All the virtues of Bill Buckley’s earlier books are here—but this one is profoundly different. 1990 was a very good year, producing vintage Buckley. He celebrated deeply meaningful anniversaries: the fortieth year of his marriage; the fortieth since his graduation from Yale; the thirty-fifth from
National Review
, the magazine he founded, and then decided—to considerable shock—to retire from editing. In the year in which he became a senior citizen, he appeared, daringly, as a harpsichordist with two symphony orchestras; wrote a controversial book advocating voluntary national service, a proposal not calculated to endear him to his fellow conservatives; and endured the death of a close friend. Thus is completed (perhaps) the end of several affairs—and the capstone volume of a diarist-journal keeper-journalist, who has proved to be, over books at sea and on land (
Cruising Speed, The Unmaking of a Mayor, Airborne, Atlantic High, Overdrive, Racing Through Paradise
), both his own Boswell and Johnson.