In his most illuminating and disturbing book Professor Shahak takes the lid off previously hidden Orthodox Jewish beliefs and practices. He explains how these beliefs are at the heart of the Zionist adventure and constitute a major influence upon Israeli government policies and actions. We are made aware of the paradox of a largely secular state basing its raison d'etre and future direction upon biblical text. The depth of Orthodox Jewish antipathy toward the gentile, and especially toward Christianity (and Jesus) will come as an unsettling surprise to the many millions of American evangelical Christians who uncritically accept a fawning admiration of all things Israeli repeatedly displayed by the TV evangelists. Frightening, too, is the near-total control of most Jewish organizations now in the hands of Zionists; it is now almost impossible for a Jew to openly disassociate him or herself from, let alone be critical of, the state of Israel or the aims of Zionism. Whereas the critical gentile must be an 'anti-Semite' so must the critical Jew be 'self-hating'. Whatever your point of view on the situation in Israel, whatever your religion or philosophical perspective, however deeply you hold your convictions, you cannot fail to be challenged by this marvelous book.

If you talk to a Muslim/Christian palastinian who is living under the Israeli occupation, he or she will not be surprised by what is written in Mr. Shahak's book. What is being described in this book as classical judaism teaching is currently being practiced and for the last fifty years in the State of Israel in the form of legitimate Judaism but comprise extreme injustice against non-Jewish people of Israel and of the occupied territories. Mr. Shahak describes where do these practices come from, and how are they being supported by the Jewish Israeli community. This book is not anti-semitic, the autor is a Jewish person born in a conservative Jewish family and lived most of his life in Israel. I think that this book has honestly analyzed the origins of the conflict in Israel and the occupied territories. Without considering the role and power of Jewish fundamentalism in Israel as described by Mr. Shahak, the quest for peace will never materialize.

Prof. Shahak is a Jew who taught at a major university in Israel. Here is provides a nuanced Jewish view on history and religion and show how the Jewish mentality leads everywhere to antisemitism. I cannot praise him enough for the honesty and courage he shows in the chapters on Jewish orthodoxy and especially on the Jewish laws against non-Jews. These abominable things are at the core of Judaism, and this gem of a book will be an eye-opener for many. It will also help understanding the many hardships the Palestinian people have been suffering since their country was invaded in the 2nd half of the 20th century.

I think that the world would be great if all Jews were as virtuous as Shahak is, and there would be much less antisemitism. Another good book by a Jewish author is Prof. Lindemann's Esau's Tears : Modern Anti-Semitism and the Rise of the Jews. I can also recommend the books by Kevin B. MacDonald and Michael Hoffman's Judaism's Strange Gods.

Gore Vidal has the power to drive conservatives insane, I can't say why, but the mere mention of his name seems to turn them into screaming maniacs, that alone would make this book worth owning. In addition to its value as a heart attack inducer, it is also easy reading, witty and well written. I especially enjoyed his vicious attack on the Christian Church (which he refers to as the cult of the 'Sky God'). He is also right on target with his assessment of the pervasive dangerous of corporate power. This slim volume is not a scholarly tome by any means, but Vidal's strength is in the way that he says things, not in the way that he backs up his assessment. Less a stunning indictment than a readable, witty summing up of the Vidal take on several important topics. A superb little pamphlet.

Gore speaks wisdom. For those turned off by the corrupt state of American politics this book is required reading. Our political system has been taken over (wait a minute, hijacked) by corporate america and its cronies in Washington D.C. The "War on Drugs" is nothing more than a war on minorities and civil liberties. The national media is nothing more than a mouth piece for the well-off and elite. The "Cold War" was basically military-industrial complex wellfare scheme. Gore Vidal cuts through the bull s--t to show that the American people have been taken for a ride by the political establishment whose sole purpose is for the protection of the very elite. By the way; I am 37 years old. Not 12.

