William F. Buckley Jr.

In this autobiography, woven from personal pieces composed over the course of a celebrated writing life of more than 50 years, you'll meet William Buckley the boy....

President Truman is nearing the end of his term in office, and Great Britain has a new queen....

As the Cold War turns hot, Oakes is thrown into the arms of a beautiful KGB agent and onto the horns of a dilemma....

A reminiscence of 30 years of friendship with the man who brought the American conservative movement out of the political wilderness and into the White House....

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....

William F. Buckley Jr.'s first political book in nearly two decades is a revealing memoir of the first champion of the conservative movement....

A singular romance navigates the political fault line that would change American history....

When a shadowy Russian mole threatens to undermine the free world's defenses, CIA super-secret agent Blackford Oakes is called in to unmask the imposter....

James Jesus Angleton was the master, a legend in the time of spies....

The year is 1961, the setting Havana. CIA super-secret agent Blackford Oakes has been sent there on a mission, only to find himself in the eye of an international political hurricane....

The sixties explode, and Elvis becomes the icon of the nation, while Orson, a college demonstrator, drifts away from regular life....

The year is 1995, and an energetic senator wants to disarm, perhaps even eliminate, the CIA....

Lyndon Johnson dispatches Oakes and a soldier of fortune named Tucker on secret missions to Southeast Asia....

Nuremberg's Palace of Justice, 1945, was the scene of a trial without precedent in history, a trial that continues to haunt the modern world....

Blackford Oakes launches a wild attempt to kill Castro on behalf of the CIA. Ever since the botched invasion at the Bay of Pigs, Fidel Castro has run amok. He has executed thousands....

It's 1956, and the cold war is hot. Hungary has just fallen, and Blackford Oakes is back from Budapest, puzzling over a betrayal and mourning a tragedy he couldn't prevent....

This essay comes from the NPR series This I Believe, which features brief personal reflections from both famous and unknown Americans....

It is 1961 in Berlin, and the Cold War is at its most chilling....

The year is 1954. Stalin has died in Moscow, and a deadly earnest power play nears its conclusion. Meanwhile British and American commandos have met a disastrous end....

Oakes is now a master spy, this time working outside the ambit of the director and around agency rules....