THE GORE VIDAL PAGES

Gore Vidal confidently delivers some of the most compelling, insightful, and witty observations on American history and politics of any American writer. The Boston Globe declared him simply America's "greatest living man of letters."

Born in 1925 as Eugene Luther Gore Vidal, Jr., he was raised within D.C.'s political class, attending St. Alban's prep school, Los Alamos Ranch School, and Philips Exeter Academy with many of America's future political and business leaders. He is the grandson of Oklahoma's first Senator (T. P. Gore), son of a West Pointer who served in FDR's administration, stepbrother of Jackie Kennedy Onassis, and friend to President John F. Kennedy, as well as to many writers, such as Tennessee Williams, and actors, such as Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward.

Vidal served in WWII as a Warrant Officer onboard a vessel in the Aleutians. In 1960 he ran for Congress from New York. Vidal lost the election but made a tremendously strong showing running as a Democrat in overwhelmingly Republican Dutchess County. While campaigning he earned the friendship of Eleanor Roosevelt, one of his enthusiastic supporters. His decision not to run again in 1962--a mid-term election year in which Democrats were swept into office in large numbers--has given rise to one of American political history's more interesting "what if's."

Vidal has written more than a dozen prize-winning and best-selling novels, including Washington D.C., 1876, Lincoln, Myra Breckinridge, and Creation. His second novel, The City and The Pillar, published in 1948 when he was only 23, was the first in American history to handle honestly--that is, with appropriate nonchalance--the subject of homosexuality. One of his earliest historical works, Julian, introduced to the American public the life and perspectives of the last non-Christian Roman emperor.

Also, Vidal has authored two successful Broadway plays (The Best Man and Visit to a Small Planet), several Hollywood screenplays (including Suddenly, Last Summer), and countless essays.

The Golden Age, published in 2000, is the seventh and last of his "narratives of empire." In the novels, Vidal uses characters who are descendants of Aaron Burr as narrative devices to dramatically chronicle America's evolution into an imperial nation.

A strong patriot, Vidal in numerous essays and articles applies searing logic to the issues that threaten the American republic from within and without--including corporate interests, the industrial-military complex, and theocracy. Some of his most recent essays have been collected in Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, and Dreaming War: Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta.

In 2003 Vidal was the subject of a 2-hour long American Masters documentary on PBS, "The Education of Gore Vidal."

A recent biography on Vidal is Dennis Altaman's, Gore Vidal's America.

In 2006, Vidal's second memoir, Point to Point Navigation: A Memoir, was published by Doubleday.