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18547-1
|
Bob Woodward
|
The Commanders
|
Bob Woodward discussed his book, "The Commanders," which investigated the decision making process in the White House from the beginning of the Bush administration to the beginning of the Persian Gulf war. He discussed the research he conducted for the book and the journalistic philosophy he employs in covering the workings of government. Mr. Woodward's book sparked controversy upon its release by revealing the amount of dissent that existed in the White House from the decision to use force in enforcing the U.N. resolutions concerning Kuwait. Mr. Woodward discussed the Bush administration's short history, which he said has been based on strong military action with a weak legislative agenda.
| 1991-06-23T00:00:00
|
067176960X
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/18547-1
|
110971-1
|
Larry Tye
|
The Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernays & The Birth of Public Relations
|
The Father of Spin , by Boston Globe reporter Larry Tye, is the first full-length biography of the legendary Edward L. Bernays who, beginning in the 1920s, was one of the first and most successful practitioners of the art of public relations. This book tells of Bernay's classic campaigns including: A "Torches of Freedom" march of debutantes down Fifth Avenue on Easter Sunday, 1929, that recast smoking as an act of women's liberation, made headlines coast to coast, and convinced a generation of women to light up - increasing profits for Bernay's client, the American Tobacco Company. A masterfully-orchestrated, secretive campaign to help overthrow the leftist government of Guatemala in the 1950s. The beneficiary: The United Fruit Company, a Bernays client whose banana republic was threatened by a socialist regime. Equally skillful efforts, on behalf of equally self-interested clients, to transform bacon and eggs into the All-American breakfast, to make Ivory the soap of choice for a generation, and to put Calvin Coolidge back into the White House. Using ideas borrowed from his uncle, Sigmund Freud, Bernays demonstrated to an entire generation of budding PR men and women the enormous power that lay within their grasp. If consumers could be guided in their selection of soap, so could husbands in their choice of a car and voters in their selection of candidates. Indeed, the very substance of American thought was mere clay to be molded by the savvy public relations practitioner, or so it seemed. The Father of Spin uses Bernay's life as a prism to understand the evolution of the craft of public relations and how it came to play such a critical—and sometimes insidious—role in American life. Drawing on interviews and primary sources, including Bernay's newly available private papers, Tye presents a fascinating and revealing portrait of a man who was one of the first and most articulate advocates of public relations, a profession that today helps define our commercial choices and shape our political discourse. —from the publisher's website
| 1998-09-20T00:00:00
|
0517704358
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/110971-1
|
13601-1
|
Tad Szulc
|
Then and Now: How the World Has Changed Since WW 2
|
Tad Szulc discussed his book which focuses on Twentieth Century historical development. The book, Then and Now: How the World Has Changed Since World War II, examined the impact of nuclear power, technological growth and Third World development on global politics. Mr. Szulc is a former foreign correspondent for The New York Times. He was the first reporter to break the news of the American-sponsored invasion at the Cuban Bay of Pigs in 1961. The book includes his evaluation of news events as well as personal reflections of the last fifty years. He concludes that the rise and fall of Marxism marks the beginning and the end of the Cold War and explains much of the last fifty years.
| 1990-08-19T00:00:00
|
0688075584
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/13601-1
|
41609-1
|
Douglas Davis
|
The Five Myths of Television Power
|
Mr. Davis talked about the research behind his book, The Five Myths of Television Power, or Why the Medium Is Not the Message, published by Simon and Schuster. He explained his exploration into the attitudes preserving the five commonly held assumptions about Americans and television, including the myth that political and social views are shaped by television, and the myth that Americans love television.
| 1993-05-30T00:00:00
|
0671739638
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/41609-1
|
182346-2
|
Simon Sebag Montefiore
|
Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar (Part 2)
|
—from the publisher's website Fifty years after his death, Stalin remains a figure of powerful and dark fascination. The almost unfathomable scale of his crimes–as many as 20 million Soviets died in his purges and infamous Gulag–has given him the lasting distinction as a personification of evil in the twentieth century. But though the facts of Stalin’s reign are well known, this remarkable biography reveals a Stalin we have never seen before as it illuminates the vast foundation–human, psychological and physical–that supported and encouraged him, the men and women who did his bidding, lived in fear of him and, more often than not, were betrayed by him. In a seamless meshing of exhaustive research, brilliant synthesis and narrative élan, Simon Sebag Montefiore chronicles the life and lives of Stalin’s court from the time of his acclamation as “leader” in 1929, five years after Lenin’s death, until his own death in 1953 at the age of seventy-three. Through the lens of personality–Stalin’s as well as those of his most notorious henchmen, Molotov, Beria and Yezhov among them–the author sheds new light on the oligarchy that attempted to create a new world by exterminating the old. He gives us the details of their quotidian and monstrous lives: Stalin’s favorites in music, movies, literature (Hemmingway, The Forsyte Saga and The Last of the Mohicans were at the top of his list), food and history (he took Ivan the Terrible as his role model and swore by Lenin’s dictum, “A revolution without firing squads is meaningless”). We see him among his courtiers, his informal but deadly game of power played out at dinners and parties at Black Sea villas and in the apartments of the Kremlin. We see the debauchery, paranoia and cravenness that ruled the lives of Stalin’s inner court, and we see how the dictator played them one against the other in order to hone the awful efficiency of his killing machine. With stunning attention to detail, Montefiore documents the crimes, small and large, of all the members of Stalin’s court. And he traces the intricate and shifting web of their relationships as the relative warmth of Stalin’s rule in the early 1930s gives way to the Great Terror of the late 1930s, the upheaval of World War II (there has never been as acute an account of Stalin’s meeting at Yalta with Churchill and Roosevelt) and the horrific postwar years when he terrorized his closest associates as unrelentingly as he did the rest of his country. Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar gives an unprecedented understanding of Stalin’s dictatorship, and, as well, a Stalin as human and complicated as he is brutal. It is a galvanizing portrait: razor-sharp, sensitive and unforgiving.
| 2004-06-27T00:00:00
|
1400042305
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/182346-2
|
50545-1
|
Madeline Cartwright
|
For the Children: Lessons from a Visionary Principal
|
Ms. Cartwright, a highly acclaimed principal of a Pennsylvania public school, discusses her book that recounts her trials and accomplishments in transforming that school. The dynamic and engaging black educator discussed her strategies and remedies in her efforts to combat teacher absences, to involve parents, and to clean up the school building and grounds. She also discussed her family and personal background. The book, For the Children: Lessons from a Visionary Principal; How We Can Save Our Public Schools, is published by Doubleday.
| 1993-09-19T00:00:00
|
0385423721
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/50545-1
|
171602-1
|
Zig Ziglar
|
Zig: The Autobiography of Zig Ziglar
|
—from the publisher's website Zig Ziglar, the motivational speaker who has galvanized audiences around the world and written more than a dozen perennially popular books, brings that same unbounded energy and clarity of vision to this candid, inspiring account of his own life and the forces that shaped it. Every year, Zig Ziglar travels all over the world delivering a resounding message of hope and commitment in forums ranging from high-powered business conferences and church leadership assemblies to youth conventions and educational gatherings. In Zig, Ziglar chronicles another kind of journey: his own transformation from a struggling, not terribly successful salesman to the sales champion of several different companies, and finally to his current position as one of the world's best-known and most highly regarded motivational speakers and trainers. As he describes his experiences, he brings to life the essence of his teachings: You can have everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want. At the heart of Ziglar's story are the people who taught him the importance of balancing a commitment to hard work with compassion for others. His first teacher was his mother, who raised him alone after the early death of his father, and introduced him to the principles and values he has honored for the rest of his life. Her lessons were reinforced by many others from the men and women who became his business mentors to the friends and spiritual leaders who comforted and supported him when things got tough. Paying tribute to each of them, Ziglar zeroes in on the philosophy and traits that have enabled him to achieve success in business and in his personal life: discipline, hard work, common sense, integrity, commitment, and an infectious sense of humor. Ziglar's speaking engagements and seminars along with a wide array of audio and video materials, books, and training manuals, have helped to trigger positive changes in small businesses, Fortune 500 companies, U.S. government agencies, nonprofit associations, religious organizations, schools, and prisons. At once engaging and enlightening, Zig provides a riveting portrait of the man who has achieved so much by embracing the simple but profound goal of helping others.
| 2002-10-06T00:00:00
|
0385502966
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/171602-1
|
16381-1
|
Father Theodore Hesburgh
|
God, Country, Notre Dame
|
In his book, Father Hesburgh chronicled his work as a priest, university president, and a public servant in politics and government. This autobiography talks about his experiences on 14 presidential commissions, including the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and the development of Notre Dame into a strong Catholic university. He said of his Notre Dame experience, a great university "needs a great faculty, a great student body, and great facilities." Father Hesburgh also commented on the current war in the Persian Gulf and gave his religious views on the conflict.
| 1991-02-10T00:00:00
|
0268010382
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/16381-1
|
158365-1
|
Robert Coram
|
Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War
|
—from the publisher's website John Boyd may be the most remarkable unsung hero in all of American military history. Some remember him as the greatest fighter pilot in American history-the man who, in simulated air-to-air combat, defeated every challenger in less than forty seconds. Some recall him as the father of our country's most legendary fighter aircraft-the F-15 and F-16. Still others think of Boyd as the most influential military theorist since Sun Tzu. They only know half the story. Boyd, more than any other person, saved fighter aviation from the predations of the Strategic Air Command. His manual of fighter tactics improved the way every air force in the world flies and fights. He discovered a physical theory that forever changed the way fighter planes were designed. Later in life, he developed a theory of military strategy that has been adopted throughout the world and even applied to business models for maximizing efficiency. And in one of the most startling and unknown stories of modern military history, the Air Force fighter pilot taught the U.S. Marine Corps how to fight war on the ground. His ideas led to America's swift and decisive victory in the Gulf War and foretold the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. On a personal level, Boyd rarely met a general he couldn't offend. He was loud, abrasive, and profane. A man of daring, ferocious passion and intractable stubbornness, he was that most American of heroes a rebel who cared not for his reputation or fortune but for his country. He was a true patriot, a man who made a career of challenging the shortsighted and self-serving Pentagon bureaucracy. America owes Boyd and his disciples the six men known as the "Acolytes" a great debt. Robert Coram finally brings to light the remarkable story of a man who polarized all who knew him, but who left a legacy that will influence the military and all of America for decades to come.
