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Written by Gore Vidal

• Format: Trade Paperback, 480 pages
 
• Publisher: Vintage
• On Sale: June 11, 2002
• Price: $17.95
• ISBN: 978-0-375-72639-2 (0-375-72639-X)

about this book

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.

“Gore Vidal is the master essayist of our age.” –The Washington Post Book World

“Lively, instructive, lucid and amusing. Vidal has a carefree touch and a humorous air. . . . [He] can be a marvelous wit.” –Paul Berman, The New York Times Book Review

“Indispensable. . . . An excellent read. . . . Provocateur, scholar, historian, novelist, scoundrel, whatever you want to call Gore Vidal–make sure you include ‘national treasure.’ . . . [He] is an original mind, who thinks and sees without regard to convention. That alone makes him required reading.” –The Sunday Oregonian

Contents

Part I
Edmund Wilson: Nineteenth-Century Man
Dawn Powell: Queen of the Golden Age
Lost New York
The Romance of Sinclair Lewis
Twain on the Grand Tour
Reply to a Critic
Twain's Letters
Rabbit's Own Burrow
A Note on The City and the Pillar and Thomas Mann
Anthony Burgess
Pride
Lindbergh: The Eagle Is Grounded
Sinatra
C. P. Cavafy

Part II
George
Amistad
FDR: Love on the Hudson
Wiretapping the Oval Office
Clare Booth Luce
Truman
Hersh's JFK
Nixon R.I.P.
Clinton-Gore I
Bedfellows Make Strange Politics
Clinton-Gore II
Honorable Albert J. Gore, Junior
Kopkind
Bad History
Blair

Part III
How We Missed the Saturday Dance
The Last Empire
In the Lair of the Octopus
With Extreme Prejudice
Time for a People's Convention
The Union of the State
Mickey Mouse, Historian
U.S. Out of UN—UN Out of U.S.
Race Against Time
Chaos

Part IV
Shredding the Bill of Rights
The New Theocrats
Coup de Starr
Starr Conspiracy
Birds and Bees and Clinton
A Letter To Be Delivered
Democratic Vistas
Three Lies to Rule By
Japanese Intentions in the Second World War