Alistair Cooke

This now classic portrait of Douglas Fairbanks - the swashbuckling original King of Hollywood - was first published in 1940. Long out of print and hard to find, Alistair Cooke's posthumous biography was the first serious consideration of the career of the great silent screen star and husband of America's sweetheart, Mary Pickford. Reissued here in a facsimile edition, Douglas Fairbanks: The Making of a Screen Character treats, step by step, the course of Fairbanks' career, and sheds light on the mysterious ingredients of screen popularity and on the history of motion pictures generally. Alistair Cooke, the distinguished journalist and broadcaster, was assistant to Charlie Chaplin when he met Iris Barry, MoMA's first film curator, in 1938. Barry invited Cooke to participate in the Museum's groundbreaking film course at Columbia University and commissioned him to write Douglas Fairbanks: The Making of a Screen Character.

For more than sixty years Alistair Cooke wrote and broadcast on every facet of American life with incomparable wit and wisdom. This is his ‘personal history’ of America, the best-selling book that accompanied his legendary BBC television series which was first broadcast in November 1972. It has sold over two million copies and has emerged through tumultuous times to become regarded as a classic. It is an irresistibly readable guide to what has made this powerful democracy work and survive through 200 years. Alistair writes with authority about the explorers who put their new-found land on the map, the pioneers who tamed the Wild West, the soldiers who fought for independence, the slaves who fled north, the tycoons who built fortunes and the immigrants that sought a new life. From the Mayflower to the gold rush, the jazz age to Pearl Harbor, with portraits of figures as varied as Buffalo Bill, John D. Rockefeller and Martin Luther King Jr., here is the American story in all its triumphs and failures, grandeurs and tragedies. It is the defining portrait of a nation. This anniversary edition includes the reflective note to the reader that Alistair Cooke wrote in 2002.

When Alistair Cooke retired in March 2004 and then died a few weeks later, he was acclaimed by many as one of the greatest broadcasters of all time. His Letters from America, which began in 1946 and continued uninterrupted every week until early 2004, kept the world in touch with what was happening in Cooke's wry, liberal and humane style. This selection, made largely by Cooke himself and supplemented by his literary executor, gives us the very best of these legendary broadcasts. Over half have never appeared in print before. It is a remarkable portrait of a continent - and a man.

First published in 1973, this follow-up to Alistair Cookes acclaimed 1972 television documentary series America: A Personal History of the United States has sold almost two million copies. From the nations discovery to modern times; from the American revolutionaries to the pioneers who forged westward; from the slaves who fled north to the immigrants that sought a new life, Cooke vividly describes the spirit of the United States. Cookes portrayal of Americas dynamic history and its ever-changing present continues to provide striking insights into the remarkable character of a nation.

In nearly three thousand BBC broadcasts over fifty-eight years, Alistair Cooke reported on America, illuminating our country for a global audience. He was one of the most widely read and widely heard chroniclers of America--the Twentieth Century's de Tocqueville. Cooke died in 2004, but shortly before he passed away a long-forgotten manuscript resurfaced in a closet in his New York apartment. It was a travelogue of America during the early days of World War II that had sat there for sixty years. Published to stellar reviews in 2006, though "somewhat past deadline," Cooke's The American Home Front is a "valentine to his adopted country by someone who loved it as well as anyone and knew it better than most" (The Plain Dealer [Cleveland]). It is a unique artifact and a historical gem, "an unexpected and welcome discover in a time capsule." (Washington Post) A portrait frozen in time, the book offers a charming look at the war through small towns, big cities, and the American landscape as they once were. The American Home Front is also a brilliant piece of reportage, a historical gem that "affirms Cooke's enduring place as a great twentieth-century reporter" (American Heritage).