Buckley

 Buckley 

by Sam Tanenhaus (Random House)

Nonfiction

This biography of William F. Buckley, Jr., offers a history of postwar American politics through the life of one of its most theatrical participants. Buckley—a swaggering, inimitable opinionator—wrote three nationally syndicated columns a week, edited National Review, hosted the weekly television show “Firing Line,” and published some fifty books. Though he advised candidates and worked closely with a few, he understood that he was, above all, an entertainer, not a theorist or a politician. Tanenhaus aptly calls him a “performing ideologue.” The book is a smart, stylish, and clear-eyed portrait of a complicated man—and of the rise of American conservatism, with Buckley in a starring role.