BOOKTV and American Writers I and II

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Booktv is on every weekend on the cable channel CSPAN2, from 8:00 a.m., EST Saturday, to 8:00 a.m. Monday.

It covers mostly hour-long lectures given by non-fiction authors on their latest books. But it also mixes in live marathon coverage of book festivals and the discussions and lectures that take place there, encore episodes of the CSPAN Booknotes program, and a three-hour In-Depth interview/call-in program with a selected historian or author like Martin Gilbert, Howard Zinn, George Will, or David Herbert Donald. There are also occasional programs featuring books on other subjects like science and education, for example, as well as interviews with novelists.

Many of the programs that have shown on Booktv are archived on the Booktv website. Go there and click on "Watch Online" for a selection.
The listings for each upcoming weekend are available on the Booktv home page, click on "Booktv Schedule."

BOOKTV Homepage

In 2000 and 2002, CSPAN featured the American Writers and American Writers II programs.

These programs "explore American history through the lives and works of selected American writers who have influenced the course of our nation and looks at what their works mean to Americans today. In this series, C-SPAN present[ed] a new live program each week from historic sites associated with the writers' lives and works such as:

Harlem to explore the Harlem Renaissance writers
Key West to discover the life and works of Ernest Hemingway

Every program will feature selected writers' novels, speeches, diaries, essays and life stories, creating a snapshot of American history.
Each week, the program invites experts to discuss the featured writer's background and literary significance, the time period the writer lived in and wrote about and the homes and historic sites important to the writer and the works. Additionally, C-SPAN opens up its phone lines to take calls from viewers during each live program."

These programs were divided into eight historical eras, from "Founding to Revolution" to "Social Transformation to Vietnam." It covered writers from Bradford, Franklin, Paine, and Jefferson and Madison to Sojourner Truth, Emerson and Thoreau, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Twain, Cather, DuBois, Black Elk, Henry Adams, Mencken, Walter Lippman, Whittaker Chambers, Ayn Rand, Jack Kerouac, Russell Kirk, Betty Friedan and many others.

Every one of the programs is permanently archived and available online at American Writers.

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larry, you're depresiing me now. can't get c-span2, the original neither. but thanks for the link, i'll try to keep abreast of happenings on the net.

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Books and authors featured this weekend on CSPAN2 Booktv:

BOOKTV Listings February 8-10

Lewis & Clark Trail Panel featuring William Least Heat-Moon, Dayton Duncan, James Thom, and Stephenie Ambrose Tubbs

J. Martin Rochester, Class Warfare: Besieged Schools, Bewildered Parents, Betrayed Kids and the Attack on Excellence

David Cannadine, In Churchill's Shadow: Confronting the Past in Modern Britain

Peter Wallison, Ronald Reagan: The Power of Conviction and the Success of His Presidency

Andy Rooney, Common Nonsense

John F. Stacks, Scotty: James B. Reston and the Rise and Fall of American Journalism

Gerald Baron, Now is Too Late: Survival in an Era of Instant News

Helmut Smith, The Butcher's Tale: Murder and Anti-Semitism in a German Town

Devra Davis, When Smoke Ran Like Water: Tales of Environmental Deception and the Battle Against Pollution

Encore Booknotes: David Hackworth, About Face: The Odyssey of an American Warrior

Public Lives: Gregory Vistica, The Education of Lieutenant Kerrey

Dominic Pulera, Visible Differences: Why Race Will Matter to Americans in the Twenty-First Century

Heather MacDonald, Are Cops Racist?: How the War Against the Police Harms Black Americans

History on Book TV: Bill Minutaglio, City on Fire: The Forgotten Disaster That Devastated a Town and Ignited a Landmark Legal Battle

Warren Bennis, Geeks & Geezers: How Era, Values, and Defining Moments Shape Leaders

Charles Kupchan, The End of the American Era: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Geopolitics of the Twenty-first Century

Orlando Figes, Natasha's Dance: A Cultural History of Russia

Tananarive Due and Patricia Stephens Due, Freedom in the Family: A Mother-Daughter Memoir of the Fight For Civil Rights

General Assignment: William Pepper, An Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King

Steve Neal, Eleanor and Harry: The Correspondence of Eleanor Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman

Featured Program: Jonathan Shay, Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming

