The definitive survey of Alistair Cooke's brilliant career as a newspaperman
Few journalists have covered the American scene as thoroughly as Alistair Cooke did. In addition to presenting the Sunday-night Letter from Americabroadcasts for the BBC, Cooke was the Guardian's chief US correspondent for more than a quarter century, filing daily dispatches about the former colonies for his British readers.
Selected and introduced by Professor Ronald A. Wells, the pieces in America Observedshowcase the full range of Cooke's omnivorous interests and impressive reportorial skills. From baseball to Billy Graham, Harry S. Truman to Chappaquiddick, he depicts the defining characters and events of the American century with elegance and insight. "The Untravelled Road" is a poignant and perceptive snapshot of the civil rights movement in Montgomery, Alabama. "The Legend of Gary Cooper" eloquently summarizes the unlikely career of America's leading man, and "A Woman of Integrity" delivers the news of Marilyn Monroe's death with empathy and honesty. "The Ghastly Sixties" is a concise, candid, and ultimately inspirational chronicle of that turbulent decade.
Remarkably prescient and endlessly entertaining, the journalism collected here is some of the twentieth century's finest.

Alistair Cooke, KBE (1908-2004), was a legendary British American journalist, television host, and radio broadcaster. He was born in Lancashire, England, and after graduating from the University of Cambridge, was hired as a journalist for the BBC. He rose to prominence for his London Letter reports, broadcast on NBC Radio in America during the 1930s. Cooke immigrated to the United States in 1937. In 1946, he began a tradition that would last nearly six decades-his Letter from America radio appearances on the BBC. Cooke was also beloved as the host of PBS's Masterpiece Theatrefor twenty-one years. He wrote many books, both collections of his Letters from America and other projects. After his death, the Fulbright Alistair Cooke Award in Journalism was established to support students from the United Kingdom seeking to study in the United States, and vice versa.

• Contents
• Preface
• Author's Note
• Introduction
• Other People's Christmas, December 24, 1946
• The Colonel and the Tribune, June 10, 1947
• Harry S. Truman: A Study of a Failure, November 1, 1948
• Mr. Laski's Democracy, March 29, 1949
• The Fourth of July, July 5, 1949
• A Lesson for Yale, May 21, 1951
• An Epic of Courage, September 14, 1951
• Harold Ross's New Yorker, December 11, 1951
• Soviet Light on Baseball, September 25, 1952
• The U.S. Negro and the Constitution, January 1, 1953
• Traubel Quits The Ring, June 12, 1953
• High Fashion Comes to Texas - and Stays There, July 30, 1953
• Revulsion Against McCarthy, June 12, 1954
• Billy Graham Comes to Babylon, March 10 and 17, 1955
• Change in the Deep South, April 28, 1955
• Mr. Lippmann's First Quarter Century, May 8, 1956
• Segregation Above the Line, May 10, 1956
• The Untravelled Road, June 7, 1956
• The Roman Road, June 14, 1956
• Look Away, Dixie Land, June 21, 1956
• Making a President, August 12, 1956
• Senator Kennedy Looks Ahead, July 11, 1957
• America Discovers Mr. Muggeridge, October 24, 1957
• The End of Reticence, June 15, 1958
• Frank Lloyd Wright, April 16, 1959
• New Ways in English Life, July 16, 1959
• The Unexplained Mr. Nixon, July 21, 1960
• The Man Who Defeated McCarthy, October 13, 1960
• Mr. Kennedy Takes Over, January 26, 1961
• The Legend of Gary Cooper, May 18, 1961
• A Woman of Integrity: Marilyn Monroe, August 9, 1962
• The U.S. Science Pavilion, October 18, 1962
• Maker of a President: Eleanor Roosevelt, November 13, 1962
• Scourge of the Book-burners, April 25, 1963
• The Thirty-sixth President, November 28, 1963
• Rally in the Valley, May 17, 1964
• How It Happened in Watts, August 19, 1965
• Hasty Marriage Better Part of Valour, September 2, 1965
• The Coronation of Miss Oklahoma, September 15, 1966
• The Rise and Fall of J. Robert Oppenheimer, February 27, 1967
• Henry Luce: His Time, Life, and Fortune, March 2, 1967
• Mary McCarthy in Vietnam, September 26, 1967
• The Permissive Society, October 26, 1967
• Reagan's Reasons, December 28, 1967
• Harvesting the Grapes of Wrath, January 4, 1968
• A Mule Cortège for the Apostle of the Poor, April 9, 1968
• Out of the Boudoir, into the Laboratory, April 21, 1968
• Bedlam in Chicago, September 5, 1968
• Where Now Is the New World?, October 24, 1968
• The Most Beautiful Woman I Know ..., February 27, 1969
• Eisenhower, April 3, 1969
• The Lost Hours of Edward Kennedy, July 24, 1969
• The Ghastly Sixties, January 3, 1970
• 'Put Not Your Trust in Princes ...,' November 6, 1971
• J. Edgar Hoover, May 11, 1972
• M*A*S*H: One of a Kind, February 12, 1983
• The Best of His Kind, September 6, 1984
• Golf: The American Conquest, March 31, 1985
• Notes
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author