This Sunday’s Booknotes (8:00 p.m. and again 11:00) on C-SPAN 1 features John McCain, Why Courage Matters: The Way to a Braver Life. The Booknotes site notes:
“Courage,” Winston Churchill explained, is “the first of human qualities . . . because it guarantees all the others.” As a naval officer, P.O.W., and one of America’s most admired political leaders, John McCain has seen countless acts of bravery and self-sacrifice. Now, in this inspiring meditation on courage, he shares his most cherished stories of ordinary individuals who have risked everything to defend the people and principles they hold most dear.
The book was published by Random House.
C-SPAN 2’s BookTV features its monthly “in-depth” session; this month, the subject will be Simon Winchester. The 3-hour session weill be repeated throughout Sunday afternoon and night (Noon to 3, 5 to 8, and midnight to 3 in the moning). Winchester’s first book was published in 1974; he has often appeared on this channel, including discussions of Krakatoa and The Professor and the Madman.
Winchester, trained as a geologist and then serving as a foreign correspondent, has often taken interesting perspectives on his subjects. His works reflect that variety.
Encore Booknotes repeats the interview with Richard Brookhiser on The Way of the Wasp: How It Made America at 7:00 Saturday evening and 11:00 Sunday morning ). . History on Book TV focuses on The First World War by Hew Strachan (11:00 Saturday evgening and 8:00 unday evening). The Public Lives choice is Fred Kaplan’s The Singular Mark Twain – an unusual literary subject for the channel , at 8:00 Saturday evening and 10:30 Sunday evening.
Other groupings:
History
The West: 8:00 a.m. on Saturday – Bobby Bridger’s Buffalo Bill and Sitting Bull and 3:00 Sunday afternoon Landon Jones’ William Clark and the Shaping of the West.
WWII: Douglas Porch on the Mediterranean Theater at 1:45 Satirday afternoon, Wukovits on Wake Island at 2:30 Sunday morning. At 7:00 Sunday evening, Dan Kurzman’s No Greater Glory discusses the roles of the “Four Immortal Chaplain” during the sinking of the Dorchester.
War on Terrorism: Andrew Exum: This Man’s Army at 5:00 Saturday.
Edmund Morgan’s The Genuine Aticle is rerun again this week at 3:45 Monday morning.
Concerning contemporary issues, there appears (as usual) to be something for everyone. Repeated three times (5:45 Saturday evening, again that midnight and at 9:45 Suday evening) is a disussion of “Books, Politics and the Culture War”. The panel includes Toni Morrison, Joe Conason, Sidney Blumenthal, Al Franken, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Other apparently cultural studies are Gillon’s Boomer Nation (11:00 Saturday morning, Robert Byrd also appears three times to discuss his Losing Ameria (noon Saturday, 10:20 Saturday evening, and again at 8:00 Sunday mrning). Returning is an interview with William F. Buckley on his Miles Gone By (8:45 Sunday morning), Fukayama’s State-Building Governance (12:45 Saturday morning). Taranto’s Presidential Leadership returns at 9:30 Saturday evening, as does tom Hayden’s Street Wars at 3:00 Saturday afternoon.
A note: the 5:30 early Sunday morning time slot for Gary Hart’s The Fourth Power probably means few will be watching. But C-SPAN’s description is misleading. I happened to listen to part of each airing last week, described as: “Former U.S. Senator Gary Hart (D-CO) talks about his newest book, The Fourth Power: A Grand Strategy for the United States in the Twenty-First Century. In it, the author makes the case that America needs a grand strategy based largely on ideals like Constitutional liberties, representative government, and freedom of the press.” While that statement may not sound very enticing or truly analytic; but you might be interested to know that the form is more a panel discussion (debate?) between Hart and John Lewis Gaddis. This makes for a sharpening of argument that remains unclear in this bland summary and I would think Gaddis might in some circles be as big a draw as Hart.
I’ve always had a fondness for the works of Simon Winchester. In one, he describes being in the hills overlooking Vandenberg Air Force Base watching the smoke rise from an unsuccessful private rocket launch attempt. That day, I was in the Launch Operations Control Center building a few miles away, watching the same smoke. It was my company (American Rocket) that had built that rocket, and I was getting ready for the press conference where I would have to explian what happened.
Eventually the story has a sort of happy ending — the hybrid rocket technology we developed ended up being used as the propulsion for Rutan’s SpaceShipOne on it ride to space. Ad astra, etc.