| 2003-01-26T00:00:00
|
0316796883
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/158365-1
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165751-1
|
Daniel Pink
|
Free Agent Nation: New Independent Workers
|
The Organization Man is history. Taking his place is America's new economic icon: the "free agent"—the job-hopping, tech-savvy, fulfillment-seeking self-employed independent worker. Already 30 million strong, these new "dis-organization" men and women are transforming America in ways both profound and exhilarating. In this landmark book, Daniel H. Pink offers the definitive account of this revolution in work. He shows who these free agents are—from the marketing consultant down the street to the home-based mompreneur to the footloose technology contractor—and why they've forged this new path. His entertaining and provocative account of the new frontier of work reveals how America's independent workers are shaking up all our institutions—from politics to education to the family. —from the author's website
| 2001-11-18T00:00:00
|
0446525235
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/165751-1
|
111945-1
|
Dorothy Herrmann
|
Helen Keller: A Life
|
This full-scale biography takes readers beyond the image of Helen Keller as the young girl portrayed in The Miracle Worker and brings to life the complex woman whose private self has, until now, been shrouded in legend. Dorothy Herrmann's book takes us through Helen's long, eventful life, a life that would have crushed a woman less stoic and adaptable—fraud. And one of the most persistent controversies surrounding her had to do with her relationship to the fiercely devoted Annie, through whom she largely expressed herself. Dorothy Herrmann explores these questions: Was Annie Sullivan a 'miracle worker' or a domineering, emotionally troubled woman who shrewdly realized that making a deaf-blind girl of average intelligence appear extraordinary was her ticket to fame and fortune? Was she merely an instrument through which Helen's 'brilliance' could manifest itself? Or was Annie herself the genius, the exceptionally gifted and sensitive one? Herrmann describes the nature of Helen's strange, sensorily deprived world. (Was it a black and silent tomb?) And she shows how Helen wasso cheerful about her disabilities, often appearing in public as the soul of radiance and altruism. (Was it Helen's real self that emerged at age seven, when she was transformed by language from a savage, animal-like creature into a human being? Or was it a false persona manufactured by the driven Annie Sullivan?). Dorothy Herrmann tells why, despite her romantic involvements, Helen was never permitted to marry. She shows us the woman who, to communicate with the outside world, relied totally on those who knew the manual finger language. For almost her entire life, these people, some of whom were jealous or dogmatic, were the key to Helen's world. —from the publisher's website
| 1998-10-25T00:00:00
|
0679443541
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/111945-1
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68051-1
|
Evan Thomas
|
The Very Best Men: Four Who Dared: The Early Years of the CIA
|
The Very Best Men is the story of the CIA's early days as told through the careers of four glamorous, daring, and idealistic men who ran covert operations for the government from the end of World War II to Vietnam. Evan Thomas re-creates the personal dramas and sometimes tragic lives of Frank Wisner, Richard Bissell, Tracy Barnes, and Desmond FitzGerald, who risked everything to contain the Soviet threat. Within the inner circles of Washington, they were regarded as the best and the brightest. They planned and acted to keep the country out of war -- by stealth and "political action" and to do by cunning and sleight of hand what great armies could not, must not be allowed to do. In the end, they were too idealistic and too honorable, and were unsuited for the dark, duplicitous life of spying. Their hubris and naïveté led them astray, producing both sensational coups and spectacular blunders like the Bay of Pigs and the failed assassination attempts on foreign leaders in the early 1960s. Thomas draws on the CIA's own secret histories, to which he has had exclusive access, as well as extensive interviews, to bring to life a crucial piece of American history. —from the publisher's website
| 1995-12-17T00:00:00
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0684810255
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/68051-1
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89403-1
|
Howard Gardner
|
Extraordinary Minds
|
Fifteen years ago, Harvard educator and psychologist Howard Gardner challenged the existing premise that intelligence consists of verbal or logical abilities only—those that are tested by schools—and argued for a broader understanding of the intelligent mind: one that embraces creation in the arts and music, spatial reasoning, and the ability to understand ourselves and others. Now, Gardner's ideas have not only become widely accepted but have changed the way we evaluate intelligence, genius, creativity, and even leadership. He is considered by educators, business persons, and policy-makers to be one of the leading authorities writing on these subjects today. Now, in EXTRAORDINARY MINDS, Gardner poses the question: Is there a set of traits shared by all truly great achievers—those we deem extraordinary—no matter their expertise or the time period within which they did their most important work? In an attempt to answer this question, Gardner first examines how most of us mature into more or less competent adults. He then closely examines the lives of Mozart, Freud, Woolf, and Gandhi, using each as an exemplar of a different kind of extraordinariness: Mozart as the master of a discipline; Freud as the innovative founder of a new discipline, Woolf as the great introspector; and Gandhi as the influencer. In his introductions Gardner explains his choices: "In every age a tiny percentage of individuals stand out by virtue of their creative achievements. A few are distinguished because of the prodigiousness and quality of their output: although he died young, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart created dozens of masterpieces in virtually every existing musical genre. Sometimes they stand out in terms of innovativeness; unknown at age forty, Sigmund Freud succeeded thereafter in creating an influential new domain called psychoanalysis. Sometimes they stand out in terms of insights into their own minds: Virginia Woolf penetrated deeply into her psyche, the experiences of women, and the nature of conscious mental processes. And sometimes they stand out in terms of their abilities to affect others: Mahatma Gandhi, a lawyer from an obscure province in colonial India, practiced a form of civil disobedience that inspired millions around the world." How can we make use of the experiences of the extraordinary person teach us about ourselves? Interestingly, Gardner finds that an excess of raw power is not the most impressive characteristic that super achievers have in common. The three core characteristics that they share are: 1) a special talent for identifying their own strengths and weaknesses 2) an ability to accurately analyze the events of their own lives 3) a facility for converting into future successes those inevitable setbacks that mark the lives of everyone Gardner has written about everything from leadership to creativity to intelligence and now, with EXTRAORDINARY MINDS, he casts his searching mind on the often taboo subject of extraordinariness. —from the publisher's website
| 1997-10-05T00:00:00
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0465045154
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/89403-1
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155183-1
|
Loung Ung
|
First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers
|
From a childhood survivor of the brutal Pol Pot regime comes an unforgettable narrative of tragedy and spiritual triumph. —from the publisher's website
| 2000-03-19T00:00:00
|
0060193328
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/155183-1
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76259-1
|
Mikhail Gorbachev
|
Memoirs
|
Mr. Gorbachev talked about his new book, Memoirs, published by Doubleday. He talked about his career as a Communist party leader and his contributions to the break-up of the Soviet Union. He said he wrote the book to explain his reasons for deciding that reforms were needed in the Soviet Union. Other topics included Mrs. Gorbachev, Russian cities, his U.S. visit, his love of reading, perestroika, and democracy. Translation from Russian to English was by voiceover. Pavel, the translator for both men, was shown on screen.
| 1996-11-24T00:00:00
|
0385480199
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/76259-1
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25679-1
|
Paul Hollander
|
Anti-Americanism
|
Mr. Hollander discussed his two new books, Anti-Americanism: Critiques at Home and Abroad, 1965-1990, published by Oxford University Press, and Decline and Discontent: Communism and the West Today, published by Transaction. Anti-Americanism is divided into two parts with one looking at domestic critiques and the other looking at foreign critiques during the period 1965-1990. He said that, as a sociologist, he was performing social history analysis in this book. He also talked about his book, Decline and Discontent, a collection of essays describing American discontent with various Communist systems. Topics included his chapter on George Kennan, definitions of 'elite' and 'intellectual,' socialism, and the decline of U.S. education.
| 1992-04-19T00:00:00
|
019503824X
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/25679-1
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23227-1
|
James Reston
|
Deadline: A Memoir
|
James "Scotty" Reston, former Washington bureau chief, columnist, and executive editor of The New York Times, discussed his book, Deadline: A Memoir. Mr. Reston reflected on his years as a journalist and discussed his relationships with policy makers and presidents from 1939, when he joined the Times' London bureau, until his retirement 50 years later. He shared his observations about the changes in America and in journalism.
| 1991-12-08T00:00:00
|
0394585585
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/23227-1
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183799-1
|
Stephen Greenblatt
|
Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare
|
—from the publisher's website How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare A brilliant reading of Shakespeare's world yields a new understanding of the man and his genius. A young man from the provinces—a man without wealth, connections, or university education—moves to London. In a remarkably short time he becomes the greatest playwright not just of his age but of all time. His works appeal to urban sophisticates and first-time theatergoers; he turns politics into poetry; he recklessly mingles vulgar clowning and philosophical subtlety. How is such an achievement to be explained? Will in the World interweaves a searching account of Elizabethan England with a vivid narrative of the playwright's life. We see Shakespeare learning his craft, starting a family, and forging a career for himself in the wildly competitive London theater world, while at the same time grappling with dangerous religious and political forces that took less-agile figures to the scaffold. Above all, we never lose sight of the great works—A Midsummer Night's Dream, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Macbeth, and more—that continue after four hundred years to delight and haunt audiences everywhere. The basic biographical facts of Shakespeare's life have been known for over a century, but now Stephen Greenblatt shows how this particular life history gave rise to the world's greatest writer. 16 pages of color illustrations.
| 2004-11-14T00:00:00
|
0393050572
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/183799-1
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100801-1
|
Ernest Lefever
|
The Irony of Virtue: Ethics and American Power
|
This definitive anthology is the fruit of one of America's most respected neoconservatives. Trained in Christian ethics, Ernest Lefever has been an articulate public policy advocate. Both conservatives and liberals will ignore his views at their peril. In this first-ever anthology of his most important work, Lefever takes a bold and lively march through the second half of the twentieth century. As an acute participant-observer who cares deeply about peace, freedom, and human dignity, Lefever became a neoconservative twenty years before Irving Kristol coined the term. For this volume, Lefever selected forty of his most influential essays from some 500 published pieces. They reveal his dramatic transformation from a liberal pacifist during World War II to a humane realist. —from the publisher's website
| 1998-03-22T00:00:00
|
0813368812
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/100801-1
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78190-1
|
John Fialka
|
War By Other Means: Economic Espionage in America
|
Mr. Fialka talked about his new book, War By Other Means: Economic Espionage in America, published by W.W. Norton and Company. He recounts many real-world spy stories and warns U.S. industry about the risks of economic espionage. He talks about security and the theft of patents and software by electronic means.
| 1997-03-19T00:00:00
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0393040143
|
https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/78190-1
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66346-1
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Cartha Deke DeLoach
|
Hoover's FBI: The Inside Story by Hoover's Trusted Lieutenant
|
Mr. DeLoach, a former FBI Deputy Director under J. Edgar Hoover, talked about his recently published book, Hoover's FBI, published by Regnery. It focuses on the FBI during the controversial tenure of J. Edgar Hoover. It attempts to disprove the many allegations against Mr. Hoover, including his sexual behavior and secret files.
| 1995-08-20T00:00:00
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089526479X
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/66346-1
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179038-1
|
Gail Collins
|
America’s Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates and Heroines
|
—from the publisher's website America's Women tells the story of more than four centuries of history. It features a stunning array of personalities, from the women peering worriedly over the side of the Mayflower to feminists having a grand old time protesting beauty pageants and bridal fairs. Courageous, silly, funny, and heartbreaking, these women shaped the nation and our vision of what it means to be female in America. By culling the most fascinating characters -- the average as well as the celebrated -- Gail Collins, the editorial page editor at the New York Times , charts a journey that shows how women lived, what they cared about, and how they felt about marriage, sex, and work. She begins with the lost colony of Roanoke and the early southern "tobacco brides" who came looking for a husband and sometimes -- thanks to the stupendously high mortality rate -- wound up marrying their way through three or four. Spanning wars, the pioneering days, the fight for suffrage, the Depression, the era of Rosie the Riveter, the civil rights movement, and the feminist rebellion of the 1970s, America's Women describes the way women's lives were altered by dress fashions, medical advances, rules of hygiene, social theories about sex and courtship, and the ever-changing attitudes toward education, work, and politics. While keeping her eye on the big picture, Collins still notes that corsets and uncomfortable shoes mattered a lot, too. "The history of American women is about the fight for freedom," Collins writes in her introduction, "but it's less a war against oppressive men than a struggle to straighten out the perpetually mixed message about women's roles that was accepted by almost everybody of both genders." Told chronologically through the compelling stories of individual lives that, linked together, provide a complete picture of the American woman's experience, America's Women is both a great read and a landmark work of history.
| 2003-12-14T00:00:00
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0061227226
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/179038-1
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8270-1
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Roger Kennedy
|
Orders From France
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Roger Kennedy talked about his book "Orders From France: The Americans and the French in a Revolutionary World, 1780 - 1820" (University of Pennsylvania Press). In the book he examines the ways in which France's artisans, architects, engineers, and craftsmen influenced Revolutionary America. During this period in American history, Williamsburg, Virginia, was modeled after Versailles, France; Washington, D.C., was designed by French architect Pierre-Charles L'Enfant; and a French engineer designed the intricate New York canal system. Mr. Kennedy talked about the development of the American and French constitutions and the impact of each revolution on world affairs. Character descriptions of influential leaders such as Washington, Jefferson, and Rousseau were also included.
| 1989-07-09T00:00:00
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0812213289
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/8270-1
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152229-1
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Linda McMurry
|
To Keep the Waters Troubled: The Life of Ida B. Wells
|
When Frederick Douglass died in 1895, writes Linda O. McMurry, Ida B. Wells "was his logical heir apparent; they had collaborated closely on several projects. She was better known than W.E.B. DuBois and more ideologically compatible with Douglass than Booker T. Washington"—but it was considered too belittling to black "manhood" to have a woman leading African American politics. Wells first rose to prominence when she wrote about her lawsuit against a railroad company that had kicked her out of a first-class seat. Throughout the 1890s, she crusaded vigorously against the rise of lynching as a tactic used by whites to intimidate the newly freed black populace. She also worked closely with the suffragist movement, but broke with white feminists who preferred to downplay or ignore ethnic dimensions to social justice. The woman who emerges from McMurry's intricately detailed biography, drawn extensively from Wells's own writings, is a fierce social advocate who easily serves as a role model for modern activists. —from the publisher's website
| 1999-09-26T00:00:00
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0195139275
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/152229-1
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115511-1
|
Philip Gourevitch
|
We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families
|
"Hutus kill Tutsis, then Tutsis kill Hutus—if that's really all there is to it, then no wonder we can't be bothered with it," Philip Gourevitch writes, imagining the response of somebody in a country far from the ethnic strife and mass killings of Rwanda. But the situation is not so simple, and in this complex and wrenching book, he explains why the Rwandan genocide should not be written off as just another tribal dispute. The "stories" in this book's subtitle are both the author's, as he repeatedly visits this tiny country in an attempt to make sense of what has happened, and those of the people he interviews. These include a Tutsi doctor who has seen much of her family killed over decades of Tutsi oppression, a Schindleresque hotel manager who hid hundreds of refugees from certain death, and a Rwandan bishop who has been accused of supporting the slaughter of Tutsi schoolchildren, and can only answer these charges by saying, "What could I do?" Gourevitch, a staff writer for The New Yorker , describes Rwanda's history with remarkable clarity and documents the experience of tragedy with a sober grace. The reader will ask along with the author: Why does this happen? And why don't we bother to stop it? —from the publisher's website
| 1998-11-22T00:00:00
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0374286973
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/115511-1
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171132-1
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Dennis Hutchinson
|
The Forgotten Memoir of John Knox
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—from the publisher's website This book is the first of its kind-the personal memoir of a law clerk to a member of the Supreme Court of the United States. John F. Knox (1907-1997) served as private secretary and law clerk to Justice James C. McReynolds, arguably one of the most disagreeable justices ever to sit on the bench, during the tumultuous year when FDR attempted to "pack the court" with judges who would approve his New Deal Agenda. The epitome of the overzealous young man, Knox kept a meticulous daily record of his life and surroundings, a practice he had begun as a lonely high school student and continued through his studies at the University of Chicago, Northwestern, and Harvard. Part scrapbook, part social commentary, and part recollection, his memoir reveals an unprecedented insider's view of the showdown between Roosevelt and the court. At the same time, it marvelously portrays a Washington culture now long gone, in which most justices worked from their homes, supported by a small staff. This unlikely cast of characters includes Knox, who continually fears for his job under the notoriously rude (and nakedly racist) justice; Harry Parker, the messenger who does "everything but breathe" for the Justice; and the maid, Mary Diggs, who with the others plots and schemes around her employer's idiosyncrasies to keep the household running. A substantial foreword by Dennis Hutchinson and David Garrow sets the stage, and a gallery of period photos of Knox, McReynolds, and other figures of the time gives life to this remarkable document, which like no other recaptures life in Washington, D.C., when it was still a genteel Southern town. John Frush Knox (1907-1997) served as private secretary and law clerk to Supreme Court Justice James C. McReynolds during the October 1936 term. After working at various law firms, he took over the family mail-order business and then worked as an insurance adjuster.
