Bill Kauffman
MEMBER OF THE WE R 3C, INC. BOARD OF TRUSTEES
Bill Kauffman is a well-published author and has been acclaimed as one of America’s funniest and wisest writers. Considered by some to be a conservative of the highest order, and by others as a romantic reactionary and a writer with an odd, energetic optimism, Bill has authored books that are most certainly appealing, elegantly written, and entirely American. As noted by one reviewer, “Kauffman has made an admirable career of celebrating unsung heroes and lost causes. His books include melancholy reflections on the disappearance of small-town life (Dispatches from the Muckdog Gazette); a profound study of America’s localist writers, artists, and thinkers (Look Homeward, America); brilliant accounts of American non-interventionism and antiwar conservatism (America First! and Ain’t My America); and a wonderfully eccentric biography of Luther Martin, the cantankerous anti-Federalist (Forgotten Founder, Drunken Prophet). The last makes clear that Kauffman knows his Founders as well as any scholar on the subject.”
…acclaimed as one of America’s funniest and wisest writers…
Bill is the author of nine books: Every Man a King (Soho Press/1989), a novel, which was recently rescued from the remainder bin by a New York Sun article proclaiming it the best political satire of the last century (the Sun thereupon set); Country Towns of New York (McGraw-Hill/1994), a travel book about God’s country; America First! Its History, Culture and Politics (Prometheus/1995), a cultural history of isolationism which Benjamin Schwarz in the Atlantic called the best introduction to the American anti-imperialist tradition; With Good Intentions? Reflections on the Myth of Progress in America (Praeger/1998), a sympathetic account of critics of highways, school consolidation, a standing army, and the Siren Progress; Dispatches from the Muckdog Gazette: A Mostly Affectionate Account of a Small Town’s Fight to Survive(Henry Holt/2003; Picador ppb. 2004), a memoirish book about his hometown which won the 2003 national “Sense of Place” award from Writers & Books; Look Homeward, America: In Search of Reactionary Radicals and Front-Porch Anarchists (ISI/2006), which the American Library Association named one of the best books of 2006 and which won the Andrew Eiseman Writers Award; Ain’t My America: The Long Noble History of Antiwar Conservatism and Middle American Anti-Imperialism (Henry Holt/ Metropolitan/2008), which Barnes & Noble named one of the best books of 2008;Forgotten Founder: Drunken Prophet: The Life of Luther Martin (ISI/2008), a biography of a brilliant dipsomaniacal Anti-Federalist who warned us this was going to happen; and Bye Bye, Miss American Empire (Chelsea Green/2010), a cheerful account of dissolution.
Bill has also written several hundred articles, essays, and book reviews over the years for, among others, The American Scholar, the Los Angeles Times Book Review, The Nation, New York History, USA Today, Newsday, The Australian, The Guardian (Manchester),Whole Earth Review, Vegetarian Times, Chronicles, the Independent and The Spectator of London, Counterpunch, Orion, University Bookman, and Utne Reader. He is a regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal and The American Conservative and has written for numerous publications, including The American Scholar, the Los Angeles Times Book Review, The Nation, New York History, USA Today, Newsday, The Australian, The Guardian (Manchester), Whole Earth Review,Vegetarian Times, Chronicles, the Independent and The Spectator of London,Counterpunch, Orion, University Bookman, and Utne Reader, inter alia.
Bill has also lectured or given readings at many schools, including Augustana College, Brown University, Emory University, Finger Lakes Community College, Genesee Community College, Georgetown University, Jefferson Community College, Loyola University (Chicago), Marquette University, Mount Saint Mary’s University, Patrick Henry College, Seton Hall University, SUNY College at Buffalo, Tufts University, the University of Colorado at Boulder, the University of Louisville, the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, Utica College, and Wellesley College; and he has spoken at such venues as the University Club (New York), the Kansas History Teachers’ Association, the Kansas City (Missouri) Public Library, the Baltimore Bar Library, the Target Center in Minneapolis (Rally for the Republic), the Cato Institute, and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute in Wilmington, Delaware.
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