Conversations with Gore Vidal features provocative and intriguing interviews with one of America's most prolific authors. Vidal was an enfant terrible in the 1940s and a marginalized homosexual in the 1950s. As Edgar Box he wrote mysteries and as a screenwriter he penned the script for Ben-Hur. In 1960 he ran for Congress. In the 1990s, he appeared in films such as "Gattaca", "Bob Roberts", and "Shadow Conspiracy". His essay collection "United States: Essays 1952-1992", which features 114 pieces on everything from Howard Hughes to French literature, won the National Book Award.

Vidal proves himself here to be a witty, acerbic, cantankerous conversationalist, one who is willing to --- and often eager to --- defy conventional wisdom and lacerate the tired clichés inherent in both politics and literature. A defiant political insider who is related to both the Gores and the Kennedys, he is a proud Leftist who nevertheless does not hesitate to slash at party orthodoxy when he deems it necessary.