Customer Reviews

Booknotes on American Character: People, Politics, and Conflict in American History

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is the best of the Booknotes books yet. In a series of short chapters drawn from interviews on C-Span's Booknotes program, Brian Lamb and the many authors provide absorbing insights into American history. Some of the choices are a bit jarring (I would certainly not have chosen to begin such a thoughtful book with excerpts from Ann Coulter and Michael Moore) but all of them are provocative and ultimately thought provoking. This is a book to keep at hand and savor for months if not years.

To hear commentators, one would believe our country has never been more divided. As this book demonstrates, the United States has a long history of highly partisan, often bitter and violent politics.

This book, the third in a series, offers the thoughts of 78 contemporary nonfiction writers whose topics span more than 225 years of American History. These essays were drawn from the author's original, thoughtful interviews on C-Span's Booknotes

Controversy is a common theme in American History. Writer Roy Morris recounts the Hayes-Tilden election of 1876, a contest which dragged on for four months of infighting and maneuvering. Hayes eventually took the oath of office at night to avoid violence.

On the other hand, Author Rich Perlstein writes about the rise of modern conservatism. The lingering memory of many of the LBJ - Barry Goldwater campaign was how hated the conservative was. Yet LBJ's support proved to be widespread but thin.

It contains essays on American exceptionalism and the leaders who promoted it. There are essays on American Ingenuity and technological prowess. Some authors demonstrate the benefits of American capitalism; others chronicle its downside.

On American Character is a great addition to the Booknotes series. It is a must read for any fan of the program and those interested in great historical moments, issues and the people who shaped our country.

A wonderful collection of short articles and essays on the essentially American items from political biography to culture, politics and history. This wonderful study opens with short talking points by Ann Coulter and Michael Moore on the right and left in America. Most of these exerts are from talks by people describing their books they have written. Thus comments are made on people from Ben Franklin to the War in Vietnam. A wonderful collection in a beautiful binding, an essential piece for any Americana book shelf.

Seth J. Frantzman

I love a good interviewer; one who asks good questions and then listens to their guest's answer. Brian Lamb, host of C-SPAN's Booknotes is all that and more.

This Booknotes selection is subtitled "On American Character" -- which I misread as American characterS. The book begins with intros from Ann Coulter (on the right) and Michael Moore (on the left). See why I read it as "characters"? With 24/7/365 all news, all the time, we've become a nation of characters -- and sometimes it seems as if character itself is lacking.

Lamb has assembled 78 contemporary essays about people, places and things -- from stories about race and culture to war to politics to Mount Rushmore as well as the Coors, Goodyear and Carnegie families (for example).

The sections are:

- The Nation's Leaders
- Social Movement & Political Vision
- America at War
- American Inventors and Businessmen
- Our Cultural Heritage

When people today say, "We've never been more divided" (as witnessed by the closeness of our last election), his selected essays show that America has a long history of highly partisan politics, often bitter, sometimes even violent.

My favorite of the 78 essays was: "Philo T. Farnsworth: The Inventor of Television." TV came into my home when I was a young teen, and I remember the excitement as if it was yesterday. My dad reveled in being one of the first to have one. I learned a lot of interesting things about the television, and how Farnsworth didn't get the credit he deserved.

Booknotes is a full course in diverse thinking, and a course well worth taking.

Armchair Interviews says: So much to read ... so little time. That's why these short essays will make you the smartest kid on the block. Read, enjoy, reflect -- and share what you learned from Booknotes.

The television show Booknotes has been known since its inception for excellence in nonfiction book and author interviews. A master of the interview, its host Brian Lamb has had over 750 guest authors on the program. In this book he has collected seventy selected pieces that reveal some aspect about the people, politics, and conflict of American history. Sometimes the articles contain interesting viewpoints, sometimes they fill in gaps in our education, and other times they are quite controversial. Each article is absorbing reading and covers a wide variety of topics including Benjamin Franklin, the Disputed Election of 1876, Carrie Nation, the Rise of Conservatism, Libertarianism, the Civil War, World Wars, Vietnam War, Child Molestation in the Early 1980s, Sinclair Lewis, Tupac Shakur, and Presidential Rhetoric. Absorbing and interesting reading, Booknotes on American Character is highly recommended.

This book provides over 80 brief summaries of what authors had to say about their books on Booknotes in recent years. In all but a handful of cases, the authors are historians or biographers. The topics are often tangentially related to "American Character." The summaries are grouped under the topics of Nation's Leaders, Social Movements and Political Visions, War, Law & Order, Inventors and Businessmen, and Cultural Heritage. The summaries vary enormously in quality with some authors being virtually inarticulate while others speak in close to written prose.

The best use for this book is to check out a book that you might want to read. The summaries allow you to go beyond what you would normally find in a book review and often reveal some of the juicier parts of the book.

A secondary use is as a gift to a young person who is interested in U.S. history but has not read much about it yet. Many of the perspectives could help such a young person develop an interest in learning more.

A few of the summaries are worth reading for their own merit, such as the ones by Dorothy Height on the civil rights movement, Vernon Jordan on his civil rights activities, Dennis Hutchinson on John Knox's observations about the 1936 Supreme Court, Isaac Stern on his musical career and James Loewen on teaching U.S. history.

Many of the authors seem obsessed with finding some little known factoid about a famous person or event. As a result, although the factoid is no doubt fascinating to the author, it may be irrelevant to you.

As I finished the many summaries, I found myself wondering why a cable television channel would devote so many hours of coverage to information of such limited significance and appeal.

I was also struck by how much more interesting it is to hear from the people who lived through significant events than from scholars who are studying them. Perhaps this show should consider doing many more autobiographies.

Great for travel or any situation where you have a bit of time to read something short and well done. Lamb is the guy who has the experience and perspective to do this well. Good book for kids who express an interest in American history.

Brian Lamb here presents edited versions of seventy-two recent interviews on Booknotes-many being interviews of fellow journalists. It's a bit unsettling to read interviews in which the interviewer has edited himself out, but since the volume is Lamb's third in this format, the publisher must have believed he knew what would sell. Obviously, some authors are more articulate than others, and the inarticulate ones come across as, well, more inarticulate than they probably would have liked. If I can be forgiven an indelicacy, this is a perfect bathroom book. The essays are informal and chatty and only about six or seven pages long-nothing too serious and nothing about which I had any desire to take notes.

The weekly program "Booknotes" is the flagship of the C-SPAN cable television network's book programming and has been popular viewing for over 15 years: its interviews have been the basis for three best-selling books already. Here CEO and host Brian Lamb provides a new and enthusiastically recommended collection of nearly eighty interviews with contemporary nonfiction writers in Booknotes: On American Character, exploring the politics and modern issues shaping the nation.