| 2002-09-08T00:00:00
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John Lewis
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Walking With the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement
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Forty years ago, a teenaged boy named John Lewis stepped off a cotton farm in Alabama and into the epicenter of the struggle for civil rights in America. The ideals of nonviolence which guided that critical time of American history established him as one of the movement's most charismatic and courageous leaders. In Walking with the Wind, John Lewis recounts his life with the fierce simplicity for which he is known, both in public and private. It began in rural poverty but within the bosom of a loving and resilient family. It has ranged across almost every battlefield in the most dramatic struggles for racial justice—from Selma to Montgomery to Birmingham and beyond. Lewis's leadership of the Nashville Movement—a student-led effort to desegregate the city of Nashville using sit-in techniques based on the teachings of Gandhi—established him as one of the movement's defining figures and set the tone for the major civil rights campaigns of the 1960s, from the Freedom Rides of 1961, during which Lewis was repeatedly brutally beaten and imprisoned; to the 1963 March on Washington, where his fiery speech thrust him into the national spotlight; to his selection as the national chairman of SNCC (the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee), which he helped shape and guide; to the 1965 "Bloody Sunday" attack at Selma, where Lewis suffered a fractured skull during a tear gas attack by Alabama state troopers. Lewis, as a participant in the movement, was to be, and remains, utterly true to his boyhood hero, Martin Luther King Jr., as a believer in the philosophy and discipline of nonviolent social action. In 1966, Lewis was ousted as SNCC chairman by Stokely Carmichael, who represented the emerging militant "Black Power" direction of the movement. Two years later, Lewis joined Robert Kennedy in his 1968 campaign for the presidency. He was with Kennedy moments before he was assassinated. Lewis, committed to the principles of nonviolence, spent the next decade organizing and registering four million voters in the South. In 1986, he sought a United States congressional seat in a campaign against his old friend, comrade, and former SNCC colleague Julian Bond. Lewis won the seat in a great upset and serves in Congress to this day. John Lewis tells his story of struggle in the civil rights movement, of comradeship in that community, of its battles and triumphs, and of his own persevering faith with great charm, candor, and humor. —from the publisher's website
| 1998-07-12T00:00:00
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Dana Priest
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The Mission: Waging War and Keeping Peace with America’s Military
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—from the publisher's website Walk with America's generals, grunts, and Green Berets through the maze of unconventional wars and unsettled peace. Four-star generals who lead the military during wartime reign like preconsuls abroad in peacetime. Secretive Green Berets trained to hunt down terrorists and wage guerrilla wars are assigned to seduce ruthless authoritarian regimes. Teenage soldiers schooled to seize airstrips instead play detective and social worker in a gung-ho but ill-fated attempt to rebuild a nation after the fighting stops. The Mission is a boots-on-the-ground account of America's growing dependence on the military to manage world affairs. It describes a clash of culture and purpose through the eyes of soldiers and officers themselves. In the aftermath of September 11, this trend has only accelerated, as the country turns to its warriors to solve the complex international challenges ahead. People in the military understand that they are on an unheralded, unnamed mission The Mission one largely unknown to most Americans. Through the author's unparalleled access to all levels of the military, much of the book unfolds in front of her eyes. The Mission blends Ernie Pyle's worm's-eye view with David Halberstam's altitude. Full of scoops, insider dialogue, and insight into the nation's top military leaders, the stories bring you to battlefields with Special Forces A-Teams in Afghanistan and Kosovo, palaces in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, the jungles of Colombia and Nigeria, and the Byzantine politics of Indonesia. To write this book, Dana Priest, who covered the military for the Washington Post, traveled to twenty countries, visiting the military's most important arenas of engagement. The result is the first full examination of new and historic policy the ever-widening role of our soldiers as America seeks to change and to pacify the world.
| 2003-03-09T00:00:00
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William Bennett
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The Book of Virtues
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Former Education Secretary Bennett described what he believes are the virtues that all children should be taught, such as friendship, courage, loyalty, self discipline, and others. He edited The Book of Virtues: A Treasury of Great Moral Stories, published by Simon and Schuster, in which he gathered together and commented upon stories and poems which illustrate these virtues. He said that our society is in decline, primarily through lack of moral values.
| 1994-01-09T00:00:00
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9780671683061
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/53631-1
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Steve Neal
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Harry and Ike: The Partnership That Remade the Postwar World
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Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower worked more closely between 1945 and 1952 than any other two American presidents of the twentieth century. They were partners in changing America's role in the world and in responding to the challenge of a Soviet Europe, yet they are remembered more for the acrimony that ended their friendship. Both were men of character, intelligence, and principle, and as the nation learned in the 1950s, they could also hold a grudge. Drawing on letters, diaries, and interviews with close associates, this is the first examination of the warm friendship, bitter rupture, and eventual reconciliation between two remarkable Americans. From the author of The Eisenhowers: Reluctant Dynasty and Dark Horse comes a unique volume focusing exclusively on the relationship between Dwight D. Eisenhower and Harry S. Truman. Harry and "Ike" grew up 150 miles apart in the heart of America. They met during World War II, when Truman became commander-in-chief after FDR's death. Together they would oversee not only the great Allied victory but also the restructuring of the U.S. military and the reconstruction of Europe. Together they would forge history's most successful alliance, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Their initial relationship was so respectful and warm that Truman offered to step aside in the 1948 presidential election if Ike would agree to run on the Democratic ticket. Preferring to remain out of politics, Eisenhower declined and instead became president of Columbia Uni-versity. Truman helped make Ike a wealthy man by granting him a special tax break for his memoirs. Eisenhower later prepared to remove himself from contention for the presidency in 1952 if Robert A. Taft supported Truman on NATO. But Ike's friendship with Truman would not survive the 1952 presidential campaign, and for nearly a decade the former allies were engaged in an epic feud. It was not until the funeral of John F. Kennedy that the two men put aside their differences and reestablished a semblance of their previous bond. In exploring the complexity of character, intelligence, and principle, Neal provides a fresh perspective on two giants of the twentieth century, and on the American presidency. —from the publisher's website
| 2002-02-10T00:00:00
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Pauline Maier
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American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence
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Pauline Maier shows us the Declaration as both the defining statement of our national identity and the moral standard by which we live as a nation. It is truly "American Scripture," and Maier tells us how it came to be—from the Declaration's birth in the hard and tortuous struggle by which Americans arrived at Independence to the ways in which, in the nineteenth century, the document itself became sanctified. Maier describes the transformation of the Second Continental Congress into a national government, unlike anything that preceded or followed it, and with more authority than the colonists would ever have conceded to the British Parliament; the great difficulty in making the decision for Independence; the influence of Paine's Common Sense, which shifted the terms of debate; and the political maneuvers that allowed Congress to make the momentous decision. In Maier's hands, the Declaration of Independence is brought close to us. She lets us hear the voice of the people as revealed in the other "declarations" of 1776: the local resolutions—most of which have gone unnoticed over the past two centuries—that explained, advocated, and justified Independence and undergirded Congress's work. Detective-like, she discloses the origins of key ideas and phrases in the Declaration and unravels the complex story of its drafting and of the group-editing job which angered Thomas Jefferson. Maier also reveals what happened to the Declaration after the signing and celebration: how it was largely forgotten and then revived to buttress political arguments of the nineteenth century; and, most important, how Abraham Lincoln ensured its persistence as a living force in American society. Finally, she shows how by the very act of venerating the Declaration as we do—by holding it as sacrosanct, akin to holy writ—we may actually be betraying its purpose and its power. —from the publisher's website
| 1997-08-17T00:00:00
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Joseph Persico
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Roosevelt’s Secret War: FDR and World War II Espionage
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Despite all that has already been written on Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Joseph Persico has uncovered a hitherto overlooked dimension of FDR's wartime leadership: his involvement in intelligence and espionage operations. Roosevelt's Secret War is crowded with remarkable revelations: -FDR wanted to bomb Tokyo before Pearl Harbor -A defector from Hitler's inner circle reported directly to the Oval Office -Roosevelt knew before any other world leader of Hitler's plan to invade Russia -Roosevelt and Churchill concealed a disaster costing hundreds of British soldiers' lives in order to protect Ultra, the British codebreaking secret -An unwitting Japanese diplomat provided the President with a direct pipeline into Hitler's councils Roosevelt's Secret War also describes how much FDR had been told—before the Holocaust—about the coming fate of Europe's Jews. And Persico also provides a definitive answer to the perennial question Did FDR know in advance about the attack on Pearl Harbor? By temperament and character, no American president was better suited for secret warfare than FDR. He manipulated, compartmentalized, dissembled, and misled, demonstrating a spymaster's talent for intrigue. He once remarked, "I never let my right hand know what my left hand does." Not only did Roosevelt create America's first central intelligence agency, the OSS, under "Wild Bill" Donovan, but he ran spy rings directly from the Oval Office, enlisting well-placed socialite friends. FDR was also spied against . Roosevelt's Secret War presents evidence that the Soviet Union had a source inside the Roosevelt White House; that British agents fed FDR total fabrications to draw the United States into war; and that Roosevelt, by yielding to Churchill's demand that British scientists be allowed to work on the Manhattan Project, enabled the secrets of the bomb to be stolen. And these are only a few of the scores of revelations in this constantly surprising story of Roosevelt's hidden role in World War II. —from the publisher's website
| 2001-11-11T00:00:00
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Elizabeth Drew
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On The Edge: The Clinton Presidency
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Ms. Drew talked about her recent book, On the Edge: The Clinton Presidency, published by Touchstone Books. Ms. Drew discussed the President's first 18 months in office, as well as the transition prior to Inauguration Day. Ms. Drew noted that President Clinton possessed a coherent vision for the U.S. and had accomplished a number of things during the early days of his administration, but she also asserted that the Clinton Administration often failed to adequately express its goals and achievements. She discussed some of the Administration's "growing pains," including the resignation of Defense Secretary Les Aspin. Ms. Drew also spoke about the process of researching and writing the book, the difficulties of gaining access to political officials, and her past experiences as a journalist.
| 1994-12-11T00:00:00
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James Perry
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A Bohemian Brigade
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Mr. Perry discussed his book The Bohemian Brigade: The Civil War Correspondents Mostly Rough, Sometimes Ready, published by Wiley, John, and Sons. The book details the emergence of modern American journalism during the Civil War. Pointing to the telegraph, steam-powered transport, the printing press, and the importance of breaking news and scoops, the author argues that the war was the first instant-news event.
| 2000-05-21T00:00:00
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Noa Ben Artzi-Pelossof
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In the Name of Sorrow and Hope
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Noa Ben Artzi-Pelossof, only granddaughter of assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, discussed her book, “In the Name of Sorrow and Hope,” published by Alfred A. Knopf. She gained international recognition when she read her "last letter" to her grandfather at his funeral. In the book, written when she was only 19, she reminisced about her childhood in Israel, her family, and her grandfather. The book details Prime Minister Rabin's evolution from soldier to Middle East peacemaker. It continues through to the leader's 1995 assassination by a member of the militant Israeli right wing. Ms. Ben Artzi-Pelossof reflected on her experiences as a young Israeli woman. Now a member of the Israeli army, she also talked about extremism in the Middle East, the political climate which resulted in her grandfather's death, and her hopes for peace.
