Sam Tanenhaus, essayist and editor, was tapped by William F. Buckley Jr. to be his official biographer. Bill spoke with him for hours over many years, gave him access to his yards of papers, and commended him to his family and friends. Tanenhaus had won Bill’s esteem with his 1997 biography of Whittaker Chambers. That book traced a clear line from family trauma through Communist commitment to the Hiss trials. It was dramatic, sympathetic, and, when necessary, stern. Buckley has many of its predecessor’s virtues. If it is noisier and sometimes halting, that is the difference between a bus trip and a drive in a car — more passengers, more destinations: a difference imposed by its subject’s wide-ranging and densely populated life.
Tanenhaus gets right to work — at 866 pages of text there is no time for fancy intros. Bill’s Texas-oilman father, William F. Buckley, sought fortune in Mexico and Venezuela. His mother, Aloise Steiner, was a pious Catholic belle from New Orleans. He and his siblings — there were ten surviving children in all — followed their patriarch as he hopped from country to country looking for investors. Bill’s early education was homeless-schooled: his first languages were Spanish and French, learned from governesses. When he started acquiring English, around age five, he compensated by learning long words.
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