Best Gore Vidal Audiobooks
Gore Vidal rewrote American history as literature — and he did it with a wit sharp enough to draw blood. His Narratives of Empire sequence, running from Burr through Lincoln to The Golden Age, reimagines the republic's founding and expansion through the eyes of insiders who are cynical, ambitious, and almost always right about power. Vidal's prose is elegant and ironic, dense with period detail but never stuffy — he writes historical figures as fully human, which means flawed, scheming, and occasionally great. Lincoln in particular is a masterwork of quiet revelation, building a portrait of the sixteenth president through the perceptions of those around him. Creation ventures further back, into the ancient world, with similar authority. Readers who want history that argues with itself, delivered in prose with genuine literary polish, will find Vidal indispensable.
Where to Start with Gore Vidal
- What fans keep coming back to → Lincoln
- Best narrator for Gore Vidal → 1876
- Highest rated by listeners → Empire (Narratives of Empire #4)
Best Gore Vidal Audiobooks
- 1
Lincoln
Narratives of Empire • Book 2
by Gore Vidal
Narrated by Grover Gardner
★ 4.37 ABR Score (10.4K ratings)★ 4.25 Goodreads (9.9K) ★ 4.75 Audible (565)More about this pick
Grover Gardner's measured, penetrating delivery transforms Vidal's revisionist Lincoln into something more unsettling than heroic—a ruthless political operator who emerges from the chaos of Civil War Washington as a far more complicated man than the marble monument we think we know.
- 2
Empire
Narratives of Empire • Book 4
by Gore Vidal
Narrated by Grover Gardner
★ 3.95 ABR Score (2.6K ratings)★ 3.86 Goodreads (2.5K) ★ 4.69 Audible (114)More about this pick
Grover Gardner's steady, authoritative narration anchors Vidal's sprawling Gilded Age saga, making 23 hours of political intrigue and dynastic ambition feel essential rather than exhausting.
- 3
1876
Narratives of Empire • Book 3
by Gore Vidal
Narrated by Grover Gardner
★ 3.88 ABR Score (3.6K ratings)★ 3.86 Goodreads (3.4K) ★ 4.42 Audible (206)More about this pick
Grover Gardner's measured, conspiratorial delivery transforms Vidal's razor-sharp political novel into something that feels like overhearing dangerous secrets at a Manhattan dinner party—16 hours of gilded corruption you won't want to pause.
- 4
Washington, D.C.
Narratives of Empire • Book 6
by Gore Vidal
Narrated by Grover Gardner
★ 3.81 ABR Score (2.1K ratings)★ 3.74 Goodreads (2.0K) ★ 4.51 Audible (78) - 5
Hollywood
Narratives of Empire • Book 5
by Gore Vidal
Narrated by Grover Gardner
★ 3.70 ABR Score (1.6K ratings)★ 3.64 Goodreads (1.5K) ★ 4.25 Audible (92) - 6
The Golden Age
Narratives of Empire • Book 7
by Gore Vidal
Narrated by Anne Twomey
★ 3.52 ABR Score (1.4K ratings)★ 3.72 Goodreads (1.2K) ★ 3.79 Audible (164)More about this pick
Gore Vidal chronicles America's transformation from republic to empire through WWII and Cold War events, seen through the eyes of actress-turned-journalist Caroline Sanford.