William F. Buckley Jr. has long been admired for his remarkable gifts as a writer, debater, and orator. The man who helped ignite the modern conservative movement has for the past fifty years played a significant role in the great social debates that have shaped our country and indeed the world. In the course of his long career, he has given hundreds of speeches to generations of listeners. "A veritable treasure house. This book has long been awaited by those of us addicted to Buckley's profound, elegant, and witty commentary on the twentieth century." — Henry A. Kissinge He has talked of many things—from the Cold War to the passing of dear friends, from moral decay to the joys of sailing the open seas, from the defense of liberty to the comfort of faith. Here, collected for the first time, are Buckley's most memorable speeches, spanning five decades—from the precocious Yale student's Class Day address in 1950 to the elder commentator's accumulated wisdom at century's end. The speeches are one-of-a-kind snapshots that capture the breadth and depth of the ideological wars fought during our country's most turbulent days. They are also richly worded masterpieces of wit, eloquence, and persuasion. Including new commentary from the author that provides historical context for his speeches, this book is a celebration of an extraordinary public life.
Author
William Frank Buckley, Jr. was an American author and conservative commentator. He founded the political magazine National Review in 1955, hosted 1,429 episodes of the television show Firing Line from 1966 until 1999, and was a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist. His writing style was famed for its erudition, wit, and use of uncommon words. Buckley was "arguably the most important public intellectual in the United States in the past half century," according to George H. Nash, a historian of the modern American conservative movement. "For an entire generation he was the preeminent voice of American conservatism and its first great ecumenical figure." Buckley's primary intellectual achievement was to fuse traditional American political conservatism with economic libertarianism and anti-communism, laying the groundwork for the modern American conservatism of US Presidential candidate Barry Goldwater and US President Ronald Reagan. Buckley came on the public scene with his critical book God and Man at Yale (1951); among over fifty further books on writing, speaking, history, politics and sailing, were a series of novels featuring CIA agent Blackford Oakes. Buckley referred to himself "on and off" as either libertarian or conservative. He resided in New York City and Stamford, Connecticut, and often signed his name as "WFB." He was a practicing Catholic, regularly attending the traditional Latin Mass in Connecticut.
