The last empire essays essays 1992-2000

Summary: A new collection of provocative, witty, and eloquent by Gore Vidal, the greatest living American man of letters and one of the finest essayists of the twentieth (and twenty-first) century. The last empire is Gore Vidal's ninth collection of essays in the course of his distinguished literary career. As in the previous volumes, which include the 1993 National Book Award-winning United States. Essays 1952-1992, Vidal displays unparalleled range and inimitable style as he deals with matters literary, historical, personal, and political. There are warm (and shrewd) appreciation of Edmund Wilson, Dawn Powell, Sinclair Lewis, and Mark Twain; polemical observations on the major figures and (as he sees it) deplorable developments in American politics Bill Clinton, FDR, JFK, his cousin Al Gore, the CIA and the American empire, the global reach of media conglomerates, and the United States' disdain for the UN-as well as fascinating autobiographical vignettes.