| 1996-05-26T00:00:00
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Walter Cronkite
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A Reporter's Life
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Many of this century's most crucial and momentous events have had one thing in common: Walter Cronkite. The word "anchorman" was actually coined for Walter Cronkite and in his more than sixty years in journalism he has truly covered the world and won the trust and respect of generations of Americans. So great has been his influence that when in 1968 he told his CBS audience that the United States should get out of the war in Vietnam, President Lyndon B. Johnson told his assistant Bill Moyers, "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost middle America." In A REPORTER'S LIFE, Walter Cronkite tells the story of his years growing up in Kansas City and Houston; his early career working for newspapers, wire services and radio stations; his time as a war correspondent for United Press; and his years at CBS and beyond. Taking us behind his coverage of such events as the German surrender ending World War II, the Nuremberg Trials, The Civil Rights movement, The assassination of President Kennedy, the first walk on the moon, and the Vietnam War, he shares his honest insights into our history and our past presidents. He describes the struggle to report the news objectively, the fight against the network bean counters, the task of getting meaningful stories on the air and his strong views on the superficial quality of political coverage. —from the publisher's website
| 1997-06-29T00:00:00
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Dusko Doder
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Gorbachev: Heretic in the Kremlin
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Mr. Doder, co-author of Gorbachev: Heretic in the Kremlin, discussed his recent book in which focuses on Gorbachev's first five years in power. The book tells stories that show the Soviet leader's personal side.
| 1990-06-03T00:00:00
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Peter Arnett
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Live from the Battlefield
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Peter Arnett discussed his book, “Live From the Battlefield,” published by Simon and Schuster. He discussed his experiences as a war correspondent. The largest part of the book is dedicated to his life in Vietnam, the defining part of his life. He spoke about his work as a stringer in Vietnam during the early 1960s and his work as a correspondent during the war's later years. He contrasted his Vietnam experiences with his coverage of the Gulf War for CNN.
| 1994-02-20T00:00:00
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9780671755867
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/54712-1
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Henry Louis Gates
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Colored People
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Henry Louis Gates, Jr. talked about the life of an African American between 1950 and 1970, when "colored" was the name used by both outsiders members of the race themselves to self identify. Dr. Gates talked about the black vernacular and said that he would like to write a book about each subsequent name, such as "Negro" and "black." He talked about black culture during this time, including racial relations. He also talked about his life, work, and family and how he came to write the book. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is the author of Colored People: A Memoir, published by Alfred A. Knopf.
| 1994-10-09T00:00:00
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067973919X
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/60633-1
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Maurizio Viroli
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Niccolo's Smile: A Biography of Machiavelli
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In Niccolò's Smile, Maurizio Viroli brings to life the fascinating writer who was the founder of modern political thought. Niccolò Machiavelli's works on the theory and practice of statecraft are classics, but Viroli suggests that his greatest accomplishment is his robust philosophy of life—his deep beliefs about how one should conduct oneself as a modern citizen in a republic, as a responsible family member, as a good person. On these subjects Machiavelli wrote no books: the text of his philosophy is his life itself, a life that was filled with paradox, uncertainty, and tragic drama. Here is an extraordinary man in all his complexity and brilliance-a vivid narrative of Machiavelli's loves and friendships, the rewards and perils of being an adviser to princes, his travels and adventures, and the challenges and dangers of both his youth and his old age. Machiavelli was a charming figure who was both famous and powerless, both loved and reviled; we see him here for the first time not as an intimidating, cynical icon of European political thought but as a subtle, modern, and sagacious man whose smile captivated his friends, disarmed his foes—and preserved his inviolable personal freedom. —from the publisher
| 2001-02-18T00:00:00
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Thomas Keneally
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The Great Shame, Part 1
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Based on unique research among little-used sources, this masterly book surveys 80 years of Irish history as seen through the eyes of political prisoners—some of whom were the author's ancestors, who served time in Australia. —from the publisher's website
| 2000-01-02T00:00:00
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0385476973
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Jeanne Simon
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Codename: Scarlett
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Jeanne Simon, wife of Senator Paul Simon of Illinois, discusses the ups and downs of life on the presidential campaign trail for the 1988 election in her book entitled Codename: Scarlett, taken from Senator Simon's codename assigned by the Secret Service. Mrs. Simon candidly discusses campaigning strategies and analyzes the electoral process, specifically the role of the Iowa caucus. The book was published by Continuum International Publishing.
| 1989-07-23T00:00:00
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John Seigenthaler
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James K. Polk
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—from the publisher's website The story of a pivotal president who watched over our westward expansion and solidified the dream of Jacksonian democracy James K. Polk was a shrewd and decisive commander in chief, the youngest president elected to guide the still-young nation, who served as Speaker of the House and governor of Tennessee before taking office in 1845. Considered a natural successor to Andrew Jackson, “Young Hickory” miraculously revived his floundering political career by riding a wave of public sentiment in favor of annexing the Republic of Texas to the Union. Shortly after his inauguration, he settled the disputed Oregon boundary and by 1846 had declared war on Mexico in hopes of annexing California. The considerably smaller American army never lost a battle. At home, however, Polk suffered a political firestorm of antiwar attacks from many fronts. Despite his tremendous accomplishments, he left office an extremely unpopular man, on whom stress had taken such a physical toll that he died within three months of departing Washington. Fellow Tennessean John Seigenthaler traces the life of this president who, as Truman noted, “said what he intended to do and did it.”
| 2004-01-18T00:00:00
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Hillary Rodham Clinton
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It Takes a Village: And Other Lessons Our Children Teach Us
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First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton talked about her recently published book It Takes a Village, and Other Lessons Children Teach Us. The book focuses on factors that influence children and the environment in which children will best grow and develop. Ms. Clinton writes that there are an unbelievable amount of resources that are drawn upon in order to raise a child that becomes a caring, well-rounded adult. Ms. Clinton served on the board of the Children's Defense Fund for twenty years and worked for the organization after graduating from Yale Law School.
| 1996-03-03T00:00:00
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0684818612
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Gordon Wood
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The American Revolution: A History
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“An elegant synthesis done by the leading scholar in the field, which nicely integrates the work on the American Revolution over the last three decades but never loses contact with the older, classic questions that we have been arguing about for over two hundred years. -Joseph J. Ellis, author of Founding Brothers . A magnificent account of the revolution in arms and consciousness that gave birth to the American republic. When Abraham Lincoln sought to define the significance of the United States, he naturally looked back to the American Revolution. He knew that the Revolution not only had legally created the United States, but also had produced all of the great hopes and values of the American people. Our noblest ideals and aspirations-our commitments to freedom, constitutionalism, the well-being of ordinary people, and equality-came out of the Revolutionary era. Lincoln saw as well that the Revolution had convinced Americans that they were a special people with a special destiny to lead the world toward liberty. The Revolution, in short, gave birth to whatever sense of nationhood and national purpose Americans have had. No doubt the story is a dramatic one: Thirteen insignificant colonies three thousand miles from the centers of Western civilization fought off British rule to become, in fewer than three decades, a huge, sprawling, rambunctious republic of nearly four million citizens. But the history of the American Revolution, like the history of the nation as a whole, ought not to be viewed simply as a story of right and wrong from which moral lessons are to be drawn. It is a complicated and at times ironic story that needs to be explained and understood, not blindly celebrated or condemned. How did this great revolution come about? What was its character? What were its consequences? These are the questions this short history seeks to answer. That it succeeds in such a profound and enthralling way is a tribute to Gordon Wood’s mastery of his subject, and of the historian’s craft. "An elegant synthesis done by the leading scholar in the field, which nicely integrates the work on the American Revolution over the last three decades but never loses contact with the older, classic questions that we have been arguing about for over two hundred years." - Joseph J. Ellis, Author of Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation . —from the publisher's website
| 2002-04-21T00:00:00
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Ronald Kessler
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The FBI: Inside the World's Most Powerful Law Enforcement Agency
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Ronald Kessler talked about his book "The FBI: Inside the World's Most Powerful Law Enforcement Agency," published by Pocket Books, which reveals details and activities of the FBI from an inside perspective. Mr. Kessler's examination of the bureau begins with J. Edgar Hoover's death in 1972. Mr. Kessler’s book details how the bureau solved prominent cases, such as Watergate, and covered up many internal cases. The book also scrutinizes the investigation following the bombing of the World Trade Center in February of 1993 and the 1988 Pan Am 103 bombing in Scotland. Mr. Kessler described the events that led to the dismissal of former FBI Director Williams Sessions. Mr. Kessler was provided access to agents and meetings of the FBI on the directive of then FBI director, William Sessions. In the course of his research, Mr. Kessler uncovered evidence of use of FBI resources for personal matters by Director Sessions. His letter to the director outlining these actions resulted in investigations that ultimately led to the firing of the FBI director by President Bill Clinton in July 1993. The president cited poor judgment by the director as a reason for the firing.
| 1993-09-12T00:00:00
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Jill Jonnes
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Empires of Light
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—from the publisher's website In the final decades of the nineteenth century, three brilliant and visionary titans of America’s Gilded Age—Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, and George Westinghouse—battled bitterly as each vied to create a vast and powerful electrical empire. In Empires of Light , historian Jill Jonnes portrays this extraordinary trio and their riveting and ruthless world of cutting-edge science, invention, intrigue, money, death, and hard-eyed Wall Street millionaires. At the heart of the story are Thomas Alva Edison, the nation’s most famous and folksy inventor, creator of the incandescent light bulb and mastermind of the world’s first direct current electrical light networks; the Serbian wizard of invention Nikola Tesla, elegant, highly eccentric, a dreamer who revolutionized the generation and delivery of electricity; and the charismatic George Westinghouse, Pittsburgh inventor and tough corporate entrepreneur, an industrial idealist who in the era of gaslight imagined a world powered by cheap and plentiful electricity and worked heart and soul to create it. Edison struggled to introduce his radical new direct current (DC) technology into the hurly-burly of New York City as Tesla and Westinghouse challenged his dominance with their alternating current (AC), thus setting the stage for one of the eeriest feuds in American corporate history, the War of the Electric Currents. The battlegrounds: Wall Street, the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, Niagara Falls, and, finally, the death chamber—Jonnes takes us on the tense walk down a prison hallway and into the sunlit room where William Kemmler, convicted ax murderer, became the first man to die in the electric chair. Empires of Light is the gripping history of electricity, the “mysterious fluid,” and how the fateful collision of Edison, Tesla, and Westinghouse left the world utterly transformed.
| 2003-10-26T00:00:00
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Bette Bao Lord
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Legacies: A Chinese Mosaic
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Ms. Bao-Lord discussed her book, "Legacies: A Chinese Mosaic," in which she examines the culture and history of her native China. In particular, she examines the effect of television on the Chinese. Ms. Bao-Lord left China to live in the United States when she was eight years old. She returned in 1985, when her husband, Winston Lord, was posted to Beijing as the U.S. ambassador to China. They remained there through spring 1989. During the weeks before the pro-democracy demonstrations, Ms. Bao-Lord was a consultant to CBS News.
| 1990-05-27T00:00:00
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Ron Chernow
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Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.
