Okay, this probably won’t be our highest rated post ever. We’ll concede that. There’s nothing chic
and hip about C-SPAN. But there’s some good substance here, and substance is what we’re about first and foremost. So give us the benefit of the doubt for a moment.
C-SPAN’s Book-TV lets you stream videos of talks, long and substantive ones, given by mostly serious authors. You can catch President Jimmy Carter talking about his new controversial book, Palestine Peace Not Apartheid (plus Alan Dershowitz’s response); Niall Ferguson, the Harvard historian, speaking on his recent work, The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West; Howard Zinn, another historian, discussing his collection of essays, A Power Governments Cannot Suppress; and Adrian Goldsworthy giving a talk on his new biography, Caesar: Life of a Colossus. For a complete list of book talks, click here.
In many ways, C-SPAN’s offering is no different in quality or substance from the video services offered by FORA.TV and Princeton’s University Channel — two other high-quality services that we like and have previewed here before. If you can set aside your general impression of C-SPAN — your memories of the unedited, endless talks from the Senate floor that lead to nowhere — you’ll find enlightened video here that’s well worth your limited time.
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