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2004-12-05 00:00:00
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17644-1
|
Robert Shogan
|
The Riddle of Power
|
Los Angeles Times reporter, Robert Shogan discussed his book, The Riddle of Power: Presidential Leadership from Truman to Bush. Based on his thirty years in journalism, Mr. Shogan decided to assess the last seven presidents of the United States to try and solve the riddle of how presidents translate their constitutional power into working authority. Mr. Shogan also attempted to determine how some presidents become respected, powerful leaders and other seem to be discredited or disgraced. Based on the three criteria of ideology, values, and character, he determined that Truman, Kennedy, Nixon, and Reagan had successful presidency, while Eisenhower, Johnson, Ford, and Carter did not. He has yet to make a determination on Bush, which will depend on how Bush handles the federal deficit and the post-Cold War world order.
| 1991-04-21T00:00:00
|
0452267714
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/17644-1
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162328-1
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William Cooper
|
Jefferson Davis, American
|
A comprehensive examination of the public and private life of the West Point graduate who fought in the Mexican War and became Secretary of War in the Pierce administration, an influential U.S. Senator from Mississippi, and eventually the first and only President of the Confederate States.
| 2001-04-08T00:00:00
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0394569164
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/162328-1
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94696-1
|
Paul Nagel
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John Quincy Adams: A Public Life, A Private Life
|
Two decades ago, Paul Nagel experienced a change of heart as a person and as a writer. For thirty years, he had participated in university life as an historian and administrator. During that time, he continued the scholarly interests he had developed in graduate school. This meant he wrote sometimes impenetrable books and articles setting forth for a small audience the ideas and images Americans used when they thought about their nation during the nineteenth century. Then, in the mid-1970's, Nagel realized he was no longer happy with academic life and with intellectual history. He found he wanted to aim his books toward general readers rather than professional peers. Consequently, he traded campus life for the solitude and risks of full-time writing. Appropriately, his new specialty was quite different from the old. Instead of abstractions, Nagel took up lives of notable people and began writing as a biographer. Whatever else may be said about this switch, there have been no regrets on Nagel's part. Fortunately, Nagel has been married to a genealogisc and librarian, Joan Peterson, whose aid and encouragement he emphasizes made his embrace of biography possible. The result has been six books, ranging from the latest, John Ouincy Adams: A Public Life, A Private Life, to a prize-winning portrayal of Missouri, his native state. The others have included two additional volumes about the Adams family, as well as biographies of the Lee family of Virginia and of the artist George Caleb Bingham. Happily, most of these books became selections of the Book-of-the-Month Club and the History Book Club. Now Nagel is steering toward autobiography as he begins a book about his German forebears and their influence upon him. He writes in Minneapolis where he and Joan reside. During their fifty years together, the Nagels have lived in ten states, mainly Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, and Virginia. Along the way, they raised three sons and numerous cats. Besides cats, Nagel's other interests are hiking, reading biography, and joining his wife in genealogical digging. All of these, however, fade when there are visits to offspring who live in London. Recognition of Nagel's writing has led to his election as a cultural laureate of Virginia and as a fellow of the Society of American Historians, the Pilgrim Society, and the Massachusetts Historical Society. He has been president of the Southern Historical Association and a trustee of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. He is a corresponding editor of American Heritage. —from the publisher's website
| 1998-01-04T00:00:00
|
0679404449
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/94696-1
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75609-1
|
Andrew Ferguson
|
Fools' Names, Fools' Faces
|
Mr. Ferguson talked about his recent book, Fools' Names, Fools' Faces, published by Atlantic Monthly Press. It is a collection of essays from 1986 to the present. He talked about his years of covering Washington politics and some of the scathing remarks he made about both Republicans and Democrats in the book. He also talked about various trends in U.S. culture and politics over the past ten or fifteen years.
| 1996-11-03T00:00:00
|
0871136511
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/75609-1
|
71073-1
|
David Reynolds
|
Walt Whitman's America: A Cultural Biography
|
Professor Reynolds talked about his recent book, Walt Whitman's America: A Cultural Biography, published by Alfred A. Knopf. He analyzed Whitman's contradictory stances on race, class and gender which came from his close relationship with the social and cultural milieu of contemporaty Jacksonian culture through not only his major poetic works, but his personal correspondence, journalism and other sources. He also examined the the aging process both in the man and his ideas.
| 1996-04-28T00:00:00
|
0679767096
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/71073-1
|
160073-1
|
Martin Goldsmith
|
The Inextinguishable Symphony
|
Set amid the growing tyranny of Germany's Third Reich, here is the riveting and emotional tale of Gunther Goldschmidt and Rosemarie Gumpert, two courageous Jewish musicians who struggled to perform under unimaginable circumstances—and found themselves falling in love in a country bent on destroying them. In the spring of 1933, as the full weight of Germany's National Socialism was brought to bear against Germany's Jews, more than 8,000 Jewish musicians, actors, and other artists found themselves expelled from their positions with German orchestras, opera companies, and theater groups, and Jews were forbidden even to attend "Aryan" theaters. Later that year, the Judische Kulturbund, or Jewish Culture Association, was created under the auspices of Joseph Goebbels's Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. Providing for Jewish artists to perform for Jewish audiences, the Kulturbund, which included an orchestra, an opera company, and an acting troupe, became an unlikely haven for Jewish artists and offered much-needed spiritual enrichment for a besieged people—while at the same time providing the Nazis with a powerful propaganda tool for showing the rest of the world how well Jews were ostensibly being treated under the Third Reich. It was during this period that twenty-two-year-old flutist Gunther Goldschmidt was expelled from music school because of his Jewish roots. While preparing to flee the ever-tightening grip of Nazi Germany for Sweden, Gunther was invited to fill in for an ailing flutist with the Frankfurt Kulturbund Orchestra. It was there, during rehearsals, that he met the dazzling nineteen-year-old violist Rosemarie Gumpert—a woman who would change the course of his life. Despite their strong attraction, Gunther eventually embarked for the safety of Sweden as planned, only to risk his life six months later returning to the woman he could not forget—and to the perilous country where hatred and brutality had begun to flourish. Here is Gunther and Rosemarie's story, a deeply moving tale of love and the remarkable resilience of the human spirit in the face of terror and persecution. Beautifully and simply told by their son, National Public Radio commentator Martin Goldsmith, The Inextinguishable Symphony takes us from the cafes of Frankfurt, where Rosemarie and Gunther fell in love, to the concert halls that offered solace and hope for the beleaguered Jews, to the United States, where the two made a new life for themselves that would nevertheless remain shadowed by the fate of their families. Along with the fate of Gunther and Rosemarie's families, this rare memoir also illuminates the Kulturbund and the lives of other fascinating figures associated with it, including Kubu director Kurt Singer—a man so committed to the organization that he objected to his artists' plans for flight, fearing that his productions would suffer. The Kubu, which included some of the most prominent artists of the day and young performers who would gain international fame after the war, became the sole source of culture and entertainment for Germany's Jews. A poignant testament to the enduring vitality of music and love even in the harshest times, The Inextinguishable Symphony gives us a compelling look at an important piece of Holocaust history that has heretofore gone largely untold. —from the publisher's website
| 2001-01-07T00:00:00
|
0471350974
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/160073-1
|
164961-1
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Walter Berns
|
Making Patriots
|
Samuel Johnson once remarked that "patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels," but is he right? Recent events such as the bombing of federal buildings and the formation of threatening militias in the name of patriotism suggest that he may have been on to something. But the United States has also seen its share of heroes: patriots who, over the course of history, have willingly put their lives at risk for this country and, especially, its principles. And this is even more remarkable given that the United States is a country founded on the principles of equality and democracy that encourage individuality and autonomy far more readily than public spiritedness and self-sacrifice. Walter Berns's Making Patriots is a pithy and provocative essay on precisely this paradox. How is patriotism inculcated in a system that, some argue, is founded on self-interest? Expertly and intelligibly guiding the reader through the history and philosophy of patriotism in a republic, from the ancient Greeks through contemporary life, Berns considers the unique nature of patriotism in the United States and its precarious state as we enter the twenty-first century. And he argues that while both public education and the influence of religion once helped to foster a public-minded citizenry, the very idea of patriotism is currently under attack. Berns finds the best answers to his questions in the thought and words of Abraham Lincoln, who understood perhaps better than anyone what the principles of democracy meant and what price adhering to them may exact. The graves at Arlington and Gettysburg and Omaha Beach in Normandy bear witness to the fact that self-interested individuals can become patriots, and Making Patriots is a compelling exploration of how this was done and how it might be again. —from the publisher's website
| 2001-08-19T00:00:00
|
0226044378
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/164961-1
|
59514-1
|
Merrill Peterson
|
Lincoln in American Memory
|
Professor Peterson discussed his new book Lincoln in American Memory. The book focuses on the effect the administration of Abraham Lincoln has had on governing in the U.S. He also spoke about the reasons he decided to write the book.
| 1994-08-14T00:00:00
|
0195096452
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/59514-1
|
184075-1
|
Peter Wallner
|
Franklin Pierce: New Hampshire's Favorite Son
|
—from the publisher's website The most recent biography of Franklin Pierce was published nearly seventy-five years ago. Yet the nation’s least known president is also one of the most charming, charismatic, and interesting men to ever hold the nation’s highest office. Described by his best friend Nathaniel Hawthrone as “deep, deep, deep,” with “most of the chief elements of a great ruler,” Pierce is also the greatest trial lawyer in New Hampshire history. A master politician at the state level, Pierce ruled over the most consistently successful state Democratic Party in the Northeast, before he and his supporters devised the executed the plan to capture the national party’s presidential nomination in 1852. The first of two volumes on the life of Franklin Pierce, Wallner’s thoroughly researched, engagingly written account of Pierce’s rise to national prominence will surprise readers with accounts of the many triumphs and tragedies of Pierce’s life leading up to his presidency.
| 2004-11-28T00:00:00
|
0975521616
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/184075-1
|
11988-1
|
Michael Barone
|
Our Country: The Shaping of America from Roosevelt to Reagan
|
Mr. Barone discussed his recent book Our Country: The Shaping of America from Roosevelt to Reagan, published by The Free Press. He talked about America's leadership from the Roosevelt administration through President Reagan with emphasis on the country's political and economic development.
| 1990-04-22T00:00:00
|
0029018625
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/11988-1
|
7773-1
|
Stanley Karnow
|
In Our Image: America's Empire in the Philippines
|
Stanley Karnow, author of "In Our Image: America's Empire in the Philippines," traces America's colonial experience in the Philippines. Beginning with the U.S. victory over the Spanish at Manila in 1898, Karnow discusses the process of "Americanization" and the impact of U.S. policies on the Philippines. Significant events such as the influence of General Douglas MacArthur, the rise and reign of President Marcos, and the revolution that brought President Corazon Aquino to power are examined. Mr. Karnow concludes by predicting what will happen to the Philippines in the next 10-20 years. Mr. Karnow also talked about his 1983 book, Vietnam: A History.
