Gore Vidal

(Doubleday, $27.50)

No writer working in English today deploys quite so many clear and lovely sentences per page as Gore Vidal – except Joan Didion, and the beauty of her prose is of a more austere sort.

More than 30 years ago, Stephen Spender proposed that Mr. Vidal was at his best in the essays. The Selected Essays easily could serve as Exhibit A. Although all but three of these 24 pieces appeared in the author's huge 1993 collection, United States: Essays 1952-1992, there's a freshness and cohesion to this volume that more than justifies the repackaging.

Part 1 ("Reading the Writers") deals with writers, writing and critical fashion; Part 2 ("Reading the World") assembles 11 political essays, from a 1963 piece on Egypt shortly after Nasser came to power through more recent ones, including his stunning 9/11 essay, "Black Tuesday."

The literary essays include Mr. Vidal's famous recovery of William Dean Howells, his scathing but hilarious denunciation of fashion masquerading as critical literary scholarship ("The Hacks of Academe") and his moving recollection of Tennessee Williams, "Some Memories of the Glorious Bird and an Earlier Self."

Los Angeles Times