I'd like to think that I understand how the puzzle pieces fit together but I need people like Vidal to illuminate the connections, to see the picture rather than the mass of pieces strewn on the table. To take the metaphor further, he provides the picture on the puzzle box that shows you what you will eventually have when the pieces are together.
I find that with the daily blizzard of new's facts coming into my house that it's like sitting down to a twenty thousand piece jigsaw that strangely has no border.
Vidal throws out bits of history and then provides the connections allowing a picture to form-seemingly from random occurrences. I found after reading this wonderful, insightful little book that all the disparate post-WWII facts came together. Yes-call me stupid for not seeing the connections earlier but my defense is this continuous blizzard of facts that shower me-this blizzard is in itself designed to do just what it is doing to me and millions of others.
One little bit from this tiny read-living as I do in Australia, I could never see why what happened to Clinton happened-everybody here knew he was being undermined since he came into office. We didn't get much coverage of his attempt to rework the healthcare system-Vidal says very matter of factly that Clinton's attempt at this reworking was his undoing. The conservatives that orchestrated his downfall didn't want Americans to have what people in nearly every other government in the developed world have-what we in Australia take for granted-universal health care.
I'm sorry most Americans will miss reading this book because they will see it as "devil phoolosophy"-the powers at work have done a fabulous job for themselves.

There is hardly anything new here - most essays in this book were originally written in the 1990s. What's the purpose of the exercise? To quickly cash in on the new interest about Iraq? Some items, like the connections of the Bush leaguers to Middle East oil and gas, are interesting but hardly new or unknown.

To mention Prince Konoye as a Japanese organizer of a valid peace proposal is cute. But Vidal should have also mentioned that the prince had no standing within his own country and would not have gotten very far with his ideas.

Vidal writes that Roosevelt provoked Japan into the war by sending a nonsensical ultimatum. But that is only half the story. He should have checked out the situation paper Roosevelt wrote when Secretary of the Navy after World War I. In that paper he wrote:" Should Japan ever decide to attack the United States, that attack will take place at Pearl Harbor". Now we know why he assembled the whole Pacific fleet there.

But the main idea Vidal conveniently left out: Why were the US so very anxious to enter two world wars, despite considerable opposition in the population? We should start out with the fact that, in both cases, the "enforcer" was Winston Churchill.

A good part of the book is dedicated to the defense against critics, especially his "The Golden Age". I don't think I need to be brought up to speed on this. Furthermore, he seems to be in such a hurry to get things on paper that his justly celebrated polished use of the English language suffers badly.

Let's get this straight from the beginning: Gore Vidal is not anti-American, and in fact, he is a true patriot that loves his country enough to ask the difficult questions in the face of the current wave of false patriotism that is taking over since the 9/11 tragedies.

_Dreaming War: Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta_ is a bold and maginficent look at the Bushian chronicles leading up to 9/11, and the consequences thereafter. Two things that are important to dwell on: Both the attack on Afghanistan and the Patriot Act were well entrenched and ready to go before 9/11 ever came about. 9/11 was merely an open door to the growth of State meddling in the lives of U.S. citizens.

Vidal looks at all the "interests" that are served by Bushian Imperial ambitions. As Vidal says, Osama is merely a poster boy for greater U.S. interestes, that being Empire, oil, and the corporatist State. Gore gives us decades worth of examples on how the U.S has come to this position.

Perhaps the one thing that is missing is an in-depth analysis of why the State loved that 9/11 happened, and how it keeps that from the American people while shedding its false tears of sorrow, and suckering folks into buying the State moral code concerning the tragedies.

Vidal's essays are compelling, truthful, and unapologetic. A fantastic read.

What other major novelist - annual Nobel laureate candidate - could go ignored in his own country when he writes an essay on the most talked about issue of the present - the Iraqi War and terrorism? What other country's major media would fail to review such a book.
Gore Vidal's last essay on our times was an underground best seller - unreviewed and ignored by the major media. Now, he writes about how we have come to be a nation presided over by a president who LOST the election, was the C-in-C when we suffered our greatest one day defeat since Pearl harbor and has started the greatest witch hunt since the 1950's.
Read this book if you think that it is patriotic to wave the flag at all of our troubles. Read this book if you have NEVER believed that the USA has fought a war for a wrong or evil reason or if you believe that the USA is NEVER wrong. Read this book if you cannot understand why so many other people in the world hate our government - and will soon hate us if we fail to take back our government and make it the bastion of freedom that we want it to be.

