Booknotes: Stories from American History: Leading Historians on the Events That Shaped Our Country

On C-SPAN's Booknotes, host Brian Lamb conducts in-depth, thoughtful (and sometimes plodding) author interviews. Transcripts of David McCullough, David Brooks, even David Crosby are free on the show's Web site, but polished essays based on the ""excerpted and edited"" interviews are gathered into a companion series, of which Booknotes: Stories from American History is the third installment. Divided into sections from ""Revolution and Founding 1776-1815"" to ""The Culture Wars 1975-2000,"" the volume features Ben Bradlee on JFK and the Pentagon Papers, Gina Kolata on the 1918 flu pandemic and Witold Rybczynski on the making of Central Park. (Nov.)