Product Description
Book Description: Knopf, Borzoi 1977. Hard Cover. Near Fine/Fine. Stated First Edition. 8vo - over 9" Tall. 205pp, including 6 photo-pages. Dj in Fine condition, with only mild bumping to edges. Book in Near Fine condition – inside clean, bright, solid, covers show mild soiling. With his adopted country, Alistair Cooke had friendships with many of its celebrities, and he enjoyed extolling their virtues as he did America in his previous bestseller. He gives us his unique views of six men familiar to many but known well by few: Humphrey Bogart, Adlai Stevenson, Charles Chaplin, Bertrand Russell, H.LMencken, and Edward VIII. Dust jacket reads: IN THE SPRING OF 1977, Yale University gave Cooke it’s rarely awarded Howland Medal. Presenting the award, Yale's president (now Ambassador to Great Britain), Kingman Brewster, said: "Alistair Cooke's subtle and perceptive view of America has helped to determine how the rest of the English-speaking world understands the American element in their destiny. From the time he left Yale in the 1930's he has been the most authoritative interpreter of the American scene and American mores. a man who has approached the unfolding history of his adopted country with wit, style, reason and a refreshing idealism." In this major new book, his first since Alistair Cooke's America, Cooke brings the same qualities to bear on six famous transatlantic figures-three of them English, three American-each of whom has a legendary meaning for our time, and a special meaning for Alistair Cooke. We will know them better from having seen them through his eyes. And there is a seventh man, no less engaging than the rest, whom Six Men gives us a chance of knowing much better, too: Alistair Cooke himself. CHARLES CHAPLIN "Neither in love nor in friendship did he ever tread water. He regularly took a header into deep water, and the splash usually shocked his envious neighbors." EDWARD VIII "The most damning epitaph you can compose about Edward -as a Prince, as a King, as a man-is one that all comfortable people should cower from deserving: he was at his best only when the going was good." H. L. MENCKEN "It is true that he disliked puritans, teetotalers, Communists, Englishmen, Methodists, and politicians on principle. But if one presented himself who was otherwise a rational and agreeable man, he spontaneously filed and forgot his prejudice." ADLAI STEVENSON "He remains the liveliest reminder for our time that there are admirable reasons for failing to be President." BERTRAND RUSSELL "Sometime, somewhere, Russell sweated to believe, the rational man would make a decent world of his instincts. This is, of course, not a new conviction. But, Russell gave the struggle to make it come true the dimensions of a Greek tragedy." HUMPHREY BOGART "Many first acquaintances were dropped at once when, out of shyness probably, they tried to adopt some of the Bogart bluster in the hope of showing right away that they were his sort. One of his own sort
