Strictly Right: William F. Buckley Jr. and the American Conservative Movement »

Linda Bridges has worked for National Review all her adult life. She was managing editor for ten years and is currently an editor at large. She coauthored (with William F. Rickenbacker) The Art of Persuasion: A National Review Rhetoric for Writers.

John R. Coyne Jr. is a former associate editor, staff feature writer, and Washington correspondent for National Review. He is also a former White House speechwriter, chief speechwriter for Amoco Corp., and the author of four books.

An affectionate portrait of the man who started it all

"With this graceful homage to Bill Buckley, two people who have known the pleasure of his company as friends and colleagues place him where he incontestably belongs—at the center of the conservative political movement that moved the center of American politics to the right."
—George F. Will, Newsweek

"Strictly Right paints an intimate and penetrating portrait of the elegant and multifaceted figure who has helped to add a new dimension to the American political canvas."
—Henry A. Kissinger

"Bill and I and others have been good friends for almost sixty years and I thought I knew of his life as well as anyone, but Linda and John have brought the events together in a magnificent story that surpasses all that we have absorbed. If you like and admire Bill, you must read this. If you don't, read it anyway—it will be good for you."
—Evan G. Galbraith, former Ambassador to France and Chairman of National Review

"Linda Bridges and John Coyne evoke the true old times, when every morning brought a noble chance, and every chance brought out William F. Buckley Jr., ready to write, speak, question, provoke, tease, or praise, in print, in person, or on the tube, as required. All honor to him, and to the authors who capture him in these pages."
—Richard Brookhiser, author of What Would the Founders Do?: Our Questions, Their Answers

Acknowledgments     ix
Prelude     1
Life before National Review     5
Forging the Conservative Movement     39
Goldwater for President     67
The Raging Sixties     89
The Long Detour     125
New Directions     165
Time to Regroup     195
The Reagan Years     223
New World Order     263
Passing the Torch     303
Books   William F. Buckley Jr.     331
Notes     335
Index     343