BOOK REVIEW: ‘Sundays at Eight’

OPINION:

SUNDAYS AT EIGHT: 25 YEARS OF STORIES FROM C-SPAN’S “Q&A” AND “BOOKNOTES”
Edited by Brian Lamb
Public Affairs, $29.99, 496 pages

There are a number of reasons I enthusiastically urge you to buy and read this anniversary selection of 41 interviews that C-SPAN, the public-affairs cable channel, has aired during its 25 years in operation. Most important, each is fascinating reading.

More broadly, the book is a rebuttal to the pervasive moan that nothing new is any good in these deeply unquiet times. Since its founding in 1989 as a fixed-camera broadcast journal of record of the U.S. House and Senate, C-SPAN not only maintained its reputation for strict nonpartisanship, but also expanded its role next as a promoter of our literary culture and then as a forum for thought-provoking conversation.

One can, and I do, argue that more than any benefit we have had in the same period from Al Gore’s Internet, C-SPAN’s founder Brian Lamb has been a more important force for intellectual good for this country, and these essays prove it.

These are not strictly essays. Rather, they are edited transcripts of book-and-author interviews in the traditional Q&A format that Mr. Lamb used between 1989 and 2005 as he hosted “Booknotes” each Sunday night at 8 p.m. (hence the title). With no break during all that time, Mr. Lamb estimates that the 801 authors who appeared as guests meant he had to spend 2.5 years of his life reading their books and preparing for the program. Since then, the program morphed into the successor, called “Q&A,” and expanded its guest list of nearly 600 authors, documentary-film producers, online bloggers and other interesting storytellers.

Each of the 41 stories profiled in the book has had the host’s questions edited out and the resulting soliloquy by the guest has been smoothly shaped into essay form. The strength of the profiles then is in the story being told. As with any selective menu, it helps that Mr. Lamb and the C-SPAN staff have organized the offerings into sections that include personal stories, conversations about American history, media and society, money and politics and post-Sept. 11, 2001 America.

My favorite essay comes from a program I watched more than two years ago, when the journalist Anne Applebaum appeared to talk about her latest book, “Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956.” Miss Applebaum picked that latter year as a watershed moment when the Eastern European nations captive under Soviet domination began to stir and shift in small ways to regain their liberty. The book, and her interview, focus on three quite different Soviet satellite nations — East Germany, Poland and Hungary — each with different histories and different adjustments to the forced strictures of Stalinism, both as an ideology and practice.

Less scholarly but just as riveting are the personal stories highlighted by other interviews. There is the horrifying tale of the rescue of a conscripted boy soldier in Sierra Leone’s civil war. Just as stark is the story of a boy born in a North Korean prison camp who made one of the scant few successful escapes to freedom in South Korea. Closer to home is the account of a West Virginia man who wins one of the biggest lottery awards and the awful things that happen to him as a result.

For the history junkie, there is rich fare served up. Author Clarence Lusane talks about his fascinating research into the role of enslaved black Americans in the lives of our earliest occupants of the White House. Longtime Senate Historian Richard Baker provided an insider’s look at that most powerful of parliamentary upper chambers and how some of the 1,900 men and women who served there changed the institution. One example is Louisiana’s Huey Long, who in the 1930s transformed the filibuster into the procedural tactic that is today routinely used — or overused.

Like any good bouillabaisse, the book’s interviews ranged over the human condition with extra portions devoted to our lives as we live them in a post-Sept. 11, 2001 world. Lawyer Kenneth Feinberg reviewed his book and experiences as the government-appointed special master of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund that paid out $7 billion to nearly 2,900 families affected by the attacks.

Time magazine reporter Michael Weisskopf was embedded in an Army patrol in Baghdad in 2003 when he picked up a grenade thrown at the troops, threw it out of range but lost his right hand in the process. His story, focused on his recovery that he and the wounded soldiers at Walter Reed Army Hospital shared, is especially poignant.

Other stories are just good yarns. British historian Simon Winchester talks about his love affair with America and how it led him to become a citizen. As counterpoint, David McCullough, the grand master of American historians, turns the lens around in his discussion of his book about the large number of Americans who went the other way in the 19th century — specifically, to Paris — and how it changed them and changed America when they returned.

In all, it is a rich stew in bite-sized servings. If you have been a fan of Mr. Lamb’s literary feast, as I have, this will be a welcome addition to your shelves.

Washington author James Srodes’ latest book is “On Dupont Circle: Franklin & Eleanor Roosevelt and the Progressives Who Shaped Our World” (Counterpoint).