Risultati di "Gore Vidal" in Tutte le categorie

Jim, a handsome, all-American athlete, has always been shy around girls. But when he and his best friend, Bob, partake in “awful kid stuff,” the experience forms Jim’s ideal of spiritual completion. Defying his parents’ expectations, Jim strikes out on his own, hoping to find Bob and rekindle their amorous friendship.

Volumes have been written about George Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson, but no previous work captures the intimate and vital details the way Inventing a Nation does. Vidal's consummate skill takes you into the minds and private rooms of these great men, illuminating their opinions of one another and their concerns about crafting a workable democracy.

A novel based on the emotional conflict centered around a son’s urge to sever the psychological umbilical cord which ties him to a selfish and possessive mother. Completely unsympathetic to his young experiences and inclinations, forever critical of his interests and reactions, she nevertheless appeals to his sympathies and attempts to hold him emotionally.

Lost for more than 60 years and overflowing with political and sexual intrigue, Thieves Fall Out provides a delicious glimpse into the mind of Gore Vidal in his formative years. By turns mischievous and deadly serious, Vidal tells the story of a man caught up in events bigger than he is, a down-on-his-luck American hired to smuggle an ancient relic out of Cairo at a time when revolution is brewing and heads are about to roll.

This explosively entertaining memoir abounds in gossip, satire, historical apercus, and trenchant observations. Vidal’s compelling narrative weaves back and forth in time, providing a whole view of the author’s celebrated life, from his birth in 1925 to today, and features a cast of memorable characters - including the Kennedy family, Marlon Brando, Anais Nin, and Eleanor Roosevelt.

Kidnapped and held to ransom by Duke Leopold of Austria after the Third Crusade, Richard the Lion Heart, it is said, was found by his faithful troubadour Blondel de Neel. But how? And what trials did the faithful and long-suffering lyricist have to overcome to find his king? Gore Vidal paints a broad, colorful, and poignant picture of a man searching for his master; for the symbolic king who is the goal of man’s eternal quest; for the spiritual centre of his life.

The fast and furious hedonistic world of the jet-set commuting between the glamour centres of Europe is the setting for this famous novel by one of the twentieth century’s most remarkable writers. Philip Warren is a personable young American who moves amongst the international demi-gods of wealth and status in search of himself and a future, which will satisfy his part cynical, part romantic outlook.

To satisfy a public that longs for a savior, Vidal’s eponymous hero of Kalki, born and bred in America’s Midwest, establishes himself in Nepal, puts out the word that he is the last incarnation of the god Vishnu, and predicts an imminent apocalypse meant to cleanse the planet.

Messiah traces the collapse of Christianity and the rise of the next great religion of Western civilization: Cavism. Founded by undertaker John Cave, Cavism holds that it is a holy thing to die. Packaged by a marketing genius, the new religion conquers the world more quickly than any prior memeplex, but pockets of resistance remain. Eugene Luther, formerly an apostle of Cavism, now a hunted apostate, writes his memoirs as a last gesture of freedom while the noose of a totalitarian religious state tightens around him.

Timothy (later St. Timothy) is in his study in Thessalonika, where he is bishop of Macedonia. It is A.D. 96, and Timothy is under terrific pressure to record his version of the Sacred Story, since, far in the future, a cyberpunk (the Hacker) has been systematically destroying the tapes that describe the Good News, and Timothy's Gospel is the only one immune to the Hacker's deadly virus.

In Death Before Bedtime, dashing P.R. man Peter Sargent is invited to the home of a venerable senator to help strategize his imminent run for president. On the night before he’s to announce, though, the senator is murdered in his bed. No longer needed as a political publicist, Sargent finds himself helping the police find the killer. He deftly navigates an eccentric cast of characters, all of whom are suspects: the rebellious daughter; the sycophantic aide; the grieving widow; and the power-hungry governor with his eye on the senator’s job.

In Death Likes it Hot, dashing P.R. man Peter Sargeant travels out to a posh beach community to help a wealthy socialite plan an end-of-summer party. His enjoyment of the sun, the surf, and the company of a lovely young fashion reporter is interrupted by the death of the socialite’s niece: she mysteriously drowns while swimming on a crowded beach. No one suspects murder until the police find a lethal dose of sleeping pills in her system.

Widely regarded as Vidal's ultimate comment on how the American political system degrades those who participate in it, Washington, D.C. is a stunning tale of corruption and diseased ambitions. It traces the fortunes of James Burden Day, a powerful conservative senator who is eyeing the presidency; Clay Overbury, a pragmatic young congressional aide with political aspirations of his own; and Blaise Sanford, a ruthless newspaper tycoon who understands the importance of money and image in modern politics.

Cyrus Spitama, grandson of the prophet Zoroaster and lifelong friend of Xerxes, spent most of his life as Persian ambassador for the great king Darius. He traveled to India, where he discussed nirvana with Buddha, and to the warring states of Cathay, where he learned of Tao from Master Li and fished on the riverbank with Confucius. Now blind and aged in Athens - the Athens of Pericles, Sophocles, Thucydides, Herodotus, and Socrates - Cyrus recounts his days as he strives to resolve the fundamental questions that have guided his life’s journeys.

Julian the Apostate, nephew of Constantine the Great, was one of the brightest yet briefest lights in the history of the Roman Empire. A military genius on the level of Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great, a graceful and persuasive essayist, and a philosopher devoted to worshipping the gods of Hellenism, he became embroiled in a fierce intellectual war with Christianity that provoked his murder at the age of thirty-two, only four years into his brilliantly humane and compassionate reign.

Here is an extraordinary portrait of one of the most complicated - and misunderstood - figures among the Founding Fathers. In 1804, while serving as vice president, Aaron Burr fought a duel with his political nemesis, Alexander Hamilton, and killed him. In 1807, he was arrested, tried, and acquitted of treason. In 1833, Burr is newly married, an aging statesman considered a monster by many. But he is determined to tell his own story, and he chooses to confide in a young New York City journalist. Burr is the first novel in Gore Vidal's Narratives of Empire series.

Gore Vidal: Sexually Speaking presents the author’s often provocative and always engaging thoughts on sexuality. Here, fourteen essays and three rare, vintage interviews published over the past four decades tackle hot-button topics such as gay American founding fathers, sex and the Catholic church, gay bashing and the U.S. Congress, and bedding Jack Kerouac.

In the tiny Central American republic of Tenango, a place of orchid-scented jungle, crumbling palaces, and baroque cathedrals, the rainy season is over and the dusty days of winter have begun. It is time for revolution. In an old plantation house the conspirators meet: General Jorge Alvarez, returned from exile in New Orleans with his hothead of a son and his proud, beautiful daughter; a volatile entourage of disenchanted colonels and rebel priests; and Peter Nelson, an American soldier of fortune with his own reasons for joining the rebels.

A gripping tale of men struggling against nature and themselves, Williwaw was Gore Vidal’s first novel, written at nineteen when he was first mate of the U.S. Army freight supply ship stationed in the Aleutian Islands. Here he writes of a ship caught plying the lethal, frigid Arctic waters during storm season. Tensions run high among the edgy crew and uneasy passengers even before the cruel wind that gives the book its title suddenly sweeps down from the mountains. Vividly drawn characters and a compelling murder plot combine to make Williwaw a classic war novel.

Two Sisters is Gore Vidal’s fictional memoir of a love affair with a beautiful set of twins in post-war Paris - a story skilfully interwoven with notebooks, diaries and the vivid fragment of a screenplay set in ancient Greece.