‘Vidal has a fierce, uncontaminated sense of what’s right and wrong, and he expresses his most intimate opinions fearlessly’ - John Simpson, Daily Mail

This new selection brings together the best of Gore Vidal’s essays, comment and criticism from his fifty-year writing career. With mercurial intelligence and often courageous - and outrageous! - forthrightness, Vidal explores his keystone subjects: primarily the worlds of literature and US politics; but also showbiz, sexuality and modern manners. His gaze ranges from the fiction of Calvino and Updike to the politics of pornography to the Clinton and Bush administrations, America post-September 11 and contemporary imperial ambitions.

These essays are a witty and brilliant assessment of our times from the most memorable of American literary masters.