The last completed novel by Henry James is, like preceding works of his later era ("The Wings of the Dove" comes up to mind first), very hard to read. That's the warning to every unwary reader who happens to think about starting to read Henry James anew.

The plot is simple: its about two couples of people -- Charlotte and Amerigo, and Adam Verver and his daughter Maggie Verver. Charlotte loves Amerigo, who, however, decides to marry Maggie. Soon after that, Charlotte marries Adam Verver, an American millionaire. Still, Amerigo and Charlotte maintain their former relations as lovers until their secret is discovered by Maggie unexpectedly with an advent of a golden bowl, which looks perfect outward, but deep inside cracked. Maggie, who greatly adores her deceived father, in turn, starts to move in order to mend the cracked relations, or secure the apparently happy family life without disturbing the present relations.

As this sketch of the story tells you, one of the favorite topics of the 19th century literature -- adultery -- is staged in the center of the book, but the way James handles it is very different from those of other American or British writers. The meaning is hidden in a web of complicated, even contorted sentences of James, and you have to read often repeatedly to grasp the syntax. The grammar is sometimes unclear, with his frequent use of pronouns and double negatives, and very often you just have to take time to understand to what person James' "he" or "she" really refers to. It is not a rare thing for you to find that a paragraph starts with those "he" and "she" without any hint about its identity, so you just read on until you hit the right meaning of these pronouns. And this is just one example of the hard-to-chew James prose. If you think it is pompous, you surely are excused.

But as you read on again, you find, behind this entangled sentences and a rather banal melodramatic story, something intelligent, something about humans that lurks in the dark part of our heart. I will not pretend that I can understand all of the book, but James clearly shows how we, with a limited ability of our perception, try to act as the characters of the book do, in the given atomosphere of society. To me, this book is about the way of the people's behavior luminously recorded; about the way of our expressing and perceiving ourselves without uttering them aloud.

Gore Vidal says about the book: "James's conversational style was endlessly complex, humourous, unexpected -- euphemistic where most people are direct, and suddenly precise where avoidance or ellipsis is usual (see his introduction of "The Golden Bowl" in Penguin Classics edition. This is exactly the nature of this book, which would either attract or repel you. Unfortunately, I admit, this is not my cup of tea, for I prefer more story-oriented novels. Still, if you really want to challenge reading something really substantial, I for one recommend this book.

There is a sumptuous film version of the book, starring Uma Thurman and Nick Nolte. It might be a good idea to watch it before you start reading the book.

I discovered James in college and read all his full-length novels before reaching age 30. The only one I had real trouble with was The Golden Bowl.

I recently reread the novel and reveled in its elegant complexity. (It would be nice to think that the passage of 20 years has brought wisdom and insight that made me a better reader, but the credit belongs to Dorothea Krook's illuminating discussion in The Ordeal of Consciousness in Henry James.)

The Golden Bowl is the last, the most demanding, and the most rewarding of James's major novels. Even its immediate predecessors, The Ambassadors and The Wings of the Dove, do not reach its deep examination of the mixed motives, the tangled good and evil, that drive human action and passion. Although he presents his characters' acts and much of what goes on in their heads, James manages in such a way that while Krook believes Adam and Maggie are on the side of the angels, Gore Vidal (who introduces the current Penguin edition) believes they are monsters of manipulation--and (as Krook acknowledges) both views are consistent with the evidence.

Much--too much--of these riches of doubt and ambiguity is lost in the Merchant/Ivory/Jhabvala translation to the screen (2001). The movie has some good things, but it could have had many more. Surprised by extraneous material (like the exotic dance), heavy-handed symbolism (the exterior darkness on the day Charlotte and Amerigo find the golden bowl), and needless oversimplifications (Amerigo's talk of "dishonor" to Charlotte, which exaggerates his virtue and his desire to be done with her), I got the sense that nobody involved in the production had read the novel with the care that it requires and rewards. Had they done so, their version could have been really fine--both as a movie and as an invitation to the novel.

It is certainly true that Henry James is a notoriously difficult writer. That's because he gives you very little to hold onto -- no clear statements of purpose, no overtly articulated themes, no ideas. Rather, he presents the very textures of his characters' minds as they try to make sense of what is happening to them. For James, such an act is the very essence of being human.