Encore Booknotes: Colin Powell, My American Journey

Rick Cowan & Douglas Century, Takedown: The Fall of the Last Mafia Empire

Pete Hamill & Mike Wallace, Forever

Diana Walker, Public & Private: Twenty Years Photographing the Presidency

Ed Moloney, A Secret History of the IRA

Joe and Hadassah Lieberman, An Amazing Adventure: Joe and Hadassah's Personal Notes on the 2000 Campaign

Mark Falcoff, The Cuban Revolution and the United States: A History in Documents, 1958-1960

Eleanor Holmes Norton & Joan Steinau Lester, Fire in My Soul

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Sorry, I was afraid of that pueo. I know at least one person overseas, in Jordan no less, who gets it, but obviously its not available to many reading this. At least some of it is online for anyone interested enough to be reading this.

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THANKS FOR THE LINKS AND THE LIST!
Thanks, Larry, for the links and the list! I'll take the info to the next Book Club meeting. We're always looking for a good read. We've read Dickens, Shakespeare, E. Annie Proulx, Patterson, Wally Lamb, Mary Kay Baxter ("Erasing Mrs. Loomis") , "The Red Tent." I can't remember the author. This is a new group. Some meetings in-between we've done poetry, both known authors and our own. Next book coming up is "Grandmère" by David Roosevelt. You can see the list is quite eclectic. Personally, my own preference is well-written material. Not all of the above would fit my criteria. For the most part, I read it anyway. 'Though I couldn't read every word of "I Know This Much Is True." (Maybe not the exact title.) Not my cup of tea.

I'm going to check out the book link now. I'll be back.[/color]

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I've seem the program a few times, and I think it's excellent. Only I wonder: Why only non-fiction? Or perhaps there could be another such program for novelists...

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D'art - Only non-fiction probably because of the public affairs nature of CSPAN - politically oriented programming. And hopefully because there is so little programming of this type anywhere on tv - non-fiction authors talking about their books.

charli - thanks - booktv is addictive, leading to less time to read books!

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Writers, books and topics on BOOKTV this weekend, February 15-17

BOOKTV Listings

National Book Award of 1902 Description: Panelists Harvey Cox, Erica Funkhouser, and Steven Pinker presented their arguments for the book most worthy of the National Book Award in 1902, some fifty years before the actual award was created. The books up for consideration were The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James (Cox), Owen Wister's The Virginian (Funkhouser), and Helen Keller's The Story of My Life (Pinker). Following the panelists' arguments, the audience members voted for the book they felt deserved the honor.

Public Lives David McCullough - John Adams

Jared Diamond Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies

History on Book TV: Andro Linklater Measuring America: How an Untamed Wilderness Shaped the United States and Fulfilled the Promise of Democracy

Thomas Cleary, Translator Great Books Discussion of, The Essential Koran: The Heart of Islam

Michael Beschloss The Conquerors: Roosevelt, Truman and the Destruction of Hitler's Germany 1941-1945

Public Lives Carol Ann Lee The Hidden Life of Otto Frank

Public Lives E.M. Halliday Understanding Thomas Jefferson

Public Lives William Miller The Abraham Lincoln Institute Fifth Annual Symposium

DeAnne Blanton They Fought Like Demons: Women Soldiers in the American Civil War

Booknotes Richard Norton Smith Patriarch: George Washington and the New American Nation

Booknotes Brooks Simpson Ulysses S. Grant: Triumph Over Adversity, 1822-1865

Booknotes Bernard Weisberger America Afire: Jefferson, Adams and the Revolution Election of 1800

Booknotes Bonnie Angelo First Mothers: The Women Who Shaped the Presidents

Booknotes James Abourezk Advise and Dissent: Memoirs of South Dakota and the U.S. Senate

Presidents' Weekend Programming

Richard Shenkman Presidential Ambition: How the Presidents Gained Power, Kept Power, and Got Things Done

L.A. Times Festival 2002: The Imperial Presidency

Carlo D'Este Eisenhower: A Soldier's Life

Gayle Feldman, Daisy Maryles, Roxanne Coady, Michael Pietsch, and Larry Ashmead Best and Worst of Times: Best Books vs. Bestsellers in a Changing Business

Lewis & Clark Trail Panel featuring William Least Heat-Moon, Dayton Duncan, James Thom, and Stephenie Ambrose Tubbs

Barbara Holland Hail to the Chiefs: Presidential Mischief, Morals, & Malarkey from George W. to George W.

