Chilton Williamson, Jr.

Williamson was born in New York City.[4] His father was a former Barnard history professor, Chilton Williamson.[4]

Williamson graduated from Trinity School, and attended college in Maine for a year before transferring to Columbia, graduating in 1969.[4] He majored in European history, and studied American history.[4]

Williamson moved in 1979 to Wyoming,[5][1] where he worked on a drilling rig in the gas fields.[4] He then wrote the book Roughnecking It (1982) and later said "It was the best year of my life, and I made lasting friends."[4]

He also lived two years in New Mexico.[5][1]

1976–1989, he was a literary editor of The National Review.[5][1]

In 1989 he started writing for Chronicles, where he wrote the columns "The Hundredth Meridian" and "What's Wrong With the World".[1] Williamson was its senior editor for books since 1989, and became editor of the magazine in June 2015.[4] The book The Hundredth Meridian (2005) is a collection of columns he wrote for Chronicles, in which the Western landscape becomes a character in itself.[4]

Williamson has also written for the publications Catholic World Report, Harper's, The New Republic, Commonweal, The New Leader, The American Spectator, Crisis [6] and The Nation.[4]

In The Conservative Bookshelf, Williamson selected fifty books.[7]

Williamson has written works of fiction, narrative nonfiction, and nonfiction, some of which are:[5][8][6][9]

• Saltbound: A Block Island Winter (Methuen, 1980)
• Roughnecking It: Or, Life in the Overthrust (1982)[4]
• Trilogy:
  • Desert Light (St. Martin's, 1987) (Novel)[4]
  • The Homestead (1990) (Novel)[4]
  • Jerusalem, Jerusalem! (2017, Chronicles Press) (Novel)[4]
• Mexico Way (2008)[4]
• The Education of Héctor Villa
• After Tocqueville: The Promise and Failure of Democracy (ISI Books, 2012)
• The Hundredth Meridian (A collection of 22 columns in Chronicles)
• The Conservatives Bookshelf

• https://www.chiltonwilliamson.com/