Hollywood

Name: Hollywood
Brand: Brilliance Audio
Availability: InStock
Author: Gore Vidal
ISBN: 9781799751120

Author: Gore Vidal

Series: Narratives of Empire #5

Narrator: Grover Gardner

Unabridged: 21 hr 29 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Brilliance Audio

Published: 11/12/2019

Categories: Fiction, Historical Fiction

Synopsis

It is 1917, and President Woodrow Wilson is about to lead the country into the Great War in Europe. In California, a new industry is born that will irreversibly transform America. Caroline Sanford, the alluring heroine of Empire, discovers the power of moving pictures to manipulate reality as she vaults to screen stardom under the name of Emma Traxler. Just as Caroline must balance her two lives—West Coast movie star and East Coast newspaper publisher and senator’s mistress—so too must America balance its two power centers: Hollywood and Washington. Here is history as only Gore Vidal can re-create it: brimming with intrigue and scandal, peopled by the greats of the silver screen and American politics.“Hollywood shimmers with the illusion of politics and the politics of illusion.” — Chicago Sun-Times“A wonderfully literate and consistently impressive work of fiction that clearly belongs on a shelf with Vidal’s best.” — The New York Times Book Review

About Gore Vidal

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) was born at the United States Military Academy at West Point. His first novel, Williwaw, written when he was 19 years old and serving in the army, appeared in the spring of 1946. He wrote 23 novels, five plays, many screenplays, short stories, well over 200 essays, and a memoir.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Julio on February 17, 2023

"I don't think any actor should ever be president of the United States. He is too used to getting fed lines and moved about in front of the camera".---Gore Vidal, on why Ronald Reagan would never become President I met Gore Vidal once in person, and his talk that day illuminates both the virtues and......more

Goodreads review by robin on July 23, 2022

Vidal's Hollywood As A Narrative Of Empire The controversial public figure and prolific author Gore Vidal (1925 -- 2012) wrote seven historical novels on American history called the "Narratives of Empire Series" with the overall goal of showing how, in his view, the United States developed from a sma......more

Goodreads review by Frank on May 30, 2016

The title is misleading. This is one of Vidal's "American Chronicle" novels (the best of the series were "Burr" and "Lincoln") and most of the action takes place in Washington, not Hollywood. This particular entry in the series is not the best. The main historical figure, Woodrow Wilson, is too dry......more

Goodreads review by Elan on May 27, 2025

This one was so much fun! Genuinely haven't enjoyed one like this in a while. and with summer upon us it's the perfect read for a breezy, sunny day. It goes back and forth between two storylines that feel only tangentially connected, but it somehow manages to make this work and its exciting when the......more

Goodreads review by Beth on June 12, 2018

I read this for research, and while I did find some relevant material, this was not a particularly enjoyable read. First of all, very little of the book is actually in or about Hollywood; it's centered in Washington, D.C. on political shenanigans. The cover quote also says it's a novel about the 192......more