<div>The story of Whittaker Chambers, HUAC, and the case that defined the McCarthy era, as reported by one of the twentieth century&rsquo;s most respected journalists. In August 1948, a former Communist Party member named Whittaker Chambers testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee that a secret cell of Communists had infiltrated Franklin D. Roosevelt&rsquo;s New Deal administration. Chief among the conspirators, according to Chambers, was Alger Hiss, a former government attorney and State Department official who had taken part in the Yalta Conference and been instrumental in the creation of the United Nations. Hiss&rsquo;s categorical denial of the charges, which led Chambers to produce evidence linking both men to Soviet espionage, quickly escalated into one of the most divisive episodes in American history and ignited the widespread fear and paranoia of the McCarthy era. As the US correspondent for the Manchester Guardian, Alistair Cooke reported extensively on the Hiss affair. In an atmosphere that he memorably compares to that of a seventeenth-century religious war, Cooke maintained a clear head and his signature intellectual rigor. A Generation on Trial, which begins with a brilliantly succinct summary of the case&mdash;&ldquo;We are about to look at the trials of a man who was judged in one decade for what he was said to have done in another&rdquo;&mdash;is both a fascinating historical document and a stirring example of journalistic integrity.</div>

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A Generation on Trial

<div>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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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 &ldquo;state of the language,&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;practically every man who signed the Declaration of Independence is at this moment being measured for a halo or, at worst a T-shirt.&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;If I could be benevolent dictator of the United States for a year,&rdquo; he informs the National Trust for Historic Preservation, &ldquo;I should provide several million jobs for the wrecking industry.&rdquo; No one played the devil&rsquo;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.</div>

Overdrive

The Patient Has the Floor

<div>The definitive survey of Alistair Cooke&rsquo;s brilliant career as a newspaperman Few journalists have covered the American scene as thoroughly as Alistair Cooke did. In addition to presenting the Sunday-night Letter from America broadcasts for the BBC, Cooke was the Guardian&rsquo;s chief US correspondent for more than a quarter century, filing daily dispatches about the former colonies for his British readers. Selected and introduced by Professor Ronald A. Wells, the pieces in America Observed showcase the full range of Cooke&rsquo;s omnivorous interests and impressive reportorial skills. From baseball to Billy Graham, Harry S. Truman to Chappaquiddick, he depicts the defining characters and events of the American century with elegance and insight. &ldquo;The Untravelled Road&rdquo; is a poignant and perceptive snapshot of the civil rights movement in Montgomery, Alabama. &ldquo;The Legend of Gary Cooper&rdquo; eloquently summarizes the unlikely career of America&rsquo;s leading man, and &ldquo;A Woman of Integrity&rdquo; delivers the news of Marilyn Monroe&rsquo;s death with empathy and honesty. &ldquo;The Ghastly Sixties&rdquo; is a concise, candid, and ultimately inspirational chronicle of that turbulent decade. Remarkably prescient and endlessly entertaining, the journalism collected here is some of the twentieth century&rsquo;s finest.</div>

America Observed

<div>&ldquo;There is never going to be anyone else like Cooke, a chronicler of amazing times.&rdquo; &mdash;The Daily Telegraph As the voice of the BBC&rsquo;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 &ldquo;a virtuosity approaching genius in talking about America in human terms.&rdquo; This second collection of Cooke&rsquo;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&mdash;on Brown v. Board of Education, the struggle to integrate the Deep South, and the riots in Watts&mdash;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&ndash;1968 is rich with humor, compassion, and commitment. In this superb overview of an astonishing era in America&rsquo;s twentieth century, Alistair Cooke is at the top of his game.</div>