| 1989-05-28T00:00:00
|
0345328167
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/7773-1
|
109118-1
|
Barbara Crossette
|
The Great Hill Stations of Asia
|
For Europeans and later Americans, the civil administrator and his clerk, the merchant and the missionary, daily life was less a matter of advancing the glory of God or empire than a daily battle for physical survival. Throughout Asia, colonialists established "hill stations" as cool retreats from unfamiliar and often unhealthy climes in which they were attempting to govern. Constructed to look like "home," these hill stations became targets for nationalistic disparagement when the countries became independent. In recent years, however, the hill stations of Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Burma, Malaysia, Vietnam, and the Philippines have been reclaimed by the newly rich, who have benefited from Asia's increasing economic prominence. The Great Hill Stations of Asia, written by veteran journalist Barbara Crossette, who has spent years covering Asia, chronicles the legacy of the hill stations. With colonialism now history, the people who inherited them and tourists from around the world have rediscovered these little towns with their parish churches, libraries, and flower gardens and are remaking them in new images. Part armchair travel, part political history, part social commentary, The Great Hill Stations of Asia is the first look across Asia to tell the story of these charming hill stations, often through the eyes and the words of those who created and visited them over the years. How It All Began The Hills of Pakistan An Indian Sextet Sri Lanka's Tea Country Forgotten Burma A Malaysian Mix Dutch Indonesia Rebirth in Vietnam Philippines Americana —from the publisher's website
| 1998-08-23T00:00:00
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0813333261
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/109118-1
|
65858-1
|
DeWayne Wickham
|
Woodholme: A Black Man's Story of Growing Up Alone
|
DeWayne Wickham discussed his book, "Woodholme: A Black Man's Story of Growing Up Alone," published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. It focuses on how he dealt with growing up in a Baltimore project after his father murdered his mother and then committed suicide when he was eight years old. He also talked about his long interest in reading and journalism.
| 1995-07-09T00:00:00
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0374292833
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/65858-1
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168015-1
|
Randall Kennedy
|
Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word
|
Nigger : it is arguably the most consequential social insult in American history, though, at the same time, a word that reminds us of the ironies and dilemmas, tragedies and glories of the American experience. In this tour de force, distinguished Harvard Law School professor Randall Kennedy author of the highly acclaimed Race, Crime, and the Law put[s] a tracer on nigger , to identify how it has been used and by whom, while analyzing the controversies to which it has given rise. With unprecedented candor and insight Kennedy explores such questions as: How should nigger be defined? Is it, as some have declared, necessarily more hurtful than other racial epithets? Do blacks have a right to use nigger even as others do not? Should the law view nigger baiting as a provocation strong enough to reduce the culpability of a person who responds violently to it? Should a person be fired from his or her job for saying nigger ? How might the destructiveness of nigger be assuaged? To be ignorant of the meanings and effects of nigger , says Kennedy, is to render oneself vulnerable to all manner of peril. This book brilliantly and sensitively addresses that concern. —from the publisher's website
| 2002-03-03T00:00:00
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0375421726
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/168015-1
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66914-1
|
Emory Thomas
|
Robert E. Lee: A Biography
|
Professor Emory Thomas discussed his book, "Robert E. Lee: A Biography," published by W.W. Norton. The book covers Lee's family background and Civil War career. General Lee lived only five years after the end of the war, during which time he was president of a small college. Professor Thomas discussed the image of General Lee and how it has been "revised" to that of a troubled, shy person. Professor Thomas also talked about his own writing and his life in academia.
| 1995-09-10T00:00:00
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0393316319
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/66914-1
|
10631-1
|
John Barry
|
The Ambition & the Power
|
John Barry describes his book The Ambition and the Power as "a case study of how Washington really works." Barry looks at the consolidation of power by House speaker Jim Wright and follows Wright through his resignation after charges were made against him by the House ethics committee. In this interview, Barry discusses the inside seat he was given by Wright. Appealing to Wright's "sense of history," Barry was even allowed access to sensitive staff meetings. Additionally, Barry discusses the changed House of Representatives without Jim Wright, specifically the role of the Rules committee. He also discusses the role of journalists in covering the Congress.
| 1990-01-14T00:00:00
|
0831783028
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/10631-1
|
8879-1
|
Jack Germond
|
Whose Broad Stripes & Bright Stars
|
In their book, Whose Broad Stripes and Bright Stars: The Trivial Pursuit of the Presidency 1988, Germond and Witcover give a retrospective analysis of the 1988 presidential election. Calling the campaign a "tug-of-war over the flag," they discuss the patriotic issues that arose and are critical of the manner in which the press handled such matters. They specifically focus on the role of the campaign managers and point out the "defining events" leading up to the election. They share particularly interesting stories of the actual interviews that they conducted with candidates and managers.
| 1989-08-27T00:00:00
|
0517074532
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/8879-1
|
172182-1
|
Charles Slack
|
Noble Obsession
|
—from the publisher's website A gripping odyssey of intense rivalry -- and the race to create the miracle substance of the industrial age: rubber. Rubber was to the 1830s what the Internet boom was to the 1990s: a flawed but potentially world-altering discovery that made and destroyed fortunes. It took the vision, courage, and perseverance of one man -- Charles Goodyear -- to reinvent rubber into the indispensable substance it is today. Noble Obsession is a riveting work of history that reads like enthralling fiction. It tells how Goodyear, a single-minded genius, risked his own life and his family’s in a quest to unlock the secrets of rubber, and how Thomas Hancock, the scholarly English inventor who raced against Goodyear, ultimately robbed him of fame and fortune. Filled with villains, con men, and entrepreneurs, and brimming with fascinating facts about the science and business of rubber, Noble Obsession takes readers from the jungles of Brazil to the laboratories of Europe to the courtrooms of America to tell one of the strangest and most affecting sagas in the history of human discovery.
| 2002-10-27T00:00:00
|
0786867892
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/172182-1
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65870-1
|
Armstrong Williams
|
Beyond Blame: How We Can Succeed by Breaking the Dependency Barrier
|
Armstrong Williams discussed his book, "Beyond Blame: How We Can Succeed by Breaking the Dependency Barrier," published by the Free Press. It focuses on two aspects of blame in U.S. society. He argues that people must stop blaming others for their asocial behaviors, but the second meaning is that there are some young people who have been so neglected that they are beyond blame for their behavior. He urges African Americans to take more responsibility for their lives and the futures of their children. He also claimed that affirmative action demeans minorities and blames the failures of black males on the public school system, overprotective elders, and the imbalance of social programs.
| 1995-07-16T00:00:00
|
0029353653
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/65870-1
|
163492-1
|
Susan Dunn
|
The Three Roosevelts: Patrician Leaders Who Transformed America
|
The leadership of Theodore, Franklin, and Eleanor Roosevelt dramatically reshaped the political landscape of our nation, from TR's Square Deal to FDR's New Deal and wartime leadership to Eleanor Roosevelt's pivotal role in the early days of the United Nations. The Three Roosevelts is the first biography to combine the intertwining lives of these three leaders, who emerged from the closed society of New York's Knickerbocker elite to become unwavering enemies of economic privilege and the most prominent American political family of the twentieth century. As Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-winning author James MacGregor Burns and acclaimed historian Susan Dunn follow the evolution of the progressive Roosevelt political philosophy, they illuminate how Theodore's vision and example would inspire the careers of his fifth cousin Franklin and niece Eleanor. The Three Roosevelts traces TR's transformation from Harvard-bred socialite to Republican reformer, president, and Bull Moose radical who declared war on the "wealthy scoundrels" and plutocrats. Franklin Roosevelt would continue this crusade as he closely followed TR's example, imitating his career track to the White House. After FDR's death, Eleanor carried on the progressive Roosevelt legacy through personal activism and advocacy, becoming a tireless champion of the rights of women, minorities, and the poor. Insightful and authoritative, The Three Roosevelts is a fascinating portrait of three of America's most forceful leaders, whose legacy is as controversial today as their vigorous brand of progressive politics was in their own lifetimes. —from the publisher
| 2001-05-06T00:00:00
|
0871137801
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/163492-1
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154186-1
|
Isaac Stern
|
My First 79 Years
|
Isaac Stern, who for more than 60 years has been a great and greatly loved performing artist, shares not only the story of his rise to eminence but also his rich personal life, as well as his feelings about music in general and his love of the violin, in particular. —from the publisher's website
| 2000-01-23T00:00:00
|
0679451307
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/154186-1
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182096-1
|
George McGovern
|
The Essential America: Our Founders and the Liberal Tradition
|
—from the publisher's website Liberalism is the oldest and most enduring American tradition, a philosophy and way of life we inherited from the Founding Fathers. This is the central idea of The Essential America by George McGovern, America's best-known (and most consistent) liberal. Referring us to our moral and spiritual foundations, McGovern not only presents a resounding defense of liberalism as "the most practical and hopeful compass to guide the American ship of state" but offers specific proposals for keeping the tradition vibrant. The Essential America proposes programs for feeding the world's malnourished children. Rather than sending our armies abroad, McGovern spells out policies that confront the causes of terrorism. He proposes cutting our military budget (echoing Dwight D. Eisenhower's powerful warning about the military-industrial complex). He condemns preemptive war, criticizes tax cuts for the rich, and warns against government for the powerful minority. Americans have traditionally stood for progress, generosity, tolerance, and protection of the needy, McGovern states -- as well as for multi- lateralism in foreign policy and "a decent respect for the opinions of mankind." He reminds us that while creative tension between liberalism and conservatism is the genius of American politics, it is the liberals who have been responsible for every forward step in our national history. They built "the Essential America."
| 2004-09-12T00:00:00
|
0743269276
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/182096-1
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42686-1
|
J. Bowyer Bell
|
The Irish Troubles: A Generation of Violence 1967-1992
|
Mr. Bell, author of The Irish Troubles: A Generation of Violence, 1967-1992, published by St. Martin's Press, described his research for the book. He said he conducted over 10,000 hours of interviews for the nearly 1,000 pages of text in the book, which focuses on the conflict between Protestants and Catholics in Ireland and the United Kingdom.
| 1993-06-06T00:00:00
|
0312088272
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/42686-1
|
9892-1
|
Felix Rodriguez
|
Shadow Warrior
|
Shadow Warrior: The CIA Hero of a Hundred Unknown Battles tells the story of Felix Rodriguez. Born in Cuba in 1941, he came to the U.S. to attend high school in Pennsylvania to fulfill dreams of becoming an engineer. However, after witnessing the rise of Fidel Castro in his native land he dedicated his life to opposing communism. As a CIA operative, he was involved in the ill-fated Bay of Pigs operation. In the following years he was involved in the tracking of the revolutionary Che Guevara. In this interview Rodriguez offers his first-hand account of capturing Guevara in Bolivia and his conversation with him before Guevara's execution. Also, Rodriguez discusses his more recent testimony before the Iran-Contra committee in 1987. He states that part of his motivation for writing the book (co-authored with John Weisman) is to tell his side of the story.
| 1989-11-12T00:00:00
|
0671667211
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/9892-1
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70352-1
|
Clarence Page
|
Showing My Color: Impolite Essays on Race & Identity
|
Clarence Page discussed his book, "Showing My Color: Impolite Essays on Race and Identity," published by Harper Collins. It is a collection of essays which focuses on the continuing importance of color in U.S. society. He also spoke about the past and present status of African-American journalists.
| 1996-03-17T00:00:00
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0060928018
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/70352-1
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18041-1
|
Lou Cannon
|
President Reagan: A Role of a Lifetime, Part 2
|
Lou Cannon, author of Ronald Reagan: Role of a Lifetime, continued his discussion of the Reagan presidency from the previous week. Mr. Cannon, now a reporter for the Washington Post, has followed President Reagan's political career since Reagan's governorship of California in the 1960's, and has written three books on the former president. Mr. Cannon discussed his numerous interactions with the former president, who he described as being distant from his family and acquaintances. The book, Mr. Cannon said, was intended to record a contemporary impression of the Reagan presidency through interviews of acquaintances rather than a historical record. Mr. Cannon said he hoped the book would provide historians of the future a greater insight into the Reagan presidency than may be provided by the Reagan archives.
