Christopher Buckley Books

Specters as various as Vallejo, Szymborska, Neruda, Fidel Castro, and Groucho Marx guide and support the elegies in Christopher Buckley's new collection. A god that may or may not be there as well as politics, memory, history, popular culture, philosophy, and a good deal of arm wrestling with chance inform Buckley's on-going debate between faith and doubt, science and religion. Buckley brings his customary sense of irony and slant humor to bear on the deep inquiry into our collective fates in Agnostic.

Christopher Buckley?s latest book continues his exploration of how, despite the intellectual tools of science and philosophy, we are still somehow left with questions about identity, memory, love, loss, value, self, and God?not to mention the depredations of war. In his poetry and nonfiction, he has considered these matters in the belief that the answers to their mysteries are in the very act of pursuit. On every page is the work of a consummate artist who is also, recognizably, a companion spirit on the journey all of creation has been on all this time.

This book follows the fortunes of the great Soviet airliners over the last three decades and looks at what happened to this immense fleet of Antonovs, Ilyushins, Tupolevs and Yaks. Illustrated with 220 photos, and supported by many anecdotes, facts and figures, this book conveys the nostalgia and wonder of this tumultuous time in aviation history.

The narrative intertwines the observations of a keen observer with a poet's emotional depth, capturing the vibrancy of springtime Paris. Through vivid imagery, it explores the nuances of everyday life, from a bus driver to a mechanic, revealing deeper truths about identity and experience. The blend of lyrical urgency and patient storytelling creates a rich tapestry of moments that resonate with both humor and introspection.

With a pajama-clad President Reagan refusing to leave the White House on his successor’s Inauguration Day, Buckley has given this farce of Oval Office politics a nearly perfect beginning. Parodying the familiar form of the White House memoir, Buckley recounts the turbulent years of the Democratic Tucker administration, as told by loyalist Herbert Wadlough. Through this former accountant’s eyes, we see the infighting that plagues the White House, the President’s faltering marriage to a former starlet, and his ongoing crises.

Steaming to Bamboola is a story of the author's time at sea. He tells first- hand about typhoons, cargoes, smuggling, mid-ocean burials, rescues, stowaways, hard places, hard drinking, and hard romance.

Nick Naylor likes his job. In the neo-puritanical nineties, it's a challenge to defend the rights of smokers and a privilege to promote their liberty. Sure, it hurts a little when you're compared to Nazi war criminals, but Nick says he's just doing what it takes to pay the mortgage and put his son through Washington's elite private school St. Euthanasius. He can handle the pressure from the antismoking zealots, but he is less certain about his new boss, BR, who questions whether Nick is worth $150,000 a year to fight a losing war. Under pressure to produce results, Nick goes on a PR offensive. But his heightened notoriety makes him a target for someone who wants to prove just how hazardous smoking can be. If Nick isn't careful, he's going to be stubbed out.

In this sharp satire by acclaimed author Tom Wolfe, the U.S. President seeks revenge on the Senate by nominating a beloved TV judge to the Supreme Court. Praised for his humor and political wit, Wolfe delivers a hilarious critique of contemporary politics in this trade paperback edition.

Maintaining the froideur that has won her little public support, First Lady Elizabeth Tyler MacMann needs to find the hottest lawyer in town to defend her in the biggest murder trial in America's history. And that means taking on the services of the fiance she dumped at law school in order to marry the then distinguished war hero who eventually becomes President. Serially divorced, Boyce Baylor is not surprised - he's the only attorney up to the job and he knows it. It's all going swimmingly - he's got it nailed, until his client decides she wants to take the stand and restore her reputation and he has no choice but to acquiesce. Throw in several egos the size of the White House, media-spin like there's no tomorrow, the old boy network, some very underhand business involving the FBI, a pregnancy, a few sex toys and a dose of Viagra and you're some way into this delicious farce - which becomes all the more delicious when you realise how small a leap of the imagination is required to get there.

His famous father conducted a legendary literary feud with Gore Vidal, and while Christopher Buckley's dust-up via fax machine with novelist Tom Clancy (who was outraged by Buckley's trashing of one of his novels in the New York Times Book Review doesn't reach that intellectual level, it does make for very funny reading and illustrates Buckley's gift for puncturing pomposity wherever he finds it. To his credit, most of the essays in this collection are quite witty, and he doesn't sink to mean- spirited ideological blather. Included are pieces published in the New Yorker , Esquire , the Wall Street Journal , and other publications. Apart from the humorous essays, Buckley's ruminations on why he didn't serve in Vietnam provide thought-provoking commentary on his generation's defining event.