Amazon.com Review
Brian Lamb is the most self-effacing man on television. So, all the questions he asks on his C-SPAN history, politics, and public policy author-interview show,
Booknotes, are focused on the book and author at hand. What a concept! As a result, this collection of the show's interviews since its inception in 1989 (divided into "Storytellers," "Reporters," and "Leaders"--the latter including Bill Clinton, Mikhail Gorbachev and Margaret Thatcher) is a treasure trove. Where else could you learn that presidential historian Forrest McDonald writes in the nude? Or that
New York Times reporter Malcolm Browne started out as a chemist but left the profession after he accidentally blew up his laboratory?
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Some of the most enjoyable reading for habitual readers is reading about writing. This fat book is a font of such enjoyment. Since April 1989, the commercial-free information TV service C-SPAN has presented a series of interviews between C-SPAN CEO Brian Lamb and the authors of new history and public affairs books. "How did you get interested in this subject?" Lamb asks. "Where do you write?" "Who are these people you thank in the acknowledgments?" Responding to such quiet, personal questions, the writers wind up telling us about the human relationships, the lifestyles, the personal preferences, the practical considerations--the
living that goes into the creating of books. Historians David McCullough and Shelby Foote, scholars Stephen Carter and Francis Fukuyama, journalists Anna Quindlen and Peter Arnett, and world leaders Margaret Thatcher and Jimmy Carter are a few who have answered Lamb, and the anecdotes and observations collected here, with which they and more than 120 equally prominent peers responded, are deeply amusing, absorbing, and affecting.
Ray Olson
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.