| 1991-05-19T00:00:00
|
067154294X
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/18041-1
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165656-1
|
Fran Grace
|
Carry A. Nation: Retelling the Life
|
This landmark biography of a much maligned and misunderstood figure will be welcomed by those interested in the history of women, reform and religion in 19th- and 20th-century America. Early biographers dismissed the axe-wielding temperance reformer as crazy, fanatical, undersexed, oversexed or menopausal; University of Redlands religious studies professor Grace makes clear that the story was far more complicated, and much less Freudian, than that. The book is worth the price of admission simply because of Grace's admirable detective work; she draws on an immense body of primary sources that earlier scholars never bothered to tap. But the biography's most important contribution is Grace's insistence that Nation can't be understood without delving into her piety. Reared by Campbellite parents, Nation, who called herself a "bulldog of Jesus," also drew on Holiness religion, the Salvation Army, Catholicism and Methodism. The biography, however, is not flawless. Grace too often sets up historiographic straw men, and her self-conscious positioning of herself as a feminist historian who is recovering Nation from the condescension of male historians is tiring; she should have made this point once in the introduction and then let her work speak for itself. The flashes of polish in Grace's prose (Nation "carved her way into the twentieth century") balance out less felicitous academese (e.g., the term "genderalities"). In all, this is a worthy portrait of the notorious smasher. —from the publisher's website
| 2001-10-14T00:00:00
|
0253338468
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/165656-1
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24896-1
|
Robert Massie
|
Dreadnought
|
Mr. Massie talked about his recently published book, Dreadnought: Britain, Germany and the Coming of the Great War, published by Random House. The book focuses on the naval race and diplomatic discourse between Great Britain and Germany, and how they helped to cause World War One. "Dreadnoughts" were early twentieth century battleships, which were extremely fast and heavily armed, built by these two great naval powers.
| 1992-03-08T00:00:00
|
0345375564
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/24896-1
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10035-1
|
Peter Hennessy
|
Whitehall
|
Author and journalist Peter Hennessy described the British civil service in his book Whitehall. Whitehall, the name the British call their civil service, derives from Whitehall Palace where many government offices were housed. The civil service is traditionally a very behind-the-scenes organization. Hennessy broke tradition by examining the lives and influence of 19th and early 20th century career civil servants in the public eye. British civil servants, unlike their U.S. counterparts, keep their positions when the government changes. Hennessy, who has reported on the British service since the early 1970s, additionally examined the "code of honor" that has been a part of civil service culture. Whitehall was rocked in the 1970s after a number of corruption cases were discovered. Hennessy finished the interview talking of the civil service today and its evolution under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
| 1989-11-26T00:00:00
|
0029144418
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/10035-1
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50825-1
|
Malcolm Browne
|
Muddy Boots and Red Socks
|
Mr. Browne discussed his memoirs and experiences as a war reporter. He spent many years in South Vietnam and won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting. He discussed the photo of a young monk's self-immolation in a Saigon street and how, as a wire service reporter, he was the single reporter and photographer to cover the event. He also related that his middle name, Wild, is the same family name as that of his uncle, Oscar Wild. The title of the book is taken from muddy field boots worn in many of his assignments and the red socks that he once purchased so he would not have to wear the drab olive army issue socks.
| 1993-09-26T00:00:00
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0812963520
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/50825-1
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101900-1
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Randall Robinson
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Defending the Spirit: A Black Life in America
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A moving and provocative memoir by a distinguished statesman offers a revealing and devastating portrait of racism. TransAfrica founder Randall Robinson chronicles a controversial, behind-the-scenes look at American foreign policymaking with African and Caribbean nations. Randall Robinson is one of America's most prominent—and controversial—political figures. As the founder of TransAfrica, the first organization to lobby for the interests of African and Caribbean peoples and to influence foreign policy initiatives in those areas, he has been at the forefront of the crusade to fight racism on national and international levels. In this stunning and inspiring memoir, DEFENDING THE SPIRIT: A Black Life in America, Randall Robinson chronicles his amazing journey and the obstacles he overcame, rising from a poor childhood in the segregated South to infiltrate the white infrastructure of Washington politics. Although racism was nothing new to Robinson when he arrived at Harvard Law School from Virginia Union University, he found himself straddling the color line on another level: a black student from a poor liberal arts college attending the nation's oldest and wealthiest, and mostly white, institution—"the school that gave the term 'self-absorption' institutional meaning," he writes. It was here that Robinson first discovered bagels, and where he was mistaken for a janitor in the law school library. As a witness and recipient of racism's pervasive hand in both the community at large and academia, Robinson realized he couldn't practice the corporate law for which Harvard Law School traditionally prepares its students—it seemed far removed from the interests and issues of African-Americans. Since his founding of TransAfrica in 1977, it has grown from a two-person, one-room organization to a national lobby with more than 15, 000 members and international influence. It became the galvanizing force behind the anti-apartheid boycott of South Africa, the efforts to secure the release of Nelson Mandela, and the fight to reinstate President Aristide and restore democracy in Haiti. Robinson's story is more than an autobiography. It takes a highly charged behind-the-scenes look at some of the most significant moments in American and world history over the past 30 years, including the fights to end apartheid in South Africa and to restore democracy in Haiti. Candidly discussing the politics of leaders such as Ronald Reagan, Jesse Helms, Bob Dole, President Clinton, Nelson Mandela, Charles Rangel, and Roger Wilkins, Robinson asserts that American foreign policy is indifferent, if not hostile, toward the interests of Africa's people. DEFENDING THE SPIRIT offers a tragic commentary on the United States' endeavors in African and Caribbean nations, where racism still plays an unfortunate role. At the same time, it heralds a compelling call to activism in order to redirect future American policies. Impassioned, charismatic, and unwavering in his convictions, Randall Robinson emerges as an inspiring and empowering example of a great American leader of our time. —from the publisher's website
| 1998-03-15T00:00:00
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0525944028
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/101900-1
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John S.D. Eisenhower
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Agent of Destiny: The Life and Times of General Winfield Scott
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From renowned Historian and son of President Dwight D. Eisenhower comes a biography of Winfield Scott, the towering commander who was instrumental in shaping America’s borders and who created the modern U. S. military. Here is the powerful story of General Winfield Scott and his amazing march through American history—as hero of the War of 1812, conqueror of Mexico City, and America's top soldier at the start of the Civil War. From Scott's early life as a lawyer to his much-lamented death in 1866, this finely rendered portrait traces his intimate involvement in the expansion of the Republic as a key agent of Manifest Destiny. It recounts his leading role in transforming the ramshackle U.S. Army into a disciplined and professional fighting force, and follows the spectacular ups and downs of his many reversals of fortune. Filled with drama and personal detail, AGENT OF DESTINY achieves that rare combination of rich narrative and serious scholarship that distinguishes the best biographies. —from the publisher's website
| 1998-04-19T00:00:00
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0684844516
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/102268-1
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Alfred Zacher
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Trial & Triumph
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Alfred Zacher talked about his book, "Trial and Triumph: Presidential Power in the Second Term," published by Presidential Press. It focuses on how some presidents have succeeded in their second terms and why others have failed, primarily because of congressional opposition. He also talked about his ten criteria for a successful second term.
| 1997-01-19T00:00:00
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0965108708
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/77381-1
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4280-1
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Neil Sheehan
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A Bright Shining Lie (Part 1)
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Neil Sheehan gave five 30-minute interviews about his book, “A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam.” The first interview was titled "The Funeral of John Paul Vann."
| 1988-10-17T00:00:00
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0394484479
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/4280-1
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46467-1
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David Remnick
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Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire
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David Remnick discussed the research behind his book, "Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire," published by Random House. In the book, Mr. Remnick explores the mood and political events in Russia surrounding the end of the Soviet Union in the late 1980's and the early 1990's. Mr. Remnick was a Moscow correspondent for the Washington Post between 1988 and 1991.
| 1993-07-25T00:00:00
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0679751254
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/46467-1
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174049-1
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Diana Walker
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Public & Private: Twenty Years of Photographing the Presidency
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—from the publisher's website From Jimmy Carter to George W. Bush, Time magazine White House photographer Diana Walker has had unique access to the Presidency for more than 20 years. Public & Private demonstrates, in intriguing detail, that she has used her access brilliantly. The 130 photographs in Public & Private cover the public aspects of the office—from inaugurations and state dinners to cabinet meetings and press conferences—bus also offer a rare, candid look at the private moments of the presidents, the first ladies, and the important figures in each administration. Missing no detail, Walker’s expert lens has captured world leaders, Congressional insiders, the White House press corps, and family moments away from the spotlight, including the Bushes at Kennebunkport and Bill and Hillary Clinton on safari in Botswana. Humorous and heartbreaking, joyful and deadly serious, Walker’s revealing images provide an unexpected understanding of the leaders we think we know so well. With a foreword by renowned presidential historian Michael Beschloss, memories and perspectives contributed by the photographs’ subjects, and Walker’s own anecdotes, Public & Private is a unique and important contribution to the record of America’s highest office.
| 2002-12-22T00:00:00
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0792269071
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/174049-1
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123223-1
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Jon Margolis
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The Last Innocent Year: America in 1964
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The year 1964 marked a watershed in American history: John Kennedy was dead, and in the aftermath of his assassination, the country was trying to figure out what to do with itself. The Warren Commission was busily sifting evidence, Jackie Kennedy was fast on her way to becoming an icon of dignified widowhood, and Lyndon Johnson was tearing down Camelot to build the Great Society. Young men started burning draft cards, rioting blacks burned whole neighborhoods, women began to wonder if the male sex was their oppressor, Congress passed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution (which escalated the war in Vietnam), and three civil rights workers were killed in Mississippi. In The Last Innocent Year, Jon Margolis, a former political reporter for the Chicago Tribune, captures all the drama and emotion of this historic year, re-creating it from the perspective of the statesmen, celebrities, and ordinary people who made its events come alive. Nineteen sixty-four was the first year since the end of World War II in which America began to lose sight of its habitual optimism, giving way to the era known as the Sixties. This was a time when people were beginning to shake things up, as many diverse, disagreeing factions rose up against the elites that had been governing them. It was also a year in which students spoke out against their elders, and the anger of middle-class working people began to foment. By the end of the year, the commonwealth itself—and the very idea that there was or ought to be a commonwealth—was under attack and was forever changed. Beginning the day after the Kennedy assassination and following through to President Johnson's defeat of Barry Goldwater in November, Margolis weaves an unforgettable narrative involving some of the most dynamic figures of this century—from Robert Kennedy to Timothy Leary, from J. Edgar Hoover to Martin Luther King Jr., from George Wallace to Fannie Lou Hamer. This was also the year the Beatles took America by storm, Elizabeth Taylor dumped Eddie Fisher for Richard Burton, and Cassius Clay beat Sonny Liston to become "The Greatest." Dr. Strangelove was playing in all the movie theaters, and The Beverly Hillbillies was all the rage on television. The Last Innocent Years provides a snapshot of who we were then, and where we were going. With the authoritative voice of a veteran journalist, Margolis not only describes the events of that momentous year but places them in a context that is relevant today. He has drawn an unforgettable portrait of a year that changed America forever. —from the publisher's website
| 1999-06-27T00:00:00
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0688153232
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/123223-1
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Sarah Brady
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A Good Fight
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On March 30, 1981, Sarah Brady's husband James was critically injured during an assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan. Some years later, she presided over passage of a handgun control law known as the Brady Bill. Now, in A Good Fight , Brady tells the compelling human story behind these news events in a voice laced with honesty, humor, and a complete absence of self-pity. It is the story of her involvement in Republican politics; of her courtship and marriage; of the Brady's brief idyll as "country mice" among the Reagan glitterati, and of the tragic day that changed their lives forever. Sarah talks candidly about the many obstacles and difficulties her family encountered learning to live together after the shooting, and about her challenges as a mother. She describes how she became a gun control activist--which didn't happen until years after her husband's shooting. She recalls her decade of work with Handgun Control Inc. which culminated in the passage of the Brady Bill and led to her organization's merger with the Million Mom March. The book also tells the story of Sarah's recent battle with lung cancer, and demonstrates how she's fighting back against this latest adversity with the same spirit she brought to all her other challenges. Much more than a polemic about the importance of gun control, A Good Fight is a wonderfully readable personal story about an ordinary woman coping with extraordinary events and becoming extraordinary in the process. —from the publisher's website
| 2002-05-05T00:00:00
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1586481053
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/169257-1
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Martin Mayer
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The Greatest Ever Bank Robbery
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Mr. Mayer discussed his best-selling book The Greatest-Ever Bank Robbery: The Collapse of the Savings and Loan Industry. He explained that the cause of the "scandal" was hard for any observers, much less the general public, to grasp because it was inherently technical. He believes that most news reports also missed the point and focused on individual stories rather than the enormous scope of the problem. Mr. Mayer has written many books on the financial community and testified before the House Banking Committee last year on the savings and loan situation.
