All the virtues of Bill Buckley's earlier books are here--but this one is profoundly different. 1990 was a very good year, producing vintage Buckley. He celebrated deeply meaningful anniversaries: the fortieth year of his marriage; the fortieth since his graduation from Yale; the thirty-fifth from National Review, the magazine he founded, and then decided--to considerable shock--to retire from editing. In the year in which he became a senior citizen, he appeared, daringly, as a harpsichordist with two symphony orchestras; wrote a controversial book advocating voluntary national service, a proposal not calculated to endear him to his fellow conservatives; and endured the death of a close friend. Thus is completed (perhaps) the end of several affairs--and the capstone volume of a diarist-journal keeper-journalist, who has proved to be, over books at sea and on land (Cruising Speed, The Unmaking of a Mayor, Airborne, Atlantic High, Overdrive, Racing Through Paradise), both his own Boswell and Johnson.

Airborne is how William F. Buckley, Jr. describes his sail across the wide Atlantic with his son and five friends. The trip, for fifteen years a dream, for fifteen months a planned operation, was always a risk: one doesn't set out haphazardly in a small sailboat across 4,400 miles of ocean, and Buckley's account of perils of the sea as experienced by himself since he acquired his first sailboat at age thirteen is at once graphic, instructive, and terrifying. But, we learn quickly, the concern is mostly for the prospect of thirty days and thirty nights away from the cosmopolitan jungle to which he and his friends are accustomed; their lair, so to speak. But it happened: notwithstanding vicissitudes amusing, annoying, and even dangerous, suddenly the schooner, and the entire trip, were airborne, and the experience resulted in a fusion of hopes, fears, ambitions, and pleasures that lifts the book from the category of mere chronicles of the sea, into a chronicle of our time, a passage of the spirit.

In 1980, Buckley gathered together his friends and set out to sail across the Atlantic. This is what he correctly describes as a "celebration" of that thirty-day event. Here are the calms and the storms, the melodrama and the rumination, the wine and the song, the navigation and the introspection that in Buckley's distinctive blend capture the imagination of sailors and non-sailors, amuse the lighthearted and the dour, and engross the reader who wishes he were aboard, as also the reader who thanks heaven that he is not.

Racing Through Paradise is the third entry in Bill Buckley's now classic sailing trilogy. Here the irresponsible, eloquent, enjoyable Buckley guides us through his beloved Azores, and through the Galapagos ("the Bronx Zoo at the Equator"), about which he inclines more to Melville's view than to Darwin's, and through places such as Johnston Atoll, where mysteries and hostilities await. On a hilarious side adventure, we have a memorable encounter with "The Angel of Craig's Point." Along the way, Buckley navigates among pleasant diversions as well as unforeseen navigational and philosophical shoals. He adroitly excerpts the candid journals of his shipmates, notably that of his son, Christopher, himself a best-selling novelist. The fine photographs by Christopher Little illustrate throughout. When Buckley's Sealestial sails, finally, into New Guinea, we have shared a unique experience with a special breed of sailor, skipper, host, friend, and human being.

Master of espionage fiction and National Book Award winner William F. Buckley Jr. brings us another in his best-selling series starring the intrepid CIA agent Blackford Oakes.
When a shadowy Russian mole threatens to undermine the free world's defenses by infiltrating President Eisenhower's National Security Counsel, CIA super-secret agent Blackford Oakes is called in to unmask the imposter. Then, Oakes turns the tables on the Communists by piloting a U-2 spy plane on a Gary Powers-style one-way mission behind the Iron Curtain. Sentenced to death and trapped in the depths of the Lubyanka prison, Oakes may have turned his last trick. Or has he?

