Rating: 
Summary: Excellent writing, as always!
Review: This book really had an impact on my thinking. When in graduate school I was really taken with the objectivist school of thought. I fancied myself a libertarian, and thought that I was SO sophisticated. Really I had discovered a sure fire way to get A's on public policy papers by using a simple formula for virtually every problem. The argument is simply this: the government has a monopoly on the use of force; therefore the government is exceedingly dangerous. Free-markets operate without coercion. The end. As a younger conservative, I wasn't all that familiar with the John Birch crowd. Older teachers in the faculty room often accused me of being a "Bircher" because I was a conservative. This book introduced me to the more hysterical elements of anti-communism. So where does modern conservatism come from? It seems to me that this book is an allegory, not a history. It is no mistake that the former Objectivist and the former Bircher get married in the end, and he goes off to fight in Vietnam. In a way, this is exactly what happened to the conservative movement. Philosophically speaking, the modern conservative coalition is made up of social conservatives and libertarians, among others. This book is effective as an allegory showing this philosophical development. Artfully done!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent writing, as always!
Review: This book really had an impact on my thinking. When in graduate school I was really taken with the objectivist school of thought. I fancied myself a libertarian, and thought that I was SO sophisticated. Really I had discovered a sure fire way to get A's on public policy papers by using a simple formula for virtually every problem. The argument is simply this: the government has a monopoly on the use of force; therefore the government is exceedingly dangerous. Free-markets operate without coercion. The end. As a younger conservative, I wasn't all that familiar with the John Birch crowd. Older teachers in the faculty room often accused me of being a "Bircher" because I was a conservative. This book introduced me to the more hysterical elements of anti-communism. So where does modern conservatism come from? It seems to me that this book is an allegory, not a history. It is no mistake that the former Objectivist and the former Bircher get married in the end, and he goes off to fight in Vietnam. In a way, this is exactly what happened to the conservative movement. Philosophically speaking, the modern conservative coalition is made up of social conservatives and libertarians, among others. This book is effective as an allegory showing this philosophical development. Artfully done!
Rating:
Summary: Oh, yes, yes, YES! Mmmmm....
Review: This book should be read as part of a three-part process. First read Philip K. Dick's "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch," then this book, and finish with "The Illuminatis Trilogy" by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson to get the correct context.
Rating:
Summary: living history
Review: This novel is in all respects delightful, in both a historical and fictional sense. Is there a better man to tell the tale of this era in OUR history?
Rating:
Summary: More Great History in Fiction
Review: This was simply a wonderful book. Buckley's history-in-fiction books have all been excellent, and this one is no exception. Having had much exposure to Randians in the late 1970s it was nice to get a clear picture of the movement and it's foundress. As also the JBS folks. One understands the animosity between the JBS folks and the NR folks a bit better. The truth hurts. I hope he writes more of these! Buy the book and have a nice dinner at Paone's in NYC.
Rating: 
Summary: Really Fictional Fiction
Review: William Buckley needs a novel to be his vehicle of attack on Rand, since it is both fiction and ad hominem. But to make-up dialogue that he (no expert on Rand's thought) sipposes Rand would have engaged in is too much. It is just as juvenile as the old Doonesbury cartoons spoofing Reagan or Bush were--and just as substantive. Buckley takes as gospel the well-refuted work of the Brandens, sources he would otherwise dismiss out of hand (say, for their own criticisms of Buckley.) No matter, Buckley builds fiction upon fiction. Murray Rothbard and Jerome Tuccille and Kay Nolte Smith and others have done much the same. Few intellectual figures have been so unfairly fictionalized as Rand. The weakness of Buckley's case can be measured by the very comparison of Rand to the John Birch leadership. Have the Birchers ever produced a Greenspan or a Martin Anderson? Do their students populate the great think-tanks? Buckley is a religious bigot. He dismisses any thinker who doesn't believe in his God. This has been known since his excommunication of Max Eastman decades ago. Envy of Rand's appeal to the young has also long motivated Buckley, as has a desire to justify his magazine's brutally unfair review of Atlas Shrugged (comparing Rand to Hitler, no less!!) Buckley, while his magazine has been a great tool for conservatives, has himself achieved nothing of intellectual substance. Rand will endure the Ages.
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