Fantastic. This is a collection of Alistair Cooke's 'letters from America' - radio broadcasts for a British audience from the USA. He discusses culture, politics, family life, sport, music, but the subject matter (though fascinating) isn't what makes this book so good. Cooke is one of the most effortlessly smooth, fluent writers I've ever read. It's fascinating to follow one man through the decades and to see the subtle shifts in his vocabulary and writing style.

http://nhw.livejournal.com/1040674.ht...

Part of the Sunday morning routine of my childhood was to listen to the weekly ten or fifteen minute "Letter from America", one of the world's longest radio programmes, produced in a stunning 2.689 editions over 58 years before Cooke gave up in 2004, a few weeks before his death at the age of 96. By the time I started understanding the content of the talks, Cooke was already sixty and had been doing it for over half his life.

The BBC has a tribute section on its website, where you can read and hear all about it. The primary way to appreciate Cooke's pieces is of course by listening to them, but there is no harm in having this selection in the form of dead trees.

They don't all work as well on the printed page, but there are some that do - a brilliant lyrical description of the New England fall; a lovely account of a family Christmas; his eyewitness account of the assassination of Robert Kennedy. It is interesting that in his early pieces on race relations, he really didn't seem to get the nature of the problem; but he redeems himself partially with a reflection on the life of Duke Ellington, and then completely with his reminiscence of covering Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King. There are three pieces included about the assassination of JFK; only one about Watergate, from years later; and several about the Monica Lewinsky scandal, which from the perspective of only a very few years later seems excessive.

Anyway, it's a heavy book, probably better for dipping into than reading straight through as I did, but worth having by anyone who remembers him. ( )

A wonderful view of 20th century American history from the man who knew everyone. Recomended reading for Americans and Brits alike. ( )

Is it inevitable that one becomes something of a reactionary with age? ( )