Gore Vidal, who died at the end of July, was one writer whose essays I began to read years ago. I then moved on to his novels, though I saw one of his more famous Broadway plays, "The Best Man," only recently for the first time.
Vidal was an outstanding historical novelist, with an astute sense of politics. His remarkable lineage may have had a good deal to do with this. Starting with his maternal grandfather, Thomas Gore, who represented Oklahoma as senator, he had, among his ancestors, Aaron Burr (Thomas Jefferson's vice president), who killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel, in 1804.
More recently, Jimmy Carter, Al Gore and George W. Bush are his distant cousins. Jacqueline Kennedy was his maternal stepfather's stepdaughter.