The Right to Vote

April 27, 2009
In 1969, the precocious 14-year-old Brookhiser wrote a cover story for National Review
and began to correspond with founding editor William F. Buckley Jr., who serves as both hero and, sometimes, villain of this wistful memoir. After graduating from Yale, the author became Buckley's designated successor, his rapid ascendancy mirroring the prodigious gains of the conservative movement as championed by the magazine and led by Ronald Reagan. The book, like the author's life, takes an abrupt turn when the mercurial Buckley writes him a letter to say that he no longer considers Brookhiser an appropriate candidate to succeed him. Brookhiser offers accounts of writing his book on Washington, Founding Father
, and his struggle with testicular cancer, but the book becomes less focused as the relationship between the author and his mentor becomes strained. Nevertheless, the author deftly sets his personal and professional biography in a sharply observed historical and intellectual context, while sharing his deep affection for—and occasional resentment of—Buckley with compelling candor.

Starred review from July 31, 2000
HAmerica's self-image as the land of democracy flows from the belief that we've long enjoyed universal suffrageDor at least aspired to it. Duke historian Keyssar (Out of Work: The First Century of Unemployment in Massachusetts) convincingly shows that, though distinctive in some ways, the evolution of the franchise in America is similar to that in other countries: highly contested, with retreats as well as advances, containing within it the sharp reflections of larger struggles for power. America's basic claim to exceptionalismDearly white manhood suffrageDwas, according to Keyssar, part historical accident and part mistake, adopted before a European-style urban working class emerged. Keyssar identifies four periods: one of expansion from the Constitution's signing to around 1850; a period of contraction lasting until around WWI, in which the upper and middle classes demonstrated hostility to universal suffrage; a period of mixed, minor adjustments lasting till the 1960s, when the fourth period beganDthe civil rights movementDwhich inaugurated the removal of most of the remaining barriers. Various historical dynamics, such as economic development, immigration and class relations, underlie this periodization, expressed, Keyssar says, in shifting ideologies: voting as a right versus voting as a privilege or trust, while lack of financial independence was repeatedly used to justify excluding whole categories of voters. These large background shifts outline the tortured ebb and flow of suffrage: the post-Civil War enfranchisement of blacks and its rollback, the 70-year struggle for women's suffrage, the restoration of black voting rights in the 1960s. This is a masterful historical account of a complex, contradictory legacy.