Best Gore Vidal Audiobooks

The best Gore Vidal audiobooks — 6 titles ranked by listening experience across Historical Fiction, averaging 3.87 ABR stars.

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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.

Gore Vidal's highest-rated audiobook in our collection is Lincoln, narrated by Grover Gardner (4.37 ABR stars). Performed by Grover Gardner, Anne Twomey. Rankings here weight the listening experience — narrator performance and Audible ratings factor alongside reader scores.

Where to Start with Gore Vidal

  1. 1
    Lincoln cover

    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)
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    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.

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  2. 2
    1876 cover

    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.

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  3. 3
    Empire cover

    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.

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  4. 4
    Washington, D.C. cover

    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)
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  5. 5
    The Golden Age cover

    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.

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  6. 6
    Hollywood cover

    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)
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How We Rank Audiobooks

Rankings are driven by listener ratings and review counts from Audible and Goodreads. Books with high ratings across a large number of listeners rank higher — a 4.5 with 50,000 ratings says more than a 4.8 with 200.

Unlike most book lists, we weight audiobook-specific factors: narrator performance, production quality, and how well a story translates to audio. A great book with a poor narration isn't a great audiobook.

We don't accept paid placements or prioritize new releases. These rankings reflect what listeners actually enjoy, not what's being promoted.

Rankings update periodically as new ratings come in and new titles are added to the collection.

Read our full ranking methodology →