In his latest installment in the Blackford Oakes series William F. Buckley, Jr., continues to astonish and delight. The year is 1995, and an energetic senator wants to disarm, perhaps even eliminate, the CIA. To accumulate the evidence necessary to persuade the Senate, he needs the cooperation of Blackford Oakes, now retired. He wants from Oakes an account of his covert activity ten years earlier, when Oakes served as chief of covert activities for the CIA. One such activity, as sensitive a secret as any member of the government ever husbanded, had to do with a plot by young veterans of the Soviet war against Afghanistan to assassinate the man who had just assumed the reins of government in Moscow: Mikhail Gorbachev. President Reagan was in the White House in 1985. What was his reaction when apprised of a plot by non-Americans to assassinate a man commonly acknowledged as a tyrant? What will the frustrated senator do to compel cooperation from Blackford Oakes? A Very Private Plot takes the reader inside the Kremlin, exhibiting a detailed knowledge and savoir faire characteristic of the author. And inside the Reagan White House, known well to the author, and inside the Clinton White House as well. The forces unleashed in 1985 threaten any resolution between the United States and the Soviet Union and threaten the lives of a very small unit of young Russians who remain in the memory as the tale reaches a climax. A Very Private Plot caps the ten novels that began when, at age twenty-four, Blackford Oakes was seduced by the Queen of England, launching him and American readers on travels unrivaled in cold war fiction for wit and imagination.

An intricate plot involves the restoration of war-damaged windows in a famous German chapel. When Blackford Oakes takes a sabbatical from his work with the CIA, he finds neither peace nor sanctuary.

First published in 1984, the book takes place in Berlin in the summer of 1961, just as the Berlin Wall is about to slam shut the last escape route out of Eastern Europe. President Kennedy needs to know what the Soviets are planning and Oakes is sent to acquire the answers. His contact, Henri Tod, is leader of the Bruderschaft, a secret group of German Dissidents. Tod has a plan to change the future of the free world but when he goes missing, Blackford locks horns with Walter Ulbricht, East Germany's unscrupulous communist boss and wins a moral victory for the West. Blackford Oakes novels have always had a very wide appeal, as readers are drawn by the delightful characters and intricate plots. "The Story of Henri Tod" and "A Very Private Plot" have plenty of both.

The year is 1954, and Joseph Stalin is dead. As the ruthless Laurenti Beria, head of the KGB, plots to succeed him, another drama is taking place in a distant part of the Soviet empire. United States and British commandoes have begun a mission to overthrow the Soviet-controlled government of Albania, but it is doomed to failure from the outset--jinxed by a traitor.

In the aftermath of the disaster, CIA super spy Blackford Oakes pursues his adversary from a covert camp for training murderers to Buckingham Palace, from a KGB hideout in Stockholm to the very doors of the Kremlin. The result is a satisfying tale that brings this episode in the conflict between the West and the Soviet Bloc to a summary conclusion.

The year is 1964. Lyndon Baines Johnson and Barry Goldwater are vying for the presidency, and CIA master spy Blackford Oakes has been sent to South Vietnam to halt its infiltration by men and materiel coming down the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Working out of Saigon with Tucker Montana, a shadowy Texan who designs a brilliant system for breaking the North's supply route, Blackford Oakes is caught up in the ambiguity and confusion generated as America's involvement in the conflict escalates. As Tucker's murky past, his torrid romance with the seductive Lao Dai, and the growing menace of global war come into focus, Oakes—and Tucker—find their loyalty called into question. Both men are forced to make a decisive move that will have consequences neither man can foresee.

Willmoore Kendall: Maverick of American Conservatives provides the first book-length study of a man long regarded as a founding father of American intellectual conservatism. This edited collection brings together a diverse range of perspectives on Kendall's life and work and places the post-World War II political theorist in the context of modern American conservatism. Far from providing a monolithic view of Kendall's thought, the contributions illuminate an unconventional, often contradictory, thinker. The book traces the development of Kendall's body of political thought from his early years in Oxford, through his work on John Locke, to the later speculation that produced The Basic Symbols of the American Political Tradition , and analyzes the influence of Leo Strauss on his later work. Including, for the first time in print, the complete correspondence between Kendall and Strauss that significantly shaped Kendall's later work, Willmoore Kendall is a vital contribution to American intellectual history.