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John D. Rockefeller, Sr.—history's first billionaire and the patriarch of America's most famous dynasty—is an icon whose true nature has eluded three generations of historians. Now Ron Chernow, the National Book Award-winning biographer of the Morgan and Warburg banking families, gives us a history of the mogul "etched with uncommon objectivity and literary grace . . . as detailed, balanced, and psychologically insightful a portrait of the tycoon as we may ever have" (Kirkus Reviews). Titan is the first full-length biography based on unrestricted access to Rockefeller's exceptionally rich trove of papers. A landmark publication full of startling revelations, the book will indelibly alter our image of this most enigmatic capitalist. Born the son of a flamboyant, bigamous snake-oil salesman and a pious, straitlaced mother, Rockefeller rose from rustic origins to become the world's richest man by creating America's most powerful and feared monopoly, Standard Oil. Branded "the Octopus" by legions of muckrakers, the trust refined and marketed nearly 90 percent of the oil produced in America. Rockefeller was likely the most controversial businessman in our nation's history. Critics charged that his empire was built on unscrupulous tactics: grand-scale collusion with the railroads, predatory pricing, industrial espionage, and wholesale bribery of political officials. The titan spent more than thirty years dodging investigations until Teddy Roosevelt and his trustbusters embarked on a marathon crusade to bring Standard Oil to bay. While providing abundant new evidence of Rockefeller's misdeeds, Chernow discards the stereotype of the cold-blooded monster to sketch an unforgettably human portrait of a quirky, eccentric original. A devout Baptist and temperance advocate, Rockefeller gave money more generously—his chosen philanthropies included the Rockefeller Foundation, the University of Chicago, and what is today Rockefeller University—than anyone before him. Titan presents a finely nuanced portrait of a fascinating, complex man, synthesizing his public and private lives and disclosing numerous family scandals, tragedies, and misfortunes that have never before come to light. John D. Rockefeller's story captures a pivotal moment in American history, documenting the dramatic post-Civil War shift from small business to the rise of giant corporations that irrevocably transformed the nation. With cameos by Joseph Pulitzer, William Randolph Hearst, Jay Gould, William Vanderbilt, Ida Tarbell, Andrew Carnegie, Carl Jung, J. Pierpont Morgan, William James, Henry Clay Frick, Mark Twain, and Will Rogers, Titan turns Rockefeller's life into a vivid tapestry of American society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It is Ron Chernow's signal triumph that he narrates this monumental saga with all the sweep, drama, and insight that this giant subject deserves. —from the publisher's website
| 1998-06-21T00:00:00
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Christopher Dickey
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Summer of Deliverance: A Memoir of Father and Son
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Summer of Deliverance is a powerful and moving memoir of anger, love, and reconciliation between a son and his father; between the journalist Christopher Dickey and the renowned poet and novelist James Dickey. Chris, best known for his reporting on wars around the world, takes us back to his childhood in his father's universe of Southern intellectuals and backwoods rednecks, of night-fighter pilots in the Pacific, poets in Paris, and martini-drinking ad men in Atlanta. And to the summer of 1971, when James Dickey's first novel, Deliverance , was made into a movie. For nearly twenty years after his mother drank herself to death in 1976, Christopher hardly saw his father. When they met, it was in passing and on neutral territory—at a coffee shop at La Guardia Airport, at the university's faculty club. Always, Jim would be drunk. Chris had heard accounts of the horrors in his father's house: an alcoholic second wife, a little daughter forced to rely on her wits and will to survive. But Chris believed that there was nothing he could do about the decisions his father made. Then, in the summer of 1994, pushed by his own wife, Chris went back to South Carolina, back to his mother's grave. He steeled himself against all the madness he knew still lingered there, but hoped that by reuniting with his father he would find what was missing in himself. He discovered he had been right about the horrors of his father's life, but he also found a blood tie that could not be broken, a need for kinship that had to be satisfied. A few months later, as Jim Dickey lay in a hospital near death with liver disease, Chris and his brother, Kevin, and the thirteen-year-old sister they barely knew entered into a conspiracy to save him. And they succeeded. Drawing on letters, notebooks, diaries, and Chris's explicit conversations with his father about what happened between them, Summer of Deliverance is a superbly crafted memoir of the corrosive effects of fame and an inspiring celebration of love between father and son. —from the publisher's website
| 1998-10-18T00:00:00
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0684812035
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/112317-1
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Cornel West
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The Cornel West Reader
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An invaluable introduction to the writings of one our most prominentand prolific public intellectuals. West ( Restoring Hope, 1997, etc.) is one of those rare African-American scholars who has been able to break out of the Black Studies ghetto not only in the academy but also in his widely and often popularly published work, as this hefty anthology plainly attests; at the same time, he asserts the continued power of Marxist thought without being confined to the only slightly less restrictive pigeonhole of socialist theory. He is as comfortable writing on William James and Josiah Royce as on Antonio Gramsci and Martin Luther King. And this retrospective collection certainly validates his stated desire ``to lay bare the basic structure of my intellectual work and life.'' Although much of the material has been published in book form before, West manages to put the pieces together in revealingly and economically thematic chunks. Those who find his technical and philosophical writings daunting will appreciate his more accessible interviews, including discussions with Bill Moyers, Anders Stephanson, and George Yancey (although a lengthy discussion of Georg Lukacs may leave most non-Marxists behind). Unfortunately, West does himself no great service with an introduction that is pompous, ponderous, and parodically self-satisfied. And while he refers to himself there as a ``Chekhovian Christian,'' West seems to have missed the dry humor that underpins much of Chekhov's best work, whileunderstandablyeschewing the rueful resignation of the Russian's plays. At his best, however, West is a lucid and serious thinker and an elegant and often impassioned writer, as this generous helping of his work reminds us. Skip the introduction and read the rest. —Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
| 2000-02-22T00:00:00
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0465091091
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/154711-1
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Thomas Sowell
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Preferential Policies: An International Perspective
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Thomas Sowell discussed his book, "Preferential Policies: An International Perspective," published by William Morrow and Company. The book addresses the effects of government-mandated affirmative action programs. Mr. Sowell's analysis includes plans that have been implemented in developed and under-developed countries for minority and majority segments of the population. He contends that preferential policies often disproportionately assist the more fortunate in a targeted group. He further argues that "temporary" preferential policies usually expand the scope of their coverage and become permanent. Subsequently, fraudulent claims become pervasive. Mr. Sowell asserts that these problems occur because the programs are designed for political expediency rather than long-term societal change.
| 1990-06-10T00:00:00
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0688085997
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/12648-1
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Ted Gup
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The Book of Honor: Covert Lives & Classified Deaths at the CIA
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CIA agents who lost their lives, only to remain anonymous and hidden by the agency, are profiled in this expo by a legendary investigative reporter who once worked under Bob Woodward at The Washington Post. Gup interviewed over 400 CIA officers and pored over official records and personal diaries to tell the agents' stories. —from the publisher's website
| 2000-08-27T00:00:00
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/157823-1
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Gary Sick
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October Surprise
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Former National Security Council member Gary Sick discussed his book, "October Surprise: America's Hostages in Iran and the Election of Ronald Reagan." In his book, Mr. Sick explored the theory that the 1980 Reagan/Bush campaign negotiated with the Iranian government to delay the release of 52 American hostages until after Reagan's 1981 inauguration. He also examined the implications of such an agreement, and its possible effect on the 1992 presidential election.
| 1991-12-01T00:00:00
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9991529136
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/23038-1
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61780-1
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Melba Pattillo Beals
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Warriors Don't Cry
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Ms. Beals discussed her book, Warriors Don't Cry, which details her experiences as part of the first integrated class of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. The author recalls how she and eight other black teenagers integrated the school as a result of the Brown v. Board of Education segregation case decision. President Eisenhower had to enforce integration in the school with National Guard troops in September 1957.
| 1994-11-27T00:00:00
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0785752528
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/61780-1
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Mona Charen
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Useful Idiots
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—from the publisher's website In Useful Idiots: How Liberals Got it Wrong in the Cold War and Still Blame America First , Mona Charen holds liberals accountable and reveals the horrifying crimes that these liberals helped defend and cover up for the Communists. Meet the useful idiots: Jane Fonda, Dan Rather, Al Gore, Ted Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, Jesse Jackson, and all the other liberals who were and are always willing to blame America first and defend its enemies as simply misunderstood. These are the liberals who flocked to Castro’s Cuba and called it paradise, just as a previous generation of liberals visited the Soviet Union and proclaimed its glorious future. They are the liberals who saw Communist Vietnam and Cambodia in fact, Communism everywhere as generally a beneficial force, and blamed America as a gross, blind, and blundering giant. Now that the Cold War has been won, these liberals, amazingly, are proud to claim credit for the victory conveniently forgetting their apologies for the Communists and their spluttering attacks on Cold Warriors like Ronald Reagan. But nationally syndicated columnist Mona Charen isn’t about to let them rewrite history. In her shocking new book, Useful Idiots: How Liberals Got It Wrong in the Cold War and Still Blame America First , she exposes: Prominent Clinton administration officials such as Madeleine Albright, Sidney Blumenthal, and Strobe Talbott who turned a blind eye to the Soviet Evil Empire, but who now want to be counted as Cold Warriors Media figures who clucked with praise for Communists and smirked with snide disdain for America including Bill Moyers, Phil Donahue, Bryant Gumble, and Katie Couric Professors who poisoned the academy with anti-Americanism and anti-capitalism at top universities such as Princeton, Brown, Columbia, and Georgetown Entertainerssuch as Harry Belafonte, Pete Seeger, Meryl Streep, Martin Sheen, and Ed Asnerwho used the megaphones of their fame to blame America first
| 2003-03-30T00:00:00
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0895261391
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/175052-1
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Harvey Mansfield
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Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America
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Alexis de Tocqueville's book he wrote on his return to France from America in 1831 remains the most often quoted book about the United States. Harvey Mansfield and Delba Winthrop's new translation is the first to appear in three decades, and the only one to provide notes identifying events and allusions no longer familiar to today's readers. —from the publisher's website
| 2000-12-17T00:00:00
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0226805328
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/159774-1
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66925-1
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Andrew Sullivan
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Virtually Normal: An Argument About Homosexuality
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Andrew Sullivan discussed his book, "Virtually Normal: An Argument about Homosexuality," published by Alfred A. Knopf. It focuses on the debate over the "normalcy" of being homosexual and how this affects the role of homosexuals in U.S. society. He also talked about his career in journalism and the discrimination he has faced.
| 1995-10-01T00:00:00
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0679423826
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/66925-1
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157619-1
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Elizabeth Taylor
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American Pharaoh: Mayor Richard J. Daley
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The story of legendary Chicago mayor Richard J. Daly and his pivotal role in building Chicago into a major metropolis while fighting against racial integration, the anti-Vietnam War movement, and President Johnson's War on Poverty. —from the publisher's website
| 2000-07-23T00:00:00
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0316834033
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/157619-1
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62796-1
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Donald Kagan
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On the Origins of War
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Professor Kagan talked about his book, "On the Origins of War," published by Doubleday, which examines the common causes of war throughout history. The original idea came from a seminar course for advanced high school students in the 1960s. He discussed the causes of five conflicts: the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta, the Second Punic War between Rome and Carthage, World Wars One and Two and the Cuban Missile Crisis. He also commented on his opinion that wars are fundamentally about pride, prestige and honor, not other factors such as geography or economics.
| 1995-03-12T00:00:00
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0385423756
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/62796-1
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David McCullough
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Truman
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David McCullough discussed his book, "Truman," published by Simon and Schuster. He discussed his research for the book, which is an exhaustive biography of the former president, spanning from a brief overview of the Truman family, his early years in farming, small business and politics, to his career after his presidency and how Truman felt returning back to citizen life.
| 1992-07-19T00:00:00
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0671456547
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/27217-1
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159943-1
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Peter Hitchens
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The Abolition of Britain: From Winston Churchill to Princess Diana
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A surprise best seller in England, The Abolition of Britain is bitingly witty and fiercely argued, yet also filled with somber appreciation for what "the idea of England" has always meant to the West and to the world at large. One English critic called The Abolition of Britain "an elegant jeremiad" in which Peter Hitchens identifies everything that has gone wrong with Britain since World War II and makes the case for "those many millions who feel that they have become foreigners in their own land and wish with each succeeding day that they could turn the clock back." Writing with passion and flair, Hitchens targets the pernicious effects of TV culture, the "corruption and decay" of the English language, the loss of politeness, and the "syrupy confessional mood" brought on by the death of Diana, which Hitchens contrasts with the somber national response to the death of Winston Churchill. If there is a term that summarizes everything that has gone wrong in Britain, it is "Tony Blairism," which Hitchens sees as having rewritten England’s history, trivialized its journalism, subverted its educational system and cultural standards, and overthrown accepted notions of patriotism, faith, and morality. The New Britain is government by focus group in which people are told what to feel as a way of preventing them from asking how they want to be governed. Looking at the changed face of his country, Hitchens finds a "politically correct zeal for the new" whose impact on daily life has been "as devastating in effect, if not in violence, as Mao tse Tung’s Cultural Revolution in China." —from the publisher's website
| 2000-12-31T00:00:00
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189355418X
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/159943-1
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125934-1
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Dan Rather
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Deadlines & Datelines: Essays at the Turn of the Century
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Ranging from the Iraq conflict to poverty in China, tragedies like the Oklahoma City bombing to triumphs in courage, Deadlines & Datelines offers readers a unique chance to share the insights of one of America's premier newsmen. With his distinctive blend of frontline determination and a journalist's knack for a good story, Rather looks at the awesome struggles and everyday accomplishments he's witnessed at home and around the globe. With candor, compassion, and sometimes irreverence, Rather examines how such figures as Madeline Albright, Bill Gates, and Fidel Castro shape world politics and culture. Deadlines & Datelines is not without its lighter moments. In one laugh-out-loud essay, Rather skewers the phenomenon of "dumb bass," or bass that are bred to go after any hook in sight. Chapters include "In the News, Across America," "Politics and Politicians," and "Tributes." Throughout these essays, Rather offers readers a wide range of thought-provoking observations and shows yet again the skill and intelligence that have made him an important part of our world for more than four decades. —from the publisher's website
| 1999-07-25T00:00:00
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0688165664
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/125934-1
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James Tobin
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Ernie Pyle's War: America's Eyewitness to World War II
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James Tobin discussed his book, "Ernie Pyle's War: America's Eyewitness to World War II," published Alfred A. Knopf. His book examines war correpsondent Ernie Pyle's life and work and the contradictory feelings of depression and exhiliration over the war action. The book also profiles Pyle's personal life and his death on the beaches of Okinawa while covering the battle on the front lines.
| 1997-08-10T00:00:00
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0684836424
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/87455-1
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54339-1
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Stanley Weintraub
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Disraeli: A Biography
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Historian Stanley Weintraub discussed his book, "Disraeli: A Biography," published by Dutton Publishing. The book deals with Disraeli who was a novelist, prime minister, and one of the major political figures in England during the 19th century. Professor Weintraub mentioned his admiration for Disraeli and said that his success in politics was due largely to his audacity.
