This is the beloved 1972 collection of Bill Buckley’s then-most-recent columns, articles, and so much more, captured at the height of his cultural power and influence. From his first-hand reports on Richard Nixon’s trip to China to an evaluation of Helen Gurley Brown’s Cosmopolitan, in Inveighing Buckley reflects on almost everything of current interest; the end of the Vietnam war; life within the Soviet Union (a famous WFB essay first printed in Playboy); accounts of Latin America, Israel, the South Pole, Ireland and New Delhi; a report on the kids, on disruptions and violence, on repression and reform; the politics of John Lindsay and Richard Nixon, of Senator Muskie and Pete McCloskey; treatment of pollution and conscription, busing and ecology; a look at the economy, at railroad reform and inflation, and Keynesianism and price controls, at the love affair between Kenneth Galbraith and Richard Nixon; a melancholy view of the decline of organized religion; and portraits of Lady Bird, Senator Buckley, Edgar Smith, Tom Wolfe, John Lennon, Clare Booth Luce and John Dos Passos; a look at Beethoven’s 200th anniversary and the new Oxford English Dictionary; a voyage to Rome, by the modern traveler. Whew! And all done in the style that won Bill the largest constituency of any journalist in America.
We’ve got a Buckley-basement-stash box containing a dozen hardcover copies. Like some other books we’ve offered (we do have two copies left of Cruising Speed, which you can order here), they’re not exactly pristine, but otherwise our dozen copies of Inveighing are quite dignified (despite spending nearly forty years in the cellar!). You can have one of these rare books (enhanced by your knowledge that they were WFB’s own) for $75, which includes shipping and handling. Order here.