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."