William F. Buckley, Jr. Books In Order

Saving the Queen

Connoisseurs of the cloak and dagger tradition know William F. Buckley Jr as the creator of Blackford Oakes, America’s top fictional secret agent and protagonist in ten of the most thrilling spy novels ever written. Blackford Oakes performed his first heroic effort in Saving the Queen, in which Buckley coaxes readers back to the earliest years of the Cold War. The year is 1952 and Harry Truman is president of the USA. The beautiful, young Queen Elizabeth has just settled on to the throne of England. The CIA, however, is baffled. Shocking things are going on at Buckingham Palace and vital Western military secrets are falling into Soviet hands. Worst of all, the leak has been traced directly to the Queen’s chambers. A recent Yale graduate and ex combat pilot, the debonair Oakes is selected to penetrate the Royal Circle, win the Queen’s confidence and plug the leak. It all leads to an explosive showdown in the skies over London, one that could determine the future of the West.

Stained Glass

With the Cold War raging, Blackford Oakes takes a sabbatical from his work as a CIA superspy in order to help restore the war damaged windows in a fabled German chapel. He finds no peace or sanctuary there, however. Instead, he ends up in the arms of a beautiful KGB agent and on the horns of a dilemma. He must either betray her or pull the switch on an old friend who is rallying his countrymen to reunite Germany.

According to THE NEW REPUBLIC, Stained Glass ‘cuts closer to the bone than Le Carr has ever cut.’ And UPI called it ‘delightful reading for the spy thriller fan…
absolutely must reading.’

Who’s on First

The celebrated author of Tucker’s Last Stand and Stained Glass offers a chilling story set against the backdrop of the cold war space race. Blackford Oakes heads a mission to kidnap a pair of extraordinary Russian scientists who can put the U.S. ahead in the race for space, unaware that KGB spymaster Bolgin is hot on his trail.

Marco Polo, If You Can

William F. Buckley, Jr. editor of National Review, may be remembered by posterity as the novelist who created Blackford Oakes. In this installment, Buckley uses a celebrated incident of 20 years ago to create a fictional adventure with official history. Oakes has just been cashiered from the Agency, when his boss decides he is the only man for an exceptionally dirty piece of work. Oakes agrees to return, but in short order finds himself standing before a secret Soviet military tribunal which has as its subject his execution for spying.

The Story of Henri Tod

President John F. Kennedy has been in office less than a year, and the Berlin Wall is about to slam shut the last escape route out of Communist Eastern Europe. Uncertain about the Soviets’ intentions, Kennedy sends Blackford Oakes into the chaos of East Berlin to plumb the depths of the crisis. Oakes’s contact is Henri Tod, leader of a group of German dissidents who has a price on his head and an ingenious plan that might just save the West from Eastern Bloc domination. When Tod mysteriously vanishes, Oakes locks horns with the ultimate opponent, East Germany’s unscrupulous party boss Walter Ulbricht, in a story created by William F. Buckley Jr., one of the foremost political thinkers and master storytellers of our time. Who will win this cloak and dagger chess game?

See You Later Alligator

The year is 1961, the setting Havana. CIA super secret agent Blackford Oakes is sent there on a mission only to find himself in the eye of an international political hurricane. President Kennedy, who has selected Oakes to meet with the Che Guevara inside Castro’s Cuba, has contrived a daring plan dubbed Operation Alligator that will hopefully bring about an era of detente in East West relations. The communists, however, have another agenda: a double cross that has terrifying consequences. Soon Oakes is trapped in Cuba, and the heat is on. Warming the climate greatly is the sultry beauty Catalina. The weather forecast: betrayal, power politics, and sudden death.

High Jinx

Blackford Oakes takes on the Russians and a top level traitor during the Cold War in this tale of treason and action packed adventure. Buckley is the author of See You Later, Alligator and The Story of Henri Tod.

Mongoose, R.I.P.

