I know this is a historical fiction about an imagined interview between Charles Schermerhorn and the infamous Aaron Burr. I have heard from friends and admirers of Mr. Vidal's that its a fabulous and engaging work of literature apt to entertain and access the world of the founding fathers in gossipy delight.

For me, the book was nothing more than great fun, a formalized version of fan fiction by an author who was fascinated by one of American history’s most enigmatic and infamous figures. Nowadays, we all know that Vice President Burr sparred and killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel, thanks to a little musical written by Lin Manuel Miranda.

Mr. Vidal writes his fan fiction with verve and grand style and wit that relishes the melodramatic and the complexity of a man involved with the founding of this country.

One of the most enjoyable historical novels ever written. None of his other works, especially his "American series" (1876, Lincoln, etc.) measure up. Its genius is a historical inversion: the hero: Aaron Burr; the villain: Thomas Jefferson. Most who didn't go to the University of Virginia should be honest enough to admit that Vidal has caught the dark side of Jefferson--the starry-eyed philosophy that contrasted with the ruthless conduct of his politics. And, Vidal devises a plausible reason for the famous dual with Alexander Hamilton (Hamilton's insult to Burr has been lost to history). Be sure to read to the end.

Of late, I have been listening to (taking?) lectures from The Great Courses that deal with America's revolutionary times and the individuals we usually refer to as 'Founding Fathers. I have augmented these lectures with biographies of the usual suspects. I then was recommended Gore Vidal's "Burr" by a folksy, philosophical friend who called it a 'hoot'. And a hoot is was!
I started the book while listening to "America’s Founding Fathers" by Professor Allen C. Guelzo, giving an almost immediate test of the veracity of Vidal's historical content...he scored very well, particularly in the outline of the charges of treason that Jefferson leveled at Burr. I found it interesting how we could see the mind of Vidal's John Marshall, as he presided over the treason trail, establishing the powers of the Supreme Court that were being attacked at that time by the Jefferson administration.
One of the conclusions I reached at the close of Dr Guelzo's lectures was that our country was really founded less on virtue and more likely on self-interest. Maybe some of the self-interest could be interpreted as virtuous, but the founders constantly argued and fought about things and policies that were not for the common good, but for regional, and even personal benefit. Slavery is the most obvious, followed by religious intolerance and suspicion of government. And so it remains today. Gore's characters...especially Aaron Burr himself...exemplifies this self-interest quite clearly.

Many of the other reviewers...and there are some really great reviews of this book here...have noted that the book starts slowly and doesn't really kick-in until Charlie (Schuyler), our narrator, gets comfortable with the most hated man in America, so be patient. When Vidal hits his stride, his characters come alive, showing their virtues and vices, bad teeth and bad manners, honor and dishonor. After a while 'The Duel' really does become unimportant...I wonder how "Burr" would play on Broadway.
This is a very good book and I highly recommend it...particularly those who have read a bit of early American (political) history.

This is a very good "historical novel" (fiction based on fact) about a less-known figure in American history. From 1801 to 1805, Aaron Burr was Thomas Jefferson's vice-president. Burr is one of a series of novels written by Gore Vidal with a background in American history.

Gore Vidal may have been one of the most knowledgeable and well-read Americans of the second half of the 20th Century. He probably could have been a famous actor, politician, humorist, or screenwriter. He flirted with all those careers but for our benefit he became a novelist.

Burr rings with the kind of truth that can only be found in fiction. We are not to believe all we read here, for it is a novel, but we should be aware of Vidal's reputation for painstaking research.

Washington, Jefferson, Monroe, and Madison come off as less than heroic, sometimes ghastly, shallow, incompetent: and in the case of Jefferson, downright hypocritical and almost evil.

Thomas Paine is barely mentioned, if at all, but Benedict Arnold is lauded as is Andrew Jackson.

Vidal's biting wit, imagination, and knowledge should be welcome in any political climate. This is a fun read that's finely crafted.

A queen knows a queen

"This republic was founded by some of the brightest minds in the country---and we haven't seen them since."---Gore Vidal. In the Year of Our Nixon 1973, Gore Vidal set out to explode the myth that America's Founding Fathers had all been saintly sages by focusing on the bete noire in the group, Aaron Burr, whom Gore argues persuasively simply had the courage to take to the limits what the others only pined for: Westward conquest, slavery, buying up the press, etc. This novel is the perfect antidote to the odious "Hamilton" musical. When asked what had shocked him the most in his research Gore replied, "Jefferson's hypocrisy."

Wait, he’s not black??????????

Vidal wants it both ways, to be both an historian and a novelist. When I read this book upon its publication, it was enjoyable and impressive. I'm re-reading, and the seams show through more. His prose is able. But like many a history, the book loses power as the text long outlives the story's most dramatic moment. Vidal catches his subject's character and poetry much of the time. His portraits of others are sharp. In the end his Burr is very much like Vidal himself, a failed politician, living in self-imposed exile. Like Jemmy Madison and many others of the founding generation, Burr spends his final days in penury though still pursuing Glory and Empire. Burr lives in this book, so that we may know him and his contemporaries, as men in their time. Vidal takes his best shots at Washington and Jefferson- national sacred cows

Ich lese Bücher selten grundlos: ich hatte die Wahl zwischen Hamilton von Chernow oder Burr von Vidal. Da die Taschenbuchversion (haha im Nachhinein, ein KOLOSS ist es trotzdem) von Hamilton im September noch nicht erschienen war und ich außerdem Leslie als Burr im Musical GROSSARTIG finde (und somit auch unweigerlich eine stärkere Verbindung zu Burr aufbaute), wollte ich unbedingt mehr über Burr erfahren.

