Athwart History ─ Half a Century of Polemics, Animadversions, and Illuminations: A William F. Buckley Jr. Omnibus

For most of the last century, William F. Buckley Jr. was the leading figure in the conservative movement in America. The magazine he founded in 1955, National Review, brought together writers representing every strand of conservative thought, and refined those ideas over the decades that followed. Buckley’s own writings were a significant part of this development. He was not a theoretician but a popularizer, someone who could bring conservative ideas to a vast audience through dazzling writing and lively wit.

Culled from millions of published words spanning nearly sixty years, Athwart History: Half a Century of Polemics, Animadversions, and Illuminations offers Buckley’s commentary on the American and international scenes, in areas ranging from Kremlinology to rock music. The subjects are widely varied, but there are common threads linking them all: a love for the Western tradition and its American manifestation; the belief that human beings thrive best in a free society; the conviction that such a society is worth defending at all costs; and an appreciation for the quirky individuality that free people inevitably develop.

William F. Buckley Jr.: "William F. Buckley Jr. is the author of fifty previous works of fiction and nonfiction. The founder and former editor-in-chief of National Review and former host of ?Firing Line,” he has been one of the intellectual leaders of the right since the 1950s. His syndicated column, ?On the Right,” began in 1962 and appears in newspapers around the country. He served as a CIA agent in the early 1950s, helped found the Young Americans for Freedom in 1960, and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by George H.W. Bush in 1991. An avid sailor and harpsichordist, he lives in Stamford, Connecticut, and New York City."


Linda Bridges was hired by William F. Buckley Jr. for the editorial department of National Review in 1969, and served as his literary assistant for the last five years of his life.

Roger Kimball is co-editor and publisher of The New Criterion and president and publisher of Encounter Books. He is also an art critic for the London Spectator and National Review and a regular columnist for Pajamas Media. Among his other books are Art’s Prospect: The Challenge of Tradition in an Age of Celebrity and Tenured Radicals: How Politics Has Corrupted Our Higher Education.