Booknotes+

By C-SPAN

Taking the concept from Brian Lamb's long running Booknotes TV program, the podcast offers listeners more books and authors. Booknotes+ features a mix of new interviews with authors and historians, al... more

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The podcast currently has 294 episodes available.

Best of Booknotes+

The most played episodes among Podcast App listeners.

Number 1: JD Vance, "Hillbilly Elegy"
In the political history of the United States, books have had a big impact on who the public follows in elections. In 1956, John F. Kennedy published "Profiles in Courage," which sold 2.8 million copies by his death in 1963. Jimmy Carter released his title "Why Not the Best?" in 1975, the year before he was elected president. When Barack Obama first released his life story in 1995, he only sold approximately 9,000 copies. When it was re-released in 2004, he sold 4.7 million copies. President Trump's "Art of the Deal," published in 1987, sold at least 1.5 million. JD Vance was unknown in 2016 when he appeared on C-SPAN's Q&A. His book "Hillbilly Elegy" has sold over 3 million copies. Ten years later he's 42 and has been a U.S. Senator for two years and Vice President of the United States since January of 2025. Here he is from 2016. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
August 18, 20261h 4min
Number 2: Paul Taylor, "This Is Getting Old"
Paul Taylor tells his readers: "For the first 25 years, I was a newspaper reporter. For the next 25, a political reformer, a demographer, a pollster, an author, and a public speaker." He's now 77 and has written a memoir titled "This Is Getting Old: Two Boomers and Their Generation at Dusk." Besides Paul Taylor, the other boomer in his book refers to his wife of 57 years, Stefanie. He asked his friend and agent Peter Bernstein (BERN-steen) to find a traditional publisher. His only reward, according to Taylor, "was a collection of lovely rejection notes." Not to be stopped, he would move on to Plan B, self-publishing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
August 25, 20261h 7min
Number 3: John Jenkins, "Summer of '71" – Part 1
John A. Jenkins has been a journalist most of his life in the city of his birth, Washington, DC. He says he's never known another summer like the one 55 years ago. His book, "Summer of '71: Five Months That Changed America," focuses on well-known names from that era: Daniel Ellsberg, Neil Sheehan, Henry Kissinger, Sarah Weddington, and Angela Davis. John Jenkins writes that "each main character has an important back story that sets them up for the summer of '71 to come." He also writes: "My purpose here is to show the drama, the pain, and the hope of a summer when America faced some of its greatest challenges at home and abroad." This is part one of a two-part interview with Mr. Jenkins. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
August 04, 20261h
Number 4: Joby Warrick, "The Jackal"
Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, better known as Carlos the Jackal, has been in prison for 32 years in France. He was captured in Sudan on August 14, 1994. In his book titled "The Jackal," Washington Post correspondent Joby Warrick reports on his 2025 meeting with the jailed terrorist in Paris. Carlos told him: "I killed 83 people with my own hand." Reporter Warrick writes that: "Carlos mattered. He was the human face of a dangerous new form of international terrorism that emerged in the 1970s and the 1980s, which became the template for later groups such as Al Qaeda and the Islamic State." The Jackal will be 77 years old on October 12th. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
September 01, 20261h 5min
Number 5: Jonathan Jordan, "Ike and Winston
Jonathan Jordan devotes 544 pages and 57 chapters of his book "Ike and Winston" to telling the story of the friendship between Dwight David Eisenhower and Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill. President Eisenhower lived to be 78 and died in 1969. Sir Winston died four years before that, in 1965, at age 90. Author Jonathan Jordan says: "Churchill could have had his pick of friendship, but he wanted Ike's. In the beginning, he courted Ike for what Ike could do for Britain. The Kansan held the trust of men like Franklin Roosevelt and George C. Marshall. This influence gave Ike the power to destroy or create, and Ike had the gambler's nerve to use that power. London needed a friend like that." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
September 15, 20261h 13min