Burr: A Novel
Gore Vidal
Language: English
Pages: 448
ISBN: 0375708731
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
For readers who can’t get enough of the hit Broadway musical Hamilton, Gore Vidal’s stunning novel about Aaron Burr, the man who killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel—and who served as a successful, if often feared, statesman of our fledgling nation.
Here is an extraordinary portrait of one of the most complicated—and misunderstood—figures among the Founding Fathers. In 1804, while serving as vice president, Aaron Burr fought a duel with his political nemesis, Alexander Hamilton, and killed him. In 1807, he was arrested, tried, and acquitted of treason. In 1833, Burr is newly married, an aging statesman considered a monster by many. But he is determined to tell his own story, and he chooses to confide in a young New York City journalist named Charles Schermerhorn Schuyler. Together, they explore both Burr's past—and the continuing civic drama of their young nation.
Burr is the first novel in Gore Vidal's Narratives of Empire series, which spans the history of the United States from the Revolution to post-World War II. With their broad canvas and sprawling cast of fictional and historical characters, these novels present a panorama of American politics and imperialism, as interpreted by one of our most incisive and ironic observers.
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First the Transition, Then the Crash: Eastern Europe in the 2000s
From Crisis to Coalition: The Conservative Party, 1997-2010
Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media
Study. Two things amaze. One, at fourteen, Hamilton was running Cruger’s business. The other, in later life, Hamilton came to detest his original benefactor. Why? A falling out? The way Hamilton always fell out with his surrogate fathers? Most mysterious. I have my theories but …” The Colonel stopped, and before I could get him to expand on those theories he had begun the day’s dictation. Memoirs of Aaron Burr–Eleven I RETURNED TO NEW YORK STATE to find George Clinton in a bad mood. He.
I changed the subject, surprising him. “I would like to know what happened between President Jefferson and Colonel Burr after the inaugural.” “What happened?” Mr. Davis pursed his lips; looked puzzled—to lie or not? “Well, Colonel Burr asked for only three appointments. He got two. I was the third. For my work in the campaign I was to be made naval officer for New York. But I did not get the post, nor did any other friend of Burr get an appointment. Jefferson dropped the Burrites in favor of an.
Shivering in a cold wind, we walked briskly along the muddy Georgetown street. And it was a proper street unlike the cow-paths and uncharted woods of near-by Washington City—a capital, as one tactful foreign minister used to say, “of magnificent distances.” As always, Hamilton tried to draw me out on the subject of Jefferson and, as always, I was not to be drawn out. I gave him only the idlest gossip. “The roof of the mansion leaks. The walls of the bedrooms are still unplastered. And Mr. Adams.
Man, despite,” and the Colonel held up a bottle of patent medicine labelled Matchless Sanative, “this delicious restorative. When I saw the President in New York, he told me not once but three times that he owed his health to this particular medicine. Since I have never seen a man look worse, I was not impressed. But then I thought, here is Jackson with a bullet lodged next to his heart and suffering from a dozen diseases and the fact that he is not dead may well be due to Matchless Sanative. So.
Happy—no, amused. “It’s the new people, Charlie. They’re going to take it all one of these days.” “Mr. Davis thinks Clay will be the next president.” “Poor Matt! He lacks judgement in the big things but is a master of the small. Van Buren will be nominated and he will defeat Clay or any other National Republican—no, no, Whig, I must get used to calling them that. How topsy-turvy it is! Those of us who were for the Revolution were Whigs. Those for Britain were Tories. Then there was the fight.