The Golden Age

Warning: While I try to keep these posts as spoiler free as possible, when discussing the later books in a series, it is difficult to avoid spoiling details of the earlier ones (though with Narratives of Empire you will probably get more spoilers from a passable knowledge of American history).

The Golden Age is the last book in the Narratives of Empire series, both chronologically and in publication order and closes out the series in a somber note.  However, much of the book takes place concurrently with Washington D.C.  following the adventures of some of the characters that he added in books later in the publication order.  However, it then continues past that through the end of the 20th century.

While wrapping up the stories of all the characters with varying degrees of satisfaction, this book also enhances and continues the cynical bent of the latter book and basically flat our accuses FDR of warmongering.  The title is, as you may expect, also a cynical slant on American history.

The Golden Age also has a fair amount of discussion of America's growth as a cultural epicenter, following up on many of the threads in Hollywood.  Gore Vidal himself makes an appearance within the pages of the book, more than once no less.

I think if you don't like FDR that much or if you like unpopular historical takes, these books will be fascinating.  I know I was very interested to see the way that FDR was portrayed continue as the modern world is so effusive in its praise of him.  However, it also makes you wonder how much of it is true and how much of it is dramatized and how much of it the author wishes were true.

Bringing the series to a close, it is somewhat depressing to do it on this note, I wish he had continued further into the cold war rather than dig so deeply into FDR for two books.  I think it leaves the series somewhat unbalanced (two books of focus on FDR, George Washington barely above a cameo in Burr). I think the years between ~1960 and 2000 could have benefited from a more detailed viewing.

However, this book is what it is and while I think the author could have picked better subject matter, it does provide some interesting views (though one has to wonder what the series would have been like if he had his ideas for the whole thing when he was writing Washington D.C. originally).  The fictional characters are all vividly imagined and the historical figures seem like they could have stepped right out of a history book.

Overall, I would give this book an 88%.