The year is 1963. Fidel Castro seeks revenge for his humiliation during the missile crisis while President Kennedy and his brother Robert have their own plan for ending the menance of the Caribbean dictator. It’s called Operation Mongoose. Blackford Oakes, the CIA’s urbane ace agent, becomes point man in the plot. Then Oakes learns there is a counterplan, one that scripts Oakes out of the play! ‘In many respects the boldest, subtlest Blackford Oakes novel, MONGOOSE R.I.P. marks a dramatic turn in the best selling adventures of the of the character called the American James Bond. Buckley’s now classic blend of gravity and humour, history and fancy, ineluctability and free will are here at their most exhilarating.’ Publisher’s Source

Tucker’s Last Stand

Blackford Oakes and a swashbuckling soldier of fortune named Tucker arrive in Southeast Asia in 1964 on a critical mission for the U.S. government. As usual Buckley fills his novel with intrigue, historical detail, and his inimitable wit. 6 cassettes.

A Very Private Plot

The year is 1995, and an ambitious U.S. senator wants to weaken the power of the CIA, perhaps to the point of its elimination. To accomplish this goal, he tries to enlist Blackford Oakes now retired into his cause by forcing him to testify before a senate committee about CIA covert activities in 1985. The senator wants to know what President Ronald Reagan did when informed of a plot by Soviet veterans of the Afghan war to assassinate Mikhail Gorbachev, who had just risen to power. What will Oakes do? Will the senator be able to force him to testify? Or will Oakes be able to draw upon the wit and savoir faire that saved the day on so many previous occasions?

The Blackford Oakes Reader

It all started when editor Sam Vaughan asked William F. Buckley, ‘Why don’t you try a novel?’ To which America’s most renowned conservative replied, ‘Sam, why don’t you play a trumpet concerto?’ Vaughan didn’t take up this musical challenge, but he did send Buckley a book contract the next morning, and therein lies the origin of the Blackford Oakes novels, ten stories of international intrigue with Oakes, a distinctly American CIA agent, serving as a protagonist. The Blackford Oakes Reader is a collection of the character studies that lie at the heart of these novels. As Buckley explains in his introduction, ‘In the first novel I guess it is correct to say that I got the idea that it should frame one person primarily. That person’s character and experiences should illuminate the story.’ Oakes himself is the focus of the first book, Saving the Queen. Subsequently, Buckley would examine an aristocrat trying to exert his will on post Hitler Germany, a pair of scientists dealing with life in the Soviet Union after confinement in the Gulag, a Spaniard serving as a pawn for the Party in Communist Cuba, and eight other diverse characters, all of whom find their lives entangled in the web of international espionage. Through his characters, Buckley gives a personal perspective to the most important and intriguing world events of the past 50 years. And his original introduction to The Blackford Oakes Reader, outlining the genesis of the novels, is in itself a treasure for Blackford Oakes fans.

Last Call for Blackford Oakes

Over twenty years ago William F. Buckley Jr. launched the dashing character of Blackford Oakes like a missile over the literary landscape. This newly minted CIA agent brainy, bold, and complex began his career by saving the queen of England and quickly took his place in the pantheon of master spies drawn up by Somerset Maugham, Graham Greene, and John LeCarre. Against the backdrop of sinister Cold War intrigue, in this his eleventh outing, Oakes crosses paths and swords with Kim Philby, perhaps the highest ranking in the parade of defectors to the Soviet Union. Oakes is now himself a master spy, working out of the agency and around agency rules. His romance with an able and worldly Soviet doctor provides consolation for the death of his beloved Sally. But after his return to Washington he receives dismaying news. It is inevitable that the great Soviet spy and the renowned American agent will meet again this time, with deadly consequences. Previous novels in the series include Saving the Queen; Stained Glass; Who’s on First; Marco Polo, If You Can; The Story of Henri Tod; See You Later, Alligator; High Jinx; Mongoose, R.I.P.; Tucker’s Last Stand; A Very Private Plot; and The Blackford Oakes Reader.

