Empire

Fülszöveg

Critical comment on Gore Vidal's American chronicle:
Washington, D.C.
'A superb story fascinating."
—John Kenneth Galbraith, Washington Post "May well be the finest of contemporary novels about the capital." -The New Yorker
"Moves with reckless speed fascinating an intelligent and irreverent commentary on American political life. ElegEint writing abounds." —Life
Burr
'A dazzling entertainment, a tour de force of historical imagination, a devastating analysis of America's first principles." —The New York Times Book Review
'An extraordinarily intelligent and entertaining novel."
—Newsweek
"Burr is a bravura tour de force, a brilliant evocation of the American political scene " —Publishers Weekly
1876
"Vidal has no peers at breathing movement and laughter into the historical past." —Paul Gray, Time
'A glorious piece of writing .Vidal's words turn each page into a tray of jewelry."
—Jimmy Breslin, Harper's "Superb .Simply splendid A thoroughly grand book— must, must... Tovább

Fülszöveg

Critical comment on Gore Vidal's American chronicle:
Washington, D.C.
'A superb story fascinating."
—John Kenneth Galbraith, Washington Post "May well be the finest of contemporary novels about the capital." -The New Yorker
"Moves with reckless speed fascinating an intelligent and irreverent commentary on American political life. ElegEint writing abounds." —Life
Burr
'A dazzling entertainment, a tour de force of historical imagination, a devastating analysis of America's first principles." —The New York Times Book Review
'An extraordinarily intelligent and entertaining novel."
—Newsweek
"Burr is a bravura tour de force, a brilliant evocation of the American political scene " —Publishers Weekly
1876
"Vidal has no peers at breathing movement and laughter into the historical past." —Paul Gray, Time
'A glorious piece of writing .Vidal's words turn each page into a tray of jewelry."
—Jimmy Breslin, Harper's "Superb .Simply splendid A thoroughly grand book— must, must reading for everyone." —Business Week
Lincoln
"Utterly convincing, lucid, intelligent, highly informative, extremely compelling."
—Joyce Carol Gates, The New York Times Book Review "It is remarkable how much good history Mr. Vidal has been able to work into a narrative that sustained my interest right up to the final page."
—Professor David Donald, Harvard University "His most moving book, "
—Walter demons, Newsweek
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"Vidal's imagination of American politics, then and now, is so powerful as to compel awe."
— Harold Bloom in The New York Review of Books on Vidal's Lincoln
'A novel of Stendhalian proportions It is probably impossible to be an American and not be fascinated and impressed by Vidal's telescoping of our early history Dazzling Always absorbing." —The New Yorker on
Vidal's Burr
And now Gore Vidal gives us another stunning epic. Empire is his prodigiously detailed and brilliantly imagined portrait of tum-of-the-century America in the buoyant aftermath of the Spanish-American War, as Theodore Roosevelt and William Randolph Hearst arc waging their private war for the soul of the powerful young nation.
By 1900 America, now reaching out for empire, is racked by titanic struggles over its own destiny. Empire brilliantly re-creates a period of possibility and promise, but also a time that would be remembered as America's Gilded Age: where political bosses rule as far as their wallets will take them, where robber barons fight unabashedly to consolidate their wealth, and where a yellow headline can lead the country to war.
As America struggles to define her destiny, so beautiful and ambitious Caroline Sanford fights to control her own fate. Caroline, one of Vidal's most inspired creations, is an embodiment of the complex, vigorous yoxmg nation. We meet her first in the summer of 1896, as a New York court is deciding the fate of the Sanford family fortune, and twenty-year-old Caroline is being propelled toward a marriage to Secretary of State John Hay's mild young son, Del. Unwilling to be trapped by turn-of-the-century American society—where wealthy women, still deprived of the vote, languish in gilded cages—Caroline chooses instead her own path, one that will bring her power rivaling that of the most influential men of her generation. From the back offices of her Washington newspaper, Caroline propels herself to the capital's center of political and social power—and confronts the two men who threaten to thwart her ambition: William Randolph Hearst, by whom Caroline is both Intrigued and repelled; and his fiercely ambitious protégé, Blaise Sanford—Caroline's half brother. In their struggles for power the lives of brother and sister become Intertwined with those of the leading figures of their day.
Through the young Sanfords we experience firsthand the unfolding of an empire, as with characteristic insight and wit Vidal gives us intimate, vivid portraits of an era and of the men and women who (continued on back flap)
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shaped it. Here are: the soft-spoken President McKinley and his irrepressible successor, Theodore Roosevelt; William Jennings Bryan, the "Great Commoner," who could move thousands with a speech, and William Randolph Hearst, who needed only a headline to move millions; the inimitable John Hay, his great companion, Henry Adams, and their friend Henry James; the Asters, Vanderbilts and Whitneys; the political and social worlds of Washington, New York and Newport.
In this breathtaking novel Gore Vidal sweeps us from the nineteenth century into the twentieth, from the horse-drawn carriage to the automobile, from women confined to domesticity to women in positions of power, from the salvaged republic of Lincoln to a nation boldly reaching for the world.
Gore Vidal was born in West Point and is the author of twenty novels including the American chronicle (Burr, Lincoln, 1876, Empire and Washington, D.C.), five plays, and five collections of essays, the most recent of which, The Second American Revolution, won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism in 1982. Vissza