1876: A novel

Other than rubber stamp on end page this is an unmarked copy- DJ shows wear and tear- Blue cloth boards with gilt titles on the cover and spine, as issued." Presents Gore Vidal's "1876". Part of a grand vision of American history "from above", a multi-volume project that took the better part of forty years. The novels, in historical order, are: "Burr", "Lincoln", "1876", "Empire", "Washington, DC", "Hollywood", and "The Golden Age". Vidal's unblinking and penetrating vision throughout the entire cycle is the transformation of his beloved country from a struggling, proud, and independent Republic to a world power and out-of-control Empire. Published in the Bicentennial Year, "1876" recreates the Centennial Year, which was "celebrated with great fanfare and the most under-handed political machination in the country's history: The theft of the Presidency from Samuel Tilden by Rutherford B. Hayes. This was the Gilded Age, when robber barons held the purse strings of the nation, and the party in power was determined to stay in power" (Publisher's blurb). As a portrait of the corruption of democracy by the moneyed elite, the novel remains unsurpassed. To many readers, it is a precursor of our very own time, notably the 2000 and 2004 elections. "Vidal's historical imagination is so powerful as to compel awe" (Harold Bloom). Most of his admirers deem the essays to be Vidal's greatest achievement because they are indeed so arresting, seductive, and inimitable. As always, Bloom's wisdom puts matters in perspective: The historical novels (and their contrapuntal inversion, Vidal's hyper-novel "inventions") will take their rightful place in his oeuvre. Gore Vidal died on July 31, 2012 at the age of 86, the last of the great American public intellectual/writers of our time. We live in the Age of Mediocrity, where (nearly) everyone is a critic/blogger/pundit mouthing timid, politically correct opinions. Pundits are retail thinkers, that is, they are not real thinkers. Someday, we will realize what we have irretrievably lost. "