The Golden Age

Gore Vidal


Vidal looks at the years of 1939 through 1954, in both Washington and New York City. The main witnesses to the epochal events of the period are Caroline Sanford, the Hollywood actress turned newspaper publisher from Hollywood, and her son Peter Sanford, journalist and later publisher of The American Prospect, and independent intellectual journal. These two characters witness first hand the events and political machinations of both Franklin Roosevelt and the Brits that led a reluctant United States into a global war that would reshape its destiny and then the actions of Harry Truman that would lead us into a bitter, decades long Cold War against Communism.


This summary is courtesy of McNaughton Books