Friend and foe alike of William F. Buckley, Jr. will find themselves disappointed in the contents of Sam Tanenhaus’s Buckley: The Life and Revolution that Changed America. Tanenhaus spent nearly thirty years working on the Buckley-commissioned biography, a time which saw the second Iraq War, Buckley’s death, the rise of Donald Trump, and half of the less-than-roaring ’20s. The unique challenge of a biography of such a titan figure as Bill Buckley is one must avoid it becoming another history of National Review and the other titan figures that surrounded it. The other rocks to run against are the temptation to avoid it all together. Tanenhaus appears to choose a secret third path—of seemingly not speaking about Buckley at all at times.

Now, there is much to be praised in this nearly 900-page book (860 to be precise, with more than two hundred pages of notes, acknowledgments, and index added). The primary strength lies when Tanenhaus remains a biographer, which is best seen in the first two sections of the book that describe Buckley’s childhood and his time at Yale. Here we are introduced to a Buckley that is tangentially related to the later Buckley, a Buckley that is a stark follower of his father, Buckley Sr. We are gifted a glimpse into the life of a man of the Old Right in Buckley Sr., an adoring fan of Charles Lindbergh and the America First Committee—a cause that Buckley Jr. also adopted. It places Buckley in the context of a pre-war, anti-New Deal “conservatism” that eventually becomes the hawkish Fusionism of the Cold War. Buckley will not be the only one to make this journey from Old Right to New, the difference being that Buckley will soon lead that movement.

It is also this era that we are allowed a glimpse into the pre-God and Man at Yale Buckley, a man cutting his teeth against what is an increasingly liberalizing academia. Buckley is portrayed as a young man at war, at war with the faculty and his fellow student as he spearheaded the Yale Daily News. Here we can see the whispers of the later Buckley, as editor and as whip. Buckley was a publicist as much as a thinker and his desire to act as a gatekeeper shine in the fights he has on the Yale campus.

Anyone who has long waited for the arrival of the definitive biography of William F. Buckley, Jr. is sure to leave disappointed by Sam Tanenhaus. Though clearly a skilled writer, his narrative is initially tight but loosens as the story progresses and becomes more of a liberal’s opportunity to air his grievances with Buckley. There may be benefits to reading the first section of the book for anyone interested in understanding Buckley’s childhood, but seemingly little elsewhere. Thirty years have not been well spent for the product we have received.