Don't get me wrong, I am a great fan of William F. Buckley, and have read most of his published books. In addition, I have read his columns and subscribed to his magazine, National Review.

Nevertheless, this is not what I expected.

This book is a compilation of several characters, drawn from his Blackford Oakes series of stories. The characterizations are good, of course, and the writing is up to Buckley's standard, which is high. But, there is nothing original in the book. It is simply a collection of characters.

The book was scanned from originally published material. Some of the scanning was faulty, resulting in mistakes like 'War College' being translated into 'Wan College'. Every 'r' is not changed to an 'n'; just often enough to irritate the reader.

For Buckley, who is a perfectionist, it must be cause for great annoyance.

William Buckley is a good, if not a great writer, who has spent his lifetime worshipping the English language. Buy the original stories, wherein you will get all of these characterizations, and the rest of the story to boot. This book is only an appetizer.

Joseph Pierre,
Author of THE ROAD TO DAMASCUS: Our Journey Through Eternity

Text information states pKa values are for the conjugate acids of bases listed in tables, and this further confuses students, who assume the molecules listed are the acids themselves.

Incredible leaps of logic must be required for students to take sparse detail in the text and apply them to complex problems in the problem sets. Although the problems are enjoyable for Ph.D.'s in the field, they miss the mark regarding beginning students. I find the problems relevant and amusing, but they are often advanced or graduate level. In contrast,example problems in the text are quite simplistic.

It appears that the text attempts to address biochemistry, polymer and medicinal chemistry to some level - but must sacrifice content in the core areas of organic chemistry in order to satisfy the unwritten rule of a book of dimensions of 1.5" x 8" x 10" for the publisher.

The sidebars were a reasonable attempt to humanize chemistry. University academics are still scratching their heads as to why they continue to have trouble interesting students in chemistry - they need to look close to home regarding text and laboratory material. Both seem to provide an exercise in futility for U.S. students. Scientific method is taught in high school, and promptly forgotten. Logic and flow is missing today.

Good luck with the next edition!

As a political activist whose views have been described as "extreme right-wing" (although I would argue that the Libertarian party annoys the Left and the Right more or less equally), I am naturally interested in how the American Right evolved, from the beginning of the Cold War to the present. It was for that reason--and not, Lord knows, because I expected any stylistic treat'that I looked forward to reading "Getting It Right." Unfortunately, as is usually the case with Mr. Buckley's historical fiction, the book would have been far more interesting'indeed potentially a classic'had the author presented it as non-fiction, either history or personal memoir. As fiction, this book is a bit of a snore.

Mr. Buckley just can't write fiction very well. I would guess that this is because he doesn't ask to be coached, and none of his circle dares coach him unbidden, and in any case his novels sell well enough regardless of their literary quality. His fans'of which I am one, when he sticks to journalism and criticism'live in hope where his fiction is concerned. However, I have finally given way to despair.

"Getting It Right" gives us a terrific subject: the story of how two very different "right-wing" movements'the anti-Communist John Birch Society and the "objectivist" cult of Ayn Rand'diverged and sometimes co-operated and between them pretty well destroyed the possibility of a libertarian revolution, leaving the United States to degenerate into the authoritarian collectivist society it has become.

The book is also blessed with a strong cast of historical characters: the imperious Miss Rand; the ever-more-paranoid Robert Welch (founder of the John Birch Society); Welch's ally, the bizarre Gen. Edwin Walker; the anti-Communist academic Revilo Oliver; self-help guru Nathaniel Branden; Sen. Barry Goldwater; cameo appearances by John and Robert Kennedy and Earl Warren.

Unfortunately, the subject matter and the historical characters'the most interesting components of the book'are treated with an almost insulting superficiality. The author spends far too much time on a fictional protagonist, Woodroe Raynor, whose background is so improbable as to make the reader roll his eyes almost immediately: a Mormon missionary, not yet 20 years old, he is miraculously caught up in the Hungarian revolt of 1956, an event that convinces him of the inherent evil of Communism. His romantic interest (if you can call it that) throughout the book is a Randian acolyte: Leonora Goldstein, the idealistic daughter of refugees from Hitler's depredations. The woodenness, the utter lack of emotion with which these two approach their relationship (which begins in the late 1950s and culminates in their engagement at the end of the book, in the mid-1960s) is quite illustrative of Mr. Buckley's chief flaw as a novelist: his apparent discomfort with anything to do with "feelings."

