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. A circle of political intellectuals and enterprising newspaper editors learn of the power they wield as they both push for and chronicle the growth of the American Empire at the turn of the 20th Century Lučić, Iva, and Dietmar Müller. 2021. Registering Land and Forests. In Managing the Land: Agricultural and Rural Actors in Twentieth Century Europe, ed. Dietmar Müller, Liesbeth van de Grift, and Corinna R. Unger. Berlin: De Gruyter. Torbakov, Igor. 2017. Neo-Ottomanism versus Neo-Eurasianism? Nationalism and Symbolic Geography in Postimperial Turkey and Russia. Mediterranean Quarterly: a Journal of Global Issues 28 (2): 125–145. Furlanetto, Elena. 2017. Towards Turkish American Literature: Narratives of Multiculturalism in Post-imperial Turkey. Frankfurt/Main: Peter Lang.

Moos, Carlo. 2016. Habsburg post mortem: Betrachtungen zum Weiterleben der Habsburgermonarchie. Wien: Böhlau. The First and Second Balkan wars. The Ottoman Empire in Europe reduced to a rump territory from Edirne to Constantinople Lajosi, Krisztina. 2018. Staging the Nation: Opera and Nationalism in 19th-Century Hungary. Boston: Brill.

This book does offer a sense of how politics work in city such as Washington where it seems like most actions have some element of the political that comes into play. Vidal's later political novels follow some of these themes, but also often show us how life is much different for the elites of the times as compared to the people who the politicians aim to turn into supporters.

Mills, Amy, James A. Reilly, and Christine M. Philliou. 2011. The Ottoman Empire from Present to Past: Memory and Ideology in Turkey and the Arab World. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 31 (1): 133–136. But while the Parvenu Olympics was tedious, the rest of the novel and Vidal's brilliant prose are a sheer pleasure to read. His characters come to life and the dialogue of the main players from President Roosevelt to Admiral Dewey and William Randolph Hearst are all superbly written. Deák, István. 1997. The Habsburg Empire. In After Empire: Multiethnic Societies and Nation-Building: The Soviet Union and the Russian, Ottoman and Habsburg Empires, ed. Karen Barkey and Mark von Hagen. New York and London: Routledge. As each novel moves forward, often somewhat clumsily, it serves that greater purpose. This one, though, better-designed as it is, doesn’t yet have the awareness of the ambition of the series as a whole. It hints at the Burr connection, but it’s more a curiosity than the inciting fact. These people have lives of their own to live (in perhaps two-and-a-half dimensions), so the history they’re part of isn’t as upfront.

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Trumbull, George R. 2017. The Environmental Turn in Middle East History. International Journal of Middle East Studies 49 (1): 173–180. They also knew his patrician manner, transatlantic accent, and witty aphorisms. Vidal came from a distinguished political lineage; his grandfather was the senator Thomas Gore, and he later became a relation (through marriage) to Jacqueline Kennedy. In this rarefied, privileged environment the question of whether or not America would choose empire over republic (or at least over an oligarchy that minded its own business) was always a foregone conclusion. Fits of scruple might percolate up among the riff-raff from time to time, but at the end of the day someone was going to rape China and it might as well be America.

A novel of pre-war politics and the dawn of the American Empire. Three men, the son of a newspaper tycoon, an aging but hale senator and the senator's poor but ambitious aide cross from the corridors of power on Capitol Hill to the drawing rooms of power in the surrounding city. Titanic events in the world at large dwarf them, but they are at the heart of the political and cultural elite and the poison and futility of politics is matched by their squalid family dealings. Writing Empire: An Approach to Joseph Roth by Using the Political Theory of Herfried Münkler. Journal of Austrian Studies 51 (2): 51–71.At that level, this is a clever novel of intrigue and family dynamics. It’s never subtle enough to be fully engaging, but it’s interesting, and you can glimpse real characters in the stereotypes from which they’re born.