Daniel Wilkinson & Dianna Ortiz on Guatemala

Rick Atkinson, Joseph Galloway, & Sean Naylor 2003 Colby Military Writers' Symposium: War Reporters Panel

2002 Lionel Gelber Prize Panel

Ronald Steinman Inside Television's First War: A Saigon Journal

Genocide Discussion with Samantha Power and Elizabeth Neuffer

Public Lives Rodney Carroll No Free Lunch: One Man's Journey from Welfare to the American Dream

Public Lives Eleanor Holmes Norton & Joan Steinau Lester Fire in My Soul

Michael Mandelbaum The Ideas That Conquered the World: Peace, Democracy, and Free Markets in the Twenty-First Century

Peter Schweizer Reagan's War: The Epic Story of His Forty-Year Struggle and Final Triumph Over Communism

Arianna Huffington Pigs at the Trough: How Corporate Greed and Political Corruption are Undermining America

Pete Hamill & Mike Wallace Forever

Ron Insana Trend Watching: Don't Be Fooled by the Next Investment Fad, Mania, or Bubble

Arthur Levitt Take on the Street: What Wall Street and Corporate America Don't Want You to Know; What You Can Do to Fight Back

Orrin Hatch Square Peg: Confessions of a Citizen Senator

2002 Harlem Book Fair: Blackspeak: Visionary Writers on the Future of America

Miami Book Fair 2002- Brad Gooch and Bruce Feiler

Kevin Belmonte Hero For Humanity: A Biography of William Wilberforce

Wally Lamb and the Women of York Correctional Institution Couldn't Keep It to Myself: Testimonies from Our Imprisoned Sisters

Dexter Scott King Growing Up King

Bill Emmott 20:21 Vision: Twentieth-Century Lessons for the Twenty-first Century

John Schaeffer & Frank Schaeffer Keeping Faith: A Father-Son Story about Love and the United States Marine Corps

Jonathan Shay Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming

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Agreed that CSPAN's focus on public affairs suggests restricting the coverage to non-fiction. Too bad PBS can't manage to do an hour a week on fiction. I guess the cooking shows and travelogues are more enlightening...

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Yes thats an opportunity missed for PBS. I think there is a half hour show on History Channel featuring a non-fiction book on Sunday mornings, and A&E used to have a show about books following their Sunday morning Breakfast With the Arts show, but I haven't seen it around lately.

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Writers, books and topics on BOOKTV this weekend, February 22-24

BOOKTV LISTINGS 2/22-2/24/03

Lizabeth Cohen A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America

National Book Award of 1902 [Yes, 1902]

Mark Falcoff The Cuban Revolution and the United States: A History in Documents, 1958-1960

Eleanor Holmes Norton & Joan Steinau Lester Fire in My Soul

John A. Williams SHORT VERSION: Accepting Phillis Wheatley Award

Klaus Larres Churchill's Cold War

Featured Program: Scott Carpenter and Kris Stoever For Spacious Skies: The Uncommon Journey of a Mercury Astronaut

Kevin Belmonte Hero For Humanity: A Biography of William Wilberforce

Northshire Bookstore Poetry Reading in Honor of the Right of Protest as a Patriotic and Historical Tradition

Encore Booknotes: Ken Auletta Three Blind Mice: How the TV Networks Lost Their Way

Public Lives: Valerie Boyd Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston

Walter Olson The Rule of Lawyers: How the New Litigation Elite Threatens America's Rule of Law

Wally Lamb and the Women of York Correctional Institution Couldn't Keep It to Myself: Testimonies from Our Imprisoned Sisters

History on Book TV: Ross King Michelangelo & The Pope's Ceiling

Genocide Discussion with Samantha Power and Elizabeth Neuffer

Peter Wallison Ronald Reagan: The Power of Conviction and the Success of His Presidency

Ronald Goldfarb Perfect Villains, Imperfect Heroes: Robert F. Kennedy's War Against Organized Crime

Gerald Baron Now is Too Late: Survival in an Era of Instant News

Norma Khouri Honor Lost: Love and Death in Modern-Day Jordan

David Wyman, Rafael Medoff, David Nasaw, and Blanche Wiesen-Cook A Race Against Death: Peter Bergson, America, and the Holocaust