Talk About America, 1951–1968

<div>A wonderful entertainment that reflects Alistair Cooke&rsquo;s love affair with cinema, from his early days as a film critic to his iconic role as the host of Masterpiece Theatre Humphrey Bogart, Fred Astaire, Lauren Bacall, Marlene Dietrich, and Marilyn Monroe are just a few of the stars profiled, along with many directors, in this sparkling and comprehensive collection of reviews, interviews, and essays. Alistair Cooke&rsquo;s first radio talk at the BBC was in October 1934, and the subject was cinema. He had begun reviewing films in the 1920s as a Cambridge undergraduate. This anthology of his best film criticism and essays includes his many favorite subjects. In &ldquo;The Symbol Called Garbo,&rdquo; Cooke reveals the woman behind the enigmatic screen goddess. James Cagney is identified as &ldquo;one of the few technically perfect actors,&rdquo; while Charlie Chaplin was &ldquo;the funniest clown alive.&rdquo; Shirley Temple&rsquo;s multi-million-dollar appeal is explained, as is the subtlety underpinning the slapstick humor of the Marx Brothers. Directors such as Frank Capra, Fritz Lang, and Cecil B. DeMille meet with Cooke&rsquo;s high praise, while Alfred Hitchcock evokes a more complicated reaction. Full of glamorous stars, provocative opinions, and fond memories, Alistair Cooke at the Movies is a very personal and captivating guide to the golden age of Hollywood and beyond.</div>

Alistair Cooke at the Movies

<div>Alistair Cooke knew, met, interviewed, or reported on many of the most influential men and women of the twentieth century and in this collection profiles the twenty-three he considered the most remarkable In his career of more than fifty years broadcasting the BBC radio program Letter from America and as the US correspondent for the Guardian for more than twenty-five years, Alistair Cooke met and mixed with many famous people. In Memories of the Great &amp; the Good he shares his portraits of the men and women that he felt made the world a better, more stimulating place. We read about Franklin D. Roosevelt&rsquo;s maintenance of his public image by means of a gentleman&rsquo;s agreement with the press and Lyndon Johnson&rsquo;s masterful backroom dealings. &ldquo;Eisenhower at Gettysburg&rdquo; reveals a conversation between Cooke and the president, touching on everything from their mutual love of golf to what it was like to grow up in a small Kansas farming town at the turn of the twentieth century. Literary figures including P. G. Wodehouse, Erma Bombeck, and George Bernard Shaw are succinctly sketched. And, in the final pair of essays, Cooke pays moving tribute to two of the men he admired the most: Winston Churchill and golfing legend Bobby Jones.</div>

Memories of the Great & the Good

<div>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.</div>

Six Men

<div>&ldquo;Reading [Cooke] is like spending an evening with him: you may have heard it all before, but never told with such grace and sparkle.&rdquo; &mdash;The New York Times Book Review <a>As the voice of the BBC&rsquo;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 &ldquo;a virtuosity approaching genius in talking about America in human terms.&rdquo;</a> That virtuosity is displayed to great effect in this essential collection of Cooke&rsquo;s letters, covering a momentous decade in American history. Always entertaining, provocative, and enlightening, the master broadcaster reports on an extraordinarily diverse range of topics, from Vietnam, Watergate, and the constitutional definition of free speech to the jogging craze and the pleasures of a family Christmas in Vermont. He eulogizes Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, pays an affectionate and moving tribute to Duke Ellington, and treats readers to a night at the opera with Jimmy Carter. Alistair Cooke was one of the twentieth century&rsquo;s most influential reporters and, according to Pulitzer Prize&ndash;winning journalist James Reston, the &ldquo;best story-teller in America.&rdquo; This captivating collection includes some of Cooke&rsquo;s most memorable insights into American history and culture.</div>

