Buckley & National Review

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

by Richard Brookhiser




I have read National Review on an intermittent basis since I was a teenager in high school. About the time I was moving from Graduate School into the 'real' world Richard Brookhiser, the author of Right Time, Right Place: Coming of Age with William F. Buckley Jr. and the Conservative Movement, was in high school. He became a journalist overnight when his essay regarding Viet Nam War protesters was published by Willam F. Buckley's National Review. In short order Brookhiser went to Yale, became an intern at National Review and following graduation became one of its editors as well. This book chronicles both his life as a journalist at National Review and highlights of the political scene on which he has commented over the last thirty years. It is an interesting story told well by Brookhiser. He had an inside seat on the right and intimate knowledge of the state of conservative journalism at National Review which was the primary journal of conservative commentary from its founding into the new century. I enjoyed the writing and the personal side of Brookhiser's story for this book is very much a memoir of his life as a journalist and writer of political biographies of Washington, Hamilton, the Adams family and others. Right Time is a political/historical memoir I would recommend to all who enjoy good writing and good reading.

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