affirms his reputation as our most provocative critic and observer of the modern American scene. In the essays collected here, Vidal brings his keen intellect, experience, and razor-edged wit to bear on an astonishing range of subjects. From his celebrated profiles of Clare Boothe Luce and Charles Lindbergh and his controversial essay about the Bill of Rights–which sparked an extended correspondence with convicted Oklahoma City Bomber Timothy McVeigh–to his provocative analyses of literary icons such as John Updike and Mark Twain and his trenchant observations about terrorism, civil liberties, the CIA, Al Gore, Tony Blair, and the Clintons, Vidal weaves a rich tapestry of personal anecdote, critical insight, and historical detail. Written between the first presidential campaign of Bill Clinton and the electoral crisis of 2000, The Last Empire is a sweeping coda to the last century’s conflicted vision of the American dream.

Essays question the consensus of the causes behind the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building, and examines the erosion of American civil liberties as a result of the war on terrorism.

The close relationship between American millionaire Adam Verver and his daughter Maggie threatens their respective marriages.

"Mr. Vidal demonstrates a political imagination and insider''s sagacity equaled by no other practicing fiction writer I can think of. And like the earlier novels in his historical cycle, Empire is a wonderfully vivid documentary drama." —The New York Times Book Review In this extraordinarily powerful epic Gore Vidal recreates America''s Gilded Age—a period of promise and possibility, of empire-building and fierce political rivalries. In a vivid and beathtaking work of fiction, where the fortunes of a sister and brother intertwine with the fates of the generation, their country, and some of the greatest names of their day, including President McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, William Jennings Bryan, William and Henry James, the Astors, the Vanderbilts, and the Whitneys, Gore Vidal sweeps us from the nineteenth century into the twentieth, from the salvaged republic of Lincoln to a nation boldly reaching for the world.

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. The centennial of the United States was celebrated with great fanfare--fireworks, exhibitions, pious calls to patriotism, and perhaps the most underhanded political machination in the country''s history: the theft of the presidency from Samuel Tilden in favor of Rutherford B. Hayes. This was the Gilded Age, when robber barons held the purse strings of the nation, and the party in power was determined to stay in power. Gore Vidal''s 1876 gives us the news of the day through the eyes of Charlie Schuyler, who has returned from exile to regain a lost fortune and arrange a marriage into New York society for his widowed daughter. And although Tammany Hall has faltered and Boss Tweed has fled, the effects of corruption reach deep, even into Schuyler''s own family.

A teenage math genius is mysteriously summoned to the Smithsonian Institution, where a crash program to develop the atomic bomb is being conducted in the basement. Surrounded by figures from American history, the boy battles to save not just himself, but humanity.

Gore Vidal has been described as America''s finest essayist. He is also one of America''s finest sex writers. Here, 14 essays and three interviews on sex and gender, including a candid conversation with Larry Kramer.

Profiles the American presidency and discusses the contributions of the more influential presidents.

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.

When Gore Vidal''s frank description of homosexual life, The City and the Pillar, was first published in 1948, the reaction was both unexpected and shocking. Republished now in hardcover with a new introduction by the author, this classic is being featured with seven of Vidal''s early stories.