Cronkite biographer to speak
"I'm just trying to understand America," said prize-winning historian Douglas Brinkley, recent author of "Cronkite," a biography of Walter Cronkite, who represented the face of the CBS Evening News from 1962 to 1981.
"When I was growing up in Bowling Green, Ohio, my goal was to be exactly like Walter Cronkite," Brinkley said. "I was even on News Six, which was a big thing for sixth-graders in my elementary school. I tend to be a little bit nostalgic and Cronkite was such a big part of my youth - he helped me start breaking down the idea of events."
Brinkley will be the featured speaker at the Idaho Humanities Council's 10th Annual Distinguished Humanities Lecture and Dinner at 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 3 at The Coeur d'Alene Resort.
His lecture will be a mixture of straight biographical facts, anecdotal drama and, of course, humor. "Nobody wants an unfunny speaker," he said.
A history professor at Rice University and the author, co-author and editor of more than two dozen books, Brinkley is the official historian for CBS.
"I wanted to look at history through the lens of Walter Cronkite," he said. "People say that they remember the Kennedy assassination. What they really remember is Cronkite telling us about the Kennedy assassination - that moment when he announced the death and pulled off his glasses. That's what they remember.
"Cronkite was the voice of the baby boomer generation, but I came to the conclusion that he will survive history largely because of his role in both the Kennedy broadcast and his Vietnam war coverage - the war that he contributed to making the 'living-room war.'"
Brinkley's publications have included biographies of Presidents Ford and Carter as well as histories of World War II. He is currently at work on a book about Franklin D. Roosevelt and conservation.
He has compiled letters and unpublished manuscripts of Hunter S. Thompson and Jack Kerouac as well as written profiles of Kurt Vonnegut, Norman Mailer and Ken Kesey for "Rolling Stone Magazine."
In his quest to understand America, Brinkley has covered an eclectic selection of historic personnel.
"For my generation, the writers we read were Vonnegut, Kerouac and Kesey and we read them more than Hemingway and Fitzgerald," he said. "For me, Bob Dylan is one of the greatest people of our times - those times being the post-war generation. When I lecture my class on Eisenhower and Khrushchev, I'm also lecturing on the Beat Generation."
In terms of his prolific writing career, Brinkley said that one of the secrets to his success has been a lifetime of reading - speed-reading, actually.
"You have to read an ungodly amount of material to write a book," he said. "But after that, you start to understand how things work and the writing is not all that hard."
And at the end of the day, would Walter Cronkite have liked Brinkley's biography?
"I think he would have liked it because his three children were pleased with my efforts," Brinkley said. "If the children are pleased, he would be, too.
"I'd just like to see history be treated fairly."
Tickets can be purchased online at www.idahohumanities.org under "IHC Events," or by calling the IHC at (888) 345-5346. General tickets are $45. Benefactor tickets are $100 and include a pre-dinner reception with Brinkley and preferred seating at the dinner and lecture.