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FOLLOWING THE PUBLICATION OF Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace and its sequel Dreaming War, Gore Vidal was described as the last "noble defender" of the American republic, America's last republican (small "r"). In Imperial America, the conclusion of this landmark trilogy and his most devastating exploration of contemporary America yet, Vidal observes that there's something suspicious about the "ever reckless Cheney-Bush junta." They have created the Department of Homeland Security, the USA PATRIOT Act, and embarked upon a series of wars in pursuit of the world's oil reserves - to the extent that they seem not to care about "the decent opinion of mankind." Vidal's essay is an Olympian survey of American Empire, where the war on terror is judged as nonsensical as the "war on dandruff," where America is an "Enron-Pentagon prison," a land of ballooning budget deficits thanks to the growth of a garrison state, tax cuts for the privileged, and of course the creeping totalitarianism of the Ashcroft justice department.
Hardcover, 181 pages, item # 1063
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