In the original dustsheet. Brown cloth binding with gilt title on the spine.

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Drawing on a rich variety of private and public sources, not to mention hours of interviews with the enigmatic subject himself, Clarke shows how Alistair Cooke carved out for himself, with dogged determination, a unique position as the foremost reporter on American life and politics, first for the British press and eventually for the entire world. Settling in New York City in 1937 at the age of twenty-eight, Cooke focused his efforts on putting years of Anglo-American misunderstanding to rest. In 1946, he began his weekly radio program, Letter from America–which still airs to this day, and which is now broadcast to more than fifty countries worldwide. Cooke’s story is also the story of the United States in the twentieth century. He has reported for decades on the events and personalities that have shaped this country–from the Great Depression through World War II, from the Cold War tensions of the’50s to the turbulence and social upheaval of the ’60s, all the way up to the Clinton administration. Most astonishingly, at an age when many men might have moved sedately toward retirement, Cooke launched energetically into new careers, becoming a familiar television face to Americans on Omnibus and later the immensely popular Masterpiece Theatre, and completing his epic BBC series and book, America, one of several best-sellers he penned. Alistair Cooke: A Biography is both a fascinating record of one man’s constant determination to reinvent himself, as well as a lively and informative journey through the highways and byways of the twentieth century.

Alistair Cooke KBE (born Alfred Cooke; 20 November 1908 – 30 March 2004) was a British-American writer whose work as a journalist, television personality and radio broadcaster was done primarily in the United States. Outside his journalistic output, which included Letter from America and America: A Personal History of the United States, he was well known in the United States as the host of PBS Masterpiece Theatre from 1971 to 1992. After holding the job for 22 years, and having worked in television for 42 years, Cooke retired in 1992, although he continued to present Letter from America until shortly before his death. He was the father of author and folk singer John Byrne Cooke.