| 1990-11-25T00:00:00
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0020126204
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/15114-1
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23633-1
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Charles Hamilton
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Adam Clayton Powell Jr: A Political Dilemma
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Political Scientist Charles Hamilton discussed the subject of his biography, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.: The Political Biography of an American Dilemma. Mr. Hamilton described Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., the son of a family of affluence in Harlem, as a congressman, preacher, civil rights leader, and playboy. Mr. Hamilton described the times during which Mr. Powell lived, and the actions taken by Mr. Powell as an influential black politician during the middle of the 20th century.
| 1992-01-05T00:00:00
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0689120621
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/23633-1
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24737-1
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Richard Nixon
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Seize the Moment, Part 2
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Former President Richard Nixon discussed his book Seize the Moment: America's Challenge in a One-Superpower World, published by Simon and Schuster. In his book, he assesses the challenges and opportunities facing the United States since the breakup of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. Mr. Nixon also shared his thoughts on domestic and foreign policy, and looked back on his own political career. This is the second part of a two-part interview with Richard Nixon.
| 1992-03-01T00:00:00
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0671743430
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/24737-1
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12829-1
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Kevin Phillips
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The Politics of Rich and Poor
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Mr. Phillips, a political analyst, discusses his predictions for the coming decades in his recent book, The Politics of the Rich and Poor. Mr. Phillips foresees another New Deal or progressive era following the Reagan era. The author compares the years President Reagan held office to two previous Republican heydays, the 1920s and the Gilded Age of the late 19th century.
| 1990-06-24T00:00:00
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1559944277
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/12829-1
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157236-1
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Francis Wheen
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Karl Marx: A Life
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Paradox and passion were the animating spirits of Karl Marx's life, which often reads like a novel by Laurence Sterne or George Eliot. "Imagine Rousseau, Voltaire, and Hegel fused into one person," said a contemporary, "and you have Dr. Marx." In this stunning book, the first major biography of Marx since the end of the Cold War, Francis Wheen gives us not a socialist ogre but a fascinating, ultimately humane man. Marx's marriage to Jenny von Westphalen, whose devotion was tested by decades of poverty and exile, is as affecting a love story offered by history, while his friendship with Friedrich Engels is by turns hilarious and inspiring. Wheen does not, however, shy away from Marx's work. Was he, as his detractors have claimed, a self-hating Jew? What did Marx really mean by his famous line, "Religion is the opiate of the masses"? Is Capital deserving of the ridicule with which modern-day economists have dismissed it? Marx lived both at the center and on the fringes of his age. He also changed the world. With Karl Marx, Francis Wheen has written a hugely entertaining biography of one of history's most unforgettable players. —from the publisher's website
| 2000-06-25T00:00:00
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039304923X
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/157236-1
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180820-1
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Richard Perle
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An End to Evil
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—from the publisher's website An End to Evil charts the agenda for what’s next in the war on terrorism, as articulated by David Frum, former presidential speechwriter and bestselling author of The Right Man , and Richard Perle, former assistant secretary of defense and one of the most influential foreign-policy leaders in Washington. This world is an unsafe place for Americans—and the U.S. government remains unready to defend its people. In An End to Evil , David Frum and Richard Perle sound the alert about the dangers around us: the continuing threat from terrorism, the crisis with North Korea, the aggressive ambitions of China. Frum and Perle provide a detailed, candid account of America’s vulnerabilities: a military whose leaders resist change, intelligence agencies mired in bureaucracy, diplomats who put friendly relations with their foreign colleagues ahead of the nation’s interests. Perle and Frum lay out a bold program to defend America—and to win the war on terror. Among the topics this book addresses: • why the United States risks its security if it submits to the authority of the United Nations • why France and Saudi Arabia have to be treated as adversaries, not allies, in the war on terror • why the United States must take decisive action against Iran—now • what to do in North Korea if negotiations fail • why everything you read in the newspapers about the Israeli-Arab dispute is wrong • how our government must be changed if we are to fight the war on terror to victory—not just stalemate • where the next great terror threat is coming from—and what we can do to protect ourselves An End to Evil will define the conservative point of view on foreign policy for a new generation—and shape the agenda for the 2004 presidential-election year and beyond. With a keen insiders’ perspective on how our leaders are confronting—or not confronting—the war on terrorism, David Frum and Richard Perle make a convincing argument for why the toughest line is the safest line.
| 2004-03-07T00:00:00
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1400061946
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/180820-1
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180744-1
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George Soros
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The Bubble of American Supremacy: Correcting the Misuse of American Power
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—from the publisher's website Long known as "the world's only private citizen with a foreign policy," George Soros combines his razor-sharp sense of economic trends with his passionate advocacy for open societies and decency in world politics to come up with a workable, and severely critical, analysis of the Bush administration's overreaching, militaristic foreign policy. Soros believes that this administration's plans abroad come from the same sort of "bubble" psychology that afflicted our markets in the late 1990s. They have used a real fact, our overwhelming military supremacy, to create a deluded worldview, that might makes right and that "you're either with us or against us," in the same way that the recent boom used a real fact, the growth in technology, to lead to a delusion, the "new economy." Like the best of the books that have responded quickly to world events, The Bubble of American Supremacy has a clear, intriguing, comprehensive thesis that makes necessary, and compelling, order of our seemingly disordered world.
| 2004-02-29T00:00:00
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1586482173
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/180744-1
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11021-1
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Jim Mann
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Beijing Jeep: American Business in China
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Jim Mann examined an American-Chinese joint business venture in "Beijing Jeep: The Short, Unhappy Romance of American Business in China." Mann chronicled the relationship between the American Motors Corporation and the Chinese government in their production of Jeep motor vehicles. In his book he described the economic and cultural difficulties encountered in the relationship. What Western business saw as a vast potential market in China, soon gave way to the reality of daily business negotiations that were hindered by unforeseen obstacles.
| 1990-02-04T00:00:00
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081333327X
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/11021-1
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181826-1
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John Lewis Gaddis
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Surprise, Security, and the American Experience
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—from the publisher's website September 11, 2001, distinguished Cold War historian John Lewis Gaddis argues, was not the first time a surprise attack shattered American assumptions about national security and reshaped American grand strategy. We've been there before, and have responded each time by dramatically expanding our security responsibilities. The pattern began in 1814, when the British attacked Washington, burning the White House and the Capitol. This early violation of homeland security gave rise to a strategy of unilateralism and preemption, best articulated by John Quincy Adams, aimed at maintaining strength beyond challenge throughout the North American continent. It remained in place for over a century. Only when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941 did the inadequacies of this strategy become evident: as a consequence, the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt devised a new grand strategy of cooperation with allies on an intercontinental scale to defeat authoritarianism. That strategy defined the American approach throughout World War II and the Cold War. The terrorist attacks of 9/11, Gaddis writes, made it clear that this strategy was now insufficient to ensure American security. The Bush administration has, therefore, devised a new grand strategy whose foundations lie in the nineteenth-century tradition of unilateralism, preemption, and hegemony, projected this time on a global scale. How successful it will be in the face of twenty-first-century challenges is the question that confronts us. This provocative book, informed by the experiences of the past but focused on the present and the future, is one of the first attempts by a major scholar of grand strategy and international relations to provide an answer.
| 2004-05-16T00:00:00
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0674011740
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/181826-1
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10416-1
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Richard Rhodes
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Farm: A Year in the Life of an American Farmer
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Author Richard Rhodes shares his thoughts on the current state of American agriculture in Farm: A Year in the Life of an American Farmer, published by Simon and Schuster. His experience is based mainly on a nine-month period he spent with a Missouri farm family, alias Tom and Sally Bauer and their children. During that time he found "how different farming and farmers are from the stereotype." Rhodes goes on to discuss federal farm programs, which he feels are aimed at helping agri-business and not the individual farmers. Also, he talks about the virtues of the American farmer and how the entrepreneurial spirit of farming continues.
| 1989-12-24T00:00:00
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0803289650
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/10416-1
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7378-1
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Col. David Hackworth
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About Face: The Odyssey of an American Warrior
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David Hackworth, author of About Face: The Odyssey of an American Warrior, discusses his experience, success, and eventual disillusionment in the U.S. Army. After rising to the rank of colonel, Mr. Hackworth retired after serving four years in Vietnam, citing his displeasure with the U.S. war effort and denouncing it on national television. Mr. Hackworth also discusses the problems of writing an accurate war story and his current involvement with the anti-nuclear movement.
| 1989-05-07T00:00:00
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671526928
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/7378-1
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49145-1
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Harold Holzer
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The Lincoln Douglas Debates
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The seven debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas held during the Illinois senatorial race of 1858 are among the most important statements in American political history, dramatic struggles over the issues that would tear apart the nation in the Civil War: the virtues of a republic and the evils of slavery. In this acclaimed book, Holzer brings us as close as possible to what Lincoln and Douglas actually said. Using transcripts of Lincoln's speeches as recorded by the pro-Douglas newspaper, and vice versa, he offers the most reliable, unedited record available of the debates. Also included are background on the sites, crowd comments, and a new introduction. —from the publisher's website
| 1993-08-22T00:00:00
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0060168102
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/49145-1
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122026-1
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Randall Kenan
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Walking on Water
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"Walking on Water" is a profoundly moving and provocative account—both timely and enduring—of the thoughts, the feelings, the lives, of African Americans in the post-Civil Rights era of the nineties, by the highly praised author of "Let the Dead Bury Their Dead" and "A Visitation of Spirits." Traversing the country over a period of six years, Randall Kenan talked to nearly two hundred African Americans, whose individual stories he has shaped into a continent-sized tapestry of black American life today. He starts his journey in the famous, long-standing black resort community on Martha's Vineyard, travels up through New England, and heads west, visiting Chicago, Minneapolis (home of the singer Prince and of the Pilgrim Baptist Church, with its seven choirs and vast outreach), Coeur d'Alene (skinhead capital of the world), Seattle, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas. He moves on to the South, to Louisiana and St. Simons Island, where so many slave ships landed, and ends up at home in North Carolina, telling his own family's story. Kenan talks to a wide variety of people: to the Harlem Renaissance writer Dorothy West; to the Republican congressman from Alaska, Walter Furnace; to a rising young air force major whose father was lynched in Alabama when the major was a child; to a vocal welfare mom. He interviews a retired railroad conductor, an energetic "child of the dream" majoring in public relations at the University of North Dakota, Atlanta's new Panther-style militants, a bisexual AIDS activist, a twelve-year-old girl who fought the racism at her elementary school with a stunning essay, a Baptist minister in Mormon Utah. He speaks to teachers, retired maids, filmmakers, dancers, entrepreneurs, cyberspace whizzes, lawyers, farmers, painters, and many, many more. The people we meet—each with his or her own unique slant on black life—are fascinating. And as we listen to them, a multifaceted portrait of the black community at the end of the century emerges, with its diverse and little-known local cultures, its widely varying accommodations to integration, its desire to keep the soul-satisfying elements of black life intact while integrating with the larger society, its many ways of coping with the discrimination that remains: its triumphs, its problems, its optimism in spite of all the odds. Walking on Water is a richer, sharper, fuller picture than we have yet had of the astonishing experience of being black in America. —from the publisher's website
| 1999-04-25T00:00:00
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0679408274
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/122026-1
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19811-1
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Clark Clifford
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Counsel to the President: A Memoir
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Former Secretary of Defense Clifford described in his book his rise from an attorney to a close adviser to Presidents Truman, Johnson, and Kennedy. He shared his insights into many of the domestic and foreign policy decisions since World War II and the people who made these decisions. Mr. Clifford discussed his close ties to President Truman after World War II and the attitude of the President as the Cold War began in the early 1950s. Many of Mr. Clifford's comments were directed at the changes in the world he experienced during his own lifetime, including the creation of the nation of Israel during President Truman's administration. He also explained his current personal crisis surrounding the investigation of illicit actions with a foreign bank for which he recently worked. "I hope that the book will inculcate in the minds of younger people a desire to someday take part in our government," stated Mr. Clifford, who concluded the discussion by describing the need for the American public to better understand its government.
