Memories of The Great & The Good.

COOKE, Alistair [William Safire].

$125.00

Item Number: 135615

London: Pavilion Books Limited, 1999.

First edition of Cooke’s moving memoir. Octavo, original cloth. Presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, “For Bill S. His services to the Language (not to mention the “State” – vide “OTHELLO”) Greetings Alistair C. Oct/99.” The recipient, William Safire was an important American author, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist, journalist, and presidential speechwriter. He joined Nixon’s campaign in the 1960 Presidential race, and again in 1968. Following Nixon’s 1968 victory, Safire served as a presidential speechwriter for both Nixon and Vice President Spiro Agnew. He was a frequent guest on Meet The Press, describing himself as the voice of “libertarian conservatives” and authored several political columns, most notably his weekly column “On Language” which appeared in The New York Times Magazine from 1979 until the month of his death in 2009. He authored two books on grammar and linguistics: The New Language of Politics (1968) and what Zimmer called Safire’s “magnum opus,” Safire’s Political Dictionary. Safire later served as a member of the Pulitzer Prize Board from 1995 to 2004 and in 2006 was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush. Fine in a near fine dust jacket. Jacket design by Nigel Partridge.

For over a quarter of a century as Chief American Correspondent of The Guardian, and throughout more than fifty years of broadcasting his Letter from America, Alistair Cooke knew, met, interviewed, or reported on many of the most influential men and women of the twentieth century. Here he has collected memoirs of a score or more of them. "A superb portraitist... adroit, shrewd, eloquent" (William F. Buckley, Jr.).