| 1994-02-06T00:00:00
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0525936688
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/54339-1
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179670-1
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Brenda Wineapple
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Hawthorne: A Life
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—from the publisher's website Handsome, reserved, almost frighteningly aloof until he was approached, then playful, cordial, Nathaniel Hawthorne was as mercurial and double-edged as his writing. “Deep as Dante,” Herman Melville said. Hawthorne himself declared that he was not “one of those supremely hospitable people who serve up their own hearts, delicately fried, with brain sauce, as a tidbit” for the public. Yet those who knew him best often took the opposite position. “He always puts himself in his books,” said his sister-in-law Mary Mann, “he cannot help it.” His life, like his work, was extraordinary, a play of light and shadow. In this major new biography of Hawthorne, the first in more than a decade, Brenda Wineapple, acclaimed biographer of Janet Flanner and Gertrude and Leo Stein (“Luminous”–Richard Howard), brings him brilliantly alive: an exquisite writer who shoveled dung in an attempt to found a new utopia at Brook Farm and then excoriated the community (or his attraction to it) in caustic satire; the confidant of Franklin Pierce, fourteenth president of the United States and arguably one of its worst; friend to Emerson and Thoreau and Melville who, unlike them, made fun of Abraham Lincoln and who, also unlike them, wrote compellingly of women, deeply identifying with them–he was the first major American writer to create erotic female characters. Those vibrant, independent women continue to haunt the imagination, although Hawthorne often punishes, humiliates, or kills them, as if exorcising that which enthralls. Here is the man rooted in Salem, Massachusetts, of an old pre-Revolutionary family, reared partly in the wilds of western Maine, then schooled along with Longfellow at Bowdoin College. Here are his idyllic marriage to the youngest and prettiest of the Peabody sisters and his longtime friendships, including with Margaret Fuller, the notorious feminist writer and intellectual. Here too is Hawthorne at the end of his days, revered as a genius, but considered as well to be an embarrassing puzzle by the Boston intelligentsia, isolated by fiercely held political loyalties that placed him against the Civil War and the currents of his time. Brenda Wineapple navigates the high tides and chill undercurrents of Hawthorne’s fascinating life and work with clarity, nuance, and insight. The novels and tales, the incidental writings, travel notes and children’s books, letters and diaries reverberate in this biography, which both charts and protects the dark unknowable core that is quintessentially Hawthorne. In him, the quest of his generation for an authentically American voice bears disquieting fruit.
| 2004-01-04T00:00:00
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0375400443
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/179670-1
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Glenn Frankel
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Beyond the Promised Land: Jews and Arabs on a Hard Road to a New Israel
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Mr. Frankel talked about his book Beyond the Promised Land: Jews and Arabs on a Hard Road to a New Israel, published by Simon and Schuster, which focuses on the changes in the Middle East. Mr. Frankel used his access to Israeli senior officials and young Palestinian street fighters to describe what was then the current state of the country He specifically emphasized the evolution of Israel from a small, belligerent state to a modern democracy that realized it needed peace for further prosperity
| 1994-12-25T00:00:00
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0684823470
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/62334-1
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168061-1
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Bill Press
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Spin This!: All The Ways We Don’t Tell the Truth
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We're all familiar with the warning, "Don't believe everything you see or hear." Bill Press, the popular co-host of CNN's Crossfire, will have you wondering whether you should believe anything at all. Spin -- intentional manipulation of the truth -- is everywhere. It's in the White House, in the courtrooms, in headlines and advertising slogans. Even couples on dates -- not to mention book jackets -- are guilty of spin. Now, analyst Bill Press freeze-frames the culture of spin to investigate what exactly spin is, who does it and why, and its impact on American society as a whole. Depending upon who is doing it, spinning can mean anything from portraying a difficult situation in the best possible light to completely disregarding the facts with the intent of averting embarrassment or scandal. Using examples drawn from recent history -- the Clinton presidency, the Florida recount, and the Bush White House -- Press first probes spin's favorite haunt: politics. In addition to surveying the incarnations of spin in the fields of journalism, law, and advertising, Press also chews on the spin of sex and "dating," a word that has become the very embodiment of spin. Perhaps surprisingly, however, Press argues that spin isn't all bad, and that without it the harsh truths of our times might be too tough to swallow. With the same keen sense of humor that helped make CNN's Crossfire television's premier debate show and the limited run of The Spin Room so popular, Press turns the tables on the prime purveyors of spin -- called spin doctors -- noting some of their biggest guffaws and blunders. As Press notes, it has become abundantly clear that the twenty-first century, beginning as it has with a president who was "spun into office," will be a fertile stomping ground for spin. —from the publisher's website
| 2002-01-06T00:00:00
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0743442679
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/168061-1
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George Ball
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The Passionate Attachment
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Former Deputy Secretary George Ball discussed his book, “The Passionate Attachment: America's Involvement in Israel, 1947 to the Present,” published by W.W. Norton and Company. He discussed his research for the book, and reflected on his experiences concerning American foreign policy during his lengthy Washington career. He served in the State Department during the Kennedy administration.
| 1993-05-23T00:00:00
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0393029336
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/40763-1
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121919-1
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Max Frankel
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The Times of My Life and My Life with the Times
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In this remarkable memoir, The New York Times's Max Frankel tells his life story the way he lived it—in tandem with the big news stories of our time. "I escaped into America, and beyond it. The idea of America became my proud passport. A passion to conform made me a patriot. The discovery of words turned me into a skeptic. And the journalist's press pass sent me vaulting across borders to gain a spectacular perspective on our era. Like the astronauts floating in outer space, I've had a rare glimpse of the earth in my times, and it gave me an irrepressible urge to record the journey." Max Frankel started to write for The New York Times as a student at Columbia in 1949, and during the next half century he held just about every important position on the paper—foreign correspondent, Washington bureau chief, editorials editor, and executive editor. When The Times of My Life begins, Max Frankel is a boy in Nazi Germany; we experience the terror of his wartime escape with his heroic mother, their immigrant lives in New York, and a teacher's inspired decision that he could belatedly learn to read English if he learned to write it. And so Max Frankel found his career. His book, like his life, moves through Hitler's Berlin, Khrushchev's Moscow, Castro's Havana, and the Washington of Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon. It reevaluates the Cold War and interweaves Frankel's personal and professional lives with the era's greatest stories, from Sputnik to the Pentagon Papers, from the building of the Berlin Wall to its collapse, all the while tracking the tensions of managing the world's greatest newspaper. Beautifully written, filled with anecdotes and insights, The Times of My Life evokes an unparalleled life as it embraces America in our time. —from the publisher's website
| 1999-04-18T00:00:00
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0679448241
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/121919-1
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9108-1
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Gen. Ariel Sharon
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Warrior: An Autobiography
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Ariel Sharon, former defense minister, discusses his personal history and commitment to the modern Israeli state in "Warrior: An Autobiography." Born in Israel of Soviet parentage, he discusses his childhood and youth in a small village, giving insight to life in Israel before the the 1948 declaration of independence. His early military career is discussed, along with the tragic deaths of his first wife and son. Sharon discusses the famous libel suit he filed against Time magazine. He addresses issues currently facing Israel and gives insight to Israeli politics by discussing the organization and membership of the Knesset, or parliament. He also responds to quotes about his character taken from Thomas Friedman's bestseller, From Beirut to Jerusalem.
| 1989-09-17T00:00:00
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074322566X
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/9108-1
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55567-1
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John Corry
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My Times: Adventures in the News Trade
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Mr. Corry discussed his recent book, My Times: Adventures in the News Trade, which was intended as a memoir of his work at The New York Times. He described his interactions with the newspaper, the ways these interactions changed both him and the newspaper, and the ways these changes affected the world around him. He also related stories about his work during the Kennedy administration.
| 1994-03-27T00:00:00
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0399138862
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/55567-1
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54899-1
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Stephan Lesher
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George Wallace: American Populist
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Stephan Lesher discussed his book, "George Wallace: American Populist," published by Addison-Wesley. He discussed populism and why Mr. Wallace fits this description. The focus of his book is the political activity and accomplishments of Mr. Wallace.
| 1994-02-27T00:00:00
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0201622106
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/54899-1
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86445-1
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Robert Hughes
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American Visions: The Epic History of Art in America
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Writing with all the brilliance, authority, and pungent wit that have distinguished his art criticism for Time magazine and his greatly acclaimed study of modern art, The Shock of the New, Robert Hughes now addresses his largest subject: the history of art in America. The intense relationship between the American people and their surroundings has been the source of a rich artistic tradition. American Visions is a consistently revealing demonstration of the many ways in which artists have expressed this pervasive connection. In nine eloquent chapters, which span the whole range of events, movements, and personalities of more than three centuries, Robert Hughes shows us the myriad associations between the unique society that is America and the art it has produced: "O My America, My New Founde Land" explores the churches, religious art, and artifacts of the Spanish invaders of the Southwest and the Puritans of New England; the austere esthetic of the Amish, the Quakers, and the Shakers; and the Anglophile culture of Virginia. —from the publisher's website
| 1997-07-20T00:00:00
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0679426272
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/86445-1
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93482-1
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Jeff Shesol
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Mutual Contempt
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A fascinating portrait of two giants of twentieth-century politics locked in a conflict that defined their era. Lyndon Johnson and Robert Kennedy loathed each other. Politics, of course, is full of heated rivalry, and the nature of the game is more often defined by power and personality than by ideas. But the animosity between these two was of a different order, marked by a bitterness so acute and abiding that they could barely speak in each other's presence. After the death of John Kennedy, they were the dominant political personalities of the 1960s. Each spent the decade listening for footsteps, looking over his shoulder, making few important decisions without first considering the feud. Their antagonism spawned political turf battles across the United States, and it captivated the newly powerful media, which portrayed their every disagreement as part of a deliberate battle to claim the legacy of the fallen president. Memoirs, biographies, previously unexamined documents, and scores of interviews have provided threads of this story, and Jeff Shesol weaves them into a gripping and coherent narrative that reflects the profound impact of this relationship on politics, civil rights, the war in Vietnam, and the war on poverty. Like a Greek tragedy played out on a nation's center stage, this book provides a prism through which to view two men, their times, and the nature of power. —from the publisher's website
| 1997-11-30T00:00:00
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039304078X
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/93482-1
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174432-1
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Joy Hakim
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Freedom: A History of US
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—from the publisher's website Master storyteller Joy Hakim has excited millions of young minds with the great drama of American history in her award-winning series A History of US . Hailed by historians, educators, and parents for its exciting, thought-provoking narrative, the books have been recognized as a break-through tool in teaching history and critical reading skills to young people. And the kids themselves agree: Hakim has piles of fan letters as testimony. Beginning in January, PBS, in association with Thirteen/WNET, General Electric and Kunhardt Productions, will present Freedom: A History of US, an innovative television mini-series based on Joy Hakim's award-winning books. Katie Couric will host the series, George and Laura Bush will introduce the first episode, and celebrated actors such as Paul Newman, Glenn Close, Robin Williams, Matthew Broderick, Angela Bassett, Jeremy Irons, John Lithgow, and Morgan Freeman will participate as narrators. The program will focus on the history of the United States through the inspiring story of our fight to uphold the ideal of freedom, beginning with the Declaration of Independence in 1776, culminating in the Civil Rights movement, and concluding with the challenges posed by the September 11th attacks. In 8 one-hour episodes appearing nationally on public television, the story of America will unfold through Joy Hakim's vision: her belief that freedom survives again and again, despite all the mistakes and tragic setbacks, and that in order to succeed in upholding this great ideal we must examine the past. The Freedom: A History of US companion book to the PBS series will capture both the visual energy of the programs and Hakim's rare gift for telling history through the lives of its makers. The book will follow the thread of the programs and also expand on them, providing a more complete picture of the people and events that shaped a defiant band of thirteen colonies into a great nation of 50 states. More than 400 illustrations, sidebars, and historical documents enhance this stunning look at American history for families to share, discuss, and treasure. Freedom: A History of US is an essential book for every household in America, and reminds us that great storytelling and a passion for freedom will always have a place at the table.
| 2003-02-23T00:00:00
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0195157117
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/174432-1
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9190-1
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George Gilder
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Microcosm
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Economist and author George Gilder takes an intriguing look at the future of technology and the world economy in his most recent work, Microcosm: The Quantum Revolution in Economics and Technology. As opposed to the macrocosm, he explains, where Newtonian laws of physics apply, the microcosm is governed by the laws of quantum theory. Understanding the microcosm, invisible to the naked eye, is what Prof. Gilder identifies as the key to future economic development. He states in this interview that "the microchip is the most important phenomenon in the world today....It is a technology that truly overthrows matter in the usual sense where things get more powerful as they grow bigger; in the microcosm things grow more powerful as they get smaller."
