Alistair Cooke's America
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For more than sixty years Alistair Cooke wrote and broadcast on every facet of American life with incomparable wit and wisdom. This is his ‘personal history’ of America, the best-selling book that accompanied his legendary BBC television series which was first broadcast in November 1972. It has sold over two million copies and has emerged through tumultuous times to become regarded as a classic. It is an irresistibly readable guide to what has made this powerful democracy work and survive through 200 years.
Alistair writes with authority about the explorers who put their new-found land on the map, the pioneers who tamed the Wild West, the soldiers who fought for independence, the slaves who fled north, the tycoons who built fortunes and the immigrants that sought a new life. From the Mayflower to the gold rush, the jazz age to Pearl Harbor, with portraits of figures as varied as Buffalo Bill, John D. Rockefeller and Martin Luther King Jr., here is the American story in all its triumphs and failures, grandeurs and tragedies. It is the defining portrait of a nation.
This anniversary edition includes the reflective note to the reader that Alistair Cooke wrote in 2002.
Alistair Cooke (1908–2004) enjoyed an extraordinary life in print, radio and television. Born in Salford in 1908 and educated at the universities of Cambridge, Yale and Harvard, throughout his long career he worked as a journalist and broadcaster for many different organisations and won numerous awards for his work. He was the Guardian's Chief American Correspondent for twenty-five years and the host of Masterpiece Theatre and other ground-breaking cultural television programmes. He achieved acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic for his 13-part BBC series America: A Personal History of the United States and the accompanying book sold two million copies. Alistair Cooke was best known both at home and abroad for his weekly 'Letter from America', which was heard over five continents and totalled 2,869 broadcasts, becoming far and away the longest-running BBC radio series in broadcasting history. He died in March 2004, just a few weeks after his retirement. Justin Webb is the longest serving presenter of 'Today' on Radio Four. He was, for the best part of a decade, the BBC's Chief Washington Correspondent and still writes regularly on US affairs for British newspapers. Before his American posting he was BBC Brussels correspondent, and prior to that he was a roving foreign correspondent. He is a host of the BBC podcast Americast and author of several books, most recently a memoir of a 1970s childhood, The Gift of a Radio.