I sometimes criticize writers (women writers in particular) for being overly occupied with the illustration of emotion, but Mr. Buckley goes to the other extreme. He acknowledges that people feel this way or that way, and admits somewhat grudgingly that people have sexual intercourse, but he's most reluctant to go any farther than that. In his rather sketchy illustration of the relationship between Woodroe and Leonora, one sees little or no affection, and certainly no passion. They behave to each other more like an undemonstrative but secretly incestuous brother and sister than like a courting couple.

Even more egregious is Mr. Buckley's description (or nondescription) of the sexual liaisons between Miss Rand and her sometime heir apparent, Branden. Such an affair did, notoriously, take place, but it's difficult to form an original movie, in one's mind's eye, of what the postmenopausal and emphatically hideous Miss Rand must have looked like, with her clothes off, doing the nasty with a chap some 30 years her junior. A gruesomely detailed written description'and we all know how funny Mr. Buckley can be, when he wants to be'would not have gone unappreciated. An even greater challenge for the author, which Mr. Buckley likewise shirks, would have been to make the reader understand why a young man might want to swyve the aging diva of objectivism in the first place.

In describing the end of their affair, Mr. Buckley commits one of the most elementary errors of fiction-writing. Here is how he describes her reaction to Branden's decision to end their sexual relationship:

"Nathaniel had seen her cross before. He had seen her critical. But he had not seen her uncontrollably, titanically, murderously angry. It was like a great tidal wave smashing everything in its path, including skyscrapers, the white cliffs of Dover, and the Maginot Line. When finally he escaped upstairs to Barbara, they wept together. But before they had come near to exhausting their reserves of mutual consolation, the telephone rang, and lo! it was Ayn. She wanted to speak with Barbara.

"She did so at great length. Any told how she had misestimated Barbara's husband. She had thought him a true man, on the scale of the great men she had created in fiction. He was less than that. Far less. He was despicable."

Any graduate assistant English instructor at any college in the United States would have handed that passage back to Mr. Buckley with the sharp admonition, "Show me, don't tell me!" Unfortunately, just as no friend of Barbra Streisand or Tim Robbins or Ed Asner is going to tell them that their political views are wrongheaded, no friend of Mr. Buckley's is likely to presume to teach him how to write fiction. Thus his next novel, if there is a next, is certain to be yet another exercise in half-assedness.

--Joseph Dobrian

During this era, Buckley, Russell Kirk, Whitaker Chambers, and others were defining, in the pages of National Review, the parameters of conservatism as we understand it today. In so doing, they strove to establish their breed of conservatism as the dominant ideology of anti-Communism, while such firebrands as Ayn Rand and the John Birch Society's Robert Welch adopted a fiercer, more confrontational demeanor. /Getting it Right/ is Buckley's account of how Rand and Welch estranged themselves from the emerging conservative silent majority. Buckley is fair to both and displays a keen understanding of how Rand and Welch each captivated their respective sects. Presently, Rand's legacy is more enduring and I expect that Buckley's portrayal of Rand as a shrew who may have "created an entire . . . philosophical system[] to deal with her own psychological problems" will earn this book hysterical reproachment from those who still adopt Rand's "Objectivism" and style themselves Randian heroes. But Buckley has in no sense whatsoever adopted the Aaron Sorkin model of political fiction wherein one makes ideological opponents look silly by putting words in their mouths that they would never speak. Buckley clearly acknowledges Rand's literary brilliance and her gift for rigorous analytical deduction. He uses her personal implosion as an object lesson in how the most studious fidelity to capitalism and freedom cannot yield genuine happiness without a corresponding commitment to the traditional social virtues.