Peter Wood Diversity: The Invention of a Concept

Phillip Dray At The Hands of Persons Unkown: The Lynching of Black America

Terry Teachout The Skeptic: A Life of H. L. Mencken [with P.J. O'Rourke]

Lynne Duke Mandela, Mobutu, and Me: A Newswoman's African Journey

Michael Mandelbaum The Ideas That Conquered the World: Peace, Democracy, and Free Markets in the Twenty-First Century

Paul Osterman Gathering Power: The Future of Progressive Politics in America

Thomas Taylor The Simple Sounds of Freedom: The True Story of the Only Soldier to Fight for Both America and the Soviet Union in World War II

J. Martin Rochester Class Warfare: Besieged Schools, Bewildered Parents, Betrayed Kids and the Attack on Excellence

Michael Lind Made in Texas: George W. Bush and the Southern Takeover of American Politics

Andro Linklater Measuring America: How an Untamed Wilderness Shaped the United States and Fulfilled the Promise of Democracy

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Re the Wally Lamb book: I read about it in the NY Times recently. It sounded really worthwhile. How do they cover all these books in one weekend, though?

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Most of these shows are one to one-and-a-half hour talks the authors give about their books all over the country - at bookstores, book festivals, etc. I think the Wally Lamb show is from the above-named correctional institution - that's at least the second show they've had from a prison. Actually, the author usually talks for twenty to thirty minutes, then answers questions from the audience for the remainder. Some of the programs are a bit more in depth, like the Featured Programs, History on Booktv, Public Lives, and the occasional In-Depth programs, which are three hours with one author, discussing their lives and works.

You can click on "Book Listings" above to see the schedule, I didn't put the times because it would be too cluttered - I just want to provide the authors and titles so that people can quickly scan the post and see if they see a favorite author or book.

You can see many old programs online by clicking "Watch Online" on the Booktv page.

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charli - sorry I missed your earlier post. Most of the books on Booktv are non-fiction, but they often feature or interview novelists. Many of those programs are on weekends when Booktv does live coverage of a book festival. Wally Lamb is on because he wrote a book about these women in the correctional institution. ("...discusses his latest book, Couldn't Keep It To Myself. The book is a collection of autobiographical writings produced in a workshop conducted for the female inmates of Connecticut's York Correctional Institution. Each of the eleven selections is a re-examination of its author's life and of the reasons that she ended up in prison...")

Lamb's earlier Oprah-novel isn't the type of book Booktv would feature. An example of a show they have on novelists is this and last-weekend's The National Book Award of 1902: "Panelists Harvey Cox, Erica Funkhouser, and Steven Pinker presented their arguments for the book most worthy of the National Book Award in 1902, some fifty years before the actual award was created. The books up for consideration were The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James (Cox), Owen Wister's The Virginian (Funkhouser), and Helen Keller's The Story of My Life (Pinker). Following the panelists' arguments, the audience members voted for the book they felt deserved the honor."

Booktv had a short interview a few weeks ago with David Roosevelt - if we are talking about the same Roosevelt - Eleanor's grandson.

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This weekend on BookTV on CSpan2. This is an incomplete listing of programs - the complete schedule is unavailable.

BookTV Schedule March 1-3

Up to the Minute CSPAN TV LISTINGS

Featured Program: In Depth: Susan Sontag

Northshire Bookstore Poetry Reading in Honor of the Right of Protest as a Patriotic and Historical Tradition

History on Book TV: Erik Larson The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America

AAP Honors Award Winner Oprah Winfrey

Arianna Huffington Pigs at the Trough: How Corporate Greed and Political Corruption are Undermining America

Encore Booknotes: Jeanne Simon Codename: Scarlett: Life on the Campaign Trail by the Wife of a Presidential Candidate

Public Lives: Bob Schieffer This Just In: What I Couldn't Tell You on TV

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Additions to the post above. On BOOKTV this weekend.

