Buckley

The Life and the Revolution That Changed America

By: Sam Tanenhaus

Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner

More than two decades in the making, the definitive biography of William F. Buckley Jr. tells the story of America’s greatest conservative and the rise and fall of the movement he led.

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. instantly 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 story of his life and times, granting him extensive interviews, entrée to his intimate circle, and unrestricted access to his most private papers. Thus began a deep, unparalleled investigation into the vast and often hidden universe of Bill Buckley and the modern conservative revolution.

Majestic in its sweep, rich in ideas and argument, and packed with news and revelations, Buckley vividly captures its subject in all his facets and phases—founding editor of National Review, the 20th century’s most influential political journal; syndicated columnist and TV debater; ally of Joseph McCarthy and Barry Goldwater; mentor to Ronald Reagan; wisecracking candidate for mayor of New York; and bestselling novelist and memoirist. There is the private, and darker life of Bill Buckley, too, from secret CIA missions to complicated friendships with Richard Nixon and Watergate felon Howard Hunt, and later, Buckley’s lonely struggle to hold together a movement coming apart over the AIDS epidemic, the culture wars, and the invasion of Iraq.

The result is a gripping story of the modern conservative movement as it rose from a formless coalition to a powerful cultural force, its campaigns and crusades defined and advanced on the many platforms Buckley created, bringing to life the era’s most important conservative intellectuals and writers.

At a crucial moment in American history, Buckley offers a powerfully relevant story about the birth of modern politics and those who shaped it.

©2025 Sam Tanenhaus (P)2025 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“Sam Tanenhaus’s Buckley is a magnificent achievement—a long, gripping, and enthralling account of the life of America’s premier conservative polemicist of the 20th century. I couldn’t put it down, and was sorry when it ended. The same will be true of anyone interested in American politics. You cannot understand the rise of the conservative movement in modern America without understanding the life of William F. Buckley Jr., and you cannot understand Buckley’s long and eventful life without reading Sam Tanenhaus’s deeply researched and profoundly insightful magnum opus.”—Max Boot, author of Reagan: His Life and Legend

“A stone-cold masterpiece . . . Buckley is a brilliant portrait of man, movement, and age.”—Geoffrey Kabaservice, author of Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, from Eisenhower to the Tea Party

“Sam Tanenhaus has done more than produce an engrossing biography of one of the most significant political and journalistic figures of the second half of the 20th century. He has illuminated the often-ugly ideological origins of our present predicament.”—Jonathan Alter, author of His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life