Vidal is a true liberal contrarian (he subtitles his essay on Theodore Roosevelt "An American Sissy"). For all that, his essays sparkle with wit and cynicism and a highly personal voice.

The three sections of this collection are entitled "State of the Art" (literary criticism); "State of the Union" (politics and history); and some more personal essays in "State of Being".

A nice astringent collection.

Essays

Vidal write clearly and presents a very lucid point of view, which he marshals from a vast corpus of his reading, listening, watching, and thinking.

Many will disagree with his conclusions, or even with his presuppositions. The clarity of his arguments, however, gives the reader the opportunity to absorb his wisdom and experience without risk to his own.

It is hard to fault anything in this volume except for its length. The three main sections; on literature and the arts, on American politics, and on his own experience, could be as easily divided into separate volumes. ( )

Gore Vidal's reputation as "America's finest essayist" is an enduring one. This collection, chosen by the author from 40 years of work, contains about two-thirds of what he published in various magazines and journals. He has divided the essays into three categories, or states. State of the art covers literature, including novelists and critics, bestsellers, pieces on Henry James, Oscar Wilde, Suetonius, Nabakov and Montaigne (a previosly uncollected essay from 1992). State of the union deals with politics and public life: sex, drugs, money, Abraham Lincoln, Eleanor Roosevelt, "The Holy Family" (his essay on the Kennedys), Nixon, and finally "Monotheism and its Discontents", a scathing critique of Christianity, Judaism and Islam. In state of being, we are given personal responses to people and events: recollections of his childhood, E. Nesbit, Tarzan, Tennessee Williams and Anais Nin.