Gore Vidal is the author of twenty-two novels, five plays, many screenplays, more than two hundred essays, and the critically lauded, Palimpsest: A Memoir. Vidal's United States (Essays 1952-1992) won the 1993 National Book Award. In its "American Masters" series PBS said "Vidal's lineage in American literature may be traced back to Henry James, the sophisticated American from the upper echelons of society who mingles with European sophisticates, and Mark Twain, the raw humorist and critic of American empire."