Vidal in a trippy frame of mind - a 13 year old boy arrives at the Smithsonian and is met by various models who've come to life (even losing his virginity to one) and gets involved in plans to make an American bomb. (Knowing Vidal he'll probably claim A Night at the Museum ripped him off) It's certainly far out and imaginative but not particularly engaging.
I admit I'm a little awkward at reading about the sex lives of 13 year old boys and also Vidal's hobbyhorse on the American Empire gets boring as does the stuff about how-America-is-so-bad-for-entering-WW1-and-WW2 (Philippines, yes; Guam,yes; Vietnam, yes - but the world wars? I don't think so. Hitler was bad, Vidal - badder than even George W Bush. America isn't responsible for everything bad in the world, so shut up about it already).
(NB And how does Vidal reconcile his anti-imperialism with the British Empire which created the USA? He never seems to weep for the Indians. And he doesn't seem to realise the best way of keeping international peace is not keeping America quiet but to spread democracy.)
More fun are the tweaking of presidents - they all read biographies about themselves, very funny - and the first ladies. Who could write so wittily and insightfully about our politicians? I can only think of Bob Ellis and hope before he dies he completes "an irreverent history of the Australian Prime Ministers" or something).
The best thing about the book is it tapes into the "what if" questions beloved by historians - what if X hadn't been president, etc - and Vidal has a lot of fun with it, and book probably would have been better had it concentrated on this instead of all the stuff about dummies and the Smithsonian.
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