Creation: 528 pages of small type. As I picked up the heavy book, I knew terror, for I am that rarest of reviewers who actually reads every word, and rather slowly. What I saw on the first page was disquieting. With an obviously bogus protagonist, Vidal must depend upon the cunning of his narrative gift to propel these characters through great events, and not only must he describe the sweep of military and political action but also give us close-ups of Darius, Xerxes, Zoroaster, the Buddha, Confucius and many more. The detail is painstaking and generally authentic. The naïve portraits of the great men convince rather more than subtler work might have done. This is not at all bad, except as prose. His reconstruction of history is painless and, I should think, most useful to simple readers. Yet there is a good deal of Pop-writing silliness, though Vidal's...