In this extraordinarily powerful epic Gore Vidal recreates America's Gilded Age—a period of promise and possibility, of empire-building and fierce political rivalries. In a vivid and breathtaking work of fiction, where the fortunes of a sister and brother intertwine with the fates of the generation, their country, and some of the greatest names of their day, including President McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, William Jennings Bryan, William and Henry James, the Astors, the Vanderbilts, and the Whitneys, Gore Vidal sweeps us from the nineteenth century into the twentieth, from the salvaged republic of Lincoln to a nation boldly reaching for the world.From the Paperback edition.