The Smithsonian Institution by Gore Vidal - 1998

The Smithsonian Institution - Hardcover first edition excellent shape very good, maroon boards gold titling spine, deckle Edge pages, minimal amounts of wear, pages clean, unmarked.... Good Friday 1939, a teenage math prodigy from St. Albans School in Washington, D.C., mysteriously summoned to the Smithsonian Institution, a crash program to develop the atomic bomb - conducted in the basement. Someone is also fooling around with space-time continuum, a preternaturally gifted teenager turns out to hold the key to both the secrets of nuclear fission / breakthroughs in the fourth dimension. In subterranean lab, brainstorming,with Robert Oppenheimer - other scientists who will soon be at Los Alamos. Displays come to life after hours, an adventurous First Lady from the inaugural-gowns exhibit takes it upon herself to show him the sexual ropes... Abraham Lincoln - along with Charles Lindbergh, Eleanor Roosevelt, Albert Einstein, Grover Cleveland, Adolf Hitler - turns up - as the teenage narrator tries not only to make sense of history but to intervene in key events that shaped the twentieth century. Questions about political responsibility - personal sacrifice are deftly woven into a surreal narrative of quantum physics, string theory, clones, sexual habits of Eskimos, domestic situations various U.S. presidents.....The Smithsonian Institution: A Novel -Gore Vidal, Pub. Random House, 1998, ISBN -0375501215, 9780375501210, - 260 pages, stated first edition hardcover very good condition , jacket illustration John Ennis, Subjects Fiction, science fiction.......Ruth Reaser..LAX Vespa, Los Angeles Culver City- maybe this will do it!-At least you know what you're getting into-City-Media Mail USPS-you get the copy you were viewing carefully Drop kick-packed to protect it - in - transit.......Smithsonian Institution 5044 HC Red SciFi 41 ZULU