Atlantic High

William F. Buckley Jr.’s account of his voyage across the Atlantic Ocean in the sailboat Sealestial, Atlantic High is a work that everywhere evidences Buckley s love for sailing and good companionship. Infused with his inimitable wit and supported by a rich fund of anecdotes and observations, Atlantic High is truly a one of a kind work.

WindFall

1990 was a significant year for Buckley. He not only embarked on a sailing trip that forms the main subject of this book, but on several other major passages: the 40th anniversary of his marriage and his graduation from Yale, and the 35th anniversary of the founding of the National Review. 111 photographs, 27 in color. Line drawings.

Brothers No More

Pfc. Danny O’Hara and Pfc. Henry Chafee are part of a regiment ordered to attack a German unit. The two men form a lifelong bond when one man’s silence is the other man’s only refuge from court martial and disgrace. The suspense will keep the audience listening as Buckley explores deep within the question of honor, betrayal, and faith. Simultaneous hardcover release from Doubleday. 2 cassettes.

The Lexicon

This boon to logophiles, culled from Buckley: The Right Word, presents the author’s most erudite, outr , 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.

Spytime

James Jesus Angleton was the master a legend in the time of spies. Founder of U.S. counterintelligence at the end of the second World War, and ruthless hunter of moles and enemies of America, his name is synonymous with skullduggery and intellectual subterfuge. Now bestselling author William F. Buckley Jr. presents a subtle and thrilling fictional account of the spymaster’s life. From his early involvement in the World War II underground to the waning days of the Cold War in Washington, D.C., Angleton pursued his enemies, real and imagined, with a cool, calculating intelligence, and an unwillingness to take anything at face value. Convinced that there was a turncoat within the CIA itself, he confused his enemy through misleading acts and deceptive feints to distort his real objective to capture and expose a traitor. The result was near victory for American Intelligence and defeat for himself. A brilliant re creation of his world, which included the CIA, Soviet defectors, the infamous traitors Burgess, MacLean, and Philby, and American presidents from Truman to Carter, Spytime traces the making and tragic unmaking of a man without peer, and at the end, a man without a country to serve.

Elvis in the Morning

This is a novel about friendship, a novel that spans the decades that changed America forever. Orson is a young boy whose mother works at a U.S. Army base in Germany in the 1950s. There, he becomes a fan of a G.I. stationed at the base, one Elvis Presley, whose music is played over and over on the radio. When Orson is caught stealing recordings of Elvis’s tunes from the PX, the attendant publicity catches the star’s attention, and he comes to visit his young fan. Thus begins a lifelong friendship. As Elvis’s career rockets ever higher and his behavior becomes ever more erratic, the two share many adventures. The sixties explode, and Elvis becomes the icon of the nation, while Orson, a college demonstrator, drifts away from regular life while looking for something of substance to believe in. Each man is an emblem of his time, as social conventions crumble, barriers fall, and the cultural landscape changes forever.A panorama of change and dissent, of the ability of friends to stay true despite distance and time, Elvis in the Morning portrays a nation in change and the effects of celebrity on innocence.

Nuremberg

Nuremberg‘s Palace of Justice, 1945: the scene of a trial without precedent in history, a trial that continues to haunt the modern world. Leading the reader into the Palace is Sebastian, a young German American whose fate is to be intimately involved with the lives and deaths of others: the father who disappeared mysteriously, the ancestors whose stories become vitally relevant, and some of the towering figures of twentieth century legal history, including Justice Robert Jackson, Albert Speer, Hermann Goering, and the dark, untried shadow of Adolf Hitler. In a gripping account of warmakers who must face the consequences of their actions, Nuremberg: The Reckoning flows through Warsaw, Berlin, Lodz, Munich, Hamburg, and finally Nuremberg, as Sebastian, an interpreter interrogator, comes to terms with his family legacy and his national identity. With his customary authority and audacity, William F. Buckley Jr. has taken a pivotal moment in history and shaped it into absorbing and original fiction. The result is a riveting novel of insight and deep understanding exploring the characters and issues that made history.

