Rating: 
Summary: our greatest living author
Review: I have read every word ever published by Gore Vidal, and consider him the greatest living American author. A national treasure. His essays, in particular, are among the finest ever written in the English language. This book is diverting, insightful, funny, iconoclastic, well-researched, and, most important, truthful. It is Vidal working at the top of his form.
Rating: 
Summary: More Than Just History
Review: I read this book after having the fun of listening to Mr. Vidal discuss it at an event last month at the new National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. I've also taken into account some of the earlier reviews posted here. I agree it's not his best work; I'd save that distinction for LINCOLN and the UNITED STATES essays. However, it is a very thoughtful and funny piece of work. Vidal INTENDS you to think about what he says. There is more to history (at least there should be) than just getting the dates and names right. If you want the life of Washington read D.S. Freeman or J. T. Flexner. If you want John Adams, go to David McCullough. If you want Jefferson, see Joseph Ellis or even Dumas Malone. Those are first-rate biographies. However, what Vidal attempts here (generally successfully) is the second part of history - how does what they did reflect now? What present events suggest we haven't come as far as this founding trio would like? (See his comments on the relationship of Adams' Alien & Sedition Acts to the Bush Patriot Act.) It's funny, elegant, and enlightening. I enjoyed every skewering line.
Rating:
Summary: Flesh and Blood.
Review: I would recommend the purchase of 'Inventing a Nation.' The main selling point of the book is Vidal's unbeatable style. You already know who the players are; 'court historians' have already identified them for you, in gross detail. Two of them adorn Mount Rushmore, gazing at a country that today they might find very strange indeed. (John Adams didn't make the cut for Mount Rushmore, I guess you would have to ask Gutzon Borglum why . . .)What the court historians don't generally do is make an effort to cast the Founding Fathers as human beings, remarkable as they were. In this book, we read about Washington's financial troubles with his mom, Jefferson's uneasy working relationship with John Marshall, and Adams' never-ending correspondence with his wife Abigail. Along with Washington, Adams, and Jefferson, Vidal takes time to embellish the margins of his portrait with sub-miniatures of Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, John Marshall, James Madison and the ineffable Talleyrand. If a bland regurgitation of dates, times and places are what you are looking for, look to a textbook. If you are looking for a breath of fresh air, and a walk among giants that were only human after all, look to Vidal.
Rating: 
Summary: Detailed, but unfocused
Review: In INVENTING A NATION, Gore Vidal focuses upon the creation of the Constitution of the United States and upon the key figures who fashioned that momentous document (with the main thrust concerning Washington, Adams and Jefferson). It is a large undertaking, and one which is only partially successful. Vidal offers a lot of historical details and anecdotes, pulling in quotes from letters, speeches and writings straight from the horse's pen, as it were. But his presentation leaves much to be desired. I learned a fair number of facts while reading this, yet I don't feel I really gained any new insights into this important time in US history.
One of the main things I didn't care for was the fact that Vidal presents a lot of quotations but a majority offers no hint as to the context in which they are delivered. I'm not accusing him of making things up or even twisting the words of the Founding Fathers. However, it's difficult to really understand what the meaning is behind the sentences when we don't know where they came from. Are these public speeches meant to put an opinion in the best possible light or private letters in which inner thoughts are revealed? The origin and emphasis has a huge effect on how the modern reader should interpret them.
The narrative voice meanders all over the place, moving from one event to the other, regardless of linear progression or actual relevance. I'm certain that there must have been some order behind the presentation of these passages, but there were times when I just couldn't see it. Hell, there were times when I was having trouble following it.
That said, the portions dealing with single morsels of history come across very well. There are many fascinating particulars scattered throughout -- a lot of things that I had never heard of before. In a handful of places he compares and contrasts a historical topic to a more modern event (say, the Presidential Election of 2000). I found these to be intriguing insights. I know that some people would prefer that nothing recent at all even be mentioned in a history text, but history repeats itself and to ignore the author's own opinions about a given parallel would be dishonest. Nor did I find him terribly unbiased in that regard; he seems equally grumpy about all things modern.
I think the ultimate superficiality of this book becomes most apparent when one first picks it up and notices that the text only runs to one hundred, eighty-nine pages (with suspiciously large spacing between lines). Gore Vidal is a gifted writer and storyteller, meaning that the individual anecdotes and details are written in an engrossing and whimsical fashion. Yet the text as a whole has the feeling of something written without a starting outline and without a second draft. It comes across as history written as stream-of-consciousness. The little stories are fascinating, but the big picture is lost.
