Miles Gone by or Right Is Wrong

Miles Gone By: A Literary Autobiography

Author: William F Buckley Jr

In celebration of his 80th birthda, Regnery presents Bill Buckley's New York Times bestseller. Included are treasured essays from the beloved founder of National Review that captures Buckley's joyful boyhood and family life.

The New York Times - Jon Meacham

Reading Miles Gone By, his latest collection of autobiographical pieces, a book of charm and grace and wit, one finds it virtually impossible to envision Buckley as his liberal critics have for so long: as a dark Goldwaterite, even a pro-crypto Nazi (Gore Vidal's phrase), who hides his extremism beneath a sophisticated Manhattan veneer. He is a partisan combatant, a key figure in the right wing's journey from the fringes of American politics to the mainstream -- from, roughly, Joe McCarthy's sweaty brow to Ronald Reagan's sunny smile. But agree or disagree with the conservative creed he helped shape and promulgate, Buckley is the happiest of warriors, an exuberant man of the right, a Roman Catholic who has apparently taken the reassurances of Scripture to heart. ''In the world ye shall have tribulation,'' Jesus says in the Gospel of St. John, ''but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.''

Caspar Weinberger - Forbes

This has been an especially good reading summer for devotees of American Colonial and Revolutionary his-tory. First and, in my opinion, the best of the many new books covering this period is Washington's Crossing--by David Hackett Fischer (Oxford University Press, $35). Professor Fischer is a noted historian, whose Albion's Seed, published in 1989, tells the story of those descendants of the British who settled here and helped create the United States. His Paul Revere's Ride has also been widely and justly praised.

Washington's Crossing tells the complete story of General George Washington's most daring, risky and successful venture early in the war. Following a succession of victories by the British and their mercenary forces, which had resultedin the loss of New York for the Americans, the British were within sight of Philadelphia, where the new American Congress was sitting.

Washington's army had been all but destroyed, and the British were surging across New Jersey. Washington's decision to cross the Delaware River on Christmas night 1776, when it was considered virtually impossible, was a move both bold and foolhardy. A flotilla of small boats crammed with soldiers, guns and horses somehow rowed across the river through one of the East's worst winter snow and ice storms. (The crossing as painted by Emanuel Leutze in 1851 captured this event spiritually and has become a great icon of the Revolution.) By crossing the Delaware, Washington placed the remnants of his army in a position to trap the British behind Trenton and, a few days later, to give that army and the cause for which it fought its first real victory. In many ways the shots fired atTrenton were the shots "heard round the world."

Professor Fischer conveys in a remarkably realistic way what combat and the fog of war are actually like. But, more important, he tells the story of what it was like for Washington to lead a discouraged, underequipped army that was constantly being micromanaged by a divided Congress that couldn't--at least at the beginning--decide whether it wanted independence or, simply, to get the Stamp Act repealed.

For those who still wonder how the Revolutionaries ever defeated the huge British forces arrayed against them, both on land and at sea, this book makes clear that it was the military genius and leadership of George Washing-ton that turned almost certain defeat into victory. Washington's Crossing is an essential and exciting key to a more complete understanding and appreciation of what our ancestors did to win the Revolution.

A new biography, Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow (Penguin Press, $35), is another superb book I read this summer. Hamilton served as principal aide to General Washington from the early days of the Revolu-tion. This gave him a ringside seat at the formation of the United States and its implausible victory over the British, who had deployed one of the world's finest military machines but lost to a ragtag army of upstarts.

Chernow's splendid, thorough and brilliantly written biography gives us a new understanding of Hamilton's vi-tal role during the war and immediately after as Secretary of the Treasury of this new entity on the world's stage. I doubt that many people realize how much of our country's financial structure we owe to Alexander Hamilton. This book goes beyond the standard fare offered in most American history classes. Hamilton's towering intellect, as well as his many faults, and his long, fierce disagreements with Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and many of the other Founding Fathers are presented here with almost shocking candor.

There have been other biographies of Hamilton, but Chernow's is far and away the most comprehensive and compelling of any I have read. It is a fitting tribute to the man who set the U.S. on the path that has made our nation the economic leader of the world.

Another treat for Revolutionary history enthusiasts is The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin by Gordon S. Wood (Penguin Press, $25.95). This delightful new study focuses on the actual aristocratic and elitist views and opinions of this so-called populist leader, who was one of our best-loved, most influential and renowned spokesmen to the world.

