1876 - Softcover

Vidal, Gore

3.85

3,180 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0345254007 ISBN 13: 9780345254009

Publisher: Ballantine Books, 1977

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The third volume of Gore Vidal's magnificent series of historical novels aimed at demythologizing the American past, 1876 chronicles the political scandals and dark intrigues that rocked the United States in its centennial year.
------Charles Schermerhorn Schuyler, Aaron Burr's unacknowledged son, returns to a flamboyant America after his long, self-imposed European exile. The narrator of Burr has come home to recoup a lost fortune by arranging a suitable marriage for his beautiful daughter, the widowed Princess d'Agrigente, and by ingratiating himself with Samuel Tilden, the favored presidential candidate in the centennial year. With these ambitions and with their own abundant charms, Schuyler and his daughter soon find themselves at the centers of American social and political power at a time when the fading ideals of the young republic were being replaced by the excitement of empire.
------"A glorious piece of writing," said Jimmy Breslin in Harper's. "Vidal can take history and make it powerful and astonishing." Time concurred: "Vidal has no peers at breathing movement and laughter into the historical past."
------With a new Introduction by the author.
From the Hardcover edition.

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Review:

The more things change, the more they stay the same: "The last few days would have brought down any parliamentary government. As it is, the Grant Administration is a shambles, and there is even talk that the President may resign."

Charles Schuyler, the narrator of Burr, returns to the United States after an absence of nearly 40 years, with his widowed daughter, Emma, in tow. While they try to find a suitably rich husband for Emma among the New York social set, Charles concentrates on the scandals in Washington--including accusations of corruption and obstruction of justice against Ulysses S. Grant--and the presidential race between Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel Tilden (Tilden apparently, in fact, won the election, only to have it taken away because of electoral fraud). Cameo appearances by Chester A. Arthur, Mark Twain, Charles Nordhoff, and others enliven the proceedings. --Ron Hogan

From the Back Cover:

"Suspenseful and extravagantly decorated. . . . If you think politics are dirty now, you should have witnessed the goings-on a hundred years ago. . . . Impossible to resist." --Cosmopolitan

"Vidal writes so well that you find yourself holding your breath over something that is a foregone conclusion. . . . Vidal's talent makes the bloated characters of Washington live in a way history books don't." --The Boston Globe

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