With the death of Gore Vidal on July 31, 2012, America lost one of its wittiest naysayers. Vidal seemed a throwback to the more patrician times of the Founders, citizens of intellect and political smarts who could write literate prose, cobble together a Constitution, invent a nation. But then, with Vidal, came the kicker: ΓÇ£The United States was founded by the brightest people in the countryΓÇöand we havenΓÇÖt seen them since.ΓÇ¥ In his prolific writingsΓÇöΓÇ¿novels, plays, essays, articlesΓÇöhe was a sort of latter-day Henry Adams, the irony-ΓÇ¿rich historian of American declension. His scrupulously researched American Chronicle series of seven historical novels provides a pleasurable and informative remedy for the historical illiteracy of what he dubbed, more in anger than sorrow, the United States of Amnesia. In most of the essays here collected, history plays a key role in the arguments.