Washington D.C. is the penultimate novel in the chronological reading of Gore Vidal's Narratives of Empire but the first one published. Unfortunately, the fact that it is the first published is not as well disguised as other series where the chronological order and published order are different.
Caroline Sanford, primary protagonist of the last two books, has vanished. And I don't mean like Luke at the beginning of The Force Awakens, it becomes clear that Gore Vidal didn't come up with her until he was writing Empire. The final book in the series, The Golden Age, takes place concurrently with this book but I am not sure that there is a reading that interleaves the chapters in true chronological order.
This book covers the depression, World War II, and the beginning of the Cold War and it is definitely more novelized and dramatic than some of the other books in the series. It is also pretty cynical, basically stating straight out that FDR got us in to WW II deliberately and takes an overall fairly negative view on some people who are today considered icons. I'm not sure if there was a large contingent of people with beliefs like that at the time and we are blinded by nostalgia or if Vidal was cynical even for his own time.
However, all of these complaints are not to say the book is unenjoyable. There is a lot to like here and seeing the 40's through a different lens makes it different than most history books I have read. Perhaps if I had started here, it might have been more of a turn off but with the investment in the characters and reading the lead up to how they got to this point, it was interesting to see how he is maneuvering everyone towards a conclusion.
Overall, I would give this book an 86%.
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