#2 – Lincoln
The novel opens as Abraham Lincoln arrives in Washington in 1861 to assume a presidency already threatened by secession. Vidal follows the new administration through the competing perspectives of Mary Todd Lincoln, William H. Seward, Salmon P. Chase, Edwin M. Stanton, John Hay and other figures…
#3 – 1876
Charles Schermerhorn Schuyler returns to the United States after more than thirty years in Europe, accompanied by his widowed daughter Emma and the remains of a fortune damaged by the Panic of 1873. To restore their position, Charles returns to journalism while Emma enters the marriage…
#4 – Empire
At the turn of the twentieth century, Caroline Sanford and her half-brother Blaise inherit competing interests in a newspaper dynasty and discover that control of information can be converted into political power. Their rivalry unfolds against the aftermath of the Spanish–American War, the expansion of United…
#6 – Washington D C
Beginning in 1937, the novel follows the families of conservative senator James Burden Day and newspaper publisher Blaise Sanford as Washington adjusts to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal and the growing possibility of another world war. Day’s ambitious aide Clay Overbury understands that political advancement depends…
#7 – The Golden Age
The final chronological volume of Narratives of Empire returns to the Sanford newspaper family, principally Caroline and her nephew Peter, as the United States moves from the uneasy peace of 1939 into the Second World War. Their access to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Washington allows Vidal to…