Booknotes Book

For nearly a decade, Booknotes has been an oasis of book programming on television, the only place where Americans can regularly find in-depth, quality discussion of books. Now, in celebration of over eight years of Booknotes, Lamb has collected the program's most interesting, revealing, and memorable moments. In essays that let the authors speak for themselves, Booknotes includes David Halberstam, who explains how he readies himself to write by having "a very lazy cappuccino;" Doris Kearns Goodwin, on spending six years working on her Roosevelt book in a study filled with pictures of FDR and Eleanor; Civil War historian Shelby Foote, explaining why he has to sleep in the room he writes in; Stephen Ambrose, on why he became a historian instead of a doctor; Norman Mailer, on why he never gets writer's block. David McCullough tells us about meeting Harry Truman; Henry Louis Gates, Jr., describes the difference between memoir and autobiography; Paul Kennedy speaks about suddenly being a best-selling author; Tina Rosenberg tells us how she selected her book title; Martin Gilbert discusses Churchill's laundry list; Robert Caro considers the ways in which writers document the lives of the powerful; Howell Raines reveals all about fly-fishing. These are just a few of the authors that can be found in Booknotes. The result is a collection that any reader or writer will savor, a peek behind the curtain and into the minds of some of our finest contemporary authors.

For the past eight years, Booknotes has been an oasis of book programming on television. Now host Brian Lamb has selected the very best moments from the show, a wonderful and intimate collection of some of America's finest authors on reading, writing, and the power of ideas. 352 pp. Author tour. 25,000 print.