Buckley and Mailer
The Difficult Friendship That Shaped the Sixties
15 July 2016
Description
A lively chronicle of the 1960s through the incredibly contentious and surprisingly close friendship of its two most colourful characters.
Norman Mailer and William F. Buckley Jr. were towering figures who argued publicly about every major issue of the 1960s: the counterculture, Vietnam, feminism, civil rights, the Cold War. Behind the scenes, the two were close friends and trusted confidantes who lived surprisingly parallel lives. In Buckley and Mailer, Kevin M. Schultz delves into their personal archives to tell the rich story of their friendship, arguments and the tumultuous decade they did so much to shape. He delivers a fresh chronicle of the ‘60s and its long aftermath as well as an entertaining work of narrative history that explores these extraordinary figures’ contrasting visions of America and the future.
Reviews
"Schultz's book is compelling and brilliant." — Literary Review
"Schultz's book is, among things, a very moving account of intellectual and political disappointment." — Prospect
"Kevin Schultz evidently had a lot of fun writing this exuberant, intelligent book, and so did I reading it." — David Aaronovitch, The Times
"A timely antidote to vacuous times... Brilliantly written and constructed, Schultz uses the friendship between these two unlikely protagonists to illuminate one of the most exciting – if turbulent – decades in modern American history: the 1960s." — The Irish Times
