This novel was published in 1976, during the Bicentennial. One should not feel tied to a 'best- seller' list to enjoy reading pleasure. Hopefully, a review may spark some interest in a book readers may otherwise have overlooked.

Considering the ease with which we can now access books and the variety of formats available, I find this sad and troubling if true.įriends and family members will comment that I am making up for the lack of reading among my countrymen (well this might be true since this is the 36th book I read this year). I recently heard that approximately 80% of Americans have not read (or even listened to) a book in the past year. 'Vidal can take history and make it powerful and astonishing.' Time concurred: 'Vidal has no peers at breathing movement and laughter into the historical past.' … ( more) With these ambitions and with their own abundant charms, Schuyler and his daughter soon find themselves at the centers of American social and political power at a time when the fading ideals of the young republic were being replaced by the excitement of empire.'A glorious piece of writing,' said Jimmy Breslin in Harper's. The narrator of Burr has come home to recoup a lost fortune by arranging a suitable marriage for his beautiful daughter, the widowed Princess d'Agrigente, and by ingratiating himself with Samuel Tilden, the favored presidential candidate in the centennial year. The third volume of Gore Vidal's magnificent series of historical novels aimed at demythologizing the American past, 1876 chronicles the political scandals and dark intrigues that rocked the United States in its centennial year.Charles Schermerhorn Schuyler, Aaron Burr's unacknowledged son, returns to a flamboyant America after his long, self-imposed European exile.

1876 by Gore Vidal