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Empire
Gore Vidal
708 pages (2004); 4.1MB download
Rosetta Books; ISBN: 9780795331746
The winner of the National Book Award and many other honors, Gore Vidal is one of America's best regarded novelists and essayists. Throughout his career, Gore Vidal has rubbed shoulders and crossed swords with many of the foremost cultural and political figures of our century: from Jack Kennedy to Jack Kerouac, Truman Capote to William F. Buckley.
Over a twenty-five period, Gore Vidal created a series of seven novels, which together are referred to as his American Chronicle novels. These novels capture American history in fiction in a way in which few writers have attempted, let alone succeeded.
"Empire" is the fifth volume in the series and a prodigiously detailed portrait of the United States at the dawn of the twentieth century as it begins to emerge as a world power. From the back offices of her Washington newspaper, beautiful and ambitious Caroline Sanford confronts the two men who threaten to thwart her ambition: William Randolph Hearst and his protégé, Blaise Sanford, Caroline's half brother. In their struggles for power the lives of brother and sister become intertwined with those of Presidents McKinley and Roosevelt, as well as Astors, Vanderbilts, and Whitneys — all incarnations of America's Gilded Age.
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