Booknotes: Stories from American History

• What is Booknotes?
  
• How many books has C-SPAN featured on Booknotes?
  
• How do books get selected for Booknotes?
  
• How many people watch Booknotes?
  
• How was Booknotes: Stories from American History chosen as the theme of the third Booknotes book?
  
• How was the new book, Booknotes: Stories from American History put together?
  
• What is the story behind the color photographs?
  
• What's the main message of this book?

• Book Details • Table of Contents • Introduction • Chapter Excerpts

Q. What is Booknotes?

A. Booknotes is a weekly television series which airs on C-SPAN on Sunday nights at 8 pm ET and PT. The series debuted in March 1989 and is essentially the same program it was thirteen years ago—a one-hour, uninterrupted conversation with one author about one book. It's a simple format—"who, what, why, where, when, and how" questions which allow a writer who has spent years with a book to tell more of their story than viewers can get in the five minute interviews that commercial television is able to allot.

When we first set out to do Booknotes, our objective was to create an environment which wouldn't distract from the conversation. Our set is as basic as you can get: two chairs and a coffee table with a black curtain background. And while we have probably replaced the chairs a few times, we've resisted the urge to do much to change Booknotes' intentional simplicity. [top]

Q. How many books has C-SPAN featured on Booknotes?

A. Almost 700 books. We aim for 52 new books every year. And, no re-runs. [top]

Q. How do books get selected for Booknotes?

A. They must be hardcover, nonfiction, recently released and widely available. One of the series' traditions is that authors can appear on the program only once in their writing careers, which means that we sometimes bypass new bestsellers from authors we've interviewed in the past. Our producers follow the nonfiction market and we get suggestions from viewers and from publishers. If you analyzed the list of selected works, you'd find lots of political biography, because people stories are always interesting; and, there have been many books on history and its influences. But most of all, we try to look for good stories. [top]

Q. How many people watch Booknotes?

A. The short answer is, we don't know. Because C-SPAN is carried by cable and satellite companies as a public service, C-SPAN does not take ratings. So, we simply don't know how many people watch any of our programs, including Booknotes. But we have learned anecdotally that there's a good and dedicated audience for this kind of book programming. We get a good number of letters about the series; C-SPAN staffers get a lot of comments about Booknotes as they travel; our first two Booknotes books sold well; and authors and publishers whose books are featured on the series frequently tell us the program helps sell nonfiction books. [top]

Q. How was Booknotes: Stories from American History chosen as the theme of the third Booknotes book?

A. There have been so many books about American history on the program over the years, that a book featuring some of these stories just made sense. We selected 88 authors whose interviews had not been part of our first two books and organized them into a collection that spans four centuries of American history. The individual chapters are intended to whet readers appetite for learning more; each contains just one or two good stories from the Booknotes interview. For example: Arnold Rogow tells the story of the Hamilton-Burr duel; Andrew Burstein talks about how American celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence; Jim Perry, who wrote about politics for the Wall Street Journal talks about the reporters who covered the Civil War; Edward Larson talks about the show business behind the Scopes Monkey Trial; and Donald Kagan talks about the Kennedy Administration's handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis. This new paperback edition also offers an updated introduction and 3 new chapters on September 11th and the 2000 election.  [top]

Q. How was the new book, Booknotes: Stories from American History put together?

A. This book follows the same format as our earlier two: conversational essays. We took the transcripts of the hour-long interviews, deleted the questions and whittled the interview down to three or four pages that focus on a couple of good stories. Readers will get the author in his or her own voice, just as they would if they were watching the program. And because C-SPAN is known for giving people unedited versions of events, we have published the entire interview -questions and all-on a website at Booknotes.org. [top]

Q. What is the story behind the color photographs?

A. That has been another tradition with all three Booknotes books. As Brian Lamb's interest in history grew throughout the years of reading for the television series, he began to visit many of the historic sites described by Booknotes' authors, taking his camera along with him. Our first two books contained portrait shots of the books' featured authors. Book number three has two sections of photos that illustrate some of the history stories told in the chapters. [top]

Q. What's the main message of this book?

A. Studying history is, in a certain way, rather comforting. When you read history, you learn pretty quickly that whatever hard times our country might be going through now, other generations have faced some pretty big challenges in the past. At the turn of the century, as the U.S. was fighting WWI, the flu virus killed about a half-million Americans; all told, 28 million Americans were infected with this dangerous flu. And during the Civil War, 620,000 Americans died on their home soil. Wars and pestilence seem to be an enduring part of the human condition. History teaches us that our nation has always faced these challenges, and survived. [top]

Publish Date: November 6, 2001 Publisher: PublicAffairs ISBN: 1586480839 Retail Price: $29.95 Other Books in the Series: