Gore Vidal - novelist, playwright, critic, screenwriter, memoirist, indefatigable political commentator and u0026 controversialist - is America's premier man of letters. No other living writer brings more sparkling wit, vast learning, indelible personality and u0026 provocative mirth to the job of writing an essay. This long-needed volume comprises some 24 of his forays into criticism, reviewing, political commentary, memoir, portraiture, and u0026, occasionally, unfettered score settling. Among them are such classics as The Top Ten Best-Sellers, Dawn Powell: The American Writer; Theodore Roosevelt: An American Sissy, Pornography, and u0026 The Second American Revolution. Edited and u0026 introduced by Gore Vidal's literary executor, Jay Parini, it will stand as one of the most enjoyable and u0026 durable works from the hand and u0026 mind of this vastly accomplished and u0026 entertaining immortal of American literature.