Getting It Right

Giving birth is arguably the most difficult physical event of a woman’s life, yet most women even those in great shape enter the delivery room wholly unprepared for the rigours of labour and demands of early motherhood. But you can train for childbirth as you would for any other athletic event to minimise your discomfort, prevent injury, and ease your delivery. Bridson, an exercise coach and four time marathoner, decided to prepare her body for the impending trials of childbirth and recovery by training her muscles, much as she had trained for her marathons. She bounced back so quickly from her pregnancy that she was able to complete her fourth marathon only seven months after giving birth. In Nine Months Strong, Bridson shares her groundbreaking plan for pregnancy fitness and training for delivery. With the added expertise of medical advisor Karin Blakemore, M.D., and numerous instructional illustrations, Bridson provides medically sound, easy to follow guidance on how to: Prevent backache during and after pregnancy Strengthen the abdominal and pelvic muscles necessary for labour Maintain healthy posture despite physical discomfort Bulk up arms for carrying baby Condition nipples for nursing Stretch vagi*nal muscles for less painful labour Choose the right positions during labour and delivery Minimize postpartum weight gain and recovery period Drawing from her experience as a coach, athlete, and mother, Bridson presents the most complete pregnancy fitness guide available. From marathoners to fitness novices, all women will benefit from Bridson’s honest advice and proven approach to materal fitness.

The Redhunter

From the celebrated conservative comes a rich and complex novel about one of the most conspicuous political figures in American history Senator Joe McCarthy.

The Rake

A prototypical child of the sixties, Senator Reuben Castle coasted through his early life on a cloud of easy charisma, leaving behind more skeletons than Arlington: a highly questionable Vietnam record, an abandoned wife, and worse. Now, two decades later, his greatest dream is within reach. But his personal history is about to become his political epitaph unless he takes the direst of measures to protect himself.

From William F. Buckley Jr. nationally bestselling author and one of the keenest political minds of our time comes an ingenious blending of satire and suspense, the riveting tale of an all too recognizable presidential candidate and the dark shadows cast behind him.

God and Man at Yale

In 1951, a twenty five year old Yale graduate published his first book, which exposed the extraordinarily irresponsible educational attitude that prevailed at his alma mater. This book rocked the academic world and catapulted its young author, William F. Buckley Jr., into the public spotlight.

McCarthy and His Enemies

An objective study of the record and purpose of the controversial Sen. Joseph McCarthy.

Up from Liberalism

This witty, piercing, and smart as*sessment of Liberalism is as relevent today as it was when it was first written 30 years ago. 5 cassettes.

Airborne

About this title: On a month long cruise across the Atlantic on his sailboat Cyrano, Buckley logs daily occurrences and reflections, recalls previous sailing experiences as far back as age 13, and considers his success as a seaman and father. A chapter on how to navigate stands out.

Cruising Speed–A Documentary

257 pp. 5 3/4 x 8 1/2. Blue cloth covered boards, stamped in gold on spine. No dj. Cloth a little faded at spine. Some soiling to bottom page edges. Signed ‘Cordially, William F. Buckley’ on ffep.

Racing Through Paradise

The third of Bill Buckley’s brilliant sailing books, chronicling his 4,000 mile voyage across the Pacific with four close friends, including his son and a photographer. 150 black and white and 35 color photographs.

Gratitude

Buckley contends that what Americans owe their country is national service, and offers a plan for universal voluntary service as well as suggestions as to how a plan such as this might be structured and administered. 3 cassettes.

