The seventh volume of what Vidal has entitled the Narratives of Empire. In The Golden Age, which offers a fictionalized version of American politics from 1940 to 2000, his main charge is that one of the most revered of all 20th-century presidents, Franklin D. Roosevelt, provoked, and then failed to warn his commanders about, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. His deception was brought about by a poll which revealed that 60 per cent of Americans were opposed to any foreign war.

ON THE EVE OF REVOLUTION, EGYPT IS A TINDERBOX.
WILL ONE AMERICAN LIGHT THE SPARK THAT SETS IT ABLAZE?
Gore Vidal was one of America s greatest and most controversial writers. The author of twenty-three novels, five plays, three memoirs, numerous screenplays and short stories, and well over two hundred essays, he received the National Book Award in 1993.
In 1953, Vidal had already begun writing the works that would launch him to the top ranks of American authors and intellectuals. But in the wake of criticism for the scandalous content of his third novel, "The City and the...