About the Book
A unique collection of eulogies of the twentieth century's greatest figures, written by conservative icon William F. Buckley Jr. and compiled by National Review and Fox News White House correspondent James Rosen.
In a half century on the national stage, William F. Buckley Jr. achieved unique stature as a polemicist and the undisputed godfather of modern American conservatism. He knew everybody, hosted everybody at his East 73rd Street maisonette, skewered everybody who needed skewering, and in general lived life on a scale, and in a swashbuckling manner, that captivated and inspired countless young conservatives across that half-century.
Among all of his distinctions, which include founding the conservative magazine National Review and serving as host on the long running talk show Firing Line, Buckley was a master of that most elusive of art forms: the eulogy. Buckley drew on his unrivaled gifts in what he liked to call the controversial arts to mourn, celebrate, or seek eternal mercy for the men and women who touched his life and the nation; to conjure their personalities, recall memorable moments, herald their greatness; or to remind readers of why a given individual, even with the grace that death can uniquely confer, should be remembered as evil.
At all points, these remembrances reflect Buckley's singular voice, with its elegant touch and mordant humor, and lend to the lives departed a final tribute consistent with their own careers, lives, and accomplishments. Of the more than one hundred eulogies located in Buckley's vast archive of published works, A Torch Kept Lit will collect the very best, those remembering the most consequential lives (Kennedy, Nixon, Reagan), the most famous to today's listeners (Elvis Presley, John Lennon, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Princess Diana), those who loomed largest in the conservative movement (Barry Goldwater, Milton Friedman), the most accomplished in the literary world (William Shawn, Norman Mailer), the most mysterious (Soviet spy Alger Hiss, CIA spymaster Richard Helms), and those most dear to Buckley (his mother and father).
About the Author :
William F. Buckley Jr. (1925-2008) was the founder of National Review and the host of one of television's longest-running public affairs programs, Firing Line. The author of more than fifteen novels, many of them New York Times bestsellers, he won the National Book Award for Stained Glass, the second in the series featuring Blackford Oakes.
James Rosen, with more than a decade at Fox News, has covered the White House and State Department beats, and reported from Capitol Hill, the Pentagon, the Supreme Court, nearly all fifty states, and forty countries across five continents. Rosen's articles and essays have appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Harper's, Atlantic, National Review, and Playboy, among many others. He is the author of The Strong Man.
Tony Pasqualini has performed in and directed over a hundred plays on countless stages around the country for forty years. He is one of the founders of the Freehold Theatre and Acting Studio in Seattle as well as a member of the Pacific Resident Theatre in Los Angeles. Tony has also guest starred on many television shows including The Office, Without a Trace, CSI: NY, Mad Men, Bones, and Frasier.
Review :
A timely gift to a nation much in need of a reminder that one can be fervently engaged in public controversies without being coarse or unforgiving.
-- "George F. Will, Pulitzer Prize-winning author"
It is the elegiac reflections on his father, wife, and close friends that give readers a glimpse of the vulnerably human side of this glittering intellectual celebrity.
-- "Booklist"
William F. Buckley, Jr., was a master of many things. This collection of obituaries and eulogies that he wrote over the course of his extraordinary career, admirably curated and eloquently introduced by James Rosen, may well establish WFB as the modern master of this literary form. I have read every single one of my father's sixty-odd books. I do not exaggerate to propose that this may prove to be William F. Buckley's finest book ever.
-- "Christopher Buckley"
William F. Buckley's sketches and vignettes of the prominent people of his time are absolute gems, and so are the introductions by James Rosen. A book to own, to read-and read again.
-- "Brit Hume, senior political analyst, Fox News"