Happy Days Were Here Again

In Happy Days Were Here Again, William F. Buckley Jr. offers a collection of his finest essays from the latter part of his long career. Sometimes celebrating, sometimes assailing, Buckley takes on opponents ranging from Mikhail Gorbachev to Carl Sagan to Leonard Bernstein; reflects on the academic scene, the Gulf War, and the idea of sin; and offers appreciations of friends, both right and left. For everyone who appreciates the wit and style of America’s pre eminent conservative, this is a must have collection.

The Right Word

Buckley’s provocative observations on the use and abuse of English, gathered for the first time in a single volume a veritable cornucopia of language and logic that belongs in every library Library Journal. Edited by Samuel S. Vaughan.

Nearer, My God

This is the story of one man’s faith, told with unrivaled reflection and candor. William F. Buckley, Jr., was raised a Catholic. As the world plunged into war, and as social mores changed dramatically around him, Buckley’s faith a most essential part of his make up sustained him. In Nearer, My God, Buckley examines in searching detail the meaning of his faith, and how his life has been shaped and sustained by religious conviction. In highly personal terms, and with the wit and acuity for which he is justly renowned, Buckley discusses vital issues of Catholic doctrine and practice, and in so doing outlines for the reader both the nature of CathoLic faith and the essential role of religious belief in everyday life. In powerfully felt prose, he contributes provocatively and intelligently to the national interest in the nature of religion, the Church, and spiritual development. Nearer, My God is sure to appeal to all readers who have felt the stirrings of their own religious faith, and who want confirmation of their beliefs or who are seeking a guide to understanding their own souls. The renowned social and political commentator, William F. Buckley Jr., turns to a highly personal subject his faith. And he tells us the story of his life as a Catholic Christian. ‘Nearer, My God‘ is the most reflective, poignant, and searching of Bill Buckley’s many books. In the opening chapters he relives his childhood, a loving, funny, nostalgic glimpse into pre World War II America and England. He speaks about his religious experiences to a world that has changed dramatically. He is unafraid of revealing the most personal side of his faith. He describes, in his distinctive style, the intimacy of a trip to Lourdes, the impact on him of the searing account by Maria Valtorta of the Crucifixion, the ordination of his nephew into the priesthood, and gives a moving account of his mother’s death. And there is humor, as Buckley gives a unique, hilarious view of a visit to the Vatican with Malcolm Muggeridge, Charlton Heston, Grace Kelly, and David Niven. Personal though this book is, Buckley has gone to others to examine new perspectives, putting together his own distinguished ‘Forum’ and leaning on the great literature of the past to illustrate his thinking on contemporary Catholic and Christian issues.

Let Us Talk of Many Things

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.

The Fall of the Berlin Wall

William F. Buckley Jr. reflects on the event that marked the fall of Communism in EuropeThe Fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 was the turning point in the struggle against Communism in Eastern Europe. The culmination of popular uprisings in Hungary, Poland, and East Germany, the Wall’s fall led inexorably to revolutions in Czechoslovakia and Romania, the reunification of Germany, and, ultimately, the disintegration of the Soviet Union itself. In this book, American conservative pioneer and National Review founder William F. Buckley Jr. explains how and why the Cold War ended as it did and what lessons we can draw from the experience. Writing with his legendary wit and insight, he brings to life Communism’s last gasp, showing how Reagan’s hard nosed foreign policy and Gorbachev’s reforms undermined Warsaw Pact dictators, emboldened dissidents, and finally made the dream of freedom a reality in Eastern Europe. Written by one of America’s most erudite and influential political thinkers and writer. Includes a new foreword by Henry Kissinger marking the 20th anniversary of the opening of the Berlin WallHailed as ‘eloquent and immensely readable’ Baltimore Sun, this account ‘celebrates the tenacity of the human spirit and the will to achieve freedom’ Publishers Weekly. Sure to delight conservatives, annoy liberals, and enlighten everyone who reads it, The Fall of the Berlin Wall is William F. Buckley Jr. at his inimitable best.

