Happy Days Were Here Again: Reflections of a Libertarian Journalist

In this collection of slashing, energetic, acerbically witty columns and articles from the National Review , Esquire , the New York Times and elsewhere, Buckley predictably takes aim at such targets as Jesse Jackson, Edward Kennedy, Ross Perot, multiculturalism and the United Nations, while just as predictably defending capital punishment, Star Wars, nuclear power and U.S. involvement in the Persian Gulf War. The conservative thinker calls the rising illegitimate birth rate the single greatest cause of poverty, illiteracy, crime, drugs and unemployment. He outlines an agenda for conservatives in the 1990s in which he advocates, among other things, an openness to arguments for the legalization of drugs. Along with withering commentaries on campus unrest, Gorbachev and the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court, Buckley pays homage to Johann Sebastian Bach, Malcolm Forbes and Christopher Columbus, and he laments the ``slow death'' of Lady Diana Spencer, Princess of Wales. Author tour. (Sept.)