The Patient Has the Floor
eBook - ePub

The Patient Has the Floor

Essays

  1. 200 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

The Patient Has the Floor

Essays

Book details
Table of contents
Citations

About This Book

Masterful essays by one of the most distinctive voices in broadcast journalism In his Letter from America reports for the BBC and as the host of PBS's Masterpiece Theatre, Alistair Cooke addressed millions of people all over the world every week. The fourteen essays collected here, each of which was first delivered as a speech, showcase the wit, charm, and eloquence of Cooke's voice in more intimate, but no less intimidating, settings. In exclusive forums as varied as the Mayo Clinic and a conference of British and American scholars investigating the "state of the language, " Cooke eagerly challenges expert opinions and delightfully skewers the pretensions of the powerful. Addressing the House of Representatives on the bicentennial of the Continental Congress, he warns against the dangers of sentimentalizing history and wryly notes that "practically every man who signed the Declaration of Independence is at this moment being measured for a halo or, at worst a T-shirt." At the Royal College of Surgeons in London, he compares his listeners to armed robbers and to the disreputable half of that infamous duo Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. "If I could be benevolent dictator of the United States for a year, " he informs the National Trust for Historic Preservation, "I should provide several million jobs for the wrecking industry." No one played the devil's advocate with as much grace and good humor as did Alistair Cooke. The Patient Has the Floor is an eminently quotable testament to his extraordinary talents as a journalist, scholar, and public speaker.

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Information

Publisher
Open Road Media
Year
2014
ISBN
9781497639942
Topic
Literature
Subtopic
Literary Essays
Index
Literature

Table of contents

  1. Cover Page
  2. Title Page
  3. Dedication
  4. Contents
  5. A Note on Speech-making
  6. 1. The Patient Has the Floor
  7. 2. Hypochondria: the Layman’s Specialty
  8. 3. How it all Began
  9. 4. Shakespeare in America
  10. 5. Staying Alive in 1776
  11. 6. How it all Ended
  12. 7. A Crash Course in Americanism
  13. 8. Thoughts Coming Out of the Ether
  14. 9. The State of the Language
  15. 10. Freedom and the Soldier
  16. 11. Doctor and Patient: Face to Face
  17. 12. A Noble Plan to Dissolve the Union
  18. 13. What to Preserve, and Why
  19. 14. The American in England: Emerson to S.J. Perelman
  20. About the Author
  21. Copyright Page