A Torch Kept Lit, the collection of obituaries written in real-time, is truly the great book William F. Buckley never knew that he’d written, a panoramic and novelesque tale of New York and the world in the late 20th century, a melange of Foreign Affairs, Vogue and National Review, the magazine that he founded around the conservative movement he led.

His precision, his perception, his generosity (compassionate conservatism!) and his prose style are on full display, as his essay on Truman Capote is better than anything Capote could have written, and a number of others — on Jackie Kennedy and John Lindsay, for instance — are equally dazzling.