BOOKNOTES LIFE STORIES: NOTABLE BIOGRAPHERS ON THE PEOPLE WHO SHAPED AMERICA; by Brian Lamb (Times Books); 471 pages; $27.50.
In honor of the 10th anniversary of Brian Lamb's classy "Booknotes" interview program on C-Span, the soft-spoken but provocative host has compiled an anthology of 120 interviews.Such talented authors as David McCullough, Doris Kearns Goodwin and Jon Katz talk about the craft of writing their major books on, respectively, Harry Truman, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Thomas Paine.
In deference to the reader, Lamb has removed his questions, to enable the finished interviews to seem less intrusive, taking on the form of conversational essays.
These essays emerge from Lamb's hourlong, Sunday evening programs on C-Span. The anthology focuses on the lives of 75 prominent Americans from the 1700s to the present, including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Susan B. Anthony, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., Eleanor Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Clare Booth Luce, Katherine Graham, Anita Hill, Ronald Reagan and Betty Friedan.
Like its predecessor, "Booknotes: America's Finest Authors on Reading, Writing and the Power of Ideas," this book includes 32 pages of full-color photos that Lamb took of his interview subjects. But the best recommendation is that Lamb has read every one of the books he featured on his show, more than 500 -- and readers may be motivated to do the same.
For those who thrive on biography, there are interesting little gems everywhere. Richard Norton Smith says George Washington lost his teeth early in life because he cracked Brazil nuts with them. But his false teeth were "state-of-the-art dentures" carved from hippopotamus tusk.
David Donald says Abraham Lincoln was continually visited by people with Harvard degrees who were shocked that he was so "folksy and down-to-earth with no polish at all." The result was that they all thought they were better than he was. But, says Donald, "Lincoln was never taken in by any one of them. . . . He knew perfectly well that he was their intellectual superior. He was smart enough not to let them know it. . . . But he knew it very well."
Denis Brian says Albert Einstein had no interest at all in his appearance, including his long, unruly hair. "He tried to simplify everything. . . . Einstein used to shave only with water, and it was very painful. A doctor friend, Thomas Bucky, gave him some shaving soap one time -- introduced him to it. Einstein used it, said it was marvelous, and then went back to water again because it was just simpler."
Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt, according to Blanche Wiesen Cook, had a wonderful love story rarely mentioned today. "Their courtship letters are as ardent as anything that Eleanor ever wrote. The sad thing is that Eleanor Roosevelt destroyed all of FDR's courtship letters when she discovered his affair with Lucy Mercer in 1918. That's a very sad loss to history."
Sylvia Jukes Morris was crushed when her subject, Clare Booth Luce, died of brain cancer in 1987. "I was grieving, and the grieving wouldn't end; it just went on and on. For several months, I dreamt about her constantly. I suppose it was because I loved her; I'd come to love her, even though I tried to distance myself from her."
Every good biographer needs a little distance from the subject, but not enough to rule out a sense of intimacy. Lamb has captured that warm, intimate feeling with his authors, which makes for stimulating, satisfying reading.