NEWS
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THE NEW YORK TIMES
From left: Dave Pickoff/Associated Press; Associated Press
WHEN JAMES BALDWIN SQUARED OFF AGAINST WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY JR.
In 1965, the year of the Selma-to-Montgomery marches and the Watts riots, an ancillary skirmish played out across the Atlantic. Read full review
James Baldwin in New York in 1963.Credit...Dave Pickoff/Associated Press
LANGSTON HUGHES ON JAMES BALDWIN’S ‘NOTES OF A NATIVE SON’
This week, Thomas Meaney reviews Nicholas Buccola’s “The Fire Is Upon Us,” about the clash between James Baldwin and William F. Buckley Jr. In 1958, Langston Hughes wrote for The Times about “Notes of a Native Son,” Baldwin’s essays on race. One definition of the great artist might be the creator who projects the biggest dream in terms of the least person. The American native son who signs his name James Baldwin is quite a ways off from fitting such a definition of a great artist in writing, but he is not as far off as many another writer who deals in picture captions of journalese in the hope of capturing and retaining a wide public. Read full review
EDITOR’S CHOICE
12 New Books We Recommend This Week. See the full list.
THE ATLANTIC
Dave Pickoff / AP / Bettmann / Getty / The Atlantic
THE FAMOUS BALDWIN-BUCKLEY DEBATE STILL MATTERS TODAY
The packed auditorium was hushed. Here was a clash of diametrically opposed titans: In one corner was Baldwin, short, slender, almost androgynous with his still-youthful face, voice carrying the faintly cosmopolitan inflections he’d had for years. He was the debate’s radical, an esteemed writer unafraid to volcanically condemn white supremacy and the anti-black racism of conservative and liberal Americans alike. Read full review
LIT HUB
OUR 50 FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR
Some of the Literary Hub staff’s least favorite things of 2019, based on an impromptu poll*: wildfires, Star Wars corporate branding tie-ins, Poet Twitter, YA Twitter, Stupid Question Twitter, that tweet about someone being at capacity, Facebook, quickly changing pant styles, Kendall’s rap, The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the shoes that the teens wear, everything about Jeffrey Epstein, our staff soccer game being cancelled this week, the American health care system, “Bandersnatch,” Read full review
‘THE FIRE IS UPON US’ REVIEW: THE GREAT DEBATE
It was the publicist at the London publisher Corgi who, in January 1965, in collaboration with some students, had the bright idea of bringing James Baldwin to the Cambridge Union to take part in a formal debate. At the turn of 1965, Baldwin was, in the words of one writer of the time, “the monarch of the current literary jungle.” Read full review
WASHINGTON POST
NYC, 1965. (Associated Press/AP)
WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY JR. vs. JAMES BALDWIN: A RACIAL SHOWDOWN ON THE AMERICAN DREAM
Hundreds of thousands of people have watched the riveting 1965 debate between the two writers, one white, the other black, on YouTube. Read full review
CHICAGO TRIBUNE 2019 BIBLIORACLE AWARD FOR BOOK THAT WILL HELP YOU BETTER UNDERSTAND THE MESSED-UP NATURE OF THE WORLD
Has another year almost passed? How is such a thing possible? Have we survived? If we survived, has reading books had something to do with our survival? I like to think so. At least, I can’t really imagine navigating the thicket of reality without the companionship of books. There’s never enough room to celebrate all the great books I read this year, but let these stand in for the whole. See the full list
THE UNDEFEATED
Our 25 can’t-miss books of 2019
Behold! It’s The Undefeated’s second annual list of books you’ve just got to read — right in time for holiday shopping season. With only 25 slots, we try to cultivate a mix of adult fiction, nonfiction, children’s and young adult options. And of course we’ve got you covered on all things sports. Happy reading! See full list
ABC NEWS
WHOOPI GOLDBERG’S BIRTHDAY GIFT IS SHARING HER FAVORITE THINGS ON ‘THE VIEW’
Celebrating Whoopi Goldberg's birthday at "The View" gives everyone a chance to get in on all of the fun! Sunny Hostin joined the birthday girl to help share her favorite things.
Listen as Whoopi Goldberg list The Fire Is Upon Us
LAW & LIBERTY
THE FIRE AND THE DREAM
Conservative leader William F. Buckley Jr. and black writer James Baldwin engaged, or engaged rather incompletely, in a celebrated debate on the ongoing civil rights crisis at Cambridge University in February 1965. As can easily happen in a race-related argument, there seems to have been no real communication between them, although each made worthy points. As we would also expect, the students who filled the hall to capacity heartily cheered the anguished radical Baldwin, who won the customary post-debate vote by a wide margin. Read full review
FLORIDA COURIER
Brando Enterprises/HarperCollins Publishers/TNS
BALDWIN V. BUCKLEY
The motion before the house – “The American Dream is at the expense of the American Negro” – was crafted to get Baldwin and Buckley to address the relationship between freedom, equality, and opportunity and the “racial nightmare” that was tearing the nation apart. Read full review
NEW YORK JOURNAL OF BOOKS
THE FIRE IS UPON US: JAMES BALDWIN, WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY JR., AND THE DEBATE OVER RACE IN AMERICA
On February 18, 1965, a 150-year-old debating society at Cambridge University in England brought together two prominent intellectuals from the antipodes of American race relations, National Review editor William F. Buckley and novelist and essayist James Baldwin, to debate the topic “The American dream is at the expense of the American Negro.” Read full review
MEDIUM
NICHOLAS BUCCOLA’S THE FIRE IS UPON US: “FOR THE AMERICAN RIGHT, THE PRICE OF POWER HAS BEEN A DEAL WITH THE DEVIL OF WHITE SUPREMACY
William F. Buckley, I suppose, would have wanted to be remembered as a powerful and charismatic public intellectual for conservatism and one of the foundational thinkers in the late 20th-/early 21st-century formation of conservative thought and the current Republican Party. Read full review
BOSTON REVIEW
BEFORE AMERICA BURNED
A new book explores how William F. Buckley, Jr., and James Baldwin came to share a stage in 1965 and what their debate over black inequality reveals about the modern conservative movement.
Read full review
LEONARD LOPATE, WBAI RADIO
LEONARD LOPATE AT LARGE ON WBAI RADIO with Nicholas Buccola on James Baldwin, William F. Buckley Jr. and America's race problem. Listen here
The TLS.CO
THE GHETTO AND THE MANSION
The battle between James Baldwin and William F. Buckley Jr.
Four celebrated American writers were close contemporaries, born in the early 1920s within less than three years of each other: Norman Mailer (1923–2007), James Baldwin (1924–87), Gore Vidal (1925–2012) and William F. Buckley Jr (1925–2008), one Jewish, one black, one Roman Catholic, two straight, two gay. Read full article
THE CRITIC
THE POET AND THE PATRICIAN
Stephen Parkinson reviews The Fire is Upon Us: James Baldwin, William F Buckley Jr, and the debate over race in America, by Nicholas Buccola
In January 1965, Peter Fullerton received the sort of telephone call most presidents of the Cambridge Union dream of. Fullerton, a history undergraduate, already had the privilege of presiding over the famous debating society’s 150th anniversary; now an opportunity arose to host an event which would ensure his term would be remembered for decades to come. Read full article