Sam Tanenhaus on William Buckley, with John A. Farrell

Sam Tanenhaus on William Buckley, in conversation with John A. Farrell

Tuesday, June 3, 6:30 pm, Elebash Recital Hall, First Floor

The Graduate Center, CUNY

365 5th Avenue, New York, NY 10016

In 1951, with the publication of God and Man at Yale, a scathing attack on his alma mater, twenty-five-year-old William F. Buckley, Jr., seized the public stage—and commanded it for the next half century as he led a new generation of conservative activists and ideologues to the peak of political power and cultural influence.
Ten years before his death in 2008, Buckley chose prize-winning biographer Sam Tanenhaus to tell the full, uncensored story of his life and times, granting him extensive interviews and exclusive access to his most private papers. Thus began a deep investigation into the vast and often hidden universe of Bill Buckley and the modern conservative revolution.
Buckley vividly captures its subject in all his facets and phases: founding editor of National Review, the twentieth century’s most influential political journal;syndicated columnist, Emmy-winning TV debater, and bestselling spy novelist; ally of Joseph McCarthy and Barry Goldwater; mentor to Ronald Reagan; game-changing candidate for mayor of New York.
Tanenhaus also has uncovered the darker trail of Bill Buckley’s secret exploits, including CIA missions in Latin America, dark collusions with Watergate felon Howard Hunt, and Buckley’s struggle in his last years to hold together a movement coming apart over the AIDS epidemic, culture wars, and the invasion of Iraq—even as his own media empire was unraveling.
At a crucial moment in American history, Buckley offers a gripping and powerfully relevant story about the birth of modern politics and those who shaped it.

Sam Tanenhaus, the former editor of The New York Times Book Review, is the author of the national bestsellers Whittaker Chambers: A Biography (winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize) and The Death of Conservatism. His feature articles and essays have appeared in The Atlantic, The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, New York Review of Books, Vanity Fair, and many other publications in the United States and abroad.

John A. Farrell (www.jafarrell.com) is the author of Richard Nixon: The Life, which won the PEN America award for the best biography, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His new book: Ted Kennedy: A Life, made the list of finalists for the National Book Award. Farrell graduated “With Distinction” from the University of Virginia, and has a PhD in history from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. In 2001 he published Tip O'Neill and the Democratic Century, which won the Hardeman prize for the best book on Congress. His book, Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned, won the Los Angeles Times book award for best biography of 2012

Host or Publisher The Leon Levy Center for Biography