Books
September, 1987
Empire (Random House), the latest addition to Gore Vidal's fictional history of patrician America, is a solid, hefty roast beef of a book, with just enough imaginative fat larding the historical meat to make it thoroughly succulent. Vidal has advanced his time frame to the gilded era beginning in 1898, when America has just won the Spanish-American War and President McKinley is deciding what to do with the spoils of victory, which include not only Cuba and Puerto Rico but the Philippines as well...