The Americans

<div>From Duke Ellington to Churchill Downs, championship golf to Greta Garbo, Alistair Cooke reports on the popular sports and entertainments he loved the most This delightful anthology, drawn from Alistair Cooke&rsquo;s Letter from America BBC broadcasts as well as his reporting for the Guardian, showcases the legendary journalist&rsquo;s wide range of sporting pleasures, which include golf, tennis, baseball, and horse racing, and records memorable fun he had with favorite movies, theater productions, and jazz performances. Included here are perceptive portraits of sports personalities such as Gabriela Sabatini, Arnold Palmer, and Sugar Ray Robinson, whom Cooke regarded as the best fighter in the history of boxing. &ldquo;A Mountain Comes to Muhammad&rdquo; captures Muhammad Ali in victory; &ldquo;Come-Uppance for the &lsquo;Onliest Champion&rsquo; &rdquo; portrays him in defeat. A &ldquo;Revised (Soviet) History of Baseball&rdquo; humorously details Russian misconceptions about America&rsquo;s pastime, a.k.a. beizbol. In &ldquo;The Road to Churchill Downs,&rdquo; Cooke captures the sights and sounds of Kentucky&rsquo;s crown jewel and delights in the joy that his young daughter, Susan, who appears with her father on the cover of this edition, takes in the sport of kings. Sharing the spotlight are celebrities of the Hollywood variety, including Gary Cooper, John Wayne, Groucho Marx, and Charlie Chaplin. Filled with Cooke&rsquo;s infectious enthusiasm for fun and games of wide variety, the lighter side of the legendary journalist&rsquo;s output will be enjoyed by devotees of popular culture.</div>

Fun & Games with Alistair Cooke

<div>&ldquo;[Cooke is] one of the most gifted and urbane essayists of the century, a supreme master.&rdquo; &mdash;The Spectator As the voice of the BBC&rsquo;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 &ldquo;a virtuosity approaching genius in talking about America in human terms.&rdquo; Letters from America: 1946&ndash;1951 contains highlights from the first five years of Alistair Cooke&rsquo;s legendary BBC radio program, years when listeners were eager to put the horrors of World War II behind them. Cooke&rsquo;s lively and illuminating dispatches from New York perfectly capture the spirit of the times. From the significance of Labor Day to reflections on the changing seasons to the heroic Long Island duck that saved two people from drowning, little escapes the broadcaster&rsquo;s sharp reportorial eye and affable wit. This collection includes Cooke&rsquo;s historical tour of Washington, DC, and his thoughts on why New York is such a singular city, and covers more serious topics such as the Soviet threat and the anxieties of the atomic age. Always captivating, Cooke treats the reader to profiles of Joe Louis and Will Rogers and reflections on Damon Runyon&rsquo;s America, and concludes with a &ldquo;Letter to an Intending Immigrant.&rdquo; Letters from America: 1946&ndash;1951, the first volume of Cooke&rsquo;s iconic broadcasts, offers a captivating journey through culture, history, and politics and is a classic of twentieth-century journalism.</div>

Letters from America, 1946–1951

<div>Benny Kramer returns, this time turning to one of his oldest friends to save the life of Kramer&rsquo;s son Though his trip from New York to Philadelphia is for business, Benny Kramer has also planned a rendezvous&mdash;not with a mistress, but with one of the city&rsquo;s finest doctors. Kramer plans to enlist him in a noble purpose: keeping his son out of Vietnam. The doctor won&rsquo;t provide this service to just anyone, but he and Benny have a mutual friend in the incomparable Sebastian Roon. Benny and Seb have been friends since the Depression, when they shared countless adventures across New York&rsquo;s Lower East Side. Now Benny&rsquo;s counting on that friendship to ensure the same life of endless possibilities for his son. This ebook features a foreword by Alistair Cooke.</div>

Tiffany Street

<div>New York Times&ndash;bestselling author: The classic comic story of a con man out to pull the job of a lifetime in New York&rsquo;s Garment District. Just south of Times Square, more than six thousand manufacturers of dresses are crammed into the few blocks that make up Manhattan&rsquo;s garment district. Their factories are cramped, noisy, and incredibly profitable&mdash;and Harry Bogen is going to take them for all they&rsquo;re worth. A classic conniver, he knows that it&rsquo;s easier, and a hell of a lot more fun, to turn a buck by lying than by telling the truth. First he convinces the shipping clerks&mdash;the pack animals of the garment industry&mdash;to go on strike. With the dress manufacturers brought to their knees, Harry will be there to pick them up again. His conscience might be conflicted, if he had one in the first place. A bracing comic sensation when first published, I Can Get It for You Wholesale remains a timeless masterpiece&mdash;its hero still a scoundrel, and his charm as irresistible as ever. This ebook features a foreword by Alistair Cooke.</div>

