Eugene Luther Gore Vidal  
(October 3, 1925 – July 31, 2012) was a liberal American author, playwright, essayist, screenwriter, and political activist. His third novel, The City and the Pillar (1948), outraged conservative critics as one of the first major American novels to feature unambiguous homosexuality. He also ran for political office twice and was a longtime political critic.

After Vidal's death tributes immediately poured in from various media sources. The New York Times described him in his obituary as being in his old age "an Augustan figure who believed himself to be the last of a breed, and he was probably right. Few American writers have been more versatile or gotten more mileage from their talent." The Los Angeles Times described him as a "literary juggernaut" whose novels and essays were considered "among the most elegant in the English language". The Washington Post remembered him as a "major writer of the modern era" and an "astonishingly versatile man of letters". Popular Spanish publication Ideal reported Vidal's death as a loss to the "culture of the United States" and described him as a "Huge American novelist and essayist". The Italian La Corriere described him as "the enfant terrible of American culture" and said that he was "one of the giants of American literature". French paper Le Figaro described him as "the Killjoy of America" but also said that he was an "outstanding polemicist" and that he used phrases "like high precision weapons." 

Vidal died at his home in Hollywood Hills, California, at about 6:45 p.m. PDT July 31, 2012, of complications from pneumonia. He was 86.