Memories of the Great and the Good by Alistair Cook lands on the |> SALE <| shelves in my shop.
Pavilion, 1999, Hardback in dust wrapper.
From the cover: For over a quarter of a century as Chief American Correspondent of The Guardian, and throughout more than fifty years of broadcasting his Letter from America, Alistair Cooke knew, met, interviewed or reported on many of the most influential men and women of the twentieth century. Here he has collected his memories of a score or more of them. They include actors and generals, statesmen and eccentrics, a poet, a jazzman, an intensely scholarly woman and a hilariously funny one, a world famous architect, the man who restored the fabric of war-devastated Europe; three Presidents and several other politicians: all of whom, in Cookes view, have left the world a better or more interesting place.
If he had a prejudice in choosing his subjects, it was in favour of people he had liked or admired. And, as a ravenous reader of biography who deplores what he calls the current plague of psycho-biographies and porno-biographies he is happy to announce that the plague passed this book by.
Here, then, are scintillating portraits of characters as far apart as George Bernard Shaw and Duke Ellington and Eisenhower, as different as the humorist Erma Bombeck and the Nobel prize winner, Barbara McClintock. Recounting the trials of Francis Chichester, the lonely global yachtsman, or analysing the different but equally indomitable spirit of Eleanor Roosevelt, Cooke helps us understand a little better the nature of courage. His fond and sensitive recollections of P. G. Wodehouse and Gary Cooper salute two unpretentious geniuses in the ostentatious world of entertainment.
The book ends with moving and memorable portraits of two men:Winston Churchill, who was for all his human flaws most certainly great, and Bobby Jones, whom Alistair Cooke regards as not only the greatest golfer of the century but as one of the three or four finest human beings I have ever known.
Very Good in Very Good Dust Wrapper. Price Clipped.
Blue boards with Silver titling to the Spine. [XIII] 255 pages. 9½” x 6¼”.
This book will be eventually reach my delightful website…(added to my Biography category.) but get 60% off buying from this very blog blog… Buy it now for just £2.60 + P&P! Of course, if you don’t like this one there are plenty more available here!
BookLovers of Bath 