Eric Alterman What Liberal Media?: The Truth About Bias and the News

Michael Rose Goodbye, Good Men: How Liberals Brought Corruption into the Catholic Church

Sen. Jim Jeffords (I-VT) An Independent Man: Adventures of A Public Servant

Kevin Coyne Marching Home: To War and Back with The Men of One American Town

Arthur Levitt Take on the Street: What Wall Street and Corporate America Don't Want You to Know; What You Can Do to Fight Back

Heather MacDonald Are Cops Racist?: How the War Against the Police Harms Black Americans

David Shambaugh Modernizing China's Military: Progress, Problems, and Prospects

Bethanne Patrick and Joao Magueijo, Pages magazine interview with Joao Magueijo, author of "Faster Than the Speed of Light"

Joao Magueijo Faster Than the Speed of Light: The Story of a Scientific Speculation

Manouchehr Ganji Defying the Iranian Revolution: From a Minister to the Shah to a Leader of Resistance

Walter Russell Mead, Samantha Power, Joseph Nye, Jr., & Paul Blustein, Lionel Gelber Prize Panel on Foreign Policy

Jonathan Shay Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming

Ashutosh Varshney Ethnic Conflict & Civic Life: Hindus & Muslims in India

Michael D'Orso Plundering Paradise: The Hand of Man on the Galapagos Islands

Gregory Vistica The Education of Lieutenant Kerrey

Peter Wood Diversity: The Invention of a Concept

Aminatta, Forna The Devil That Danced on the Water

Teresa Wagner, ed. Back to the Drawing Board: The Future of the Pro-Life Movement

Dominic Pulera Visible Differences: Why Race Will Matter to Americans in the Twenty-First Century

Walter Olson The Rule of Lawyers: How the New Litigation Elite Threatens America's Rule of Law

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Books, authors and topics on BOOKTV this weekend:

BOOKTV SCHEDULE, March 15-17

Paul Osterman Gathering Power: The Future of Progressive Politics in America

Gerald Baron Now is Too Late: Survival in an Era of Instant News

Ishmael Reed Another Day at the Front: Dispatches from the Race War

Heather MacDonald Are Cops Racist?: How the War Against the Police Harms Black Americans

The Business of Books: Charles McGrath, Francine Prose, David Bromwich, Daniel Mendelsohn and Judith Shulevitz, The Art of Criticism Panel at Yale

Salome Thomas-El I Choose to Stay: A Black Teacher Refuses to Desert the Inner City

Chalmers Johnson Book Discussion of: Blowback: The Costs & Consequences of American Empire - Public Affairs book group

J. Martin Rochester Class Warfare: Besieged Schools, Bewildered Parents, Betrayed Kids and the Attack on Excellence

Michael D'Orso Plundering Paradise: The Hand of Man on the Galapagos Islands

Encore Booknotes: Sam Roberts Who We Are: A Portrait of America

Public Lives: H. Paul Jeffers Roosevelt the Explorer

Peter Wood Diversity: The Invention of a Concept

Malachy McCourt Voices of Ireland

History on Book TV: Howard Dodson, Gail Buckley, Annette Gordon-Reed Jubilee: The Emergence of African-American Culture

Martha Sandweiss Print the Legend: Photography and the American West

Terry Teachout The Skeptic: A Life of H. L. Mencken

Jedediah Purdy Being America: Liberty, Commerce, and Violence in an American World

Diana Walker Public & Private: Twenty Years Photographing the Presidency

Lisa Jardine On a Grander Scale: The Outstanding Life of Sir Christopher Wren

Wilfred McClay Religion Returns to the Public Square: Faith and Policy in America

Norman Mailer The Spooky Art: Some Thoughts on Writing

Norma Khouri Honor Lost: Love and Death in Modern-Day Jordan

Doug Wead All The Presidents' Children

Nat Brandt Chicago Death Trap: The Iroquois Theatre Fire of 1903

Thomas Childers In the Shadows of War: An American Pilot's Odyssey Through Occupied France and the Camps of Nazi Germany

David Halberstam, Earl Caldwell, Alex S. Jones, Richard Stolley, Ekwueme Michael Thelwell, Reporting Civil Rights

Donald Brownlee The Life and Death of Planet Earth: How the New Science of Astrobiology Charts the Ultimate Fate of Our World

James Stewart Heart of a Soldier: A Story of Love, Heroism, and September 11

Al Crespo Protest in the Land of Plenty

Mario Bencastro, Jose Raul Bernardo, Chris Davey, Much Ado About Books 2003 - Writing Historical Fiction

Patricia Cornwell Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper, Case Closed

Harlow Unger Lafayette

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