Moving away from Revolutionary times, I next read, and thoroughly enjoyed, Miles Gone By: A Literary Autobiography byWilliam F. Buckley Jr. (Regnery Publishing, $29.95). Buckley, a major founder of today's sen-sible conservatism, has led an extraordinary life, which fully matches his extraordinary talents. His subtitle is apt, as the book contains essays on sailing, skiing, music, old friends and colleagues and all manner of other diverse subjects, which are united in that they have all been of interest to one of the best minds and writers in America today.

Publishers Weekly

The conservative writer and Firing Line host has published so many millions of words in five decades of polemics and public musing that amassing a sort of autobiography required little more than sandwiching a selection of 50 essays between a brief preface and epilogue. The extracts range in subject from his silver-spoon boyhood and boarding-school days to the lives and deaths of the many prominent people he has known. Fame came early, with Buckley's 1951 God and Man at Yale, excerpted here, which lambasted liberal bias at elite American colleges. (Far superior, though, is the sparkling memoir of his war-veteran class of 1950 at Yale.) An instant darling of conservatives who needed a spirited new voice, Buckley founded the National Review, whose writers became the core of his widening circle of influential acquaintances. While sailing, touring and media punditry take up much of the collection, the most memorable pieces are about such offbeat friends as the tragic Whittaker Chambers. Nevertheless, some portraits are merely laudatory epitaphs. Approaching 80, Buckley notes that his sporting days are about over, but "[s]o to speak, I can still ski on a keyboard." Like skiing, his keyboard has its ups and downs. B&w photos. Agent, Lois Wallace. (July) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Table of Contents:

	At home
	Life at Great Elm	3
	Life at Great Elm II	11
	St. John's, Beaumont	17
	The "distinguished" Mr. Buckley	36
	Wine in the blood	39
	Wine : one man's happy experiences	42
	William Frank Buckley, 1881-1958	48
	Aloise Steiner Buckley, 1895-1985	51
	Yale
	God and man at Yale	57
	A toast to the class of 1950	95
	Reflections on life after Yale	104
	Wartime
	Army life	115
	Sailing (and skiing, and one fly-by)
	We must sail across the ocean!	123
	Christmastime in the Caribbean	145
	Gulf stream musings	164
	Meet me at K club	174
	A quickie, Bahamas to Charleston	179
	Pleasure on skis	191
	Alta, my alta	197
	Six freshmen and an Ercoupe	206
	The angel of Craig's point	217
	A sail across the Pacific	228
	Aweigh	240
	People
	Ten friends	255
	Five colleagues	282
	And a sixth	292
	Remembering
	Whittaker Chambers, 1901-1961	299
	Murray Kempton, 1917-1997	318
	Henry Regnery, 1912-1996	330
	National Review, b. 1955	338
	Blackford Oakes, b. 1975	343
	William Shawn, 1907-1992	354
	Firing line, 1966-1999	362
	Language
	The dictionary, ready at hand	391
	The conflict over the unusual word	395
	On writing speedily	400
	Getting about
	1001 days on the Orient Express	409
	Definitive vacations	421
	A pilgrimage to Lourdes	427
	The stupefaction of the New England coastline	443
	A performance with the symphony, coming up	446
	The life of the public speaker	455
	Going down to the Titanic	469
	Aboard the Sea Cloud	482
	Politics
	My own secret right-wing conspiracy	501
	Running for mayor of New York City	518
	Social life
	Querencia : on coping with social tedium	545
	The threatened privacy of private clubs	553
	Why don't we complain?	558
	Epilogue : thoughts on a final passage	569

Books about: Art of Plank Grilling or Good Beer Guide West Coast USA

Right Is Wrong: How the Lunatic Fringe Hijacked America, Shredded the Constitution, and Made Us All Less Safe (and What You Need to Know to End the Madness)

Author: Arianna Huffington

With her trademark passion, intelligence, and devastating wit, Huffington Post editor in chief Arianna Huffington tackles the issues that are crucial to this year’s presidential election and, even more so, to the fate of the country.

Huffington makes the case that America has been hijacked from within by a radical element—the “lunatic fringe” of the Right that has taken over the Republican Party. Despite holding views at odds with the majority of Americans, these zealots have given us an endless war in Iraq, a sputtering economy, a health care system on life support, a war on science and reason, and an immoral embrace of torture.

But they haven’t done it on their own: they have been enabled by a compliant media that act as if there is no such thing as truth and are more interested in cozying up to those in power than in holding them accountable, and by feckless Democrats who have allowed themselves to be intimidated into backing down again and again.