Willmoore Kendall: Maverick of American Conservatives provides the first book-length study of a man long regarded as a founding father of American intellectual conservatism. This edited collection brings together a diverse range of perspectives on Kendall's life and work and places the post-World War II political theorist in the context of modern American conservatism. Far from providing a monolithic view of Kendall's thought, the contributions illuminate an unconventional, often contradictory, thinker. The book traces the development of Kendall's body of political thought from his early years in Oxford, through his work on John Locke, to the later speculation that produced The Basic Symbols of the American Political Tradition , and analyzes the influence of Leo Strauss on his later work. Including, for the first time in print, the complete correspondence between Kendall and Strauss that significantly shaped Kendall's later work, Willmoore Kendall is a vital contribution to American intellectual history.

In 1952, Elizabeth II has just settled on to the throne of England, and the CIA is baffled at the breaches in security that are taking place. Worst of all, the leaks have been traced directly to the queen's chambers.

A legendary CIA operative and central figure in the Watergate scandal at last tells his story World War II covert agent E. Howard Hunt joined the CIA soon after its inception, becoming one of its most valuable operatives until his retirement in 1970. He blazed a trail for the agency in Latin America, helping to orchestrate the successful 1954 coup in Guatemala as well as the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, which ended in disaster after an ill-fated decision by President John F. Kennedy. During the Nixon administration, he worked with the White House Special Investigations Unit (aka the "plumbers"). In the aftermath of the Pentagon Papers leak, he masterminded the burglary of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office in 1971, and, with G. Gordon Liddy, he organized the break-in at the Democratic National Committee's Watergate headquarters in 1972. Hunt was ultimately convicted of burglary, conspiracy, and wiretapping and served 33 months in prison. Now in his late eighties, Hunt looks back over his storied career, revealing what really happened and debunking the many rumors that have swirled around him. Writing with his characteristic salty wit, he brings to life his exploits in the CIA, offering surprising revelations about the agency's Latin American operations and its masterly manipulation of politics and the media in the U.S. He details the "black bag jobs" of the White House plumbers, explains why he agreed to participate in the Watergate burglary even though he thought it was a bad idea and sheds new light on the aftermath of the break-in. He sets the record straight on rumors about his first wife's death and accusations that have linked him to the JFK assassination and the George Wallace shooting. And finally, he offers an insider's advice on how the CIA must now reshape itself to regain its edge and help win the war on terrorism. E. Howard Hunt (Miami, FL) is author of more than 70 suspense novels. Greg Aunapu (Miami, FL) has reported for Time, People, and a variety of other national news media.

Eloquent . . . immensely readable . . . the saga of the victory of capitalism over the brutal and irrational fraud that was state socialism.
--"The Baltimore Sun"

""Buckley's lucid account celebrates the tenacity of the human spirit and the will to achieve freedom.""
--"Publishers Weekly"

""This is a small masterpiece of the narrative tradition. The Fall of the Berlin Wall keep s] readers turning the page.""
--"National Review"

"" A] great narrative of democratic survival and democratic victory.""
--"The Washington Times"

The fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 was the turning point in the struggle against Communism in Eastern Europe. In "The Fall of the Berlin Wall," renowned author and conservative pioneer William F. Buckley Jr. explains why the wall was built, reveals its devastating impact on the lives of people on both sides, and provides a riveting account of the events that led to the wall's destruction and the end of the Cold War.

You are introduced, in a single volume, to a central character from each of Buckley's ten spy novels. All stand alone in this readable, exciting, and thoughtful collection. As diverse characters find their lives entangled in the web of international espionage, Buckley gives his own stylish, sly, and erudite perspective on intriguing world events.

This boon to logophiles, culled from Buckley: The Right Word, presents the author's most erudite, outre, and interesting words - from prehensile and sciolist to rubric and histrionic - complete with definitions, examples, and usage notes. Introduction by Jesse Sheidlower; illustrations by Arnold Roth.

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.