Alastair Cooke's "Letter from America: 1946-2004" is a defining collection from his legendary BBC Radio broadcasts that guides us through nearly sixty years of changing life in the United States. Alistair Cooke's "Letter from America" interpreted nearly sixty years of changing US life for the rest of the world. Covering key moments from the assassination of Kennedy through Vietnam and Watergate to September 11, Iraq and anticipating the 2004 elections, this book provides a defining collection of Letters from his legendary BBC Radio 4 broadcasts. Encompassing portraits of the great and the good from Charlie Chaplin to Martin Luther King and topics as varied as civil rights, golf, jazz and the changing colours of a New England fall, each Letter contributes a captivating portrait of a nation - and of a man. "Cooke was the special relationship". ("Daily Mail"). "Such experience, wisdom and education are unlikely ever again to combine in one journalist". (Mark Lawson). "There is never going to be anyone else like Cooke, a chronicler of amazing times". ("Daily Telegraph"). "The range of Cooke's experiences was awesome but he always had the personal touch". (Jeremy Vine). "No one else succeeded in explaining to the English-speaking world ...the idiosyncrasies of a country at once so familiar, and yet so utterly foreign". ("Independent"). Alistair Cooke (1908-2004) enjoyed an extraordinary life in print, radio and television. "The Guardian's" Senior Correspondent in New York for twenty-five years and the host of groundbreaking cultural programmes on American television and of the BBC series "America", Cooke was, however, best known both at home and abroad for his weekly BBC broadcast "Letter from America", which reported on fifty-eight years of US life, was heard over five continents and totalled 2,869 broadcasts before his retirement in February 2004, far and away the longest-running radio series in broadcasting history.

Alistair Cooke was born in Manchester in 1908 and educated at the universities of Cambridge, Yale and Harvard. Throughout his long career he worked as a journalist and broadcaster for many different organisations including the BBC, The Times and the Guardian, and won numerous awards for his work. He is best known both at home and abroad for his weekly Letters from America, far and away the longest-running radio series in broadcasting history. He died in March 2004, just a few weeks after his retirement.