From William F. Buckley Jr., comes an engrossing and unexpected historical novel about one of the most controversial figures in American political history - Senator Joe McCarthy. Senator McCarthy rose and fell in just four years, yet he gave a name, lastingly, to an era. It wasn't until February 9, 1950 in Wheeling, West Virginia, that McCarthy bewitched a nation - and unleashed a crusade - with his claim that Communists had infiltrated the United States government.
In The Redhunter, a blend of fact and fiction, Buckley tells the story of Harry Bontecou. Freshly graduated from Columbia, Bontecou joins McCarthy and remains at his side for three critical years. But when McCarthy's judgment becomes clouded by prosecutorial zeal and reckless extravagance, Bontecou delivers an ultimatum: McCarthy must choose between Bontecou and Roy Cohn, McCarthy's ruthless aide. By then we have seen at close hand Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, J.
Edgar Hoover, and Dean Acheson in memorable portraits of leaders in action.
William Frank Buckley, Jr. was an American conservative author and commentator. He founded the political magazine National Review in 1955, hosted 1,429 episodes of the television show Firing Line from 1966 until 1999, and was a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist. His writing style was famed for its erudition, wit, and use of uncommon words.
George H. Nash, a historian of the modern American conservative movement, believed that Buckley was "arguably the most important public intellectual in the United States in the past half century". "For an entire generation he was the preeminent voice of American conservatism and its first great ecumenical figure." Buckley's primary change to politics was the fusion of traditional American political conservatism with laissez-faire economic theory and anti-communism, laying the groundwork for the modern American conservatism of U.S. presidential candidates Barry Goldwater and President Ronald Reagan.
Buckley wrote first *God and Man at Yale* (1951); among over fifty further books on writing, speaking, history, politics and sailing, were a series of novels featuring CIA agent Blackford Oakes. Buckley referred to himself as either a libertarian or conservative. He resided in New York City and Stamford, Connecticut. He was a practicing Roman Catholic, regularly attending the traditional Latin Mass in Connecticut.
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[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_F._Buckley,_Jr.