| 1989-09-24T00:00:00
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067170592X
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/9190-1
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153861-1
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Edmund Morris
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Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan
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Why did Pulitzer-winning Theodore Roosevelt biographer Edmund Morris controversially choose to write his authorized biography of Ronald Reagan in the form of a historical novel? There's a clue in a quote the book attributes to Jane Wyman, Reagan's first wife. As Ronnie speechified about the Red Menace at a 1940s Hollywood party, Wyman allegedly whispered to a friend, "I'm so bored with him, I'll either kill him or kill myself." This anecdote, if true, is more revealing than Nancy Reagan's charge in the book that Jane had attempted suicide to get Ronnie to marry her in the first place. Jane was no intellectual—Morris cracks that "If Jane had ever heard of Finland, she probably thought it was an aquarium"—but he found to his horror, after years of research, that he felt much the same as Wyman. Reagan was as boring as a box of rocks, as elusive as a ghost. Decades before Alzheimer's clouded Reagan's mind, he showed a terrifying lack of human presence. "I was real proud when Dad came to my high school commencement," reports his son, Michael Reagan. After posing for photos with Michael and his classmates, the future president came up to him, looked right in his eyes, and said, "Hi, my name's Ronald Reagan. What's yours?" Poor Michael replied, "Dad, it's me. Your son. Mike." Despite deep research and unprecedented access—no previous biography has ever been authorized by a sitting president—Morris could get no closer to Reagan's elusive soul than Reagan's own kids could. So Morris decided to dramatize Reagan's life with several invented characters—including a fictionalized version of himself and an imaginary gossip columnist who makes wicked comments on Reagan's career. This is one weird tactic, forcing the reader constantly to consult the footnotes at the back of the book to sort things out, and Morris makes it tougher by presenting his invented characters as real, even in the footnotes. Ultimately, the hubbub over Morris's odd method is beside the point. His speculative entry into Reagan's life and mind is plausible, dramatic, literary, and lit by dazzling flashes of insight. The narrator watches the young Reagan as a lifeguard (years before the real Morris was born): One tunnels along in a shroud of silvery bubbles, insulated from any sight or sound . . . . Others may swim alongside for a while, but their individuality tends to refract away, through the bubbles and the blur. Often I have marveled at Reagan's cool, unhurried progress through crises of politics and personnel, and thought to myself, He sees the world as a swimmer sees it. We cannot verify Morris's notion that Reagan probably approved the illegal Iran-Contra funding without having a clue it was illegal, or that the "Star Wars" program sprang from his love of Edgar Rice Burroughs's first novel, A Princess of Mars, which featured glass-domed cities. But however bizarre and ignorant his thoughts were, however cold his heart, Morris believes, the guy did crush the Evil Empire and achieve greatness. Morris achieves a kind of greatness, too, but one wishes he had written a more straightforward dramatization of history. —Tim Appelo
| 1999-12-05T00:00:00
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0394555082
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166459-1
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Kirkpatrick Sale
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The Fire of His Genius: Robert Fulton and the American Dream
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None of the well-dressed crowd that gathered on the Hudson River side of Lower Manhattan on the hot afternoon of August 17, 1808, could have known the importance of the object they had come to see and, mostly, deride: Robert Fulton's new steamboat, the North River, the boat that is frequently—and wrongly—remembered as the Clermont. But, as Kirkpatrick Sale shows in this remarkable biography of Fulton, the North River's successful four-day round-trip to Albany proved a technology that would transform nineteenth-century America, open up the interior to huge waves of settlers, create and sustain industrial and plantation economies in the nation's heartland, and destroy the remaining Indian civilizations and most of the wild lands on which they depended. The North River's four-day trip introduced the machines and culture that marked the birth of the Industrial Revolution in America. The Fire of His Genius tells the story of the extraordinarily driven and ambitious inventor who brought all this about, probing into the undoubted genius of his mind but, too, laying bare the darker side of the man -- and the darker side of the American dream that inspired him. It depicts one of America's earliest heroes both at the pinnacle of creativity and success, fame, and fortune and in the depths of solitude, recklessness, and contentiousness that preceded his early death (Fulton spent much of his life defending patents for everything from rope-making machinery to submarines to proto-torpedoes that he attempted to sell, in succession, to the French, the British, and the American navies). All this is set against a brilliant portrait of a dynamic historical period filled with characters from Bonaparte to Jefferson, Cornelius Vanderbilt to Meriwether Lewis, Robert Livingston to Benjamin West, and events from the Lewis and Clark expedition to the War of 1812, the Louisiana Purchase to the bombing of Fort McHenry, the treasontrial of Aaron Burr to the "Great Removal" of American Indians. Here are the "taming" of America's rivers and the building of its great canals, the introduction to every body of water of Fulton's "large, noisy, showy, fast, brash, exciting, powerful, and audacious" machine that was the very embodiment of America. A biography that bears comparison to the best work of David McCullough, Dava Sobel, and Garry Wills, The Fire of His Genius is a remarkable achievement: an extraordinarily clear window into an extraordinary time told with deftness, zest, and unflagging verve. —from the publisher's website
| 2001-11-25T00:00:00
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068486715X
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160742-1
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Frank Rich
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Ghost Light: A Memoir
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There is a superstition that if an emptied theater is ever left completely dark, a ghost will take up residence. To prevent this, a single "ghost light" is left burning at center stage after the audience and all of the actors and musicians have gone home. Frank Rich's eloquent and moving boyhood memoir reveals how theater itself became a ghost light and a beacon of security for a child finding his way in a tumultuous world. Rich grew up in the small-townish Washington, D.C., of the 1950s and early '60s, a place where conformity seemed the key to happiness for a young boy who always felt different. When Rich was seven years old, his parents separated—at a time when divorce was still tantamount to scandal—and thereafter he and his younger sister were labeled "children from a broken home." Bouncing from school to school and increasingly lonely, Rich became terrified of the dark and the uncertainty of his future. But there was one thing in his life that made him sublimely happy: the Broadway theater. Rich's parents were avid theatergoers, and in happier times they would listen to the brand-new recordings of South Pacific, Damn Yankees, and The Pajama Game over and over in their living room. When his mother's remarriage brought about turbulent changes, Rich took refuge in these same records, re-creating the shows in his imagination, scene by scene. He started collecting Playbills, studied fanatically the theater listings in The New York Times and Variety, and cut out ads to create his own miniature marquees. He never imagined that one day he would be the Times's chief theater critic. Eventually Rich found a second home at Washington's National Theatre, where as a teenager he was a ticket-taker and was introduced not only to the backstage magic he had dreamed of for so long but to a real-life cast of charismatic and eccentric players who would become his mentors and friends. With humor and eloquence, Rich tells the triumphant story of how the aspirations of a stagestruck young boy became a lifeline, propelling him toward the itinerant family of theater, whose romantic denizens welcomed him into the colorful fringes of Broadway during its last glamorous era. Every once in a while, a grand spectacle comes along that introduces its audiences to characters and scenes that will resound in their memories long after the curtain has gone down. Ghost Light, Frank Rich's beautifully crafted childhood memoir, is just such an event. —from the publisher's website
| 2000-12-10T00:00:00
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0679452990
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/160742-1
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Douglas Brinkley
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The Majic Bus: An American Odyssey
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Professor Brinkley discussed his book, The Majic Bus: An American Odyssey, the record of a two-month cross-country tour with eleven Hofstra students. The American culture-humanities "class" travelled in a specially-outfitted bus, stopping in Atlanta, San Francisco, Chicago and many other cities, visiting historic sites, homes of famous writers, and other culturally important places. The author stressed that the students received college credit for this "travelling seminar" and were expected to read relevant books and were graded on their participation.
| 1993-04-18T00:00:00
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1560254963
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/39818-1
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7575-1
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James Fallows
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More Like Us: Making America Great Again
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In More Like Us: Making America Great Again, James Fallows examines the cultural differences between the U.S. and Japan. Mr. Fallows celebrates the uniqueness of American culture and believes its strength lies in its diversity and tolerance. Mr. Fallows also discusses the political and economic relationship between America and Japan and ways in which the U.S. can compete with the Japanese
| 1989-05-14T00:00:00
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0395498570
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/7575-1
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176507-1
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Eric Schlosser
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Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market
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—from the publisher's website In Reefer Madness, the best-selling author of Fast Food Nation investigates America's black market and its far-reaching influence on our society through three of its mainstays -- pot, porn, and illegal immigrants. The underground economy is vast; it comprises perhaps 10 percent -- perhaps more -- of America's overall economy, and it's on the rise. Eric Schlosser charts this growth, and finds its roots in the nexus of ingenuity, greed, idealism, and hypocrisy that is American culture. He reveals the fascinating workings of the shadow economy by focusing on marijuana, one of the nation's largest cash crops; pornography, whose greatest beneficiaries include Fortune 100 companies; and illegal migrant workers, whose lot often resembles that of medieval serfs. All three industries show how the black market has burgeoned over the past three decades, as America's reckless faith in the free market has combined with a deep-seated puritanism to create situations both preposterous and tragic. Through pot, porn, and migrants, Schlosser traces compelling parallels between underground and overground: how tycoons and gangsters rise and fall, how new technology shapes a market, how government intervention can reinvigorate black markets as well as mainstream ones, how big business learns -- and profits -- from the underground. With intrepid reportage, rich history, and incisive argument, Schlosser illuminates the shadow economy and the culture that casts that shadow.
| 2003-06-15T00:00:00
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0618334661
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/176507-1
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171497-1
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Beppe Severgnini
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Ciao America! An Italian Discovers the U.S.
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In the wry but affectionate tradition of Bill Bryson, Ciao, America! is a delightful look at America through the eyes of a fiercely funny guest one of Italy’s favorite authors who spent a year in Washington, D.C. When Beppe Severgnini and his wife rented a creaky house in Georgetown they were determined to see if they could adapt to a full four seasons in a country obsessed with ice cubes, air-conditioning, recliner chairs, and, of all things, after-dinner cappuccinos. From their first encounters with cryptic rental listings to their back-to-Europe yard sale twelve months later, Beppe explores this foreign land with the self-described patience of a mildly inappropriate beachcomber, holding up a mirror to America’s signature manners and mores. Succumbing to his surroundings day by day, he and his wife find themselves developing a taste for Klondike bars and Samuel Adams beer, and even that most peculiar of American institutions -- the pancake house. The realtor who waves a perfect bye-bye, the overzealous mattress salesman who bounces from bed to bed, and the plumber named Marx who deals in illegally powerful showerheads are just a few of the better-than-fiction characters the Severgninis encounter while foraging for clues to the real America. A trip to the computer store proves just as revealing as D.C.’s Fourth of July celebration, as do boisterous waiters angling for tips and no-parking signs crammed with a dozen lines of fine print. By the end of his visit, Severgnini has come to grips with life in these United States -- and written a charming, laugh-out-loud tribute. Ciao, America! reads like Alexis de Tocqueville reincarnated with a sense of humor. Beppe Severgnini is not only wickedly witty, he is an astute and intelligent observer of the American way of life. A wonderful and uplifting book. —from the publisher's website
| 2002-07-28T00:00:00
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0767912357
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Brian Burrell
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The Words We Live By
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In The Words We Live By , Brian Burrell, a lecturer in mathematics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, turns his father's passion for words into a spirited study of the ideals and principles recorded in America's key texts. While Brian Burrell was growing up, his father began collecting mottoes, oaths, and creeds from around the country in a notebook titled "The Words People Live By." On family vacations or everyday travel, Burrell's father would pull the car over—as he did in the pouring rain at the Taft Memorial—to jot down the inscription on a statue or the saying from a diner placemat. By the time he took over the project, Burrell and his father had amassed a wide and varied volume of words that serve as public expressions of good citizenship, as tests of solidarity, and as the tenets of conventional wisdom. They include everything from The Pledge of Allegiance, The Golden Rule and Murphy's Law to the Mafia Initiation Oath, Wedding Vows, and the creed of the Elvis Presley Imitators International Association. Yet Burrell takes THE WORDS WE LIVE BY one step further than his father's project. Burrell divides his study into two parts. Part I organizes a discussion of the collection into categories, such as "Words of Belief and Conviction," "Words of Obedience," and "Fighting Words." Here Burrell historicizes each text, citing its origin and both its intended meaning and use. He also offers insights on how these have changed over time. We learn, for example, that our National Motto, IN GOD WE TRUST, took its place in 1955 through an act of Congress. It was first the battle-cry of a group known as the Huntington Bible Company—a nickname for the Fifth Pennsylvania Volunteers, who distinguished themselves at the Battle of Antietam. Burrell also explains that the motto has long been the target of criticism for its defiance of the Constitutional church/state separation. Part II is an anthology of that prints in full the texts discussed in Part I. THE WORDS WE LIVE BY takes its reader on a tour of America through the phrases of belief, duty, and community that offer ready-made opinions and profess values for everyday life in the United States. Learning from his father, Burrell animates how we defined what is American. —from the publisher's website
| 1997-09-07T00:00:00
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0684830019
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/88272-1
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Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf
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It Doesn't Take a Hero
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General Schwarzkopf, chief commander of the coalition forces in the Persian Gulf War, discussed his autobiography It Doesn't Take A Hero, published by Bantam Books. The general talked about his decisions in the Persian Gulf War, as well as other moments in his long military career, including his experiences in Vietnam.
| 1992-11-22T00:00:00
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0553563386
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James Stewart
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Den of Thieves
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Mr. Stewart discussed his book, Den of Thieves, in which he discussed insider trading of stocks and bonds on Wall Street. He looks specifically at four men: Martin Segal, Dennis Levin, Ivan Boesky, and Michael Milkin, all of whom were convicted of insider trading.