These difficulties are especially apparent in "The Golden Bowl," where virtually nothing happens. Yet in this dark masterpiece, James gives us a remarkably clear guide to what he is up to, namely, the golden bowl itself. On the one hand, it stands for all that is beautiful. But on the other, it suggests the fundamental brokenness of the characters in the novel, who view each other as mere objects to be collected, moved around, and manipulated. Maggie, Prince Amerigo, Adam, and, to a lesser extent, Charolotte, all suffer from this affliction.

The level of maninpulation by these characters is extraordinary. And the greatest manipulator of all is the novel's apparent victim, Maggie, who through insinuation persuades her father to return to America with Charlotte so Maggie can have Prince Amerigo to herself. This shatters all of their lives to pieces, just as the golden bowl is smashed to bits near the end of the novel.

This book must have been the blueprint for the Bush's family election success. 1876 could as well be talking about Florida in November of 2000.

Keep this in mind when you read this book and you won't put it down, I guarantee it.

Charles Schermerhorn Schuyler returns to America at the end of 1875 after his long stay in Europe, accompanied by his daughter, the Princesse d'Agrigente. It's the last days of the Grant presidency, the Adminstration rapidly decaying amid its own corruption. Prospective successors are busy lining themselves up.

Through the eyes of Schuyler, Vidal takes the reader through the political high society of the day, painting a picture of an elite, and indeed a society, so devoted to the capture of wealth that principles have been wantonly (indeed, proudly) discarded. The culmination is the corrupt election of 1876, the result of which is disputed until March 1877 (ring any bells?).

Democracy is seen not to be working for the benefit of all - Vidal paints a frightening picture of the New York underworld, replete with beggars, violence and prostitution, the latter of which the hypocritical male upper classes frequent regularly.

I think that the propective reader needs to be aware that (surprise, surprise given that this is Vidal) this is an intensely political novel. Vidal both loves and detests the US political scene, is fascinated and yet repelled by its faults and hypocrisy: Vidal seems to say that countries get the governments they deserve, and if you've got a corrupt government then a plague on the electors for being stupid enough to elect it in the first place. Vidal may, due to the fact that he's lived in Europe for so many years (even at the time of writing "1876" if I'm not mistaken), have become more European than the Europeans - read Schuyler's views on Mark Twain for example.

Although it's fiction I enjoyed "1876" as it's part of American history I am utterly ignorant of, and Vidal carries off the novel with style.

"1876" was written as part of a series commemorating the USA two centennial republic. Like Gore Vidal, in the year 1976 (or slightly before) other authors were invited to write a text or a book whose subject had to be related to that date (1776). For example, Isaac Asimov wrote "The bicentennial man" for the series.

"1876" brings back character Charles Schuyler, who had previously appeared in "Burr". After a self-exile of forty years, Schuyler is back to his native country and begins to write his impressions for New York newspapers. 1876 is election year in USA. It is also the final year of the Grant 8-year administration, which is notorious for its corruption and scandals related to large amounts of money.

Schuyler describes the race for the seat in the Oval office and his struggles to earn money in a country totally defferent from the one he left behind almost half a century before.

After the ridiculous voting and election problems during the Bush-Gore dispute, the reader can see that, after 125+ years, some things (specially related to power and money) are difficult to get changed, no matter where.

"1876" is about a nebulous (at least for me) period of the US history and, as always, Vidal, with his sarcasm, good prose and refined research, delivers another accurately historic fiction. The problem is, Vidal doesn't have complete respect for things he doesn't fully understand or know, so some passages of the book feature a bad taste that I don't like.

This book is not so dense and enjoyable as some of Vidal's other works, like "Lincoln" or "Creation" or Burr, but still one is able to learn about the period, society, people, etc featured in the story.

As part of the trilogy "Burr", "1876", "Washington D.C.", a necessary read for Vidal fans.

