Buckley and Mailer The Difficult Friendship That Shaped the Sixties [Paperback]

Brings alive two talented, tireless characters&Schultz weave[s] their contrasting public lives together in a way that helps to make sense of an era.[A] perceptive dual portrait&Schultz does a superb job of contextualizing their differing positions.A largely respectful portrait, but Schultz doesnt sugarcoat his subjects failings&Flawed these men were for sure. But&its good to remember pundits who thought big, fought big, had something to say and said it with hellacious verve.Illuminate[s], often entertainingly, the cultural and political upheaval of the sixties.Schultz brings a good-natured, entertaining and, rare in academe, highly readable style to his treatment of two 20th century America patriots whose lives enriched us all.[A] provocative and thorough . . . social and political history of the sixties, among the very best we have had.Deliciously entertaining and insightful,One might think that Bill Buckley and Norman Mailer were not at all alike, but Kevin M. Schultz, in his very entertaining book, reminds us to think again. In fact, despite their complicated political differences, these two American originals liked each other, tried to understand each other, and discovered that that they had much in common: a passion for engagement, for literate expression, and perhaps above all the pleasure they took in playing their outsize selves.Riveting. In this superbly written account of two of the most fascinating and important 20th-century American intellectuals, Kevin M. Schultz not only brings the spirits of William Buckley and Norman Mailer back to life, he endows us with a subtle yet profound analytical framework for understanding the massive social changes set off during the Sixties. Anyone who wants to understand contemporary American political culture needs to read this book.A lively chronicle of the 1960s through the surprisingly close and incredibly contentious friendship of its two most colorful characters.