Both a withering indictment and a hopeful call to arms, Right Is Wrong is an explosive, boldly incisive work that will help set the national agenda.


From the Hardcover edition.

Publishers Weekly

Political commentator and Huffington Post blog creator Huffington offers her own take on the politics of the upcoming 2008 presidential election, studying the recent pitfalls and economic downturn induced by the current regime. Her reading is filled with her trademark hard-hitting sense of humor and controversial opinions, lashing out at the Republican Party in this impassioned audio. Her reading is solid and her opinions bear a weighty truth even if they are questionable at times. Simultaneous release with the Knopf hardcover (Reviews, Apr. 14). (May)

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Donna L. Davey, Margaret Heilbrun - Library Journal

The blog Huffington cofounded is among the most read, and the 200,000-copy first printing assumes that her book will be popular, too. Huffington organizes her text thematically, e.g., by the media, Congress, the "War on Science," Iraq, torture, and immigration. Noting how "moral values" became a brand for the Right, she provides many highlighted boxes showing examples of Right inconsistencies. For all public libraries.

Kirkus Reviews

Noted conservative doyenne turned noted liberal doyenne Huffington (On Becoming Fearless . . . in Love, Work, and Life, 2006, etc.) enumerates all the ways in which the GOP has gone astray. Born in Greece, Huffington knows the meaning of the word apostate. In a sidebar, "My Name is Arianna, and I Am a Former Republican," she recounts her road to the Damascus moment, which took the hulking form of Newt Gingrich, who appropriated some of her compassionate conservatism and put it in his Social Darwinist blender. "I was seduced, fooled, blinded, bamboozled," she reports, but not for long. The liberal convictions that followed seem of a piece with the progressivism of her moderate Republican ways, and indeed most of her notions are centrist: her belief, for instance, that ending poverty will call for a combination of public and private effort, and that the government has no business in the bedrooms of consenting adults. Like so many of the time, she has a soft spot in her heart for Ronald Reagan, who opened the door for what she characterizes as the right-wing takeover of the party by the likes of Bush and Cheney-and Coulter ("the right-wing punditry's equivalent of crack or crystal meth"), Limbaugh, O'Reilly and company-as the radical fringe became the radical core. Huffington chastises the media for allowing this rightist cabal to proceed unchallenged, a charge that sticks but needs more elaboration than she provides. Elsewhere she walks down any number of well-trod paths: the lies about WMDs and the Freudian reasons for toppling Saddam, the right wing's war on science, the abuse of the Constitution, the quest for saviors in the form of General David Petraeus (for Bush, "a magic word,"though a "thunderingly misguided" commander), the contempt for expertise. John McCain, Huffington ventures, will bring more of the same. There is little effort at prescription here, but much complaint. Liberally inclined readers will find little that's new; since anyone else will be unlikely to pay attention, this seems a slightly misguided effort. First printing of 200,000

Encounters with the Archdruid or Collapse

Encounters with the Archdruid

Author: John McPhe

The narratives in this book are of journeys made in three wildernesses - on a coastal island, in a Western mountain range, and on the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon. The four men portrayed here have different relationships to their environment, and they encounter each other on mountain trails, in forests and rapids, sometimes with reserve, sometimes with friendliness, sometimes fighting hard across a philosophical divide.

Look this: Borstal Boy or Samuel Adams

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

Author: Jared Diamond

In his runaway bestseller Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond brilliantly examined the circumstances that allowed Western civilizations to dominate much of the world. Now he probes the other side of the equation: What caused some of the great civilizations of the past to fall into ruin, and what can we learn from their fates? Using a vast historical and geographical perspective ranging from Easter Island and the Maya to Viking Greenland and modern Montana, Diamond traces a fundamental pattern of environmental catastrophe-one whose warning signs can be seen in our modern world and that we ignore at our peril. Blending the most recent scientific advances into a narrative that is impossible to put down, Collapse exposes the deepest mysteries of the past even as it offers hope for the future.

