William F. Buckley

The conservative's early views on the quality of education and religion at Yale

The Superstitions of 'Academic Freedom'

God and Man at Yale

half a century of polemics, animadversions, and illuminations : a William F. Buckley, Jr., omnibus

Athwart history

Notes & Asides from National Review

Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription

An Autobiography of Faith

Nearer, My God

The Reagan I knew

Gore Vidal

The Historic 1968 ABC News Debates

Buckley vs. Vidal

Aside from his considerable political persona, William F. Buckley is remarkably skilled in his understanding and usage of the English language. Here, for the first time and in one volume, is the complete Buckley on words: a collection of his provocative thoughts on the uses and abuses of language; ideas on usage, style, and speaking; on diction and dictionaries; on Latin, letters, eloquence, journalism, reviews, interviews, and much more.

The Right Word

Buckley

Blackford Oakes hunts for a mole inside MI6 after a catastrophe in Albania Albania may be a small nation, but it's about to become the front line of the Cold War. In hopes of toppling the brutal Communist regime that controls the country, the British intelligence service has handpicked an elite group of Albanian freedom fighters to be molded into commandos by Blackford Oakes, the CIA's all-purpose warrior. With the help of MI6's most ruthless clandestine agent, Oakes is charged with turning the Albanians into a team of guerillas who will parachute back into their homeland to fight the good fight—and together, die. When the Albanian mission ends in disaster, however, Oakes smells a rat inside MI6, and he begins a hunt for the most notorious mole in the history of espionage. High Jinx is the 7th book in the Blackford Oakes Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.

High Jinx

Blackford Oakes makes a deal with the underground to save the city of Berlin President Kennedy is sailing off Cape Cod when the Secret Service tells him they have to return to shore. This can only mean one thing: crisis. The president sails back to Hyannis Port as fast as possible, and upon stepping off the dock, his worst fears are realized. The Communists have cut Berlin in half. Kennedy will not let this stand;Germany is too important to be divided by the Soviets. The president knows he must fight to save Berlin, and there is 1 man in Washington with the savoir faire to carry out the mission. His name is Blackford Oakes. Oakes infiltrates the divided city and makes contact with the resistance leader Henri Tod, whose men have dedicated themselves to driving the Communists out of East Berlin. When Tod disappears, Oakes will risk everything to save him, even if it means stepping across the Iron Curtain. The Story of Henri Tod is the 5th book in the Blackford Oakes Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.

The Story of Henri Tod

When the Queen's life is threatened, it takes a remarkable CIA agent to save her Blackford Oakes has never been afraid of obeying orders. During the war, it's what kept him alive. When he leaves the air force for Yale, Oakes is studious, temperate, and polite. He knows how to follow rules—but he also knows the secret to breaking them: Never tell a little lie when a big lie will do. He's exactly the man the CIA is looking for. Just before Oakes graduates, an old friend recruits him to work for the Company. His military background, knowledge of French, and family in London make Oakes a perfect choice for the most glamorous role the CIA has to offer: deep-cover agent. When his 1st assignment reveals Soviet espionage inside Buckingham Palace and a plot against the young Queen, Oakes will throw the rulebook out the window. Saving the Queen is the 1st book in the Blackford Oakes Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.

Saving the Queen

A CIA agent goes from the White House swimming pool to the sweltering jungles of Vietnam in this novel in the New York Times–bestselling series: “A romp” (The Wall Street Journal). It starts with a naked president. Blackford Oakes, the most elegant spy in the CIA, meets Lyndon B. Johnson at the White House swimming pool, and has no choice but to accept the president’s invitation to skinny-dip. Even naked, Johnson is all business, lambasting Oakes and the CIA for allowing the continued infiltration of guerillas into South Vietnam. Johnson demands for Oakes to fix it, and the agent can’t refuse—it’s impossible to say no to a stark-naked Texan. Oakes teams up with hardened mercenary Tucker Montana, and they take to the Ho Chi Minh Trail. After slogging over hundreds of miles of jungle, they hit upon a brilliant plan to stop the North’s clandestine war in its tracks. But as the 1964 election turns bitter, Oakes finds that politics and war do not mix. Tucker’s Last Stand is the 9th book in the Blackford Oakes Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.