Miles Gone By

In Happy Days Were Here Again, William F. Buckley Jr. offers a collection of his finest essays from the latter part of his long career. Sometimes celebrating, sometimes assailing, Buckley takes on opponents ranging from Mikhail Gorbachev to Carl Sagan to Leonard Bernstein; reflects on the academic scene, the Gulf War, and the idea of sin; and offers appreciations of friends, both right and left. For everyone who appreciates the wit and style of America’s pre eminent conservative, this is a must have collection.

Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription

National Review has always published letters from readers. In 1965 the magazine decided that certain letters merited different treatment, and William F. Buckley, the editor, began a column called Notes & Asides in which he personally replied to the most notable and outrageous correspondence.

Culled from four decades of the column, Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription includes exchanges with such well known figures as Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, John Kenneth Galbraith, A.M. Rosenthal, Auberon Waugh, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., and many others. There are also hilarious exchanges with ordinary readers, as well as letters from Buckley to various organizations and government agencies.

Combative, brilliant, and uproariously funny, Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription represents Buckley at his mischievous best.

Flying High

William F. Buckley Jr.’s first political book in nearly two decades is a revealing memoir of the first champion of the conservative movement.

If any two people can be called indispensable in launching the conservative movement in American politics, they are William F. Buckley Jr. and Barry Goldwater. Buckley’s National Review was at the center of conservative political analysis from the mid fifties onward. But the policy intellectuals knew that to actually change the way the country was run, they needed a presidential candidate, and the man they turned to was Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater.

Goldwater was in many ways the perfect choice: self reliant, unpretentious, unshakably honest and dashingly handsome, with a devoted following that grew throughout the fifties and early sixties. He possessed deep integrity and a sense of decency that made him a natural spokesman for conservative ideals. But his flaws were a product of his virtues. He wouldn’t bend his opinions to make himself more popular, he insisted on using his own inexperienced advisors to run his presidential campaign, and in the end he electrified a large portion of the electorate but lost the great majority.

Flying High is Buckley’s partly fictional tribute to the man who was in many ways his alter ego in the conservative movement. It is the story of two men who looked as if they were on the losing side of political events, but were kept aloft by the conviction that in fact they were making history.

The Reagan I Knew

In The Regan I Knew, the late William F. Buckley Jr. offers a reminiscence of thirty years of friendship with the man who brought the American conservative movement out of the political wilderness and into the White House. Ronald Reagan and Buckley were political allies and close friends throughout Reagan’s political career. They went on vacations together and shared inside jokes. When Reagan was elected president, Buckley wrote him to say that Reagan should not offer him any position in the new administration; Reagan wrote back saying he had hoped to appoint Buckley U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan then under Soviet occupation. For the rest of his term, Reagan called Buckley Mr. Ambassador. On the day the Soviets withdrew, he wrote Buckley to congratulate him for single handedly driving out the Red Army without ever leaving Kabul.

Yet for all the words that have been written about him, Ronald Reagan remains an enigma. His former speechwriter Peggy Noonan called him paradox all the way down, and even his son Ron Reagan despaired of ever truly knowing him. But Reagan was not an enigma to William F. Buckley Jr. They understood and taught each other for decades, and together they changed history.

This book presents an American political giant as seen by another giant, who knew him perhaps better than anyone else. It is the most revealing portrait of Ronald Reagan the world is likely to have.

Athwart History

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.

