All the virtues of Bill Buckley's earlier books are here-but this one is profoundly different. The year 1990 was a very good one, producing vintage Buckley. He celebrated deeply meaiiiivgful anniversaries: the fortieth year of his marriage; the fortieth since his graduation from Yale; and the thirty-fifth year of National Review, the magazine he founded and then decided-to considerable shock from readers-to retire from editing. In the year in which he became a senior citizen, he appeared, daringly, as a harpsichordist with two symphony orchestras; wrote a controversial book advocating voluntary national service, a proposal not calculated to endear him to his fellow conservatives; and endured the death of a close friend. Thus is completed (perhaps) the end of several affairs-and the capstone volume of a diarist-journal keeper-journalist, who has proved to be, over books at sea and on land (Cruising Speed, The Unmaking of a Mayor, Airborne, Atlantic High, Overdrive, and Racing 'Through Paradise), both his own Boswell and Johnson.