| 1991-07-28T00:00:00
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0394569954
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122730-1
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Betty Boyd Caroli
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The Roosevelt Women
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First Ladies Eleanor (Franklin's wife) and Edith (Theodore's) are both subjects of full-scale biographies, and Theodore's daughter Alice Roosevelt Longworth remains legendary for her caustic wit. In this book, historian Betty Boyd Caroli looks at seven additional powerful Roosevelt women (the family didn't seem to produce or marry any other kind) and notes some intriguing similarities despite the political differences that divided "Theodores" (stalwart Republicans like Corinne Roosevelt Robinson and her daughter, Corinne Robinson Alsop) and "Franklins" (Democrats such as Sara Delano Roosevelt, unjustly caricatured as the mother-in-law from hell). All these women descended from Martha Bulloch Roosevelt, a Georgia belle who married North and kept her Confederate sympathies quiet; they all were unusually independent and outspoken for women born in the 19th century; and several compensated for unsatisfying marriages with intense friendships. And they lived and breathed politics with a sense of noblesse oblige towards those not blessed with their wealth and privileges. Caroli's cogent group portrait restores to history neglected figures like Anna Roosevelt Cowles, whom some contemporaries felt would have made a better president than her younger brother Theodore, and puts well-known histories like Eleanor's in a revealing new context. —from the publisher's website
| 1999-05-09T00:00:00
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0465071341
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47330-1
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Alexander Brook
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The Hard Way: The Odyssey of a Weekly Newspaper Editor
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Mr. Brook, former publisher of a weekly newspaper, and Mr. Phillips, former publisher of the Wall Street Journal, discussed Mr. Brook's new book, The Hard Way: The Odyssey of a Weekly Newspaper Editor, published by Bridge Works Publishing Co. The book recounts anecdotes from the career of Mr. Brook, whose newspaper circulated in southern Maine. Mr. Phillips discussed his new career as a book publisher and the mechanics behind a small publishing house.
| 1993-08-01T00:00:00
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1882593375
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/47330-1
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112316-1
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George H. W. Bush
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A World Transformed
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It was one of the pivotal times of the twentieth century—during George Bush's presidency, an extraordinary series of international events took place that materially changed the face of the world. Now, former President Bush and his national security advisor, Brent Scowcroft, tell the story of those tumultous years. Here are behind-the-scenes accounts of critical meetings in the White House and of summit conferences in Europe and the United States, interspersed with excerpts from Mr. Bush's diary. We are given fresh and intriguing views of world leaders such as Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin, Margaret Thatcher, Helmut Kohl, and Francois Mitterand—and witness the importance of personal relationships in diplomacy. There is the dramatic description of how President Bush put together the alliance against Saddam Hussein in the Gulf War. There are the intensive diplomatic exchanges with Beijing following the events of Tiananmen Square, and the intricate negotiations leading up to German reunification. And there is the sometimes poignant, sometimes grim portrayal of Gorbachev's final years in power. A World Transformed is not simply a record of accomplishment; Bush and Scowcroft candidly recount how the major players sometimes disagreed over issues, and analyzes what mistakes were made. This is a landmark book on the conduct of American foreign policy—and how that policy is crucial to the peace of the world. It is a fascinating inside look at great events that deepens our understanding of today's global issues. —from the publisher's website
| 1998-10-04T00:00:00
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0679432485
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180836-1
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Alyn Brodsky
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Benjamin Rush: Patriot and Physician
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—from the publisher's website The only full biography of Benjamin Rush, an extraordinary Founding Father and America's leading physician of the Colonial era While Benjamin Rush appears often and meaningfully in biographies about John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin, this legendary man is presented as little more than a historical footnote. Yet, he was a propelling force in what culminated in the Declaration of Independence, to which he was a cosigner. Rush was an early agitator for independence, a member of the First Continental Congress, and one of the leading surgeons of the Continental Army during the early phase of the American Revolution. He was an constant and indefatigable adviser to the foremost figures of the American Revolution, notably George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams. Even if he had not played a major role in our country's creation, Rush would have left his mark in history as an eminent physician and a foremost social reformer in such areas as medical teaching, treatment of the mentally ill (he is considered the Father of American Psychiatry), international prevention of yellow fever, establishment of public schools, implementation of improved education for women, and much more. For readers of well-written biographies, Brodsky has illuminated the life of one of America's great and overlooked revolutionaries.
| 2004-07-04T00:00:00
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0312309112
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/180836-1
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160022-1
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Maya Lin
|
Boundaries
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Walking through this park-like area, the memorial appears as a rift in the earth—a long, polished black stone wall, emerging from and receding into the earth. Approaching the memorial, the ground slopes gently downward, and the low walls emerging on either side, growing out of the earth, extend and converge at a point below and ahead. Walking into the grassy site contained by the walls of this memorial, we can barely make out the carved names upon the memorial's walls. These names, seemingly infinite in number, convey the sense of overwhelming numbers, while unifying these individuals into a whole . . . So begins the competition entry submitted in 1981 by a Yale undergraduate for the design of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.—subsequently called "as moving and awesome and popular a piece of memorial architecture as exists anywhere in the world." Its creator, Maya Lin, has been nothing less than world famous ever since. From the explicitly political to the unashamedly literary to the completely abstract, her simple and powerful sculpture—the Rockefeller Foundation sculpture, the Southern Poverty Law Center Civil Rights Memorial, the Yale Women's Table, Wave Field—her architechture, including The Museum for African Art and the Norton residence, and her protean design talents have defined her as one of the most gifted creative geniuses of the age. Boundaries is her first book; an eloquent visual/verbal sketchbook produced with the same inspiration and attention to detail as any of her other artworks. Like her environmental sculptures, it is a site, but one which exists at a remove so that it may comment on the personal and artistic elements that make up those works. In it, sketches, photographs, workbook entries, and original design are held together by a deeply personal text. Boundaries is a powerful literary and visual statement by "a leading public artist." (Holland Carter). It is itself a unique work of art. —from the publisher's website
| 2000-11-19T00:00:00
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Neil Sheehan
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A Bright Shining Lie (Part 5)
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Neil Sheehan gave five 30-minute interviews about his book, “A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam.” The last interview was titled "Profile of the Author."
| 1988-10-22T00:00:00
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Robert Kurson
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Shadow Divers
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—from the publisher's website In the tradition of Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air and Sebastian Junger’s The Perfect Storm comes a true tale of riveting adventure in which two weekend scuba divers risk everything to solve a great historical mystery–and make history themselves. For John Chatterton and Richie Kohler, deep wreck diving was more than a sport. Testing themselves against treacherous currents, braving depths that induced hallucinatory effects, navigating through wreckage as perilous as a minefield, they pushed themselves to their limits and beyond, brushing against death more than once in the rusting hulks of sunken ships. But in the fall of 1991, not even these courageous divers were prepared for what they found 230 feet below the surface, in the frigid Atlantic waters sixty miles off the coast of New Jersey: a World War II German U-boat, its ruined interior a macabre wasteland of twisted metal, tangled wires, and human bones–all buried under decades of accumulated sediment. No identifying marks were visible on the submarine or the few artifacts brought to the surface. No historian, expert, or government had a clue as to which U-boat the men had found. In fact, the official records all agreed that there simply could not be a sunken U-boat and crew at that location. Over the next six years, an elite team of divers embarked on a quest to solve the mystery. Some of them would not live to see its end. Chatterton and Kohler, at first bitter rivals, would be drawn into a friendship that deepened to an almost mystical sense of brotherhood with each other and with the drowned U-boat sailors–former enemies of their country. As the men’s marriages frayed under the pressure of a shared obsession, their dives grew more daring, and each realized that he was hunting more than the identities of a lost U-boat and its nameless crew. Author Robert Kurson’s account of this quest is at once thrilling and emotionally complex, and it is written with a vivid sense of what divers actually experience when they meet the dangers of the ocean’s underworld. The story of Shadow Divers often seems too amazing to be true, but it all happened, two hundred thirty feet down, in the deep blue sea.
| 2004-07-11T00:00:00
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Lou Cannon
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President Reagan: A Role of a Lifetime, Part 1
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Washington Post reporter Lou Cannon discussed his book, Ronald Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime, in which Mr. Cannon examined Reagan's presidential roles from various perspectives: as that of communicator, leader, and so on. Mr. Cannon, who has reported on Ronald Reagan's political career for over twenty years since Reagan's tenure as governor of California in the 1960's, interviewed hundreds of administration officials and acquaintances of the Reagans as the basis of the book. Mr. Cannon discussed President Reagan's methods of communicating ideas to audiences, which was based on his role as an actor: as an actor, President Reagan allowed himself dramatic license when making a point. Although he did not lie, President Reagan occasionally included or excluded facts in order to convey the general impression he wished to leave with an audience. Mr. Cannon went on to discuss his career covering politics in California and Washington, and his three books on President Reagan's life and career.
| 1991-05-12T00:00:00
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067154294X
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Harrison Salisbury
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Tiananmen Diary: Thirteen Days in June
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Eighty year-old former New York Times editor Harrison Salisbury discussed the writing of his most recent book, Tiananmen Diary: Thirteen Days in June, published by Little, Brown and Company. While working on a documentary of China with a Japanese film crew, Salisbury witnessed the events of June leading up to and including the massacre at Tiananmen Square in Beijing on June 4, 1989. The book is a polished version of the notes he recorded in his diary while in China. Harrison also discussed the events leading up to the massacre and Chinese personalities such as Deng Xiaoping, Li Peng and Hu Yuobang. He compared and contrasted the "Events of June" to the Chinese Cultural Revolution, and speculates about the future of Chinese politics.
| 1989-10-15T00:00:00
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0044406193
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/9545-1
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Susan Faludi
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Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women
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Ms. Faludi, author of Backlash: The Undeclared War on American Women published by Anchor Books, discussed her research on women's issues that documents a movement against women's civil and political equality in America. She said the movement against American women is based on the false belief that feminism and social equality has created misery among American women. Ms. Faludi accuses conservative research organizations of spreading the anti-feminist propaganda that a woman's chances of marrying diminish greatly if she doesn't marry young and that women should leave the workforce and return home.