Alles, was ich über die Amerikanische Revolution wusste, kannte ich vom bis dahin nur 2x komplett gehörten Hamilton Musical - also nicht besonders viel. Ich hatte erst Sorge, dass ich durch meinen Mangel an historischem und vor allem politischen Wissen dem Verlauf des Buches nicht folgen können würde...aber das war überhaupt nicht der Fall! Ich behaupte mal, dass ich selbst dann Spaß am Buch gehabt hätte, wenn ich noch weniger Ahnung gehabt hätte.
Das Buch ist als Roman geschrieben und zwar aus der Sicht von Charlie Schuyler (nein, nicht SO ein Schuyler), der im Verlauf des Buches in Burrs Anwaltskanzlei arbeitet und mit Burrs Hilfe dessen Biographie schreibt. Über 20 solche Biographie-Ausschnitte sind im Buch drin, die dann die Geschehnisse von Beginn der Revolution bis nach Burrs Anklage auf Verrat enthalten - alle dann natürlich aus Burrs Perspektive geschrieben.
Mich hat besonders beeindruckt, was für ein Chaos and simply a mess gerade der Beginn der Revolution gewesen ist, mit Washington vorn dabei. Ich hatte es mal getwittert, aber ich wiederhole es hier nochmal: Ich habe mich zeitweise gefragt, wie die es überhaupt geschafft haben, einen Staat zu gründen. Bei diesem Chaos, every person involved had their flaws. Faszinierend.

Das Musical noch im Kopf, hatte ich gedacht, dass das Duell zwischen Burr und Hamilton DAS Ereignis des Buches sein wird und fragte mich (als der Abschnitt dann vorbei war), was denn jetzt noch kommen sollte? Ich wusste zwar was von einer Anlage bezüglich Verrat an den US und einer geplanten Invasion von Mexiko, aber dachte nicht, dass es SO SPANNEND war. Seriously, ich fand den ganzen trial so cool beschrieben, dass ich das gern als Theaterstück oder Miniserie gesehen hätte. Jefferson und Burr, ey, meine Fresse. I can't. Ich habe die letzten drei Tage von Jefferson geträumt, okay?

Also, dieses Buch war kurzweilig, informativ, spannend, toll, awesome wow und ich kanns nur empfehlen.

This was EXPERTLY researched on all fronts...and yet I found the conceit of framing Burr’s history in terms of memoirs he dictates to main character Charlie rather tedious. I found Charlie’s portions of the story slow and dull, and, frankly, not “why I was here” but chunks of Burr’s reminiscing were also dense and could get bogged down in explaining the intricacies of how a minute incident played out. I wanted to like this, and it is clear an astounding amount of work went into researching both Burr’s heyday and Charlie’s milieu but for me it was not presented in the form of a compelling story. But, gosh darn it, I did read the whole thing.

Aaron Burr is perhaps the most contentious of all American politicians. A contemporary of the founding fathers and a mover and shaker in the first years of the union, his name is now a byword for betrayal and devilry due to killing Alexander Hamilton in a duel and being brought to trial for suspected treason.

Who better than to re-tell history with Burr as the hero but Gore Vidal?

This is the fifth of the seven Narratives of Empire series that I have read and the first in the series chronologically, covering the period 1775 - 1840.

Burr dictates his memoirs to a would be biographer, Charles Schuyler, a fictional character. The memoirs are framed by the events of both of their lives in the mid 1830's, the final years of Burr's life, and a time of transition and revelation for Schuyler (who was to return in a later book of the series, 1876).

We get to see a Washington who couldn't fight his way out of a pair of leggings and whose chief character traits are dullness and vanity; a Jefferson who is endlessly mendacious and completely without principle; and a Hamilton who is sparkling but reckless, at every turn the architect of his own downfall.

Against these titans - the reputations of whom history has decided to honour - we see a Burr who is eminently more noble and trustworthy than all three, but who becomes manipulated into infamy by the Virginian junto that ruled the time.

This is not only the way Burr tells it in his memoirs either, Vidal has a substantial number of supporting testimonies from his contemporaries to back him up.

As this is a Gore Vidal book, 500+ plus pages can glide smoothly by without once becoming bogged down. All the characters can converse glibly in the cleverest of aphorisms, epigrams and paradoxes, all laced with the sweetest or bitterest of ironies.

But what really floats Vidal's boat is debunking the accepted versions of history. The below example, about Washington, is typical of this tendency, and something of a manifesto:
"Ultimately, I think, he must be judged as an excellent politician who had no gift for warfare. History, as usual, has got it all backward."

I will make sure I read the last two books in the series by the end of this year. The next one, Washington D.C. (which was actually the first one written) I believe sticks it to F.D.R.