Grade 8.6/10

You might think that Gore Vidal's Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace is a book primarily about the September 11th attacks. This isn't true. "September 11, 2001 (A Tuesday)," is the only essay that deals directly with the attacks and the American response, and it covers only pages 3-21 (of 160). Well, okay, it runs to page 41 if you count the long list of aggressive American military actions, borrowed from the Federation of American Scientists, that Vidal tacks on at the end of his essay. After this, Vidal includes essays about the Oklahoma City bombings, religious fundamentalism in America, and excessive spending on the military. Most of these essays were published before September 11, which should indicate to you that regardless of how it is advertised, this is not primarily a September 11 book. Instead, it is a collection of Vidal essays that all address in some way or another the power of the American government.

Vidal's first essay discusses the reasons for the September 11th attacks. A self-described defender of the "American republic" but an opponent of "the American Global Empire," (46) Vidal argues that America is hated because of its many aggressive military actions around the world, not because of its "freedoms". This essay was too controversial for any American publishers to touch in the weeks after September 11, so Vidal published it first in Italy, where it became an "instant best-seller" (xiii). Personally, I agree that the essay is controversial, but I have seen similar critiques of U.S. policy published elsewhere.

Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace devotes the majority of its pages (about 90 out of 160) to essays about the Oklahoma City bombings. Vidal can speak about Timothy McVeigh's motives with a rare degree of authority, because he exchanged several letters with the convicted bomber before his execution. McVeigh's actions might have been repulsive, Vidal says, but so were the American government's abuses of power at Ruby Ridge and Waco, which inspired McVeigh to retaliate. McVeigh did not attack American civilians in a federal building for fun, but rather because he saw it as a way to strike back against the federal government for its abuses of power. Vidal also suggests that there might have been more to the Oklahoma City attack than one man acting alone, and he accuses the FBI of failing to investigate the attack adequately.

Vidal also includes an July 1997 essay, entitled "The New Theocrats" and published originally in The Nation, about the harmful doctrines of religious fundamentalists who are obsessed with sexual morality but indifferent to other kinds of unethical behavior. Finally, in an December 2000 essay, Vidal discusses excessive government defense spending in the form of a "letter" to Clinton's then-undetermined successor. There's no conclusion or epilogue, so the book ends abruptly with a footnote about the result of the 2000 presidential elections.

All of the essays in this book are well-written, with frequent touches of humor. Even though some of them are several years old, they address topics that are still relevant today. If you are thinking of buying this book, just be aware that Vidal's reflections on September 11 are only a small part of it.

"...Even so, Mr. President Elect, there is an off chance that you might actually make some difference if you start now to rein in the warlords. Reduce military spending, which will make you popular because you can then legitimately reduce our taxes instead of doing what you have been financed to do, freeing corporate America of its small tax burden."

Gore Vidal
PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE

Gore Vidal would not be Gore Vidal if he left the topic of this book at merely proving the more than 200 instances of United States "pre-emptive strike" military incursions that have taken place since the end of World War Two, proving the existence of the philosophy in the Pentagon that is sarcastically referred to by the title of the book. Vidal traces the dangerous link between Timothy Mcveigh and Osama bin Laden to moral anamolies in American foreign and domestic policy in much the same way one could trace the otherwise unrelated illnesses of heart disease and lung cancer to cigarette smoking. In so doing he demands us, whether or not we come to the same conclusions, to look at our own cultural selves and our country's leaders with new eyes: the eyes of much of the rest of the world.

Vidal is often too postmodern for his own good. As he approaches his late seventies (he is the author of twenty-two novels, tons of essays, plays and screenplays and was one of President Kennedy's best friends) his all too self-conscious "ascerbic wit" has begun to have a harder than necessary edge to it. You can almost see how the conversations he is writing for us have really become conversations he is having with himself, in the way a wise old man, slowly but inexplicably driving to Curmudgeonville after giving up on his audience or would-be students ever getting a clue would do. Yet the pearls of wisdom that thread through both this work and his infinitely insightful mind makes the book immeasurably important, and go a lot further in explainnig the souce of both his cynicism and the repressed, near uncontrollable passion he has for his country.

Something is missing in America today, something deeply important for the American soul. When that thing is concentrated or exaggerated to the point of absurdity in an individual (in inverse proportion to its absence in the culture) it produces the actions of the men who form the subject of several of his essays. But the value of this unnamed thing--and the fact that it is missing from our culture in areas where it is needed: our relationship with the non-rich world in and outside of our boundaries--comes clear with every page. That is the magic of great writers: making something invisible felt between every written word.