I Can Get It for You Wholesale

<div>A New York Times&ndash;bestselling author&rsquo;s poignant novel of a boy&rsquo;s coming of age on Manhattan&rsquo;s Lower East Side in the 1920s. When Benny Kramer&rsquo;s father came to the United States, he was hungry, broke, and ignorant. Handed a banana and told it was &ldquo;American food,&rdquo; he scarfed it down, peel and all. By the time he died, he was no richer, but much wiser, and everything he learned he imparted to his son. Growing up on New York&rsquo;s Lower East Side between the wars, Benny&rsquo;s life was just as chaotic as his neighborhood. How many young boys have seen a man decapitated by a horse? How many know blacksmiths who got tangled up in a multiple homicide? How many win an elocution contest, only to find out it was rigged by the mob? For Benny, these are everyday events, and he remembers them with the biting wit that made Jerome Weidman one of the most beloved novelists of his day. This ebook features a foreword by Alistair Cooke.</div>

Fourth Street East

<div>Reminiscing after his mother&rsquo;s death, Benny Kramer remembers the chaos and hardships of his youth, indelibly marked by a brief turn as a bootlegger For most of his life, Benny Kramer&rsquo;s mother was an inescapable presence in his life. But on the day of her death, her body disappears on its way from hospital to morgue. While scouring New York in search of her body, Benny remembers the first adventure his mother sent him on, fifty years before. At the height of Prohibition, little Benny&rsquo;s mother gives him a simple task: Deliver eighteen bottles of bootlegged hooch to a wedding. Along the way, the would-be rumrunner encounters sinister slumlords, a sadistic rabbi, and enough slapstick obstacles to give the Marx Brothers fits. Reliving each moment as he searches for his mother, Benny comes to understand that this is just another day in the life of a boy desperate to find his mother&rsquo;s love. This ebook features a foreword by Alistair Cooke.</div>

Last Respects

<div>Out of the game and itching for action, Harry schemes up a way back to the top in this engrossing sequel to I Can Get It for You Wholesale When Harry Bogen became king of the garment district, he blossomed into a natural-born tyrant: imperious, cruel, and quick with a lie. But after he built his empire, he blew it up, leaving his partners in jail and securing the whole of the fortune for himself. It takes only three months for Harry to find that retirement does not suit him. To get back in the action, he&rsquo;ll have to spin a lie that would be his biggest yet. The scheme starts with an order for one thousand dresses, bought at cut-rate price from a vendor who can&rsquo;t afford not to sell. From there, Harry raises the stakes, juggling deals and spinning stories as fast as he possibly can. Will he secure himself fortune everlasting, or will this little Napoleon meet his Waterloo? Win or lose, Harry Bogen will keep scrapping every inch of the way. This ebook features a foreword by Alistair Cooke.</div>

What's in It for Me?