| 1991-11-24T00:00:00
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067179227X
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/22933-1
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182346-1
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Simon Sebag Montefiore
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Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar (Part 1)
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From Publisher's Website - Fifty years after his death, Stalin remains a figure of powerful and dark fascination. The almost unfathomable scale of his crimes–as many as 20 million Soviets died in his purges and infamous Gulag–has given him the lasting distinction as a personification of evil in the twentieth century. But though the facts of Stalin’s reign are well known, this remarkable biography reveals a Stalin we have never seen before as it illuminates the vast foundation–human, psychological and physical–that supported and encouraged him, the men and women who did his bidding, lived in fear of him and, more often than not, were betrayed by him.
| 2004-06-20T00:00:00
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1400042305
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/182346-1
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24448-1
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Al Gore
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Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit
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Mr. Gore discussed the importance of environmental protection as described in his book, Earth in the Balance: Ecology & the Human. He also commented on how his son's near death experience inspired him to write the book. Mr. Gore described his wide traveling experiences that were necessary for his extensive research. The book, published by Houghton Mifflin Company, is full of vignettes of successful and tragic encounters with environmental problems on a global and local level.
| 1992-02-16T00:00:00
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0618056645
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/24448-1
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159444-1
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Connie Bruck
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When Hollywood Had a King
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—from the publisher's website In When Hollywood Had a King , the distinguished journalist Connie Bruck tells the sweeping story of MCA and its brilliant leader, a man who transformed the entertainment industry— businessman, politician, tactician, and visionary Lew Wasserman. The Music Corporation of America was founded in Chicago in 1924 by Dr. Jules Stein, an ophthalmologist with a gift for booking bands. Twelve years later, Stein moved his operations west to Beverly Hills and hired Lew Wasserman. From his meager beginnings as a movie-theater usher in Cleveland, Wasserman ultimately ascended to the post of president of MCA, and the company became the most powerful force in Hollywood, regarded with a mixture of fear and awe. In his signature black suit and black knit tie, Was-serman took Hollywood by storm. He shifted the balance of power from the studios—which had seven-year contractual strangleholds on the stars—to the talent, who became profit partners. When an antitrust suit forced MCA’s evolution from talent agency to film- and television-production company, it was Wasserman who parlayed the control of a wide variety of entertainment and media products into a new type of Hollywood power base. There was only Washington left to conquer, and conquer it Wasserman did, quietly brokering alliances with Democratic and Republican administrations alike. That Wasserman’s reach extended from the underworld to the White House only added to his mystique. Among his friends were Teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa, mob lawyer Sidney Korshak, and gangster Moe Dalitz—along with Presidents Johnson, Clinton, and especially Reagan, who enjoyed a particularly close and mutually beneficial relationship with Wasserman. He was equally intimate with Hollywood royalty, from Bette Davis and Jimmy Stewart to Steven Spielberg, who began his career at MCA and once described Wasserman’s eyeglasses as looking like two giant movie screens. The history of MCA is really the history of a revolution. Lew Wasserman ushered in the Hollywood we know today. He is the link between the old-school moguls with their ironclad studio contracts and the new industry defined by multimedia conglomerates, power agents, multimillionaire actors, and profit sharing. In the hands of Connie Bruck, the story of Lew Wasserman’s rise to power takes on an almost Shakespearean scope. When Hollywood Had a King reveals the industry’s greatest untold story: how a stealthy, enterprising power broker became, for a time, Tinseltown’s absolute monarch.
| 2003-07-20T00:00:00
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0375501681
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79045-1
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Claude Andrew Clegg III
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An Original Man: The Life and Times of Elijah Muhammad
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Mr. Clegg talked about his recent book, An Original Man: The Life and Times of Elijah Muhammad, published by St. Martin's Press. Elijah Muhammad founded the Nation of Islam. He talked about his influence on many African-American leaders, such as Malcolm X, and the private and public lives of Muhammad.
| 1997-03-30T00:00:00
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0312181531
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9046-1
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Thomas Friedman
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From Beirut to Jerusalem
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Thomas Friedman, chief diplomatic correspondent for the New York Times, discusses his best-selling book, From Beirut to Jerusalem. Friedman was the first Jewish correspondent to be sent by the Times to cover Middle East politics. He was assigned to Beirut and Jerusalem from the late seventies through the mid-eighties. The Muslim-Christian-Jewish conflict is addressed and he speaks of many "absurdities of life" in Beirut. Friedman also talks of daily life in Jerusalem and how such a relatively small city can command so much of the world headlines.
| 1989-09-10T00:00:00
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0374158959
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/9046-1
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63336-1
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Lynn Sherr
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Failure is Impossible: Susan B. Anthony in Her Own Words
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The author discussed her book Failure Is Impossible: Susan B. Anthony In Her Own Words, published by Times Books. Marking the 175th anniversary of Ms. Anthony's birth and the 75th anniversary of the passage of the 19th amendment granting women the right to vote, the book depicts the most famous suffragist through her own written and spoken words. "We (women) now have nearly equality of rights everywhere. They let us work everywhere, but only give us half pay," she wrote in the 1800s. More responsible than anyone for getting women the vote, she also dealt with many issues still crucial to women today: equal opportunity, political representation, domestic violence, child rearing, and financial autonomy. Ms. Anthony crisscrossed the country to give speeches and lead rallies well into her eighties.
| 1995-03-05T00:00:00
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0812927184
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/63336-1
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30441-1
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Gilbert Fite
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Richard B. Russell, Jr.: Senator from Georgia
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Mr. Fite discussed his book, Richard B. Russell, Jr.: Senator from Georgia. He commented on Mr. Russell's political career, including 38 years in the U.S. Senate, and personal life. Mr. Fite also remarked on the reasons Mr. Russell never married and the special characteristics that made him such a hard worker. Published by University of North Carolina Press.
| 1992-08-02T00:00:00
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0807819379
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/30441-1
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168649-1
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Jon Ronson
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Them: Adventures with Extremists
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Islamic fundamentalists, Ku Klux Klansmen, Christian separatists, and certain members of British Parliament would seem to have very little in common, but they do in fact share one crucial belief: that the world is secretly controlled by an elite group -- in a word, Them. This shadowy elite starts the wars, elects heads of state, sets the price of oil and the flow of capital, conducts bizarre secret rituals, and controls the media. This group is incredibly powerful and will destroy any investigator who gets too close to the truth. Does this shadowy elite really exist? Jon Ronson wondered. As a journalist and a Jew, Ronson was often considered one of "Them," but he had no idea if their meetings actually took place and, if so, where. Was he the only one not invited? Ronson decided to settle the matter himself, seeking out the supposed secret rulers of the world by way of those who seem to know most about them: the extremists. The result is a riveting journey around the globe. Along the way Ronson meets Omar Bakri Mohammed, once considered to be the most dangerous man in Great Britain. This powerful Muslim fundamentalist -- who tricks Jon into chauffeuring him around town because he doesn't have a car -- seems harmless enough until he takes Jon to Jihad training camp where Ronson is unmasked as a Jew. Jon shoots guns with Ruby Ridge survivor Rachel Weaver and learns about black helicopters and the New World Order. While trying to monitor a meeting of the famous Bilderberg Group in Portugal, he is chased by men in dark glasses. With a group of other true believers, he breaks into the fabled Bohemian Grove in California and witnesses CEOs and politicians engaged in a bizarre pagan ritual. When he attends a KKK rally to interview a PR-conscious Grand Wizard who forbids use of the "N-word," Jon watches as Klan members confront a perpetual cross-burning problem: Do you raise it and then soak it or soak it and then raise it? But the more Ronson tries to expose the emptiness of these conspiracies, the less and less he's certain that the extremists are crazy. In the end, Them is an eye-opening narrative of the looking-glass world of "us" and "them." Funny, chilling, and seamlessly told, it is an unforgettable glimpse into lives on the fringe. —from the publisher's website
| 2002-03-24T00:00:00
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0743227077
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/168649-1
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18418-1
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Dixy Lee Ray
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Trashing the Planet
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Dixie Lee Ray, former governor of Washington and former Atomic Energy Commission chairman, discussed her book Trashing The Planet: How Science Can Help Us Deal With Acid Rain, Depletion of the Ozone and Nuclear Waste (Among Other Things). The book deals with scientific means of environmental management and media distortion of environmental issues. She discussed her work as a scientist, her years of involvement in government, and the misinformation she perceived in the media on the environment that led to the writing of the book. For example, she said temperature records for the past hundred years show no unnatural increase in global temperatures despite the heavy media emphasis on global warning.
| 1991-06-16T00:00:00
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0060974907
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17829-1
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Nicholas Lemann
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The Promised Land
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Nicholas Lemann, correspondent for Atlantic Monthly, discussed his book, "The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America." The book details the movement of blacks from the rural South to the industrial cities of the North from 1940 to 1970. Mr. Lemann discussed the origins of the migration, which includes the mass production of the mechanical cotton picker, which freed numbers of blacks from the sharecropper system, and the development of ghettos in the industrial cities of the North. He decided to write the book on the urban migration of the blacks as a means to explain the development of ghettos, a subject he came upon while writing a newspaper feature on the welfare system. Mr. Lemann said he hoped his book would help people gain a greater insight into the development and continuation of ghettos in American cities.
| 1991-05-05T00:00:00
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0679733477
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/17829-1
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65259-1
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Peter Brimelow
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Alien Nation: Common Sense About America's Immigration Disaster
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Mr. Brimelow discussed his book Alien Nation: Common Sense About America's Immigration Disaster, published by Random House. The book focuses on U.S. immigration policy and cycles of control on immigration. Mr. Brimelow argues that legislation passed in 1965 has resulted in negative trends in immigration to the United States, including an influx of immigrants from a very few countries that he says are engulfing America. The author says that the latest immigration wave consists of immigrants who are less educated, less skilled, and less likely to share American ideals, which he argues is a detriment to American culture.
| 1995-06-11T00:00:00
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0060976918
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/65259-1
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51949-1
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Andrew Nagorski
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The Birth of Freedom
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Andrew Nagorski discussed his book, "The Birth of Freedom: Shaping Lives and Societies in the New Eastern Europe," published by Simon and Schuster. He is married to a Polish woman, and lived in Warsaw for three years during the past 15 years. He described the changes in people's lives in Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republics and East Germany since the events of 1989. He said the political changes affected the social fabric and the rise of private entrepreneurship differently in each country.
| 1993-10-31T00:00:00
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0671782258
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/51949-1
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165452-1
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Tom Philpott
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Glory Denied
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One of the most powerful books to emerge about Vietnam the unforgettable story of America's longest-held prisoner-of-war, his family, and a country at war with itself. He had dreamed of being a military man as a youngster during World War II. Marrying shortly after high school, he was drafted by the Army in 1956 and sent to a faraway land called Vietnam in 1963 at a time when America still seemed innocent. In fact, Floyd "Jim" Thompson might have led a perfectly ordinary life had he not been captured on March 26, 1964, just three months after arriving in Vietnam, becoming one of the first Americans taken prisoner, and ultimately, the longest-held prisoner-of-war in American history. Now, for the first time, Thompson's epic story, and that of his family who also paid dearly for his sacrifice, is brought to life in Glory Denied, a searing reconstruction of one man's tortuous journey through war and its aftermath. Weaving together scores of interviews with Thompson and his family, comments from friends, fellow soldiers, former prisoners-of-war, and excerpts from service records, medical reports, and intelligence briefings, Philpott delivers an exceptionally nuanced and moving portrait of a man, a family, and a nation. The first half of the saga follows Thompson from his youth through his marriage and early days in the Army, to his harrowing survival in Vietnam nine years in jungle cages and dank prison cells, surviving torture, disease, and starvation. We see how, by happenstance, a painful childhood honed a soldier's survival skills amid unspeakable horrors. And most vividly we see Thompson's family struggling with the consequences of his absence. Indeed, particularly arresting is Philpott's ability to juxtapose Thompson's capture, torture, and multiple escape attempts with the trials of his young wife Alyce, pregnant with their fourth child and devastated when her husband was declared missing inaction. The once dependent wife, unaware of her husband's survival and feeling trapped, would make choices that forever would tie her own fate to the war she despised. And the Army's compliance with those decisions turned the spotlight off Thompson and allowed another prisoner of war to be remembered in his place. The final half of Glory Denied chronicles the journey of the Thompsons in the decades following America's longest war. While wounds from the war, both physical and social, healed for most Americans, the nightmare of Vietnam only shifted into another stage for the family. What became so apparent was that Alyce had changed. The children had changed. The nation's values had changed. But Thompson's values and dreams had not. He had missed an unprecedented social revolution a revolution that now mocked his sacrifice and he had missed nine critical years of an Army career. The final chapters of Glory Denied read like a classic tragedy, filled with stories of reconciliation, abandonment, and addiction. It is a tale as absorbing as any Arthur Miller play, a relentlessly heartrending story that tells us as much about our nation's history as it does about a family named Thompson. Glory Denied, which combines the historical detail of Neil Sheehan's A Bright Shining Lie with the pathos of a James Jones novel, is a masterly work of oral history, a project that has consumed its author for more than a decade. Neither the book nor its subject, Jim Thompson, will soon be forgotten. —from jacket of the book
| 2001-08-05T00:00:00
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0393020126
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https://booknotes.c-span.org/Watch/165452-1
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