Vidal is a master whose talent nor reputation have ever been overstated. This book, which shockingly though unfortunately understandably could not be published in America when it was first written, is another of his gifts to the country he loves so much.

Gore Vidal, once again, shows he is the consummate essayist. I wasn't 10 pages into his book and I had highlighted nearly everything he wrote.

While I am no fan of Timothy Mc Veigh's, I was able to gain an understanding of why he did what he did. I still don't condone his actions but I understand his motiviations.

Gore's point about the current sad, sorry state of the US media was demonstrated for all the world to see when his book was actually banned after September 11 (while the country was inundated with typical, spiteful vitriol from the FAR right and that was deemed okay).

Gore urges this country to really take a look at itself and examine its policies. It is these policies that have made us hated, a prime target for international hate groups. It is innocent people like those in the World Trade Center towers who pay the price for these policies, not the beyond crooked politicians behind them.

He gives us 19 pages of military operations from 1949 to the present day. THAT in itself is worth the price of the book.

Gore touched a very raw nerve and he makes loads of sense.

Apparently Gore Vidal wanted to exact some facile laugh mixing poor religious satire (at a goliardic level, let the word "blasphemous" rest), a wagonload of sex, and a confusing cyberpunk story on the proposed filming of the
crucifixion and resurrection of Our Saviour Jesus.Well, if well done it could have been interesting, but this book is simply a prolonged implausible vaudeville act. It also purports a theory on Jesus who is rejected by all the sensible scholars in the field. Oh, well,in conclusion: if you want some fast laugh whit some sex buy it, but if you want to read something good by Gore Vidal, go elsewhere (Kalki or Julian, pour example).

Dear Reader, If you enjoy satire of serious events as a breathing space from a much too serious world, then you will enjoy this creation of Mr.Vidal's. Mr.Vidal once remarked on a talkshow to another famous author that his famous competitor was a "famous typist", as the two authors were debating literary style. Such is the satirical wit of Gore Vidal, and this style prevails through out "Live From Golgotha". He does not mis-state any historical facts, or ideas that are not true as we know truth to be, he is a great historian. Rather, In this work it is the way he peices together those 'facts' and the interaction between events and characters that is funny and of his own Satirical Invention. I think we have all done this at one time or another as kids in church or some serious situation, but Gore has managed to make a work of satire and it's worth a read.I would rank Vidal's Satire on par with Voltaire's, Fran Lebowitz's and Gary Kilban's. Gore Vidal has also written many serious treatments of history, in Novel form. Political Historians that I have contact with, such as local Legisators, praise Gore's wealth of detail in his historical novels when we discuss Gore Vidal's books."Julian" is another fabulous example of Gore Vidal's wit, while remaining true to the 'facts?' of history.

Though a work of fiction, this is one of the funniest books I've ever read. I'd have to say that this book is much more of an insult to Christianity than the Satanic Verses was to Islam. Gore Vidal, a self-proclaimed "very strong Atheist," is a brilliant writer. I especially enjoyed his work Julian (JVLIAN), which was about Julian the Apostate, the only Roman emporer to leave Christianity in favor of the pre-Nicean pagan temples of Rome and their respective gods. Live from Golgotha, like Rushdie's "Satanic Verses," takes the basic characters and story line from a major religion, and alters it to make it comedy, making a sort of mockery of that respective faith.

The author makes fun of Jesus, his disciples, and the apostle Paul. Jesus is badly overweight; a big fatty with an eating disorder. Paul is a notorious homosexual, and possibley even a child molester, not to mention a former hitman for Mossad. The early disciples and church fathers are either greedy Jewish gangsters or bisexual Greek converts. Both Jesus and Paul, the founders of Christianity who never met each other, have a tendency to lie and rewrite Christian history in order to make themselves look good (as Jesus gets older, he keeps lying about his age; at 40 he tells people he's only 33).

