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