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Bill Kauffman

Bill Kauffman is the author of eleven books, among them Dispatches from the Muckdog Gazette (Henry Holt), Ain’t My America (Metropolitan), Look Homeward, America (ISI), and Poetry Night at the Ballpark (FPR Books). His next book, Upstaters, is due from SUNY Press in 2026. He is a columnist for The American Conservative and The Spectator World. Bill wrote the screenplay for the 2013 feature film Copperhead. He is a founding editor of Front Porch Republic and has served as a legislative assistant to Senator Pat Moynihan, editor for various magazines and publishers, and vice president of the Batavia Muckdogs, a professional baseball team that was euthanized by Major League Baseball. He lives with his wife Lucine in his native Genesee County, New York.

Articles by Bill Kauffman

St. Dennis of the Bleachers

It’s been almost six years now and I suspect he’s still talking St. Peter’s ear off.
June 14, 2010

June Cleaving

William Cullen Bryant selected the month of his death: I gazed upon the glorious sky    And the green mountains round And thought, that when I came to lie   …
June 10, 2010

Groovin’ with Arthur Schlesinger

The great libertarian journalist Jesse Walker calls this Cold War liberal folkery (http://reason.com/blog/2010/05/27/you-hit-me-baby-like-an-atomic) "the most earnest song ever written." Hilariously bad. Enjoy! 
May 28, 2010

DON’T SHOOT THAT MOCKINGBIRD!

Besides, the harshest criticisms of any place come from those who truly love and belong to it.
May 28, 2010

Idaho May…

"Would that thou couldst last for aye, Merry, ever merry May" --William D. Gallagher Well, it can't. But herewith my May column from The American Conservative on a contumacious patriot of…
May 13, 2010

Bacevich to Miller to Lasch

How's that for a triple play? Andrew Bacevich reviews Eric Miller's new biography of Christopher Lasch.
May 7, 2010

Boxing (172 miles north of) Helena

My review of Jason Kelly's entertaining account of George Babbitt as boxing promoter, Shelby's Folly, is in today's Wall Street Journal.
April 6, 2010

Hello Again From an April Fool

I love to go in the capricious days of April and hunt violets.
April 1, 2010

Although it’s been said many times, many ways…

BURNED-OVER DISTRICT, NY---Merry Christmas to all friends (and enemies, too) of Front Porch Republic! Don't you worry 'bout that quaffer-scoffer in the Quad Cities. Come December 24 he'll be reading…
December 16, 2009

“There is No Peace on Earth,” I Said

The Prince of Peace---rather a seditious title in our age of Homeland Security and endless war, eh? "Love thy neighbor" and "Thou Shalt Not Kill" were  no less subversive 95 years ago, when…
December 8, 2009

My Favorite Marsden

In today's Wall Street Journal I review Elyssa East's Dogtown: Death and Enchantment in a New England Ghost Town: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703939404574566772944605580.html. Among her subjects is the New England painter Marsden Hartley,…
December 1, 2009

The Grinch Who Moved Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving---or pre-Christmas, as it is known in marketing circles---is upon us, and between reading Truman Capote ("A Thanksgiving Visitor") and Lydia Maria Child ("Thanksgiving Day") and tossing around the football…
November 25, 2009