<div>Three volumes of BBC broadcasts about the US from the New York Times&ndash;bestselling author, host of Masterpiece Theater, and &ldquo;international treasure&rdquo; (Booklist). In addition to his most visible presence as the host of PBS&rsquo;s Masterpiece Theater for over two decades, British-born Alistair Cooke entertained and informed millions of listeners around the globe with his weekly BBC radio program, Letters from America, for over half a century. An outstanding observer of the American scene, he became one of the world&rsquo;s best-loved broadcasters. The three works in this collection gather together his most memorable insights into American history and culture. &ldquo;Reading [Cooke] is like spending an evening with him: you may have heard it all before, but never told with such grace and sparkle&rdquo; (The New York Times Book Review). Letters from America: Beginning with his first letter in 1946, a powerful description of American GIs returning home, and ending with his last broadcast in February 2004, reflecting on the presidential campaign, this comprehensive collection displays Cooke&rsquo;s &ldquo;virtuosity approaching genius in talking about America in human terms&rdquo; (Lord Hill of Luton, chairman of the BBC). Highlights include an eyewitness account of Robert Kennedy&rsquo;s assassination, a moving evocation of 9/11, personal reflections on presidents, and warm remembrances of celebrity friends and cultural icons. &ldquo;In this tightly edited collection . . . Cooke captures the expanding soul of a nation and people.&rdquo; &mdash;Publishers Weekly Talk About America: Personally selected by Cooke, these dispatches cover a tumultuous time in American history, including the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War. Along with cogent commentary, Cooke offers characteristically incisive portraits of political and cultural figures such as John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Robert Frost, H. L. Mencken, Charles Lindbergh, and John Glenn. &ldquo;There is great political penetration here, and there are flashes on every page of wit, humanity, and wisdom.&rdquo; &mdash;The New York Times The Americans: Always entertaining, provocative, and enlightening, the &ldquo;best storyteller in America&rdquo; reports on an extraordinarily diverse range of topics, from Vietnam, Watergate, and the constitutional definition of free speech to the jogging craze and the pleasures of a family Christmas in Vermont (James Reston). In this New York Times bestseller, Cooke eulogizes Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, pays an affectionate and moving tribute to Duke Ellington, and treats readers to a night at the opera with Jimmy Carter. &ldquo;One of the most gifted and urbane essayists of the century.&rdquo; &mdash;The Spectator</div>

The Alistair Cooke Collection Volume One

<div>A New York Times bestseller: This portrait of the United States at the beginning of World War II is &ldquo;an unexpected and welcome discovery in a time capsule&rdquo; (The Washington Post). In nearly three thousand BBC broadcasts over fifty-eight years, Alistair Cooke reported on America, illuminating our country for a global audience. Shortly before he passed away, a long-forgotten manuscript resurfaced in a closet in his New York apartment. It was a travelogue of America during the early days of World War II that had sat there for sixty years. Published to stellar reviews, Cooke&rsquo;s The American Home Front is a &ldquo;valentine to his adopted country by someone who loved it as well as anyone and knew it better than most&rdquo; (The Plain Dealer). A portrait frozen in time, the book offers a charming look at the era as it journeys through small towns, big cities, and the American landscape as they once were. The American Home Front is also a brilliant piece of reportage, a historical gem that &ldquo;affirms Cooke&rsquo;s enduring place as a great twentieth-century reporter&rdquo; (American Heritage). &ldquo;An interesting eyewitness record . . . It recalls transcontinental travel in the pre-interstate highway era, and with greater depth, social problems that Cooke detected beneath the win-the-war exhortations he encountered from coast to coast.&rdquo; &mdash;Booklist</div>

The American Home Front, 1941–1942

<div>New York Times-Bestselling Author: “An elegant and breezy tour of the game” by the legendary journalist and beloved TV host (Sports Illustrated). Alistair Cooke shares his lifelong enthusiasm for golf in this brilliant collection of his writing on the sport he loved most. On a fateful day in 1964, Cooke was dragged into New York City’s Van Cortlandt Park to play his first game of golf. He was immediately hooked, and golf became his greatest passion, even though he called it “a method of self-torture, disguised as a game.” Golf gathers together for the first time the best of Cooke’s pieces on what he called “the marvelous mania” and showcases the incomparable wit and mischievous charm that made Cooke one of the greatest journalists and broadcasters of the twentieth century. Luxuriate in his prose as he describes Arnold Palmer playing in 102-degree heat in San Antonio, dapper Gary Player winning the US Open at Creve Coeur, Missouri, and Jack Nicklaus playing—and winning—almost everywhere. This is a book no golfer, pro or amateur, should be without.</div>

Alistair Cooke
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Books By Alistair Cooke (13 Books)