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Buckley: The Life and the Revolution That Changed America
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About This Book
In 1951, with the publication of God and Man at Yale, a scathing attack on his alma mater, twenty-five-year-old William F. Buckley, Jr., seized the public stage—and commanded it for the next half century as he led a new generation of conservative activists and ideologues to the peak of political power and cultural influence. Ten years before his death in 2008, Buckley chose prize-winning biographer Sam Tanenhaus to tell the full, uncensored story of his life and times, granting him extensive interviews and exclusive access to his most private papers. Thus began a deep investigation into the vast and often hidden universe of Bill Buckley and the modern conservative revolution. Buckley vividly captures its subject in all his facets and phases: founding editor of National Review, the twentieth century's most influential political journal; syndicated columnist, Emmy-winning TV debater, and bestselling spy novelist; ally of Joseph McCarthy and Barry Goldwater; mentor to Ronald Reagan; game-changing candidate for mayor of New York. Tanenhaus also has uncovered the darker trail of Bill Buckley's secret exploits, including CIA missions in Latin America, dark collusions with Watergate felon Howard Hunt, and Buckley's struggle in his last years to hold together a movement coming apart over the AIDS epidemic, culture wars, and the invasion of Iraq—even as his own media empire was unraveling. At a crucial moment in American history, Buckley offers a gripping and powerfully relevant story about the birth of modern politics and those who shaped it.
Reviews
"That's probably not to the book's detriment ..."
"It nicely balances discussion of Buckley's private life, public life and broader political and cultural contexts."
"The author is a gifted writer and a diligent scholar; his account is ably paced ..."
"The biography benefits from viewing Buckley more as a networker than as an intellectual ..."
"Tanenhaus is fair to this complicated pundit — more than fair — and the payoff is worth it."
"Painstakingly researched and beautifully crafted, Buckley is a capacious and incisive history of the modern conservative movement's formative years, seen through the eyes of its intellectual leader — a man who, in Tanenhaus's hands, is enthralling and infuriating by turns, but never boring ..."
"Tanenhaus's case for Buckley's significance is mostly tacit, as the book curiously lacks a formal introduction ..."
"Tanenhaus's portrait of Buckley's later views and activities is sketchy ..."
"It offers a deeply affectionate portrait of Buckley's personal life ..."
"Buckley is a magnificent work of history as well as of biography, and is as relevant to these parlous times as it is revelatory of Buckley and his times ..."
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