Living on Fire

The Life of L. Brent Bozell Jr.

Daniel Kelly

• Publisher: Intercollegiate Studies Institute
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781497635487
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Biographies
• Index: Politics & International Relations

"A triumph... A moving, beautifully written biography." — National Review
From the beginning, L. Brent Bozell seemed destined for great things. An extraordinary orator, the young man with fiery red hair won a national debate competition in high school and later was elected president of Yale's storied Political Union, where his debating partner was his close friend William F. Buckley Jr. In less than a decade after graduating from Yale, Bozell helped Buckley launch National Review, became a popular columnist and speaker, and, most famously, wrote Barry Goldwater's landmark book The Conscience of a Conservative. But after setting his sights on high political office, Bozell took a different route in the 1960s. He abruptly moved his family to Spain; he founded a traditional Catholic magazine, Triumph, that quickly turned radical; he repudiated on religious grounds the U.S. Constitution; he made it his mission to transform America into a Catholic nation; he led the nation's first major antiabortion protest (featuring a militant group known as the Sons of Thunder); he severed ties with his erstwhile friends from the conservative movement, including Buckley (who was also his brother-in-law). By the mid-1970s, Bozell had fallen prey to bipolar disorder and alcoholism, leading life as if "manacled to a roller coaster." Biographer Daniel Kelly tells Bozell's remarkable story vividly and with sensitivity in Living on Fire. To write this book, Kelly interviewed dozens of friends and family members and gained unprecedented access to Bozell's private correspondence. The result is a richly textured portrait of a gifted, complex man—his triumphs as well as his struggles.

NOTES

One: The Bozells of Omaha

1	Scott Moore, current president of Bozell & Jacobs, to author, January 27, 2007.
2	Patricia Bozell Prom to author, January 4, 2007.
3	Maureen Bozell to author, February 27, 2007.
4	Patricia Buckley Bozell (hereafter, PBB) to author, July 11, 2006.
5	Copies of the speeches, along with newspaper clippings and photographs relating to the contest, provided by PBB.
6	Leo Bozell’s letter provided by PBB.
7	Patricia Bozell Prom to author, January 4, 2007; L. Brent Bozell (hereafter, LBB) to Patricia Bozell Prom, October 3, 1947, letter provided by PBB.
8	LBB, Mustard Seeds: A Conservative Becomes a Catholic (Front Royal, VA: Christendom Press, 2001), 2; Lucius Cervantes, SJ, to author, February 7, 2007; LBB to Patricia Bozell Prom, April 3, 1950, provided by PBB; LBB, “The New Catholic: Quo Vadis?” New Oxford Review 55 (March 1988): 20.
9	PBB to author, July 11, 2007.
10	PBB to author, July 11, 2007.

Two: Bulldog

1	LBB to Patricia Bozell Prom, February 20, 1949, letter provided by PBB.
2	Ibid., November 22, 1948, and February 20, 1949, letters provided by PBB.
3	Garry Wills, Confessions of a Conservative (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1979), 14–15.
4	John Judis, William F. Buckley Jr.: Patron Saint of the Conservatives (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988), 56–57; William F. Buckley Jr., Nearer, My God: An Autobiography of Faith (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1997), 258.
5	Judis, Buckley, 74; Charles Lam Markmann, The Buckleys: A Family Examined (New York: William Morrow, 1973), 59–60; PBB to author, November 20, 2007.
6	Buckley, Nearer, My God, 258–59; Judis, Buckley, 64; Yale Daily News, January 16, 1948, January 22, 1948, February 26, 1948.
7	Dwight Macdonald, Memoirs of a Revolutionist: Essays in Political Criticism (New York: Meridian Books, 1957), 333.
8	George H. Nash, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America since 1945 (New York: Basic Books, 1976), 427n72.
9	LBB to Patricia Bozell Prom, November 22, 1948, letter provided by PBB.
10	Ibid., October 3, 1948, and November 22, 1948, letters provided by PBB.
11	Ibid., October 7, 1948, letter provided by PBB.
12	Official Campaign Biography of L. Brent Bozell, 1964 Republican primary in Maryland’s Sixth Congressional District, provided by Neal B. Freeman; LBB, “Mustard Seeds,” Mustard Seeds, 2.
13	William F. Buckley Jr., Cruising Speed: A Documentary (New York: Putnam, 1971), 219; William F. Buckley Jr. to PBB, January 28, 2007, e-mail provided by PBB.
14	PBB to author, October 31, 2006.
15	Buckley, Nearer, My God, 260.
16	PBB to her parents, late 1938, William F. Buckley Jr. Papers, Sterling Memorial Library, Yale University.
17	William F. Buckley Jr., Miles Gone By: A Literary Autobiography (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2004), 5–6.
18	Ibid., 27.
19	New York Post, March 20, 1971; Osterweis quoted by Markmann, The Buckleys, 87; Carol Buckley, At the Still Point (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996), 44.
20	PBB to author, October 31, 2006.
21	Ibid.; Judis, Buckley, 57.
22	LBB to Patricia Bozell Prom, January 12, 1949; PBB to author, November 20, 2007; LBB to...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• Foreword by Neal B. Freeman
• Preface
• One The Bozells of Omaha
• Two Bulldog
• Three McCarthy and His Friends
• Four Standing athwart History
• Five Ghostwriter
• Six Magic Kingdom
• Seven Pulling Up Stakes
• Eight Defender of the Constitution
• Nine Defender of the Faith
• Ten The Cutting Edge
• Eleven Autumn in America
• Twelve Phantom Empire
• Thirteen Time to Die
• Fourteen Manacled to a Roller Coaster
• Fifteen Mercy
• Epilogue
• Notes
• Acknowledgments
• Index
• Copyright Page