William F. Buckley

As the 1960s kick off, the Cuban missile crisis has brought the Communist threat to within miles of the United States, and extremist movements roil the American Right. Two college students, Woodroe Raynor and Leonora Goldstein, meet in the fall of 1960 before embarking on separate paths. Woodroe...

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 of his enemies, driven his countrymen to emigrate, and done everything possible to run Cuba into the ground—all...

As Anatole Broyard of the New York Times has so aptly said, "If le Carr├ is the Henry James of suspense fiction, Buckley, if he chose, might be the Waugh." Bill Buckley has created a handsome American hero, Blackford Oakes, who happens to be an irreverent Yale-and-CIA-trained superspy. The...

Over twenty years ago, William F. Buckley Jr. launched the dashing character of Blackford Oakes like a missile over the literary landscape. This newly minted CIA agent—brainy, bold, and complex—began his career by saving the queen of England and quickly took his place in the pantheon of...