Pippa Passes was a dramatic piece, as much play as poetry, by Robert Browning published in 1841 as the first volume of his Bells and Pomegranates series. The author described the work as the first of a series of dramatic pieces. His original idea was of a young, innocent girl, moving unblemished through the crime-ridden neighbourhoods of Asolo. The work caused outrage when it was first published, due to the matter-of-fact portrayals of many of the area's more disreputable characters – nota...

"I exist to say, No, that isn't the way it is,' or What you believe to be true is not true for the following reasons.' I am a master of the obvious. I mean, if there's a hole in the road, I will, viciously, outrageously, say there's a hole in the road and if you don't fill it in you'll break the axle of your car. One is not loved for being helpful."Gore Vidal, one of America's foremost essayists, screenwriters, and novelists, died July 31, 2012. He was, in addition, a terrific co...

"I exist to say, 'No, that isn't the way it is,' or 'What you believe to be true is not true for the following reasons.' I am a master of the obvious. I mean, if there's a hole in the road, I will, viciously, outrageously, say there's a hole in the road and if you don't fill it in you'll break the axle of your car. One is not loved for being helpful."Gore Vidal, one of America's foremost essayists, screenwriters, and novelists, died July 31, 2012. He was, in addition, a terrific co...

Gore Vidal—novelist, playwright, critic, screenwriter, memoirist, indefatigable political commentator, and controversialist—is America's premier man of letters. No other living writer brings more sparkling wit, vast learning, indelible personality, and provocative mirth to the job of writing an essay.This long-needed volume comprises some twenty-four of his best-loved pieces of criticism, political commentary, memoir, portraiture, and, occasionally, unfettered score settling. It will stand...

This vivid New York Times bestseller about 1950s America from the Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist is "an engrossing sail across a pivotal decade" ( Time ).Joe McCarthy. Marilyn Monroe. The H-bomb. Ozzie and Harriet. Elvis. Civil rights. It's undeniable: The fifties were a defining decade for America, complete with sweeping cultural change and political upheaval. This decade is...

**The New York Times BestsellerWilliam F. Buckley, Jr. remembers—as only he could—the towering figures of the twentieth century in a brilliant and emotionally powerful collection, compiled by acclaimed Fox News correspondent James Rosen.**In a half century on the national stage, William F. Buckley, Jr. achieved unique stature as a writer, a celebrity, and the undisputed godfather of modern American conservatism. He kept company with the best and brightest, the sult...

The New York Times bestselling portrait of America on the verge of a nervous breakdown in the tumultuous political and economic times of the 1970s is “a Rosetta stone for reading America and its politics today” (Frank Rich, The New York Times Book Review).In January of 1973 Richard Nixon announced the end of the Vietnam War and prepared for a triumphant second term—until televised Watergate hearings revealed his White House as little better than a...

William Randolph Hearst was a man of mythical proportions and staggering contradictions. And he was a fascinating character so much so that he appears in various fictional works from John Steinbeck's "Grapes of Wrath" and F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Last Tycoon" to Orson Welles' "Citizen Kane" as if his life was not sufficiently bizarre in its own right. At its peak Hearst's media empire included 28 leading newspapers from the San Francisco Examiner to the New York Journal ...

The essays collected here all appeared in The Nation magazine between 1958 and 2005. The early literary ones reflected Vidal’s status as a rising young novelist of the postwar generation, and as he expanded confidently into nonfiction, his essays range widely over politics, religion, society, manners and morals. We see him emerge as the pre-eminent essayist of his generation, winning a 1993 Nation Book Award for a collection of nonfiction works.Vidal’s Nation year...

Whatever happened to good old-fashioned red-baiting? The #1 New York Times–bestselling humorist rails against the silly people in our midst . . .In the midst of the Clinton years, political satirist P. J. O'Rourke, in conjunction with the conservative magazine The American Spectator, launched into a gleeful project: carrying on the grand tradition of McCarthyism by compiling a New Enemies List. Their goal: to reveal the utter silliness of politici...

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 ...

An intimate, authorized yet totally frank biography of Gore Vidal (1925–2012), one of the most accomplished, visible, and controversial American novelists and cultural figures of the past centuryThe product of thirty years of friendship and conversation, Jay Parini’s Empire of Self digs behind the glittering surface of Gore Vidal’s colorful career to reveal the complex emotional and sexual truths underlying his celebrity-strewn life. But there is plenty of...