Tucker's Last Stand

In the New York Times–bestselling spy series, Agent Oakes is in Cuba for secret negotiations with Che Guevara—on a mission that soon turns deadly. From his 1st day in office, President Kennedy has been bedeviled by Cuba. The CIA forced the Bay of Pigs invasion down his throat, resulting in lost lives, international embarrassment, and a new low in America’s relationship with the Caribbean. More than anything, Kennedy wants Cuba contained. Brute force didn’t work; it’s time to try a subtler approach—and there is no spy more tactful than Blackford Oakes. The CIA calls it Operation Alligator: a top secret back-channel negotiation to put Cuba and the United States on better footing. Oakes goes south to meet with Castro’s right-hand man, the notorious Che Guevara, in hopes of finding common ground between their countries. Instead, he discovers a sinister Communist plot that could destabilize the hemisphere, and lead the US president to his doom. See You Later, Alligator is the 6th book in the Blackford Oakes Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.

See You Later, Alligator

The New York Times–bestselling and National Book Award–winning mystery that’s “delightful reading for the spy thriller fan” (UPI.com). When the Wehrmacht took Warsaw, Alex Wintergrin led the charge. But as soon as Hitler’s army occupied the Polish capital, the charismatic young count disappeared, and he was assumed to be dead. But that couldn’t have been further from the truth. Wintergrin had ditched his uniform and turned himself in to Polish security forces, with whom he shared every scrap of Hitler’s plans for the invasion. He then waited out the war in Norway, fighting the Germans with the resistance. Now the fighting may be over, but for Wintergrin, a new battle has just begun. When he starts inciting East Germans to throw off the yoke of Soviet oppression, the USSR threatens to roll its tanks across Europe. In order to keep another war from breaking out, the CIA must send in the charming devil Blackford Oakes to talk sense into Wintergrin—and if necessary, kill him. Stained Glass is the 2nd book in the Blackford Oakes Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.

Stained Glass

The “witty, charming, and courageous” CIA agent hunts for a mole inside MI6 in this New York Times–bestselling Cold War thriller series (Publishers Weekly). Albania may be a small nation, but it’s about to become the front line of the Cold War. In hopes of toppling the brutal Communist regime that controls the country, the British intelligence service has handpicked an elite group of Albanian freedom fighters to be molded into commandos by Blackford Oakes, the CIA’s all-purpose warrior. With the help of MI6’s most ruthless clandestine agent, Oakes is charged with turning the Albanians into a team of guerillas who will parachute back into their homeland to fight the good fight—and together, die. When the Albanian mission ends in disaster, however, Oakes smells a rat inside MI6, and he begins a hunt for the most notorious mole in the history of espionage. High Jinx is the 7th book in the Blackford Oakes Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.

