American Sketches, Walter Isaacson
American Sketches, Walter Isaacson
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American Sketches
Great Leaders, Creative Thinkers, and Heroes of a Hurricane

Author: Walter Isaacson

Narrator: Cotter Smith

Unabridged: 9 hr 27 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 11/24/2009


Synopsis

One of America's most versatile writers, author of bestselling biographies such as Steve Jobs and Benjamin Franklin, has assembled a gallery of portraits of (mostly) Americans that celebreate genius, talent, and versatility, and traces his own education as a writer and biographer.

In this collection of essays, the brilliant, acclaimed biographer Walter Isaacson reflects on lessons to be learned from Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, Bill Gates, Henry Kissinger, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton, and other interesting characters he has chronicled both as biographer and journalist. The people he writes about have an awesome intelligence, but that is not the secret to their success. They had qualities that were even more rare, such as imagination and true curiousity.

Isaacson also reflects on how he became a writer, the lessons he learned from various people he met, and the challenges for journalism in the digital age.

He also offers loving tributes to his hometown of New Orleans, which offers many of the ingredients for a creative culture, and to the Louisiana novelist Walker Percy, who was an early mentor. In an anecdotal and personal way, Isaacson describes the joys of writing and the way that tales about the lives of fascinating people can enlighten our own lives.

About Walter Isaacson

Walter Isaacson is the president and CEO of the Aspen Institute, a nonpartisan educational and policy studies institute based in Washington, DC. He has been the chairman and CEO of CNN and the editor of Time Magazine. In 2011 he wrote a biography titled “Steve Jobs”, which was based off on over forty interviews with Jobs over a two-year period up until shortly before his death. It became an international best-seller, breaking all records for sales of a biography.

Isaacson was born on May 20, 1952, in New Orleans. He is a graduate of Harvard College and of Pembroke College of Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He began his career at “The Sunday Times” of London and then the New Orleans “Times-Picayune”. He joined “Times” in 1978 and served as a political correspondent, national editor, and editor of digital media before becoming the magazine’s 14th editor in 1996. He became chairman and CEO of CNN in 2001, and then president and CEO of the Aspen Institute in 2003.

Along with “Steve Jobs”, Isaacson has published several other books, including: “Einstein: His Life and Universe” (2007), “Benjamin Franklin: An American Life” (2003) and Kissinger: A Biography” (1992), as well as coauthor of “The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made” (1986). His most recent book, “The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution” (2014) is a biographical tale of the people who invented the computer, Internet and the other great innovations of the digital age. It became a New York Times bestseller.

Isaacson has been awarded many accolades of the years, including in 2012, when he was selected as one of the Time 100, the magazine’s list of the most influential people in the world.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Jay on March 17, 2010

I loved the last chapter ... which made the whole effort truly rewarding. Now I am not a usual fan of the "cut-n-paste" nonfiction genre where we get a journalist's "best" articles or columns repurposed as a stand alone book. This dislike has its roots in my disappointment at "Boss," Mike Royko's Pul......more

Goodreads review by Steve Lacey on November 09, 2024

American Sketches I am an unabashed fan of Walter Isaacson so it is possible that anything I say should be taken with a grain of salt. Still, this collection of his marvelous is warm-hearted, profound, challenging, and inspiring. It is strange to say but he reminds me of Arthur Brooks and it is hard......more

Goodreads review by Steve on January 27, 2023

A wonderfully enlightening collection of writings about some very interesting people. Most of the included book extracts and magazine articles are historical in nature and therefore timeless. It is interesting with the passage of time (14 years as of this reading from when the book was first publish......more

Goodreads review by Stanley on June 09, 2022

After several starts and stops finally completed reading Issacson’s American Sketches. It is a collection of some of his articles and essays from Time Magazine and his biographies. Some very interesting, can’t quite say I agree with him on the Man of the Century, but he makes a decent argument. Reco......more

Goodreads review by sunspot on August 01, 2013

Most of these pieces were written while Isaacson was an editor with Time magazine. I found most of the pieces well written and was left wanting to know more. I have read his book on Steve Jobs and Benjamin Franklin. Isaacson writes in a clear and precise fashion. I can see that he works very hard to......more