| 1992-10-25T00:00:00
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Anthony Cave Brown
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Treason in the Blood
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Mr. Brown talked about his book, Treason in the Blood, published by Houghton Mifflin, which focuses on the espionage efforts of St. John Philby to injure British interests in the Middle East and his son Kim's efforts to penetrate the British intelligence network while working for Soviet intelligence.
| 1995-01-15T00:00:00
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Norman Ornstein
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Debt and Taxes
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Professor Ornstein discussed the book he co-wrote with John H. Makin, "Debt and Taxes: How America Got into Its Budget Mess and What to Do About It," published by Times Books Random House. The book details the history, economics and political science of taxes and the national debt. He pointed out that there is much less corruption in the federal government now than in the previous 200 years. However, the public perceives that there is more corruption because of improved communications of all kinds. He suggests that the federal government must somehow gain the trust of U.S. citizens. Only then will taxpayers accept the "pain" of decreasing the national debt.
| 1994-03-13T00:00:00
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Jack Nelson
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Terror in the Night
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Jack Nelson discussed his book "Terror in the Night: The Klan's Campaign Against the Jews," published by Simon and Schuster, which details the Ku Klux Klan's campaign of intimidation against the American Jewish community in the late 1960's. He said the Klan believed the Jewish community was behind the civil rights movement in the South during the 1950's and 1960's, and he noted the white community's response to the Klan's terrorism campaign.
| 1993-02-07T00:00:00
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0878059075
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Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
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The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society
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In 1991, when the end of the Cold War released long repressed ethnic, racial, and religious antagonisms, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. wrote a penetrating book that raised the discussion of multiculturalism in American society to a new level. This challenging work soon became a popular bestseller and an integral part of college courses across the country. "A brilliant book," Vann Woodward called it. "We owe Arthur Schlesinger a great debt of gratitude." Since then, ethnic strife has ravaged the globe, from Europe, Asia, and Africa, to Bosnia and Brooklyn. In the The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society, Revised and Enlarged Edition (W.W. Norton) Schlesinger offers a cogent look at the crises of nationhood in America and around the world. A new epilogue assesses the impact both of radical multiculturalism and radical monoculturalism on the Bill of rights. The new edition concludes with "Schlesinger's Syllabus," an annotated reading list of baker's dozen of writings that illuminate crucial aspects of the American experience. Written with Schlesinger's usual clarity and verve, the book brings a noted historian's wisdom and perspective to bear on America's vehement 'culture wars.' Schlesinger addresses the questions: What holds a nation together? And what does it mean to be an American? Describing the emerging cult of ethnicity, Schlesinger praises its healthy effect on a nation long shamed by a history of prejudice and bigotry. But he warns against the campaign of multicultural ideologues to divide the nation into separate and indelible ethnic and racial communities. From the start, he observes, the United States has been a multicultural nation, rich in its diversity but held together by a shared commitment to the democratic process and by the freedom of intermarriage. It was this national talent for assimilation that impressed foreign visitors like Alexis de Tocqueville and James Bryce, and it is this historic goal that Schlesinger champions as the best hope for the future. Schlesinger analyzes what he sees as ominous consequences of identity politics: the magnification of differences, ethnic cheerleading, Afrocentric curricula, bilingualism, speech codes, censorship. Attacks on the First Amendment, he contends, threaten the vitality of intellectual freedom and, ultimately, the future of the very groups the censors ostensibly seek to protect. His critiques are not limited to the left. As a former target of McCarthyism, he understands that the radical right is even more willing than the radical left to restrict and subvert the Bill of Rights. The author does not minimize the injustices and contradictions concealed by the 'melting pot' dream. THE DISUNITING OF AMERICA is both erudite and personal, trenchant in argument, balanced in judgment. It is a book that will no doubt anger some readers, but it will surely make all of them think again. The winner of Pulitzer Prizes for history and for biography, an authoritative voice of American liberalism, special assistant to President Kennedy, adviser to Adlai Stevenson, Schlesinger is uniquely positioned to bring bold answers and healing wisdom to this passionate debate over who we are and what we should become. —from the publisher's website
| 1998-05-10T00:00:00
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Eric Alterman
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Sound & Fury: The Washington Punditocracy and the Collapse of American Politics
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Alterman's shrewd and entertaining book proposes that our national political dialogue has become nonsensical, and that our politics are now enslaved by the sitcom-dominated values of the Washington pundits--the George Wills, the John McLaughlins, the Robert Novaks, and all the opinion makers who are regarded as authorities on government. —from the publisher's website
| 1992-12-20T00:00:00
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Michael Davis
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Thurgood Marshall
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Mr. Clark and Mr. Davis discussed their book Thurgood Marshall: Warrior at the Bar, Rebel on the Bench, published by Carol Publishing Group, a biography of Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. They were not able to talk to Marshall personally but use interviews from people closely associated with him to describe his upbringing in Baltimore, his work for the NAACP, and his handling of the historic Brown v. Board of Education segregation case. They discussed Justice Marshall's role in the civil rights movement in the 20th century, as well as his influence on the Supreme Court.
| 1993-01-03T00:00:00
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0735100977
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David Fromkin
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In The Time of Americans
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Professor Fromkin discussed his book, In the Time of the Americans: The Generation That Changed America's Role in the World, published by Alfred A. Knopf. The book studies the careers of Presidents Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, General MacArthur and many others of their generation who profoundly influenced changes in international economy and politics.
| 1995-10-22T00:00:00
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0679767282
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Mark Perry
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Grant and Twain: The Story of a Friendship That Changed America
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—from the publisher's website In the spring of 1884 Ulysses S. Grant heeded the advice of Mark Twain and finally agreed to write his memoirs. Little did Grant or Twain realize that this seemingly straightforward decision would profoundly alter not only both their lives but the course of American literature. Over the next fifteen months, as the two men became close friends and intimate collaborators, Grant raced against the spread of cancer to compose a triumphant account of his life and times—while Twain struggled to complete and publish his greatest novel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn .In this deeply moving and meticulously researched book, veteran writer Mark Perry reconstructs the heady months when Grant and Twain inspired and cajoled each other to create two quintessentially American masterpieces. In a bold and colorful narrative, Perry recounts the early careers of these two giants, traces their quest for fame and elusive fortunes, and then follows the series of events that brought them together as friends. The reason Grant let Twain talk him into writing his memoirs was simple: He was bankrupt and needed the money. Twain promised Grant princely returns in exchange for the right to edit and publish the book—and though the writer’s own finances were tottering, he kept his word to the general and his family. Mortally ill and battling debts, magazine editors, and a constant crush of reporters, Grant fought bravely to get the story of his life and his Civil War victories down on paper. Twain, meanwhile, staked all his hopes, both financial and literary, on the tale of a ragged boy and a runaway slave that he had been unable to finish for decades. As Perry delves into the story of the men’s deepening friendship and mutual influence, he arrives at the startling discovery of the true model for the character of Huckleberry Finn. With a cast of fascinating characters, including General William T. Sherman, William Dean Howells, William Henry Vanderbilt, and Abraham Lincoln, Perry’s narrative takes in the whole sweep of a glittering, unscrupulous age. A story of friendship and history, inspiration and desperation, genius and ruin, Grant and Twain captures a pivotal moment in the lives of two towering Americans and the age they epitomized.
| 2004-07-18T00:00:00
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Robert Bartley
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The Seven Fat Years and How to do it Again
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Wall Street Journal editor and vice president Robert Bartley discussed his book, The Seven Fat Years and How to Do It Again, published by Free Press. The book deals with the seven years of economic prosperity in the 1980s when the U.S. economy grew by almost 33% and nearly twenty million new jobs were created. The author claims that the years of recession in the early 1990s were not a result of the greed of the 1980s, as opponents charge. Rather they were the result of the economists of the 1990s abandoning the practices of the '80s. He said the 1980s was not a terrible decade in terms of economic and political prosperity in the United States, as the media appears to maintain, but rather an era of affluence and political prominence for the U.S. and its population.
| 1992-05-17T00:00:00
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002874022X
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Jeffrey Bell
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Populism and Elitism
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Mr. Bell talked about his book Populism & Elitism. He discussed the end of communism and the spread of democracy and said that 'populist vs. elitist' has replaced 'liberal vs. conservative.' Bell was a campaign strategist for Ronald Reagan.
| 1992-07-12T00:00:00
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0895265176
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/26997-1
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Elizabeth Norman
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We Band of Angels
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We Band of Angels is the story of women searching for adventure, caught up in the drama and danger of war. On the same day the Japanese Imperial Navy launched its surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, it also struck American bases in the Far East, chief among them the Philippines. That raid led to the first major land battle for America in World War II and, in the end, to the largest defeat and surrender of American forces. Caught up in all of this were ninety-nine Army and Navy nurses—the first unit of American women ever sent into the middle of a battle. The "Angels of Bataan and Corregidor" —as the newspapers called them—became the only group of American women captured and imprisoned by an enemy. And the story of their trials on a bloody battlefield, their desperate flight to avoid capture and their ultimate surrender, imprisonment, liberation and homecoming is a story of endurance, professionalism and raw pluck. Along the way, they helped build and staff hospitals in the middle of a malaria-infested jungle on the peninsula of Bataan. Then, short of supplies and medicine, they worked around the clock in the operating rooms and open-air wards, dealing with gaping wounds and gangrenous limbs, ministering to the wounded, the sick, the dying. A few fell in love, only to lose their men to the enemy. Finally, on the tiny island of Corregidor in Manila Bay, the Japanese took them prisoner. For three long years in an internment camp—years marked by loneliness and starvation—they kept to their mission and stuck together. In the end, it was this loyalty, this sense of purpose, womanhood and honor, that both challenged and saved them. Through interviews with survivors and through unpublished letters, diaries and journals, Elizabeth M. Norman vividly re-creates that time, telling the story in richly drawn portraits and in a dramatic narrative delivered in the voices of the women who were there. —from the publisher's website
| 1999-08-15T00:00:00
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0375502459
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Robert Novak
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Completing the Revolution: A Vision for Victory in 2000
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As the presidential primary season nears, one of America's foremost conservative columnists maps out a plan for winning back the White House in 2000—and restoring the office of the presidency to its previous high station. —from the publisher's website
| 2000-01-30T00:00:00
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William Lee Miller
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The Business of May Next
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The author, a professor of ethics and institutions at the University of Virginia, discussed his book "The Business of May Next: James Madison and the Founding," published by the University Press of Virginia.
| 1992-06-14T00:00:00
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Robert Cwiklik
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House Rules
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Mr. Cwiklik talked about his book House Rules: A Freshman Congressman's Initiation to the Backslapping, Backpedaling and Backstabbing Ways of Washington, published by Villard. He is a freelance writer and former editor for the Ottaway News Service who followed Nebraska Democrat Peter Hoagland through his campaign, election and first year in office. In the book, Mr. Cwiklik discussed some of the issues debated by the first session of the 102nd Congress, including the savings and loan bailout and the Congressional pay raise, and provided an inside look at the political process and the Washington establishment. He discussed how he got involved with the project and to what extent the experience helped shape his view of Congress.
