Right from the Beginning is the personal memoir of Pat Buchanan, the story of how the most controversial conservative in America got where he is today, and how he came to believe as he does. It is the intimate first-person account of how the third son in a devout Catholic family of nine children followed his expulsion from Georgetown University at age 21 with achieving the distinction, two years later, without experience in journalism or politics, of being the youngest editorial writer in America; then, at 26, becoming Richard M. Nixon's confidant as he began, despite being a twice-defeated ex-Vice President, the political comeback of the century.

But Right from the Beginning is more than a personal memoir, it is the sometimes hilarious, sometimes sad, poignant, and moving story of the Buchanan family; a book that brings alive again America in the forties and fifties, when "the faith was unquestioned and patriotism unconstrained".