In this collection Gore Vidal addresses a wide range of topics: writers and politicians, the CIA and the American Empire, Mark Twain and George Washington, Franklin Roosevelt and Edmund Wilson. There are literary essays on Sinclair Lewis and Dawn Powell, and political pieces on America's ambivalent attitude to the UN, the disunity of the United States, and the issue of race as the global village disintegrates into fragments of uncertain national identity. Vidal's barbed pen is unsparing of reputation, whether in a savage assault on John Updike or an acidly humorous commentary on Bill Clinton. The book concludes with a claim regarding the extent of US military involvement in the British Isles.