Narratives of Empire

The Narratives of Empire series is a heptalogy of historical novels, by Gore Vidal, published between 1967 and 2000, which chronicle the dawn-to-decadence history of the American Empire; the narratives interweave the personal stories of two families with the personages and events of U.S. history. Despite the publisher's preference for the politically neutral series-title “American Chronicles”, the author Vidal preferred the series-title “Narratives of Empire”. The seven narratives of empire can be read in either historical or publication order without losing narrative intelligibility.