Rating: 
Summary: Unscholarly Rant
Review: In this poor excuse for a work of scholarship, Vidal spends his time (and ours) entertaining personal assumptions (see Publishers Weekly review), viewpoints, and pet themes. Why, in the middle of a purported historical work on the Founding Fathers, does he digress into making weak connections with the war in Iraq, his generalizations of contemporary America, and other unrelated, obviously biased dribble? If I want politically charged opinion on the topics of the day, I'll read Op/Ed pieces, or at least something that admits its bias from the onset. If you are looking for an unbiased, focused, and SCHOLARLY substantive work on the topic, read Ellis' Founding Brothers. It won the Pulitzer--because it is everything Inventing a Nation is not.
Rating:
Summary: Unscholarly Rant
Review: In this poor excuse for a work of scholarship, Vidal spends his time (and ours) entertaining personal assumptions (see Publishers Weekly review), viewpoints, and pet themes. Why, in the middle of a purported historical work on the Founding Fathers, does he digress into making weak connections with the war in Iraq, his generalizations of contemporary America, and other unrelated, obviously biased dribble? If I want politically charged opinion on the topics of the day, I'll read Op/Ed pieces, or at least something that admits its bias from the onset. If you are looking for an unbiased, focused, and SCHOLARLY substantive work on the topic, read Ellis' Founding Brothers. It won the Pulitzer--because it is everything Inventing a Nation is not.
Rating:
Summary: A song for America
Review: In this vibrant book of historical nonfiction, Gore Vidal illuminates the key figures and events that shaped the founding of the American Republic. He brings to life Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Alexander Hamilton, and others to create a powerful portrait of America's beginnings. By peering at the past, we gain a better understanding of the current political climate, and "Inventing a Nation" is a glorious testament to our founding, colored as it is by Vidal's astute observations and insights.
Rating:
Summary: A Much Needed Reminder of the Past
Review: Just when we need him most, here comes Gore Vidal with a slim but deep look at our nation's beginning. Vidal's elegant, waspish wit makes this book (along with everything else he writes) a delight, but the true value of this work lies in its content. Vidal makes it clear in his afterword that the book was inspired by a brief conversation he had with John F. Kennedy in November 1961. Kennedy wondered why we had no great men of the caliber of the Founding Fathers in his own time (how depressed he would have been had he lived forty more years and witnessed our present crop of "leaders"!!) Vidal doesn't really give us a clear answer to Kennedy's question, but he does manage, in less than 200 pages, to remind us of both the Founders' human frailties and their greatness. With Vidal Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, and many others don't come out as icons, but neither are they the villains some would make them. One finishes this book in an hour or so aware that the men who created our nation were human after all, but intelligent and dedicated men who compare rather well with their successors in 2003.
Rating:
Summary: Who does he like?
Review: Mr. Vidal likes George Washington. We get some history here and some inventive literary licence..At least he doesn't tell us he took a walk with George Washington..The very talented Shirley MacLaine who also writes books, in one of them told us she had dates with Charlemagne..She may be dancing a bit too high there, whereas the prolific Mr. Vidal has his feet on the ground.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Essay: A Little Too Fashionable
Review: Need a Christmas stocking stuffer for your friends who are interested in American history and American politics? Buy Inventing A Nation! Inventing A Nation is a very fashionable book. For example, John Adams is very fashionable in today's historical and political circles. But, the real political muscle behind John Adams is missed by Vidal. John Adams older cousin Sam Adams. Sam Adams had the real political clout in terms of men and financial backers. Vidal does mention that Aaron Burr finds it necessary to "flatter" Sam Adams (page 130). But he doesn't follow up on Sam Adams, the real leader of the Adams political machine. Sam Adams was a well educated, calvinist protestant, popular with the tradesman, small merchants, sailors and laborers of Boston. Sam was able to get the wealthiest man in Boston, John Hancock to dress up like an indian and throw tea in Boston Harbor. John Adams is nice, but, let's not forget "Uncle" Sam. For the serious student of Washington, it seems that Washington's financial difficulties were ameliorated after his mysterious trip to western Pennsylvania/western Virginia in 1784...there maybe the basis of a historical novel in that trip itself for those familiar with old legends...even Albert Gallatin a/k/a Galatini shows up in that tale... I intend to again read Vidal's mentions of Patrick Henry. Both Henry and Sam Adams were elected to the Constitutional Convention. Neither one of them decided to attend. Inventing A Nation is a great port of departure...
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