"Diamond's most influential gift may be his ability to write about geopolitical and environmental systems in ways that don't just educate and provoke, but entertain." -The Seattle Times

"Extremely persuasive . . . replete with fascinating stories, a treasure trove of historical anecdotes [and] haunting statistics." -The Boston Globe

"Extraordinary in erudition and originality, compelling in [its] ability to relate the digitized pandemonium of the present to the hushed agrarian sunrises of the far past." -The New York Times Book Review

The Washington Post - Robert D. Kaplan

In a world that celebrates live journalism, we are increasingly in need of big-picture authors like Jared Diamond, who think historically and spatially -- across an array of disciplines -- to make sense of events that journalists may seem to be covering in depth, but in fact aren't. He did this so well in Guns, Germs, and Steel, which has been a huge bestseller since its publication in 1997, that one might think Diamond would have little more to say about the vast sweep of human history. Think again. In his extraordinarily panoramic Collapse, he moves his wide lens to yet another telling phenomenon: failed nations, of both the distant and the recent past.

The New York Times - Michiko Kakutani

Mr. Diamond - who has academic training in physiology, geography and evolutionary biology - is a lucid writer with an ability to make arcane scientific concepts readily accessible to the lay reader, and his case studies of failed cultures are never less than compelling. He presents some intriguing digressions about methods used by scientists and historians to diagnose the trajectory of long dead societies, and provides some provocative analyses of current environmental problems in Australia, the United States and China.

Publishers Weekly

In his Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller Guns, Germs, and Steel, geographer Diamond laid out a grand view of the organic roots of human civilizations in flora, fauna, climate and geology. That vision takes on apocalyptic overtones in this fascinating comparative study of societies that have, sometimes fatally, undermined their own ecological foundations. Diamond examines storied examples of human economic and social collapse, and even extinction, including Easter Island, classical Mayan civilization and the Greenland Norse. He explores patterns of population growth, overfarming, overgrazing and overhunting, often abetted by drought, cold, rigid social mores and warfare, that lead inexorably to vicious circles of deforestation, erosion and starvation prompted by the disappearance of plant and animal food sources. Extending his treatment to contemporary environmental trouble spots, from Montana to China to Australia, he finds today's global, technologically advanced civilization very far from solving the problems that plagued primitive, isolated communities in the remote past. At times Diamond comes close to a counsel of despair when contemplating the environmental havoc engulfing our rapidly industrializing planet, but he holds out hope at examples of sustainability from highland New Guinea's age-old but highly diverse and efficient agriculture to Japan's rigorous program of forest protection and, less convincingly, in recent green consumerism initiatives. Diamond is a brilliant expositor of everything from anthropology to zoology, providing a lucid background of scientific lore to support a stimulating, incisive historical account of these many declines and falls. Readers will find his book an enthralling, and disturbing, reminder of the indissoluble links that bind humans to nature. Photos. Agents, John Brockman and Katinka Matson. (Jan.) Forecast: With a 12-city author tour and a 200,000-copy first printing, this BOMC main selection and History Book Club featured alternate is poised to compete with its ground-breaking predecessor. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Foreign Affairs

Huls Farm and Gardar Farm seem to be models of successful agricultural enterprise. Both have lush settings, good grass, and imposing barns that house 200 head of cattle, and they are owned by respected community leaders. They also face significant difficulties: their high-latitude locations make for short growing seasons, and a changing climate signals greater problems to come.

The two farms form the center of an anecdote that comes at the beginning of Jared Diamond's Collapse, and the story's O. Henry ending, stealthily arrived at, encapsulates the book's message. Huls, Diamond reveals, is a still-expanding fifth-generation farm in Montana's Bitterroot Valley; Gardar, despite its apparent prosperity, was abandoned 500 years ago when Greenland's Norse society collapsed amid starvation and civic unrest.

Library Journal

The author of Guns, Germs, and Steel considers why some societies collapse when faced with environmental or political catastrophe, while others soldier on. Lessons for today? With a 12-city author tour. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

School Library Journal

Adult/High School-This powerful call to action should be read by all high school students. Diamond eloquently and persuasively describes the environmental and social problems that led to the collapse of previous civilizations and threaten us today. The book's organization makes researching particular regions or types of damage accessible. Unfamiliar words are defined, and mention of a place or issue that has been described in greater detail elsewhere includes relevant page numbers. Students may become impatient with the folksy Montana fishing stories in part one, but once the fascinating account of the vanished civilizations begins, readers are taken on an extraordinary journey. Using the Mayan empire, Easter Island, the Anasazi, and other examples, the author shows how a combination of environmental factors such as habitat destruction, the loss of biodiversity, and degradation of the soil caused complex, flourishing societies to suddenly disintegrate. Modern societies are divided into those that have begun to collapse, such as Rwanda and Haiti; those whose conservation policies have helped to avert disaster, such as Iceland and Japan; and those currently dealing with massive problems, such as Australia and China. Diamond is a cautious optimist. Some of his most compelling stories show how two groups of people sharing the same land, such as the Norse and Inuit in Greenland, can end up in completely different situations depending on how they address their problems. The solutions discussed are of vital importance: how societies respond to environmental degradation will determine how teens will live their adult lives. As Diamond points out, in a collapsing civilization, being rich just means being the last to starve. Black-and-white photos are included.-Kathy Tewell, Fairfax County Public Library, VA Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Table of Contents:

