Memories of the Great and the Good - Hardcover

Cooke, Alistair

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1559704799 ISBN 13: 9781559704793

Publisher: Arcade Publishing, 1999

Synopsis

Journalist Alistair Cooke recounts his meetings with numerous people during his sixty-year career, including Dwight D. Eisenhower, Jelly Roll Morton, and Erma Bombeck, and explains why each of them left the world a better or more interesting place. 75,000 first printing.

About this title

Review:

Alistair Cooke writes in the preface to this collection of 23 biographical sketches, "Most of these pieces tend to find, and rejoice in, what is best about their subjects." That is not to say that the distinguished British print and broadcast journalist (resident for many years in America) is starry-eyed about the men and women he profiles: George Bernard Shaw was a crank; Frank Lloyd Wright a prima donna; General George Marshall an appalling public speaker. Yet Cooke's smooth prose and keen insights explore the larger issues his subjects' stories raise and invite readers to appreciate the people who have made a difference. Franklin Roosevelt's visionary leadership was possible because of a gentleman's agreement with the press inconceivable today: they never printed a single photo of him in his wheelchair. FDR's vice president, John Nance Garner, was a Southern politico who understood only power and back-scratching: "There is one man left who is like him," Cooke wrote in 1967, "Lyndon Johnson"--cogently and simultaneously nailing LBJ's strength and weakness. Politicians and statesmen preponderate here (Cooke's Winston Churchill portrait is justly famous), but the author covers writers (P.G. Wodehouse, Robert Frost), performers (Gary Cooper, Duke Ellington), and columnists (James Reston, Erma Bombeck) with equal shrewdness. --Wendy Smith

About the Author:

Born in England and educated at Cambridge, Yale, and Harvard, Alistar Cooke (1908-2004) became a U.S. citizen in 1941. He was awarded an honorary knighthood in 1973 and delivered the keynote address before both houses of Congress at the bicentennial celebrations in 1976. Cooke lived and worked in an apartment overlooking Central Park, where he raised his family and lived with his wife, Jane White, until his death.

About this edition

• Publisher: Arcade Publishing
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 1559704799
• ISBN 13: 9781559704793
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288