Buckley
The Life and the Revolution That Changed America

Quotes

“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. Beautifully written.”—John Banville, The London Times

“A smart, stylish, and clear-eyed portrait of a complicated man—and of the rise of American conservatism, with Buckley in a starring role.”—The New Yorker

“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.”—The Washington Post

“A biography not just of a prominent influencer but also of a potent movement . . . a milestone contribution to our understanding of the American Century.”—The Boston Globe

“The principal achievement of Buckley is to have tightly wound together the life of the man and the life of the movement he coaxed into being almost single-handedly . . . In Tanenhaus, both have found their Robert Caro.”—Mark Lilla, The New York Review of Books

“Massive and absorbing . . . a welcome debunking of the myth of Buckley as a mainstream conservative when in fact he was a key catalyst of the radical right. . . . finely detailed and clear-­sighted.”—Jeet Heer, The Nation

“Marvelous, decades-in-the-making . . . offers a deeply affectionate portrait of Buckley’s personal life . . . [and] also methodically surfaces the darker strains of the movement.”—The New Republic

“A magnificent, absorbing work about a man known as the father of postwar American conservatism.”—Chronicles Magazine

“Shows a rare familiarity with its subject and his times. . . . Tanenhaus is to be congratulated for his achievement.”—The Spectator World

“A lively, balanced and deeply researched book . . . engrossing.”—The Guardian

“A chronicle of the life of a man but also a history of the era he helped to shape . . . worth the wait.”—The Washington Free Beacon

“A grand biography . . . magnificent.”—The Washington Monthly

“Meticulous . . . unlikely to be bettered anytime soon.”—The Financial Times

“Superb . . . Tanenhaus discovered some parts of the story that were largely unknown . . . fair and balanced story of a life of purpose, one that was actively lived and whose echoes are still felt today.”—The Christian Science Monitor

“Runs to more than 1,000 pages—yet is not a word too long.”—The Economist

“Monumental, honest, fair-minded, and spectacularly enlightening.”—Foreign Affairs

“[A] stunning new biography . . . Tanenhaus chronicles Buckley’s . . . sprawling career as a right-wing revolutionary.”—Nicole Hemmer, Democracy Journal

“Unfurls a remarkable canvas . . . a vivid portrait of a singular man.”—Law and Liberty

“William F. Buckley forever changed America, and Tanenhaus’s Buckley will forever change how we understand America.”—John Ganz, author of When the Clock Broke

“A superb biography. Writing a life is harder than it looks. Sam Tanenhaus’ contribution is up there with Robert Blake’s classic Disraeli.”—Niall Ferguson, author of Kissinger, 1923-1968: The Idealist and The House of Rothschild

“Sam Tanenhaus . . . has illuminated the often ugly ideological origins of our present predicament.”—Jonathan Alter, author of His Very Best

“A stone-cold masterpiece . . . Buckley is a brilliant portrait of man, movement, and age.”—Geoffrey Kabaservice, author of Rule and Ruin

“Buckley is all that a biography could and should be: penetrating, deeply researched, respectful but critical.”—Beverly Gage, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of G-Man

“Writing with superb insight into celebrity culture, Tanenhaus nails Buckley for many lapses of judgment, while also revealing his countless acts of unpublicized generosity.”—Richard Wightman Fox, author of Lincoln’s Body

“Tanenhaus is clear-eyed about Buckley’s many failures but also does justice to his eccentric charisma, humanity, and wit.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review