| 1992-02-02T00:00:00
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Harold Evans
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The American Century
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Although most of this sprawling book is set in the 20th century, it begins on April 29, 1889, when Benjamin Harrison commemorated the first centennial of American government. This 11-year jump-start allows Harold Evans to write about the last major push to settle the Western territories, the gradual dwindling of Native American societies, the rise to prominence of William Jennings Bryan, and other quintessentially American moments of the 19th century. But make no mistake about it— The American Century is very much rooted in the modern world. Evans's tight, journalistic prose marks the significant events and personages in America's rise to superpower status and offers several educational surprises, such as a two-page spread on too-little-known naval historian Alfred Mahan, whose The Influence of Sea Power upon History shaped foreign policy in America and several European nations. His treatments of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s and the Watergate crisis are substantial highlights. Juxtapositions such as Ralph Nader and Rachel Carson or Jimmy Hoffa and Cesar Chavez make for a lively overview. The book essentially ends with the inauguration of George Bush in 1989, although brief mention is made to some of what has happened since then. Filled with photographs and contemporary editorial cartoons, The American Century is an excellent one-volume chronicle of a rather momentous 100 years. —from the publisher's website
| 1999-02-07T00:00:00
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Ralph Nader
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Crashing the Party: How to Tell the Truth and Still Run for President
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Ralph Nader is one of America's most passionate and effective social critics. He has been called a muckraker, a consumer crusader, and America's public defender. The cars we drive, the food we eat, the water we drink-their safety has been enhanced largely due to Ralph Nader. Time magazine called him "the U. S.'s toughest customer." His inspiration and example have rallied consumer advocates, citizen activists, public interest lawyers, and government officials into action, and in the 2000 election, nearly three million people voted for him. An inspiring and defiant memoir, Crashing the Party takes us inside Nader's campaign and explains what it took to fight the two-party juggernaut; why Bush and Gore were really afraid to let him in on their debates; why progressive Democrats have been left behind and ignored by their party; how Democrat and Republican interests have been lost to corporate bankrolling; and what needs to happen in the future for people to take back their political system. The 2000 election gave the Green Party legitimacy (as 60 Minutes' Mike Wallace called it-"the only campaign with a pulse") and an important, growing foothold on national politics. With humor and insight, Crashing the Party is the one honest retelling of what unfolded over the course of the 2000 campaign. —from the publisher's website
| 2002-02-03T00:00:00
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John Morris
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Get the Picture: A Personal History of Photojournalism
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In his long and distinguished career as a journalist and picture editor, John G. Morris had one simple—and stunningly complex—assignment: Get the picture . "Picture editors," Morris writes, "are the unwitting (or witting, as the case may be) tastemakers, the unappointed guardians of morality, the talent brokers, the accomplices to celebrity. Most important—or disturbing—they are the fixers of 'reality' and of 'history.'" Indeed, Morris commissioned, edited, and published the photos that have helped define our sense of recent history, and he worked closely with some of the century's great photographers, including Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and W. Eugene Smith. Get the Picture is Morris's fascinating account of a half century of photojournalism, from Capa's heroism on D-Day to the special ethical problems that arose for photographers and their editors on the night Princess Diana died in a Paris tunnel while trying to avoid the paparazzi. Beginning with the ascendancy of Life magazine during World War II, Morris offers the inside stories behind dozens of famous pictures, and intimate portraits of the men and women who took them, along with colorful anecdotes about his encounters with Alfred Hitchcock, General George S. Patton, Marlene Dietrich, Ernest Hemingway, Lee Miller, Andrei Sakharov, and many others. Morris has a few opinions as well about his powerful bosses—Henry Luce of Time Inc., Katharine Graham of The Washington Post , and A. M. Rosenthal of The New York Times —and he reflects, often humorously, on his triumphs and losses inside various media empires. He observes how the press failed to tell the story of the Holocaust, and how it turned away in revulsion from images of what the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki did to the human body. In addition, Morris details how The Washington Post fell for the Johnson administration's lies about the Tonkin Gulf "incident," and he notes how The New York Times initially missed its significance. Get the Picture is also a book about lasting friendships and the importance of professional and personal commitment under impossible circumstances. Morris writes movingly about the tragic deaths of his colleagues Robert Capa, Werner Bischof, David "Chim" Seymour, and W. Eugene Smith, and about what was required to carry on without them. Above all, Get the Picture is about a life vigorously lived, and Morris is still going strong as one of the leading proponents of a journalism committed to the unflinching, unblinking truth. —from the publisher's website
| 1999-01-10T00:00:00
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Bruce Feiler
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Abraham: A Journey to the Heart of Three Faiths
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—from the publisher's website In this timely, provocative, and uplifting journey, the bestselling author of Walking the Bible searches for the man at the heart of the world's three monotheistic religions -- and today's deadliest conflicts. At a moment when the world is asking, Can the religions get along? one figure stands out as the shared ancestor of Jews, Christians, and Muslims. One man holds the key to our deepest fears -- and our possible reconciliation. Abraham. Bruce Feiler set out on a personal quest to better understand our common patriarch. Traveling in war zones, climbing through caves and ancient shrines, and sitting down with the world's leading religious minds, Feiler uncovers fascinating, little-known details of the man who defines faith for half the world. Both immediate and timeless, Abraham is a powerful, universal story, the first-ever interfaith portrait of the man God chose to be his partner. Thoughtful and inspiring, it offers a rare vision of hope that will redefine what we think about our neighbors, our future, and ourselves.
| 2002-12-01T00:00:00
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Ronald Brownstein
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The Power and the Glitter
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Mr. Brownstein discussed his book, The Power and the Glitter: The Hollywood-Washington Connection. The close relationship between the entertainment industry and decision makers in the nation's capitol is described. He was prompted to write the book, as a journalist covering politics, because he was "struck by the incredible confluence of money, politics, and celebrities at every event." Mr. Brownstein chronicled the seven decade evolution of Hollywood and its powerful connections to politics.
| 1991-02-17T00:00:00
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0679738304
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21997-1
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Tina Rosenberg
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Children of Cain: Violence and the Violent in Latin America
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Tina Rosenberg, a MacArthur Fellow, lived in Latin America for five years. "Children of Cain: Violence and the Violent in Latin America" is an accumulation of her experiences and research, profiling people in six Latin American countries, and exploring the circumstances that lead people to perform violent acts. Ms. Rosenberg includes descriptions of a Maoist guerilla in Peru, a Chilean student leader supporting Pinochet, and an Argentinean interior officer responsible for the death and torture of hundreds. She explained that violence in Latin America is generally planned and accepted by people living in a society governed by power and connections, not by law. She also considered the role of the U.S. in the region.
| 1991-11-10T00:00:00
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0140172548
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Dorie McCullough Lawson
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Posterity: Letters of Great Americans to Their Children
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—from the publisher's website An elegantly designed, beautifully composed volume of personal letters from famous American men and women that celebrates the American Experience and illuminates the rich history of some of America’s most storied families. Posterity is at once an epistolary chronicle of America and a fascinating glimpse into the hearts and minds of some of history’s most admired figures. Spanning more than three centuries, these letters contain enduring lessons in life and love, character and compassion that will surprise and enlighten. Included here are letters from Thomas Jefferson to his daughter, warning her of the evils of debt; General Patton on D-Day to his son, a cadet at West Point, about what it means to be a good soldier; W.E.B. DuBois to his daughter about character beneath the color of skin; Oscar Hammerstein about why, after all his success, he doesn’t stop working; Woody Guthrie from a New Jersey asylum to nine-year-old Arlo about universal human frailty; sixty-five-year-old Laura Ingalls Wilder’s train of thought about her pioneer childhood; Eleanor Roosevelt chastising her grown son for his Christmas plans; and Groucho Marx as a dog to his twenty-five-year-old son. With letters that span more than three centuries of American history, Posterity is a fascinating glimpse into the thoughts, wisdom, and family lives of those whose public accomplishments have touched us all. Here are renowned Americans in their own words and in their own times, seen as they were seen by their children. Here are our great Americans as mothers and fathers.
| 2004-08-22T00:00:00
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Peter Skerry
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Mexican-Americans: The Ambivalent Minority
|
Mr. Skerry discussed his book and said that the significance of his subtitle, "the ambivalent majority," is that no one is quite sure of the political direction of this newly emerging group in the next decade. He stated that the ambivalence is political and not psychological, and believes that Mexican-Americans will be the next "test case" of how America integrates its ethnic minorities.
| 1993-10-03T00:00:00
|
0674572629
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/51082-1
|
173558-1
|
Michelle Malkin
|
Invasion
|
—from the publisher's website Invasion exposes how America continues to welcome terrorists, criminal aliens, foreign murderers, torturers, and the rest of the world's "undesirables." It reveals how our immigration authorities have granted citizenship or legal permanent residence to America-haters and brutal thugs. And it explains how misguided policies and overworked officials have encouraged criminals to enter our country, abuse our systems, and attack our citizens. Based on exhaustive research and interviews with dozens of current and former immigration officials, Invasion shines light on how the INS, Congress, State Department, Big Business, and ethnic special interests continue to value criminal alien rights over American lives.
| 2002-12-08T00:00:00
|
0895261464
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/173558-1
|
13246-1
|
Teresa Odendahl
|
Charity Begins at Home
|
Author Teresa Odendahl makes a controversial premise in her book. She says that philanthropy better serves the rich than the poor. In her book, entitled "Charity begins at Home: Generosity and Self-Interest Among the Philanthropic Elite," argues that most rich people assume their charitable contributions benefit the needy and deserving, when in fact most of their donations end up underwriting activities controlled by the upper classes, particularly elite preparatory schools and colleges. She concludes that instead of relieving and balancing inequities in society, philanthropy actually exacerbates it.
| 1990-07-22T00:00:00
|
0465009611
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/13246-1
|
121914-1
|
Richard Shenkman
|
Presidential Ambition
|
Combining a potent narrative with persuasive and compelling insights, Shenkman reveals that it is not just recent presidents who have been ambitious and at times frighteningly overambitious, willing to sacrifice their health, family, loyalty, and values as they sought to overcome the obstacles to power—but they all have. This volcanic ambition, Shenkman shows, has been essential not only in obtaining power but in facing--and attempting to master—the great historical forces that have continually reshaped the United States, from Manifest Destiny and Emancipation to immigration, the Great Depression, and nuclear weapons. —from the publisher's website
| 1999-03-21T00:00:00
|
006018373X
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/121914-1
|
16187-1
|
Carl Rowan
|
Breaking Barriers: A Memoi
|
Carl Rowan's book, "Breaking Barriers," relates his personal experiences with the changing face of race relations during the past 50 years. He describes barriers in the press, military, and government. He gives his opinion on political leaders and what they have done to help or hinder race relations. Mr. Rowan was one of the first black officers in the U.S. Navy. He has served as a journalist, a State Department spokesperson, an ambassador to Finland, and the head of the U.S. Information Agency.
| 1991-02-03T00:00:00
|
0316759775
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/16187-1
|
25534-1
|
Orlando Patterson
|
Freedom in the Making of Western Culture
|
Professor Orlando Patterson discussed his book, "Freedom in the Making of Western Culture," published by Basic Books. A sociologist, he explained how the value of freedom became important only in Western culture. He explored the origins and development of freedom from ancient times through the present.
| 1992-04-12T00:00:00
|
0465025323
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/25534-1
|
12342-1
|
Allister Sparks
|
The Mind of South Africa
|
Allister Sparks discussed his book, "The Mind of South Africa," on the history of the divided nation's politics and people. Sparks, a fifth-generation South African,chronicled Africaaner nationalism and apartheid and discussed the social and political forces in the country.
| 1990-05-20T00:00:00
|
0394581083
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/12342-1
|
61222-1
|
David Frum
|
Dead Right
|
Mr. Frum talked about his recently published book, Dead Right, which deals with the problems of the Republican conservatism stemming from the intellectual and political malaise of the late 1980s and its chances for revival against the current power of the Democratic party.
