More than two decades in the making, the definitive biography of National Review founder William F. Buckley, Jr., proves that you can’t understand conservative politics without understanding the man who galvanized modern conservatism into a distinct voice and identity. At age 25 in 1951, with the publication of God and Man at Yale, a scathing attack on his alma mater, William F. Buckley, Jr. instantly seized the public stage—and commanded it for the next half century, leading a new generation of activists and ideologues to the heights of political power while he himself attained unique fame and public influence. Ten years before his death in 2008, Buckley chose prize-winning biographer Sam Tanenhaus to tell the full story of his life and times, granting him extensive interviews, entrée to his intimate circle, and unrestricted access to his most private papers. Thus began a deep investigation into the vast and often hidden universe of Bill Buckley and the conservative revolution. Buckley vividly captures its subject in all his facets and phases—founding editor of National Review, best-selling novelist and memoirist, jet-setting clubman and socialite, downhill skier and sailboat racer, wisecracking candidate for mayor of New York, flamboyant antagonist of James Baldwin and Gore Vidal, mentor and idol to hundreds who today populate the worlds of politics and media. Tanenhaus also reveals the private and at times secret life of Bill Buckley: his backstage collaborations with Senator Joseph McCarthy and Watergate felon Howard Hunt; thorny relationships with Presidents Nixon and Reagan; flirtations with financial ruin and legal censure—and, late in life, Buckley’s lonely struggle to hold together a movement coming apart over AIDS, the culture wars, and the invasion of Iraq. Majestic in its sweep, lushly detailed, rich in ideas and argument, packed with news and revelations, Buckley is the definitive account of an American giant and the revolution he led.