But did this have to be a novel? Not until the final pages will readers develop much affection for the major fictional characters, each of whom serves as little more than a deus ex machina to hurry along the narrative. The author was a major participant in many of the events chronicled, and history would have been better served by a well-documented first-person account than by a half-fictionalization in which Buckley at times clumsily renders himself as a supporting character. The novel's copious citations to National Review editorials also harmonize rather poorly with its literary form. Yet the struggle for the soul of American conservatism does have the character of an epic. The drama reaches its crescendo at the 1964 Republican National Convention when a defiant Barry Goldwater declares, "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. . . . Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." By itself, the sentiment was and is beautiful, but Buckley places it in context, and, as always, stands athwart history, yelling Stop.

This is a novel but it is historical fiction predicated upon actual meetings that the author was a party to, gatherings he attended, articles that were written about him and his magazine The National Review, and a variety of other published material from a wide spectrum of thought. And this is a book that goes beyond politics to philosophy, religion, the relevance of altruism, and many other issues.

Labels are easy to place but they suffer from the same shortcomings and hopeless inadequacies that any generalizations immediately suffer from the moment they are invoked. Where would you place categories of thought, or defined groups like the following, Libertarian, Conservative, The John Birch Society, Young Americans for Freedom, or those who are labeled Objectivists?

All words credited to Robert Welch in the book are his; the same is the case with another prominent figure in the book Ayn Rand. These two founders, respectively, of the John Birch Society and the philosophy of Objectivism should provide enough material on their own to cause endless hours of debate about the book. Ayn Rand is the author of the widely read and very influential works including, "Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, and The Virtue of Selfishness", amongst others.

To keep this time period from 1958 to 1966 at a constant boil Mr. Buckley brings two young people together. And these are not just any two youthful idealists, one is part of Ayn Rand's group and the other is..........well, you can imagine.

The book takes the reader from a young Mormon Missionary being shot as the Soviet Military attempts to stop persons from fleeing Hungry, through the Eisenhower years, and on to Kennedy's abbreviated presidency and the turmoil that President Johnson faces and proceeds to compound exponentially. And of course for added spice, "Tricky Dick", makes cameo appearances whenever the warring parties of, "The Right", need an additional bit of behind the scenes mischief. There are many other complex people that play appear from Alan Greenspan to Whittaker Chambers, and they, like the major characters ensure there is an angle for anyone who picks up the book to either champion or condemn, or attack for the pure love of debate.

I am a great admirer of Mr. Buckley for his works of fiction and non-fiction. His last 2 books have been either clearly disappointing, or confusing. This is not the case with, "Getting It Right". This is a wonderful read from a great writer and mind, and a book that will appeal to a much wider readership than those that think if Mr. Buckley has written it, then it is only for subscribers to, "The National Review".

I bought both books and am returning the more expensive one, the Betz Guide.

Buckley's main character is flat. The conflict he will face is apparent and obvious early. The "big twist" at the end was predictable and meager.

Worse, I was never sure if Buckley knew what he wanted to write. A novel about a participant in the trials? A novel with a philosophical debate? An expose on the legal tenets used in the Nuremburg trials? Unfortunately, all of these were touched upon in the book, but none satisfactorily probed or developed in depth. Instead, the book was scattered and disorganized with the reader left to want more in each area.

Overall a very disappointing book about a topic that has so much to offer.

One should always keep in mind that Nuremberg had a profound impact on the world. That being said, writing about such a serious -- and, emotional -- topic cannot be taken lightly. William Buckley appears to have done just that. For example, he confuses Hess with Hoess. Additionally, introducing a fictional character on the docket with the leaders of the Third Reich trivilizes the importance of this trial. Why "add" another defendent when you already have twenty others that have been indicted for crimes conducted during the war?

Buckley delivered dribble when he could have given the readers something powerful. For this reason, the book is a let down. I was expecting something a lot better.

Plus, of course, we can follow a nice story about a German-American family and how their young son, in the US Army, fits
into all the international politics of the time.

A very engrossing book and one most of us will find it difficult
to put down.