| 1994-10-30T00:00:00
|
0465098207
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/61222-1
|
162772-1
|
Reese Schonfeld
|
Me and Ted Against the World
|
They were the odd couple of broadcast news, destined to alter global communications forever—to free-for-all of a saga that's larger than life and more engaging than a major business book has any right to be. 1979. Down in Atlanta, Ted Turner was fighting his battles with the networks. Up in New York, Reese Schonfeld was warring with the network journalists. Then they joined forces in a magnificent experiment and, for the next three years, stood shoulder to shoulder and back to back—until the allies became antagonists, and the unraveling of CNN began. Turner was cable before cable was cool. Schonfeld was in the TV news business before there was a TV news business was tile best advertising salesman TV has ever known. Schonfeld had invented the first independent news agency that worked. Turner got cable companies to put CNN—the first twenty-four-hour news network—on the air. Schonfeld got newsmen to bet their lives on CNN. Turner brought in the money. Schonfeld brought in the news. Turner had been thrown out of Brown, Schonfeld, out of Harvard Law. Neither could tolerate authority. Both were control freaks. CNN was their baby. 1982. With CNN's ratings at an all-time high. Turner fired Schonfeld and gained control of CNN. Now it was totally his baby. Schonfeld went oil to, create News 12 and the Food Network. Ted went on to create TNT, the Cartoon Network, and Turner Movie Classics: become a legend; and sell his empire to Time Warner. 2000. Now Ted looks at news from the outside. Schonfeld plays one more long shot, trying to get back in. CNN is Time Warner's now. In the beginning, it was me and Ted against the world, but has the world finally won? Me and Ted Against the World recounts the no-holds-barred triumphs of CNN's beginnings, the tribulations of its middle age, and the tragedy of its current moment in the wake of Time Warner's projected sale to AOL. As broadly entertaining as it is enlightening about the brave universe of telecommunications and crammed with unforgettable characters and highly revealing anecdotes, Me and Ted Against the World is eye-opening in every sense of the word. —from the publisher
| 2001-03-25T00:00:00
|
0060197463
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/162772-1
|
172600-1
|
Arnold Ludwig
|
King of the Mountain: The Nature of Political Leadership
|
—from the publisher's website King of the Mountain presents the startling findings of Arnold M. Ludwig’s eighteen-year investigation into why people want to rule. The answer may seem obvious power, privilege, and perks but any adequate answer also needs to explain why so many rulers cling to power even when they are miserable, trust nobody, feel besieged, and face almost certain death. Ludwig’s results suggest that leaders of nations tend to act remarkably like monkeys and apes in the way they come to power, govern, and rule. Profiling every ruler of a recognized country in the twentieth century over 1,900 people in all, Ludwig establishes how rulers came to power, how they lost power, the dangers they faced, and the odds of their being assassinated, committing suicide, or dying a natural death. Then, concentrating on a smaller sub-set of 377 rulers for whom more extensive personal information was available, he compares six different kinds of leaders, examining their characteristics, their childhoods, and their mental stability or instability to identify the main predictors of later political success. Ludwig’s penetrating observations, though presented in a lighthearted and entertaining way, offer important insight into why humans have engaged in war throughout recorded history as well as suggesting how they might live together in peace.
| 2002-09-15T00:00:00
|
0813122333
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/172600-1
|
179671-1
|
Carl Cannon
|
The Pursuit of Happiness in Times of War
|
—from the publisher's website The Founders wrote in 1776 that "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" are unalienable American rights. In The Pursuit of Happiness in Times of War , Carl M. Cannon shows how this single phrase is one of almost unbelievable historical power. It was this rich rhetorical vein that New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and President George W. Bush tapped into after 9/11 when they urged Americans to go to ballgames, to shop, to do things that made them happy even in the face of unrivaled horror. From the Revolutionary War to the current War on Terrorism, Americans have lived out this creed. They have been helped in this effort by their elected leaders, who in times of war inevitably hark back to Jefferson's soaring language. If the former Gotham mayor and the current president had perfect pitch in the days after September 11, so too have American presidents and other leaders throughout our nation's history. In this book, Mr. Cannon--a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist--traces the roots of Jefferson's powerful phrase and explores how it has been embraced by wartime presidents for two centuries. Mr. Cannon draws on original research at presidential libraries and interviews with Gerald R. Ford, Jimmy Carter, George H. W. Bush, and Bill Clinton, among others. He discussed with the presidents exactly what the phrase means to them. Mr. Cannon charts how Americans' understanding of the pursuit of happiness has changed through the years as the nation itself has changed. In the end, America's political leaders have all come to the same conclusion as its spiritual leaders: True happiness--either for a nation or an individual--does not come from conquest or fortune or even from the attainment of freedom itself. It comes in the pursuit of happiness for the benefit of others. This may be one truth that contemporary liberals and conservatives can agree on. John McCain and Jimmy Carter both envision happiness as a sacrifice to a higher calling, embodied in everything from McCain's time as a prisoner of war to the Nobel Prize-winning Carter's public efforts for world peace and his quieter work with Habitat for Humanity. Their thoughts and deeds echo George Washington, who spoke in his first inaugural address of an "indissoluble union between virtue and happiness."
| 2003-12-28T00:00:00
|
0742525910
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/179671-1
|
38911-1
|
Deborah Shapley
|
Promise and Power
|
Ms. Shapley discussed her research for her book, Promise and Power: The Life and Times of Robert McNamara, published by Little, Brown and Company on the life of the former secretary of defense under the Kennedy administration. Mr. McNamara, who Ms. Shapley said helped create the Vietnam tragedy, was also president of the World Bank for several years. She conducted several interviews with Mr. McNamara to create the book.
| 1993-03-21T00:00:00
|
0788151819
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/38911-1
|
52571-1
|
Betty Friedan
|
The Fountain of Age
|
Ms. Friedan explained that her new book, The Fountain of Age, published by Simon and Schuster, describes "a period of human life that most people didn't even used to have." Ms. Friedan took an Outward Bound wilderness course for persons over 55 years of age. The course became a metaphor for searching for the "fountain of age," rather than the fountain of youth. Through research and hundreds of interviews, she came to describe the "older years" as a new period of life for most men and women, not a time of deterioration. She found in these people a willingness to take risks, and a desire to keep learning. She said that in the U.S., the negative images of old age are even "more pernicious and more pervasive" than negative images of women. Ms. Friedan's previous book, The Feminine Mystique, has sold millions of copies.
| 1993-11-28T00:00:00
|
0671898531
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/52571-1
|
158987-1
|
Alan Murray
|
The Wealth of Choices
|
It's Not Your Father's Economy . . . If Adam Smith were to visit the United States today, he would be a very happy man. That invisible hand he made famous in The Wealth of Nations two centuries ago is more limber and supple than ever. Indeed, competition in the New Economy is so intense and uncompromising that everyone, even Fortune 500 giants, must bend to it. All of this competition has lead to a wealth of choices about every aspect of our lives—and a huge shift in how society works and who gets rewarded. Alan Murray, the Washington bureau chief of The Wall Street Journal, shows how all of us can not only live in the New Economy, but thrive in it. The New Economy isn't just another buzz phrase, but an important change in our economic system, one that has meaning for everyone, not just the economic elite. It's creating a world in which all prices are fuzzy and everything is negotiable. If you know what you're doing, there are great gains to be made and great bargains to be had. Starting with a thoughtful overview of how the New Economy works, Murray shows, chapter by chapter, what all of us can do to take advantage of the changes taking place in everything from health care to education to the workplace. The rules have changed—and Murray's smart advice may surprise you: Health Care: The most potentially traumatic change in the New Economy will be in the relationship between you and your doctor. Murray explains what you need to know to be an effective consumer in this ever-changing market. Education: The price of a good education has gone sky high. But your mind is your most important investment. Murray shows how to cut costs and cut deals that will help you grow. Your Job: The revolution in the workplace means that you have to think of yourself as a brand. Murray shows how to compete and excel. Personal Finance: Your father said avoid credit cards, but he never saw rates of 3.9 percent! Murray shows how you can turn the tables and use the insane competition between credit card companies to your advantage. Investing: "Professional money manager" is an oxymoron. They don't know much more than you! Murray provides easy-to-use rules that will let you get great returns on your own. Retirement: Old age isn't what it used to be. Murray explains why the traditional three-legged stool (social security, private pension, personal saving) is rickety—and what to do about it. And much more, including websites that can help you navigate the wealth of choices, inside information on where the economy will go next, and a treasure trove of straightforward, concrete advice on thriving in a world where the consumer is king. Anyone can talk about the New Economy. Alan Murray shows how to live in it. The Wealth of Choices is the first book that combines the big picture and the street-smart tactics that will help you to profit and live well. —from the publisher's website
| 2000-09-17T00:00:00
|
0812932668
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/158987-1
|
73853-1
|
Donald Warren
|
Radio Priest: Charles Coughlin, the Father of Hate Radio
|
Donald Warren talked about his book, "Radio Priest: Charles Coughlin, The Father of Hate Radio," published by The Free Press. It focuses on the rise and fall of Father Charles Coughlin, a Catholic priest from Michigan who provided radio listeners in the 1930s and early 1940s with vicious attacks against both corporations and minority groups, especially Jews, as the cause for many of the U.S. social and economic ills during the Great Depression.
| 1996-09-08T00:00:00
|
0684824035
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/73853-1
|
11740-1
|
Fred Graham
|
Happy Talk: Confessions of a TV Newsman
|
The author was CBS News legal correspondent for almost 15 years. He described changes at the network after Dan Rather replaced Walter Cronkite as anchor in 1981. The ratings went down and non-journalists were brought in to run the news division. Graham recalled his introduction to an "infotainment" approach to news. He also discussed the high salaries of network correspondents. After leaving CBS, Graham returned to Nashville, Tennessee and became a local television news anchor. That experience proved less than satisfying and accounts for the "Happy Talk" in the book's title.
| 1990-04-01T00:00:00
|
0393027767
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/11740-1
|
181013-1
|
Constance Hays
|
The Real Thing: Truth and Power at the Coca-Cola Company
|
—from the publisher's website A definitive history of Coca-Cola, the world’s best-known brand, by a New York Times reporter who has followed the company and who brings fresh insights to the world of Coke, telling a larger story about American business and culture. The Real Thing is a portrait of America’s most famous product and the men who transformed it from mere soft drink to symbol of freedom. The story, starting with Coke’s creation after the Civil War and continuing with its domination of the domestic and worldwide soft-drink business, is a uniquely American tale of opportunity, hope, teamwork, and love, as well as salesmanship, hubris, ambition, and greed. By 1920, the Coca-Cola Company’s success depended on a unique partnership with a group of independent bottlers. Together, they had made Coke not just a soft drink but an element of our culture. But the company, intent on controlling everything about Coke, did all it could to dismantle that partnership. In its reach for power, it was more than willing to gamble the past. Constance L. Hays examines a century of Coca-Cola history through the charismatic, driven men who used luck, spin, and the open door of enterprise to turn a beverage with no nutritional value into a remedy, a refreshment, and the world’s best-known brand. The story of Coke is also a catalog of carbonation, soda fountains, dynastic bottling businesses, global expansion, and outsize promotional campaigns, including New Coke, one of the greatest marketing debacles of all time. By examining relationships at all levels of the company, The Real Thing reveals the psyche of a great American corporation and how it shadows all business, for better or worse. This is as much a story about America as it is the tale of a great American product, one recognized all over the world. Under the leadership of Roberto Goizueta and Doug Ivester, Coca-Cola reinvented itself for investors, spearheading trends such as lavish executive salaries and the wooing of Wall Street, but when Coke’s great global ambitions ran into trouble, it had difficulty getting back on track. The Real Thing is a journey through the soft-drink industry, from the corner office to the vending machine. It is also a social history in which sugared water becomes an international object of consumer desire—and the messages poured upon an eager public gradually obscure the truth.
| 2004-03-21T00:00:00
|
0375505628
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/181013-1
|
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