Booknotes
TRANSCRIPTS    |    ARCHIVES    |    BUY VIDEO    |    ABOUT

A Companion Web Site to C-SPAN's Author Interview Series
November 28, 1999
The Great Republic: A History of America
by
Winston Churchill
Author image
Options Menu

  Watch Program

  Transcript

  Classroom Guide

  Search the Video

Video Search:

The Great Republic is Sir Winston Churchill's personal vision of American history, from the arrival of the first European settlers to the dawn of the Cold War, edited by his grandson, the historian and journalist Winston S. Churchill. The book is a magnificent retelling of the American story, including some of the best short histories of the Revolutionary War and the Civil War ever written. The bulk of this book, America's history up to the twentieth century, has until now been found only within Churchill's much longer four-volume A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1953. The chapters on America from that larger work have been knit together into a whole, and to them Winston S. Churchill has added essays and speeches of his grandfather's, many never before published in book form, to bring the book up to the mid-twentieth century.

Sir Winston Churchill's renown as a statesman has tended to overshadow his great gifts as a historian. History was the work of his heart's delight, and few subjects were dearer to him than America. His mother, Jennie Jerome, was American, and all of his life Churchill harbored a deep warmth of feeling for this country and a sense of its special destiny. With fondness, he called America "the Great Republic," and in his later years he trained all of his powers on the history this book contains. The Great Republic is stirring in its sweep and breathtaking in the flash and vigor of its insights. Only an author with Sir Winston Churchill's special perspective on America, his experience as a leader and strategist, his intimacy with the responsibilities of guiding a nation, and his great gifts as a narrative historian could have written a book that lays out America's history, character, and destiny with this book's special brilliance.
—from the publisher's website

Book image The Great Republic: A History of America
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 037550320X

Transcript Search:

 Advanced Search

Now in Paperback!
Booknotes: On American Character, the fourth book drawn from the Booknotes series. It features 80 of America's best-known contemporary historians, biographers, and journalists. Only $16.50.



Buy DVDs
Visit the C-SPAN Store to buy Booknotes DVDs.

[ Learn More and Purchase ]



Video Note
Pop-up blockers must be set to OFF for this site in order to watch videos.

C-SPAN | American Presidents | American Writers | Book TV | Q&A
C-SPAN Civics Bus | Capitol Hearings | Students & Leaders | Tocqueville

Created by Cable. Offered as a Public Service.