AMERICA, fashionable observers say, is a non-ideological nation; and it is understandable why this is a phenomenon from which one takes pleasure. No one is more tedious than the totally ideologized man, the man who forces every passing phenomenon into his ideological mold to end up, for example, concluding that every friend of Congressional investigating committees is an enemy of civil liberties, or that every enemy of Congressional investigating committees is a friend of civil liberties. American political conflicts are not generally fought on the battleground of ideas. The thoroughly non-Ideological Man is usually designated as steward of the American political community. This is partly a good thing, because everyone knows that ideological totalism can bring whole societies down, as it did Hitler’s, and permanently terrorize others, as Communism has done. The danger comes when a distrust of doctrinaire social systems eases over into a dissolute disregard for principle. A disregard for enduring principle delivers a society, eviscerated, over to the ideologists. America, most historians teach us, has sought to avoid the extremes, to be flexible without resembling Silly Putty; to be principled without being arch. I think our country is not clearly enough avoiding the former extreme. I think she is in danger of losing her identity—not on account of the orthodoxy that we are being told in some quarters threatens to suffocate us; but for failure to nourish any orthodoxy at all. I think the attenuation of the early principles of this country has made America vulnerable to the most opportunistic ideology of the day, the strange and complex ideology of modern Liberalism. I think, moreover, that disordered and confused though it concededly is these days, conservatism is the only apparent rallying point. To put forward such a thesis is to take on many obligations. Very well. But bear in mind the logical maxim that one man’s failure to prove a thesis does not render it invalid. I am by no means the ideal person to take on the job at hand, which is to discredit doctrinaire Liberalism and plead the viability of enlightened conservatism. I have many disqualifications, among them that of having personally experienced the tenacious ill will of some of the men about whom I shall be writing; and I see some of them, day after day, berating people who stand for the things I love. I herewith hoist high a flag of truce, respectfully inviting their attention to what I have to say; but I will not feign surprise if the flag comes hurtling down, felled by a withering burst of fire from a hotblooded evangelist in the Liberal camp—who was brought up to assume that the differences between us, Liberals and conservatives, are not negotiable. It is not as though the Communists had hoisted the flag.

Up From Liberalism

Blackford Oakes launches a wild attempt to kill Castro on behalf of the CIA Ever since the botched invasion at the Bay of Pigs, Fidel Castro has run amok. He has executed thousands of his enemies, driven his countrymen to emigrate, and done everything possible to run Cuba into the ground—all in a deliberate attempt to humiliate the White House. At least, that’s how the situation looks from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, where hatred of Castro has grown into an obsession. Under orders from John and Bobby Kennedy, the CIA will do anything necessary to kill Castro—no matter how ridiculous. Even-tempered CIA agent Blackford Oakes is dismayed at the agency’s wild schemes, which include everything from poisoned wet suits to mafia hit men. But the evil of Castro’s regime is not a joke, and Oakes won’t be laughing when he tries to knock the dictator off his throne. Mongoose, R.I.P. is the 8th book in the Blackford Oakes Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.

Mongoose, R.I.P.

Here is a unique collection of fifty years of essays chosen to form an unconventional autobiography and capstone to his remarkable career as the conservative writer par excellence. Included are essays that capture Buckley's joyful boyhood and family life; his years as a conservative firebrand at Yale; the life of a young army officer; his love of wine and sailing; memories of his favourite friends; the great influences of music and religion; a life in politics; and exploring the beauty, diversity, and exactitude of the English language.

A Literary Autobiography

Miles Gone By

In 1952 as the Cold War heats up, CIA agent Blackford Oakes is selected to penetrate the Royal circle around the new British queen, find the person responsible for giving vital Western military secrets to the Soviets, and to plug the leak.

Getting It Right is the story of Kara and Alex, half-sisters who have never met―one the product of an abusive foster-care setting, the other of dysfunctional privilege. Haunted by crippling memories, Kara falls for the wrong men, tries to help her foster-care siblings suffering from PTSD, and longs for the father and half-sister she only knows from a photograph. Alex, meanwhile, struggles to keep her younger sisters out of trouble, her mother sane, and her marketing business afloat. Now Alex has a new responsibility: from his hospital bed, her father tasks her with finding Kara, the mixed-race child he abandoned. Alex is stunned to learn of Kara's existence but reluctantly agrees. To make things more complicated, Kara loves a married man whom the FBI is pursuing for insider trading. When Alex eventually finds her half-sister, she becomes embroiled in Kara's dangers, which threaten to drag them both down. If Kara doesn't help the FBI, she could face prosecution and possible incarceration, and if Alex can't persuade Kara to meet their father, she will let him down during the final days of his life. Set in Harlem, the Bronx, and the wealthy community of Bedford, New York, during two weeks in March, Getting It Right explores grit and resilience, evolving definitions of race and family, and the ultimate power of redemption and forgiveness.

William F. Buckley

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