	Prologue : a tale of two farms	1
Pt. 1	Modern Montana	25
Ch. 1	Under Montana's big sky	27
Pt. 2	Past societies	77
Ch. 2	Twilight at Easter	79
Ch. 3	The last people alive : Pitcairn and Henderson Islands	120
Ch. 4	The ancient ones : the Anasazi and their neighbors	136
Ch. 5	The Maya collapses	157
Ch. 6	The Viking prelude and fugues	178
Ch. 7	Norse Greenland's flowering	211
Ch. 8	Norse Greenland's end	248
Ch. 9	Opposite paths to success	277
Pt. 3	Modern societies	309
Ch. 10	Malthus in Africa : Rwanda's genocide	311
Ch. 11	One Island, two peoples, two histories : the Dominican Republic and Haiti	329
Ch. 12	China, lurching giant	358
Ch. 13	"Mining" Australia	378
Pt. 4	Practical lessons	417
Ch. 14	Why do some societies make disastrous decisions?	419
Ch. 15	Big businesses and the environment : different conditions, different outcomes	441
Ch. 16	The world as a polder : what does it all mean to us today?	486

Delta Force or Mudslingers

Delta Force: The Army's Elite Counterterrorist Unit

Author: Charlie A Beckwith

The only insider's account ever written on America's most powerful weapon in the war against terrorism

Wall Street Journal

Absolutely compelling...nations without men like this simply don't survive.

Armed Forces Journal

A page turner...hard to put down; you come to the end of one page and can't wait to read the next one. It leaves you dehydrated, because you won't put it down long enough to get another beer...It's one of those rare books that military people will annotate and underline and hesitate ever to lend out...Beckwith's candor is extraordinary...You end up reading Delta Force feeling good about America and the people who serve it in uniform — and most of the brass who lead them.

Wall Street Journal

Absolutely compelling...nations without men like this simply don't survive.

Armed Forces Journal

A page turner...hard to put down; you come to the end of one page and can't wait to read the next one. It leaves you dehydrated, because you won't put it down long enough to get another beer...It's one of those rare books that military people will annotate and underline and hesitate ever to lend out...Beckwith's candor is extraordinary...You end up reading Delta Force feeling good about America and the people who serve it in uniform — and most of the brass who lead them.

Go to: Three Trillion Dollar War or The Preacher and the Presidents

Mudslingers: The Twenty-Five Dirtiest Political Campaigns of All Time

Author: Kerwin Swint

Undoubtedly, the upcoming 2008 presidential election will be full of the dirty politics and negative ads voters have come to expect during campaign season. Yet, even while modern mudslinging has grown more rampant—as a hungry media feed the frenzy for the next juicy story, which political adversaries are eager to supply—the phenomenon is hardly new. Author, professor, and former political consultant Kerwin Swint looks back to the dawn of American politics, drawing from presidential, senatorial, gubernatorial, and mayoral races, to select the 25 most low-down, smear-filled campaigns in U.S. history.
Almost everyone will remember the 2004 battle between George W. Bush and John Kerry. But no less dirty was the lesser-known fierce 1800 contest between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams for control of the White House, finally settled on the floor of the House of Representatives in Jefferson's favor. Number one?  The brutal 1970 Alabama Democratic primary, in which George Wallace repeatedly slurred his opponent Albert Brewer as "sissy britches," spread false rumors about Brewer's sexuality, and made patently racist appeals to white voters.
There are numerous victims of muddy political skirmishes, including Helen Gahagan Douglas, smeared as a communist by Richard Nixon, and Michael Dukakis, whose defeat in the presidential election of 1988 by George H. W. Bush was due in part to the infamous "Willie Horton" ad. Swint introduces readers to them all. 
A lively journey through the most polluted of politics, Mudslingers provides a sparkling account of the history of negative campaigning, and, in the process, offers a fascinating glimpse into our nationalpolitical culture.