The story is a wonderful read, and though Vidal makes a mockery of the story of Christianity, he is thoroughly familiar with its tenets. The story touches on the possible troubles between James' Jewish church, and Paul's gentile church, and how both had different interpretations of the message brought by the most subversive self-hating Jew of them all, Fat Jesus. As a teaser, I'll leave you with Paul's account of when he met Jesus post-crucifixion, which is found both on the back of the book, as well as in the fourth chapter:

"So there I was. A hot day. Palm trees. A mirage shivering in the middle distance. A camel. A pyramid. Your average Middle Eastern landscape... Suddenly, HE WAS THERE... Wide as he was tall, Jesus waddled toward me... That face. Those luminous eyes hidden somewhere in all that golden fat. That ineffable smile like the first slice from a honeydw melon. Oh delight! He held up a hand, a tiny starfish cunningly fashioned of lard. He spoke, His voice so high, so shrill that only the odd canine ever got the whole message... 'Why,' shrilled the Son of the One God, 'dost thou persecuteth me-th?'"

As a long-time fan of Gore Vidal (both the man and his work) I was disappointed with Kaplan's treatment. He is overly fawning of Vidal and looks at all events soley through his subject's eyes. The result is a fawing biography with little, if any, critical analysis or realism about Vidal. Kaplan also has a propensity for constantly droning on about Gore's good looks. Every few pages we are reminded that Vidal was "handsome," striking" or given details about his mesmerizing pulchritude. Enough, already.

There was ample gossip and name dropping, so if you're into dirt on the Kennedy's, Capote or Gore himself, you won't be disappointed. But if you're seeking a serious or even semi-critical examination of Gore, flaws and all, you won't find it here.

It's a shame, because few men of any generation have had the brains, wit and talent of Gore Vidal, but he has proven elusive to the picklocks of biographers.

The monumental life lived by Gore Vidal is on full display here: politics, Hollywood, literary fist-fights, etc. In a way, this book is a biography of America in the 20th century, and as such it is a fascinating and surprisingly quick read (despite its heft).

But as a biography it is flawed, essentially because Kaplan views everything through Vidal's perspective. Little critical analysis is given to significant events in Vidal's life, except to the extent Vidal provides some himself and articulates it to the biographer. By excusing, defending and/or justifying the many poses, positions, and actions this larger-than-life figure has taken, the book reads less like a biography and more like an apologia. Hey, maybe Gore's entitled to one.

Kaplan has written a wonderfully involving biography of my favorite author. His portrait is well balanced and doesn't skirt any issues concerning this talented, complex and sometimes infuriating man. I have had my reservations about Vidal as a person and Kaplan gives enough background to understand, though not fully absolve, Gore Vidal. I enjoyed every page of it. Especially priceless is the shrewd, winking, nudging account of the famous William F. Buckley/Gore Vidal feuds in which Buckley comes across as quite bad. It becomes pretty obvious to any intelligent reader of 1999 why Buckley behaved so erratically and could barely stand to be in the same room with Gore Vidal. The whole book is a great read. One finishes it with a sense of both admiration and pity for Vidal who suffered (at the hands of his shrewish mother, from the loss of an early love, from early devastating literary disappointments, from being gay when it was verboten) more than he ever let on. Vidal isn't what one would call a nice, warm human being, but he did his best to make something of himself with the considerable talent he had.

The books that comprise the "Narratives of Empire" series were not written in order, and if you're reading them in order the cracks show up here in the sixth and final volume. In each volume, Vidal includes a preface telling you the story of the book you're about to read, and proudly reminding you that the entire series is the chronicle of a single family, direct in descent from Aaron Burr to himself. Yet when we get to "Washington DC" we learn that it was Blaise Sanford who purchased the Washington Tribune all those years ago and launched his publishing career, not his half-sister Caroline. In fact, Caroline Sanford has utterly ceased to exist, despite having been our main character during the previous two novels, during which she, yes, purchased the Washington Tribune and launched HER publishing career, only allowing Blaise to buy a 48% share years later when he was desperate. What's more, it was Caroline's mother who was descended from Burr, not Blaise's, as readers of volume three know perfectly well, which means that there are no more descendants of Burr left by volume six. Hmph.

Apparently others disagree, but I thought this was the best novel in Vidal's American Chronicle series. It's also the best one to start with if you haven't read any others in the series, although it's near the end chronologically. I feel that it provides a good background for the other books, making it easier to understand and get into them.
Washington, DC will also stand alone as a great political novel. I'm not generally a fan of historical fiction, but I love Vidal, and this book is one of his best.

