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Audiobooks by William F. Buckley, Jr.
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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 master spies drawn up by Somerset Maugham, Graham Greene, and John le Carré.
Against the backdrop of Cold War intrigue, in this his eleventh outing, Oakes crosses swords with Kim Philby, perhaps the highest-ranking in the parade of defectors to the Soviet Union.
Oakes is now himself a master spy, this time working outside the ambit of the director and around agency rules. His romance with an able and worldly Soviet doctor is consolation for the death of his beloved Sally. But after his return to Washington, he receives dismaying news. It is inevitable that the great Soviet spy and the renowned American agent will meet again-this time with deadly consequences. "[An] engaging piece of espionage cloak-and-daggitude that roams ruefully across the near terminal days of the cold war."-New York Times Book Review
As Anatole Broyard of the New York Times has so aptly said, "If le Carré 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 year is 1954. Stalin has died in Moscow, and a deadly earnest power play nears its conclusion. Meanwhile, British and American commandos on a mission to liberate a Soviet satellite country have met a disastrous end. Jinxed. The communications system between English and American intelligence has been penetrated. Jinxed. There is a spook in their midst. High Jinx-higher still when the risk becomes one which Blacky alone must take.
With his customary authority and audacity, William F. Buckley, Jr., has taken a pivotal moment in history and shaped it into absorbing, original fiction that is a coming-of-age story and a riveting novel exploring characters and issues that defined history.
It's 1956, and the cold war is hot. Hungary has just fallen, and Blackford Oakes is back from Budapest, puzzling over a betrayal and mourning a tragedy he couldn't prevent. But in Washington, all attention is focused on the race to put the first satellite in space. Ironically, Russia and America each have the secrets the other needs to succeed. The solution: kidnap a pair of extraordinary Russian scientists who can put the U.S. in the lead. Blackford Oakes is in charge, unaware that KGB spymaster Bolgin and a trio of vengeful Hungarian freedom fighters are hot on his trail. Oakes' life and America's future are on the line in this fast-paced thriller that is Buckley at his best.
"Who's On First is a rollicking good read, easy to pick up, hard to put down!"-Midwest Book Review
When a shadowy Russian mole threatens to undermine the free world's defenses by infiltrating President Eisenhower's National Security Counsel, CIA super-secret agent Blackford Oakes is called in to unmask the imposter. Then, Oakes turns the tables on the Communists by piloting a U-2 spy plane on a Gary Powers-style one-way mission behind the Iron Curtain. Sentenced to death and trapped in the depths of the Lubyanka prison, Oakes may have turned his last trick. Or has he?
"Mixes politics, humor, suspense, and ingenious espionage capers in an enjoyable blend."-Publishers Weekly
Two college students, Woodroe Raynor and Leonora Goldstein, meet in the fall of 1960 before embarking on separate paths. But a singular romance blooms as the two make their way through a tumultuous era, navigating the political fault line that would change American history.
The year is 1961, the setting Havana. CIA super-secret agent Blackford Oakes has been sent there on a mission, only to find himself in the eye of an international political hurricane.
President Kennedy has selected Oakes to meet with Che Guevara inside Castro's Cuba as part of his Operation Alligator, a daring plan to bring about an era of d'tente in East-West relations. The communists, however, have another agenda in mind: a double-cross with terrifying consequences.
Soon, Oakes is trapped in Cuba, and the heat is on. Warming the climate greatly is the sultry beauty Catalina. The weather forecast: betrayal, power politics, and sudden death.
In The Reagan I Knew, the late William F. Buckley Jr. offers a reminiscence of thirty years of friendship with the man who brought the American conservative movement out of the political wilderness and into the White House. Ronald and Buckley were political allies and close friends throughout Reagan's political career. They went on vacations together and shared inside jokes.
Yet for all the words that have been written about him, Ronald Reagan remains an enigma. His former speechwriter Peggy Noonan called him 'paradox all the way down,' and even his son Ron Reagan despaired of ever truly knowing him. But Reagan was not an enigma to William F. Buckley Jr. They understood and taught each other for decades, and together they changed history.
A matter of some delicacy: finding the perfect blue to restore the windows of a thirteenth century German chapel at the Palace of St. Anselm. Blackford Oakes, fresh from his daring exploits at Windsor Castle, is in charge. But Alex Wintergrin, owner of the chapel, is far more than a charming aristocrat and congenial companion. A charismatic hero, he is rising to power, rousing his countrymen to reunite Germany. As the cold war turns hot, Oakes is thrown into the arms of a beautiful KGB agent and onto the horns of a dilemma. He must either pull the fatal switch on a friend, or find a way to change the rules.
"Cuts closer to the bone than Le Carré has ever cut."-New Republic
This is the book that launched Buckley's career. As a young recent Yale graduate, Buckley took on Yale's professional and administrative staffs, citing their hypocritical diversion from the tenets on which the institution was built. Yale was founded on the belief that God exists, and thus virtue and individualism represent immutable cornerstones of education. However, when Buckley wrote this scathing expose, the institution had made an about face: Yale was expounding collectivism and agnosticism. This classic work shows Buckley as he was and is: dauntless, venturesome, bold, and valiant.
This is the book that launched Buckley's career—and a movement. As a young recent graduate, Buckley took on Yale's professional and administrative staffs, citing their hypocritical withdrawal from the tenets upon which the institution was built. Yale was founded on the belief that God exists, and thus virtue and individualism represent immutable cornerstones of education. But when Buckley wrote this scathing expos├®, the institution had made an about-face: Yale was expounding collectivism and agnosticism. This classic work shows Buckley as he ever was: dauntless, venturesome, bold, and valiant.
More than half a century later, experience the extraordinary work that began the modern conservative movement.
Orson is a young boy whose mother works at the U.S. Army base in Germany in the 1950s. There, he becomes a fan of a G.I. stationed at the base, one Elvis Presley, whose music is played over and over on the radio. When Orson is caught stealing recordings of Elvis' tunes from the PX, the attendant publicity catches the star's attention, and he comes to visit his young fan. Thus begins a lifelong friendship.As Elvis' career rockets ever higher and his behavior becomes ever more erratic, the two share many adventures. The sixties explode, and Elvis becomes the icon of the nation, while Orson, a college demonstrator, drifts away from regular life looking for something of substance to believe in. Each man is an emblem of his times, as social conventions crumble, barriers fall, and the cultural landscape changes forever.
