Fire Is Upon Us

<p><b>How the legendary debate between a civil rights firebrand and the father of modern conservatism illuminates America's racial divide</b> <p/>On February 18 1965 an overflowing crowd packed the Cambridge Union in Cambridge England to witness a historic televised debate between James Baldwin the leading literary voice of the civil rights movement and William F. Buckley Jr. a fierce critic of the movement and America's most influential conservative intellectual. The topic was the American dream is at the expense of the American Negro and no one who has seen the debate can soon forget it. Nicholas Buccola's <i>The Fire Is upon Us</i> is the first book to tell the full story of the event the radically different paths that led Baldwin and Buckley to it and how the debate and the decades-long clash between the men illuminates the racial divide that continues to haunt America today.</p>