Gore Vidal is one of America's most erudite and imaginative historical and political thinkers. He also happens to be one the most intelligent, witty, and capable literary craftsmen this country has ever produced.

In Washington, D. C., Vidal has created a novel that is simultaneously informative and entertaining. The story takes place between the 1930s (FDR era) and WWII. For anyone interested in that historical period, this book will be a fascinating read. The amazing thing is, however, that even if you're not interested in that historical period, you'll enjoy the satirical nuances of the book. Also, Vidal draws his characters with such authenticity that you'll get lost in the interpersonal relationships and forget the historical backdrop.

A vague outline of the novel is as follows: Senator Day twarts FDR's attempt to pack the Supreme Court; he then gets involved in an attempt to be elected president; while all this is happening his daughter's ex-fiance Clay Overbury (who is also Senator Day's aide) marries another woman whose father is extremely rich; and the political intrigue and madness ensue.

This, and all of Vidal's American Chronicle series, should be required reading for every American citizen.

I have been a fan of Gore Vidal's for a very long time, so very few of his views on American presidents listed in this book are really new. But it is interesting to see them collected in one single volume and without the subtlety of earlier writings. Thus Vidal says plainly that presidents are either military dictators (Lincoln and FDR) or servants of Big Business. Truman and Eisenhower never considered the Soviet Union any real threat but invented the Cold War to please the military-industrial complex - a game that JFK, a cynical in everything else, believed in and wanted to win, almost causing World War III. And the Clintons are, of course, naïve idealists who never had any idea of how the US works until they tried to defy Corporate America with their health care plan which would have brought happiness to all. And so on and so forth.

Of course one should not accept at face value the conventional version of any country's history - not only the United States'. Vidal's historical novels, especially "Burr", are excellent in pointing that out. But although "The American Presidency" is useful as a readable and entertaining summary of American history which does sometimes make you think, it is also extremely simplistic - almost a caricature of Vidal's early writings on that subject. It made me sad, in a way.

The book/pamphlet is unusual. It is quick reading and very amusing and funny. It does not try to be completely historically detailed and is not written in the scholarly style but rather goes through the key American presidents in order and gives a brief description of their character, accomplishments, and the problems they faced/solved/created.

In my opinion, Gore Vidal can be considered an elite insider of the US system. He pretty much writes as one blatantly and I believe he is making a point: here is someone on the inside who knows many of the presidents, politicians, the rich, and the media editors and is presenting history through such a perspective and in such a mode. He is a traditional republican and conservative (in the original sense of these words, hence the lower case use): foreign adventures/interventions, domestic political repression, economic polarization, and increasing corporate control are things he speaks against vehemently. For these reasons, this is a very refreshing book to read.

In addition, the book raises and deals with important questions about the presidency as an institution: what are its limitations and powers? How did this historically lead to its use and abuse for particular ends by various characters? What types of people were the various presidents and how did they change this institution?

Finally, Gore Vidal sees the US in the process of a slow but steady downfall, particularly since the Cold War years (1950s): politically, culturally, and economically (since the 1980s). The costs of being imperial master, with attendant crushing stifling of dissent at home, the huge military spendings and deficits, and foreign interventions and the loss of foreign and US life in the process, etc. are reviewed quite negatively in this book. Whether you believe this or not is something else, and the facts he produces are suggestive only (but then again,
the book is quite short).

In short, I recommend the book. As long as read properly, it provides quite some insight into American history. If you're looking for detailed history, facts and figures, and precise arguments, go elsewhere. If you're looking for a quick overall and consistent viewpoint and history viewed in broad burshstrokes, this book really hits the spot.

For those who don't have the time to read James Loewen's "Lies My Teacher Told Me" this book is a nice short summary of why we shouldn't take the institution of the American presidency too seriously. Also, it highlights the grossly mistaken manner in which American history is taught in the nation's high schools. Vidal makes it clear that far from the proud heroes presented in the history textbooks, most American presidents were just ordinary guys with more than their far share of flaws. He also explains why it is important to understand that the policies led by these flawed, often greedy and usually power hungry individuals had grave consequences not only for America but most of the world.