Booknotes: Час с автором

US television program

Booknotes is an American television series on the C SPAN network hosted by Brian Lamb, which originally aired from 1989 to 2004. The format of the show is a one hour, one on one interview with a non fiction author. The series was broadcast at 8 p. m. Eastern Time each Sunday night, and was the longest running author interview program in U. S. broadcast history.

Booknotes debuted on April 2, 1989. The first guest was former United States National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, discussing The Grand Failure: The Birth and Death of Communism in the Twentieth Century. The fifth anniversary was marked on April 10, 1994 with a special two hour show featuring over 50 of the 300 authors previously featured on the program. For the tenth anniversary of Booknotes in 1999, Brian Lamb compiled and edited an anthology of stories on 78 people who influenced American history from the 18th century to 1999. Titled Booknotes: Life Stories, each contributed story was written by a well known biographer. After 801 interviews, the final broadcast aired December 5, 2004. The show was intended to end with the 800th episode, but due to a miscalculation, the final program was actually the 801st. while C SPAN 3 airs repeat segments every weeknight at 11 p. m. Pacific Time. All 801 transcripts are available online Lamb's own copies of the Booknotes books, most of which contain his personal marginalia, are housed in the rare books collection of George Mason University.

The Booknotes concept grew out of a one off interview special with Neil Sheehan, author of A Bright Shining Lie, in September 1988. In November 2007, Lamb received the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his work on C SPAN. The American Historical Association awarded Lamb the 2004 Theodore Roosevelt Woodrow Wilson Award "for extraordinary contributions to the study, teaching, and public understanding of history."