Six Men
Six Men

Author: Alistair Cooke

Publisher: Open Road Media

Published: 2015-03-03

Total Pages: 147

ISBN-13: 1497697786

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Drawing on a lifetime of journalistic encounters with the great and the famous, Alistair Cooke profiles the six extraordinary men who impressed him the most Over the course of his sixty-year career as a broadcaster, television host, and newspaper reporter, Alistair Cooke met many remarkable people of the twentieth century. This entertaining and insightful collection shares his unique, often startling personal vision of six key figures from the worlds of literature, entertainment, and politics. They are: Charlie Chaplin, whom Cooke befriended in Hollywood and who courted controversy in his politics and romances; the charming-yet-naive Edward VIII, whose love affair changed the course of World War II; Humphrey Bogart, the first antihero hero onscreen and a sensitive gentleman at home; H. L. Mencken, brilliant, inspirational, and deeply flawed; Adlai Stevenson, whom Cooke labeled the failed saint; and Bertrand Russell, who had the courage and the audacity to try to make the world a better place. The subjects of Six Men are united by the deep complexities of their characters. In balancing informed details of their lives with an objectivity set against the ever-changing landscape of their times, Six Men is a master course in the art of concise biography.

Letter from America
Letter from America

Author: Alistair Cooke

Publisher: Penguin UK

Published: 2005-06-02

Total Pages: 544

ISBN-13: 014190920X

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A defining collection from Alistair Cooke's legendary BBC Radio broadcasts, guiding us through nearly sixty years of changing life in the United States 'No one else succeeded in explaining to the English-speaking world ... the idiosyncrasies of a country at once so familiar, and yet so utterly foreign' Independent When Alistair Cooke retired in February 2004 he was acclaimed as one of the greatest broadcasters of all time. His Letter from America radio series, which began in 1946 and continued every week for fifty-eight years until his retirement, kept the world in touch with what was happening in America. Cooke's wry, humane and liberal style both informed and entertained his audience. The selection here, made largely by Cooke himself and supplemented by his literary executor, gives us the very best of these legendary broadcasts. It covers key moments from the assassination of Kennedy through to the Vietnam War and Watergate to 9/11, the Iraq War and anticipates the 2004 elections. It includes portraits of the great and the good from Charlie Chaplin to Martin Luther King, Jr, and topics as varied as civil rights, golf, jazz and the changing colours of a New England fall. Each Letter contributes to a captivating portrait of a nation - and of a man.

Alistair Cooke
Alistair Cooke

Author: Nick Clarke

Publisher: Arcade Publishing

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 620

ISBN-13: 9781559705486

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The first major biography of revered journalist Alistair Cooke, known to millions here as the host of Masterpiece Theatre, & to the world as the author of the weekly Letter from America.

The Patient Has the Floor
The Patient Has the Floor

Author: Alistair Cooke

Publisher: Open Road Media

Published: 2014-08-19

Total Pages: 150

ISBN-13: 1497639948

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Masterful essays by one of the most distinctive voices in broadcast journalism In his Letter from America reports for the BBC and as the host of PBS’s Masterpiece Theatre, Alistair Cooke addressed millions of people all over the world every week. The fourteen essays collected here, each of which was first delivered as a speech, showcase the wit, charm, and eloquence of Cooke’s voice in more intimate, but no less intimidating, settings. In exclusive forums as varied as the Mayo Clinic and a conference of British and American scholars investigating the “state of the language,” Cooke eagerly challenges expert opinions and delightfully skewers the pretensions of the powerful. Addressing the House of Representatives on the bicentennial of the Continental Congress, he warns against the dangers of sentimentalizing history and wryly notes that “practically every man who signed the Declaration of Independence is at this moment being measured for a halo or, at worst a T-shirt.” At the Royal College of Surgeons in London, he compares his listeners to armed robbers and to the disreputable half of that infamous duo Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. “If I could be benevolent dictator of the United States for a year,” he informs the National Trust for Historic Preservation, “I should provide several million jobs for the wrecking industry.” No one played the devil’s advocate with as much grace and good humor as did Alistair Cooke. The Patient Has the Floor is an eminently quotable testament to his extraordinary talents as a journalist, scholar, and public speaker.

