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Vidal, Gore (Author/Subject); Leibovitz, Annie & Other Photographer/Contributors : Snapshots In History's Glare

Harry N. Abrams, New York City, NY, 2009

ISBN 0810950499

First Edition / First Printing. As New in As New Dust Jacket. 256 pages. The author's third memoir in words and photographs. One of the most beautiful literary-cum-photographic memoirs of our time. The First Hardcover Edition. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions. Published in a small and limtied first print run as a hardcover original only. The First Edition is now scarce. A brilliant production by Sarah Gifford: Oversize-volume format. Black hard boards with white titles on cover and spine, as issued. Photographs by Howard Auster, Annie Leibovitz, Andy Warhol, and other artists and photographers. Text by Gore Vidal. The book is presented as a scrapbook/photo-album, where every photograph evokes vivid memories and elicits whole stories. Printed on pristine-white, thick coated stock paper in the United States to the highest standards. In pictorial DJ with titles on the cover and spine, as issued. Presents Gore Vidal's "Snapshots In History's Glare". The third and final volume in his memoir trilogy, which he began with "Palimpsest" (1995), one of the greatest books of the 20th century, and continued with "Point To Point Navigation" (2006). It is the grand finale to the author's memoirs: "In this collection of photographs, letters, manuscripts, and other selections from Vidal's vast personal archives, readers are escorted by one of America's wittiest insiders into the Kennedys' Camelot as well as the set of 'Ben-Hur', and into the private lives of Eleanor Roosevelt, Paul Newman, and Tennessee Williams, to name just a few. Written with Vidal's legendary wit and literary elegance, this book reveals not only the personal reflections of the last of the great generation of American writers, but also a captivating social history of the 20th century told by one of our great raconteurs" (Publisher's blurb). Strictly as a photography book, it is dazzling, especially the way "professional" photographs are juxtaposed with "amateur" snapshots, threaded together by Vidal's supple prose: Vintage photographs, film-set souvenirs, Polaroids by Andy Warhol, and formal portraits by Annie Leibovitz. Written in his 80's and in very frail health, Gore Vidal was no longer merely looking back, he was summing it all up. As such, he has given us a time capsule and a classic. Gore Vidal died on July 31, 2012 at the age of 86, the last of the great American public intellectual/writers of our time. We live in the Age of Mediocrity, where (nearly) everyone is a critic/blogger/pundit mouthing timid, politically correct opinions. Pundits are retail thinkers, that is, they are not real thinkers. This book helps make us realize what we have irretrievably lost. An absolute "must-have" title for Gore Vidal collectors. This copy is very prominently and beautifully signed in black pen-marker on the title page by Gore Vidal. It is signed directly on the page itself, not on a tipped-in page. This title is a contemporary classic. This is one of few such signed copies of the First Hardcover Edition/First Printing still available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright, a pristine beauty. Please note: Copies available online have serious flaws, are subsequent printings, or are remainder-marked. This is surely an accessible and lovely alternative. A rare signed copy thus. Recipient of the National Book Award's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2009 for "Distinguished Contribution to American Letters". One of the greatest writers of the 20th century. A fine collectible copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER GORE VIDAL TITLES IN OUR CATALOG). ISBN 0810950499.

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