"The Golden Age is the concluding volume in Gore Vidal's American empire novels - a unique pageant of the national experience from the United States' entry into World War Two to the end of the Korean War.". "The Golden Age is a vibrant tapestry of American political and cultural life from 1939 to 1954, when the epochal events of World War Two and the Cold War transformed America, once and for all, for good or ill, from a republic into an empire....