Above London
Above London

Author:

Publisher: Cameron Books

Published: 1980

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780918684103

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Above London. Visitors to England who marvel at this lush land on their first incoming flight now have a volume to treasure forever. Here are the famed gardens, the majestic estates, the granduer of centuries of architecture. Along with Robert Cameron's areial photographs Alistair Cooke's text is brimming with the raconteur's characteristic wit and insight. The pictorial essay begins at the Thames and follows the history of the beloved city well into the countryside.

Memories of the Great & the Good
Memories of the Great & the Good

Author: Alistair Cooke

Publisher: Arcade Publishing

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 9781559704793

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Over the course of his distinguished career as a foreign correspondent, which spans more than sixty years, Alistair Cooke has known, interviewed, or reported on literally hundreds of the most influential men and women of the twentieth century. Here he has collected his memories of more than a score of them: they include actors and generals, statesmen and eccentrics, a poet, a jazzman, an intensely scholarly woman and a casually funny one, an architect, a publisher, and several politicians--all of whom, in Cooke's view, have left the world a better or more interesting place. Book jacket.

Talk About America, 1951–1968
Talk About America, 1951–1968

Author: Alistair Cooke

Publisher: Open Road Media

Published: 2015-03-03

Total Pages: 215

ISBN-13: 1497697697

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“There is never going to be anyone else like Cooke, a chronicler of amazing times.” —The Daily Telegraph As the voice of the BBC’s Letter from America for close to six decades, Alistair Cooke addressed several millions of listeners on five continents. They tuned in every Friday evening or Sunday morning to listen to his erudite and entertaining reports on life in the United States. According to Lord Hill of Luton, chairman of the BBC, Cooke had “a virtuosity approaching genius in talking about America in human terms.” This second collection of Cooke’s personally selected letters covers tumultuous events in American history such as the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement. His analysis of the origins of the conflict in Vietnam is clear eyed and compelling, and in three thoughtful and incisive essays—on Brown v. Board of Education, the struggle to integrate the Deep South, and the riots in Watts—Cooke identifies the changing racial attitudes that defined the era. He reflects on the rise of drug use among college students and offers a paean to the beauty of Golden Gate Park. With characteristically incisive portraits of political and cultural figures such as John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Robert Frost, H. L. Mencken, Charles Lindbergh, and John Glenn, Talk About America: 1951–1968 is rich with humor, compassion, and commitment. In this superb overview of an astonishing era in America’s twentieth century, Alistair Cooke is at the top of his game.

Alistair Cooke's American Journey
Alistair Cooke's American Journey

Author: Alistair Cooke

Publisher: Penguin UK

Published: 2007-04-26

Total Pages: 491

ISBN-13: 0141904720

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Alistair Cooke, then a Washington correspondent for the Guardian, recognized a great story to be told in investigating at first hand the effects of the Second World War on America and the daily lives of Americans as they adjusted to radically new circumstances. Within weeks of the Pearl Harbor attack, Cooke set off with a reporter’s zeal on a circuit of the entire country to see what the war had done to people. He talked to everyone he encountered on his extensive trip, from miners to lumberjacks, to war-profiteers, to day-laborers, to local politicians – even the unfortunate Japanese-Americans who had been rapidly interned in stark, desert camps. This unique travelogue celebrates an important American character and the indomitable spirit of a nation that was to inspire Cooke’s reports and broadcasts for some sixty years.

Alistair Cooke
Alistair Cooke

Author: Nick Cooke

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2012-02-28

Total Pages: 727

ISBN-13: 1628720166

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One of the preeminent journalists of the twentieth century, Alistair Cooke has enjoyed a truly extraordinary career in print, radio, and television. Born into a working-class family and christened Alfred, Cooke swiftly broke free of his modest origins and became the foremost commentator on American life and politics, first for the British press and eventually for the entire world. Alistair Cooke: A Biography is both a fascinating record of one man's determination to reinvent himself and a lively and informative journey through the highways and byways of the twentieth century.

America Observed
America Observed

Author: Alistair Cooke

Publisher:

Published: 1988

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 9781871061093

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America Observed provides, for the first time, a collection of Alistair Cooke's memorable dispatches to The Guardian written between 1946 and 1972, the year that he retired as the paper's chief American correspondent.