Right Time, Right Place: Coming of Age with William F. Buckley Jr. and the Conservative Movement (Hardcover)

~ (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In 1969, the precocious 14-year-old Brookhiser wrote a cover story for National Review and began to correspond with founding editor William F. Buckley Jr., who serves as both hero and, sometimes, villain of this wistful memoir. After graduating from Yale, the author became Buckley's designated successor, his rapid ascendancy mirroring the prodigious gains of the conservative movement as championed by the magazine and led by Ronald Reagan. The book, like the author's life, takes an abrupt turn when the mercurial Buckley writes him a letter to say that he no longer considers Brookhiser an appropriate candidate to succeed him. Brookhiser offers accounts of writing his book on Washington, Founding Father, and his struggle with testicular cancer, but the book becomes less focused as the relationship between the author and his mentor becomes strained. Nevertheless, the author deftly sets his personal and professional biography in a sharply observed historical and intellectual context, while sharing his deep affection for—and occasional resentment of—Buckley with compelling candor. (June)
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From The Washington Post

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Justin Moyer American conservatives are stranded in a political wilderness, but memoir makes excellent manna. With "Right Time, Right Place," Richard Brookhiser, a turned-off, tuned-out baby boomer who published his first counter-counterculture writing in William F. Buckley's National Review at age 14, offers a foot soldier's view of the movement, the magazine and the man who sponsored supply-side economics, the Vietnam War and eight years of Ronald Reagan. Balancing hero-worship with a frank assessment of ugly infighting at the Review -- Buckley denied his protege a promised top spot at the magazine for a lack of "executive flair" -- Brookhiser pays a fond farewell to the conservative icon whose death last year deprived a generation of right-wingers of its flawed ideological father. "The adversary who compelled liberals to respect him had become the respectable adversary," Brookhiser writes of Buckley's slow descent into bourgeois caricature marked by stretch limousines, simmering anti-Semitism and disagreements with his son, Christopher, who deserted the cause via a 2008 Barack Obama endorsement. As the Review once asked, "whither conservatism" without Buckley? Brookhiser doesn't pretend to know, but his lyrical meditation on the intersection of his own life and that of his "lost leader" will move the most hardened Nation subscriber.
Copyright 2009, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books; First Printing edition (June 8, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465013554
• ISBN-13: 978-0465013555
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #31,654 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Right-on!, June 9, 2009

By	Raymond H. Smeeth "manfred arcane" (Springfield, VA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is a fabulous book. First it supplies an intimate report of the intellectual battlefields of the last half century. Neatly woven in to that tableau is a bittersweet reminiscence of collegial friendship along the way with an unique and stirring individual. Or maybe I have their priority reversed. In either case, both accounts are supremely well written, and the latter especially moving. This is a new discovery for me, that Mr. Brookhiser writes so well. Now I must go check out more of his writings. Well done, Mr. Brookhiser. Well done.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars very engaging and informative, June 16, 2009

By	Jeff Peirce (Salt Lake City, Utah United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book is very good on many levels. I was surprised at its depth.

I got the book to read about William Buckley, "National Review," and the influence of both Buckley and the magazine on American politics.

What I got was much better than that. I did learn about Buckley, and I did learn about his magazine. But I also got a pretty darned good intellectual history of the political battles fought in America over a period of several years.

I learned many things I did not know. I learned William Buckley was human, quirky, and not above making some big mistakes. He did not really know how to communicate with people, and had to resort to leaving notes. But he was also very generous, and capable of great kindness. I came away liking the man, despite his quirks and faults. He made the world a better place by being in it.

I learned that the battles fought on the right did not go the way one thinks they did. There were divisions, fights over turf, great differences in the preference of candidates, and shifts in ideas and ideals.
The author was there to see many of them, and he writes about them very well. The book is remarkable engaging.

Many of the person to person encounters in this book are funny, or painful, or surprising. The book never ceases to surprise.

The author deserves considerable praise for this book. He wrote a little gem . I hope it will get the sales and attention it deserves.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A man in full!, June 28, 2009

By	E. D. Smith "Nocomme1" - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Brookhiser is a very gifted writer who avoids here both petty score-settling and its opposite, idolatry. First encountering William F. Buckley when Buckley's National Review ran a piece (as a cover story!) that the then 14 year old Brookhiser had submitted, the book relates the often difficult relationship that began as proxy child/father and evolved through the years into one of being equals.

Brookhiser walks a real tightrope here, being unsparringly honest, noting Buckley's flaws and weaknesses while not neglecting so much about the man that made him such a singular figure. The end result is a balanced and therefore very accesible account of a very real man. In telling his story about Buckley as he does Broohiser tells us much about himself as well. Deeply bitter about Buckley's having promised him that he'd be Buckley's successor, then reneging on that promise without warning, Brookhiser continued to work for NR (as he does to this day), in a diminished capacity with his approach to Buckley considerably more cautious. But Brookhiser doesn't let his bitterness consume him or let Buckley's crude handling of the matter poison their relationship in perpetuity. Buckley possessed so many admirable qualities - energy, intelligence, an astonishing generosity - and Broohiser doesn't let his lesser qualities overwhelm them. Forgiveness really is an act of grace.

What strikes you about Right Time, Right Place is the degree to which it is permeated with love, an adult and therefore meaningful love that admits that people are flawed but doesn't get devoured by that fact. It is easy to love a perfect person, much less so one whose flaws can bring pain.

In addition to Buckley, Brookhiser touches on many of the very colorful characters who populated NR through the years, names that are very familiar to those of us who have been long-time readers. James Burnham, Bill Rusher, Gary Wills, Joe Sobran and many of the others from NR's past are dealt with in revealing, sometimes funny, sometimes disturbing portraits. Brookhiser also deals with and gives insight into a number of the behind-the-scenes policy controversies that are so important to an opinion journal like NR: the Panama Canal, the Soviets, tax cuts.

The only quibble I have is that Brookhiser never fully resolves the other theme of the book: his lifelong quest for a father figure. The picture he draws of his own father is one of a man perhaps no better but realistically no worse than any of our fathers. He does come to recognize this after his falling out with Buckley but even in his more mature years when he becomes enamoured of the historical George Washington, he is still looking for that perfect father figure. The genesis of that search remains elusive.

Right Time, Right Place is a beautifully written work that should be of interest to anyone curious about the history of the last fifty years, is intrigued by big personalities on big stages or who like to see how love can make us better people.

Highly recommended.