About the Author

WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY JR. (1925-2008) was an intellectual leader of the Right for more than fifty years. The founder and editor-in-chief of National Review and the founder and host of Firing Line, he was also the author of more than fifty books of fiction and nonfiction. His syndicated column, “On the Right,” was begun in 1962 and appeared in newspapers around the country for forty-six years. He served (briefly) as a CIA agent in the early 1950s, helped found Young Americans for Freedom in 1960, and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by George H. W. Bush in 1991. He died in February 2008.