West Point: Two Centuries of Honor and Tradition

With contributions from Stephen Ambrose William F. Buckley, Jr. David Halberstam Arthur Miller George Plimpton Tom Wicker and other historians and writers Introduction by General H. Norman Schwarzkopf The year 2002 marks the bicentennial of the United States Military Academy at West Point. More than any other institution’s, the history of West Point is the story of America. Now commemorating this historic milestone is this authoritative publication of the Academy’s Association of Graduates. Featured here is one of the greatest collections ever of essays by world renowned historians and writers, plus 400 illustrations, nearly half in full color including famous and rarely seen paintings historic letters from cadets, treasured athletic memorabilia, and other artifacts. WEST POINT On the Fourth of July in the year 1802, a handful of cadets gathered on the tall banks of the Hudson River to celebrate the formal opening of the United States Military Academy at West Point. At the time, two instructors with few books taught the rudiments of military engineering in a building no larger than a country schoolhouse. From these inauspicious beginnings rose a national citadel that has produced America’s greatest military leaders and two presidents three, if you count the Confederacy’s Jefferson Davis. This is the story of ‘The Point,’ in the throes of war and the lull of peace, in its glory days and years of challenge. Inside WEST POINT you’ll relive: The growth years under Superintendent Sylvanus Thayer, who after taking office in 1817 rescued West Point from the brink of mutiny and rebuilt it into a model for military academies everywhere The Golden Age in the years before the Civil War, when the Academy educated a remarkable group of leaders that included Ulysses S. Grant, Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, James Longstreet, George McClellan, George Pickett, and William T. Sherman The Great War and after, when Superintendent Douglas MacArthur launched a short lived effort to reform the Academy, pleading ‘How long are we going on preparing for the War of 1812?’ World War II, when training on horseback finally gave way to drills on motorized vehicles, and the teaching of practical tactics finally replaced theory The Korea and Vietnam eras, when costly conflicts forced the institution through painful but necessary transitions The playing field as battlefield, when from 1944 to 1946 Red Blaik coached Army to three consecutive football championships, ably assisted by ‘Mr. Inside and Mr. Outside,’ Doc Blanchard and Glen Davis. You’ll read prize winning authors like Arthur Miller on his controversy filled appearance at Vietnam era West Point; George Plimpton on the boyhood memories of his great grandfather, General Adelbert Ames, a man who received the Congressional Medal of Honor after First Bull Run; Stephen E. Ambrose on Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Class of 1915, which produced 60 WW II generals; David Halberstam on the unique hunger that drives West Point students; and William F. Buckley, Jr., on the question that hovers over everything the Academy stands for: ‘Is America worth it?’ WEST POINT is the ultimate salute to an institution that represents both America’s belief in itself and its willingness to fight to defend that belief.

Defining a Nation: Our America and the Sources of Its Strength

‘The freer we are the stronger we are,’ writes David Halberstam in this probing compilation of original essays which distill the essence of America, an evergreen subject rendered even more timely by recent world events that highlight cultural clashes and prompt us not just to reconsider foreign attitudes and aspirations but to think anew about our own. Each chapter explores fundamental qualities, concepts and accomplishments that shape the American character: the sheer size of our country; the legendary events of our history; the heroes, villains, and icons of our national mythology; our enduring dream of a meritocratic society; and the unmistakable spirit that defines us both to ourselves and the rest of the world. Halberstam’s keen observations introduce richly varied contributions by distinguished and eloquent commentators like Russell Baker, Ben Bradlee, James Fallows, Cynthia Gorney, Vartan Gregorian, and Janet Maslin, among others, who consider everything from Manifest Destiny to the McCarthy hearings and from Paul Revere’s midnight gallop to John Wayne’s classic cowboy riding tall through the American Century. Inspiring, enlightening, and enhanced by more than 300 photographs and illustrations, this wide ranging collection provides thought provoking, often surprising insights into how today’s America took shape, who we are as a nation now, and where our country is headed. From the Trade Paperback edition.

Elvis: All Shook Up: Stories And Insights

Elvis remains the King of rock and this star studded collection pays tribute to his enduring power. Admirers from all walks of life weigh in, including award winning journalists and influential thinkers William F. Buckley Jr.; rock stars Kris Kristofferson, Bono; starlets Ann Margret, Barbara Eden, and many others. Entertaining and illuminating, this anthology shows why people continue to be all shook up over Elvis.