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In 1997, Lamb published Booknotes, a compilation of his interviews. And now, Lamb has published a sequel, Booknotes: Life Stories, a sampling of interviews with biographers who’ve visited the program.

The temptation is to think of these short chapters as “Cliff Notes” versions of the books the writers are promoting.

Instead, these entries are more like a serving of literary dim sum -- a la carte appetizers that ultimately lead the reader to want to devour the full serving and go out and buy the books they promote. But Booknotes: Life Stories isn’t merely a feast of p.r. hype, either.

It’s a tribute to Lamb’s abilities as an interviewer, even though his questions are edited out.

Each author is presented in a natural, conversational flow, sharing insights and analyses that are obviously coaxed out by Lamb’s questions. He’s the invisible presence, guiding the interview and often focusing on the minutiae that add a richer understanding of each subject. The chapters in this book aren’t comprehensive by any means -- the entries are excerpts of the hour-long programs, and serve as snapshots, albeit snapshots full of fascinating details that put the personality in his or her historical context.

Often, they reveal tidbits of trivia that humanize their subjects: Susan B. Anthony was vain about a bad eye, which is why we know her only in profile; Teddy Roosevelt once made a speech with a bullet in his chest, pouring forth blood the whole time; Amelia Earhart wore men’s underwear because women’s bloomers didn’t fit under pants and men’s underwear was more comfortable; industrialist John D. Rockefeller, who became an eccentric old man before he died in 1937, lost all his body hair in 1901 from an illness, alopecia, and wore a wig.

Author David McCullough admits to Lamb in an interview for Truman: A Life, that writing about the aw-shucks, Missouri-born president’s retirement years was as fun as covering Harry Truman’s career. Truman didn’t play golf or tennis, McCullough says, but he loved to drive his Chrysler, including on a cross-country trip back to Washington D.C.

“Mr. Truman liked to drive quite fast - above the speed limit. Bess, Mrs. Truman, didn’t approve of that, so she would have him hold to the speed limit. As a consequence, they were often being passed. When people would pass them by, they’d look in the car and there was the former president of the United States and his wife driving along the highway. The cars would drop back and pass them again, just to see if their eyes were playing tricks on them.”

The book, which is chockfull of such anecdotes and details (early chapters often mention how tall the person was) is organized chronologically, by birth date. The first entry is Richard Norton Smith, speaking about George Washington (1732-1799) on the publication of Patriarch: George Washington and the New American Nation. The final entry is an interview with Anita Hill (b. 1956) about her autobiographical “Speaking Truth to Power.”

Not surprisingly, given C-SPAN’s political public-service focus, most of the subjects in Booknotes: Life Stories are political figures, and most of the political figures are American. The biographies featured include those of the well-known, from Paul Revere, Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson to those lesser known, such as vice president John C. Calhoun (under John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson) or racist radio preacher Charles Coughlin. Also featured are a variety of notable personalities whose lives have, as the book’s subhead announces, “shaped our world”: pioneering civil rights activist Sojourner Truth, Civil War and frontier hero George Armstrong Custer, inventor Thomas Edison, author Marcel Proust, columnist H.L. Mencken, Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and of course a host of Presidents over the centuries, including Bill Clinton.

In an interview for his 1988 book, Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan, author Edmund Morris gives Lamb -- and readers -- a hint of the biographer’s struggle. He describes an Oval Office televised address when Reagan looked typically resplendent, but acted distracted just before the cameras switched on. When the TV monitor to the side of the office showed his image, Morris says, Reagan relaxed.

“‘Ah, there he is,’” he recounts Reagan saying.

“I remember thinking, ‘Well, if that’s him, who are you?’ A biographer’s constant problem is to come to terms with his subject’s own self-image, particularly when that subject is a public man and the image, the picture on the monitor, is more or less identical with what the public perceives.”

Lamb lets the biographers express their struggle throughout these interviews, and the process of coming to terms with the self-image of each famous (and even the not-so-famous) subject is the unexpected extra treat that makes this better than a collection of interviews. It’s a collection of insights.

The chronological scope and variety of subjects, as well as the treatments accorded them, make for fresh reading every time you pick up the book. After all, their world is our world today, made all the richer for their impact. And Booknotes: Life Stories brings alive their impact on our time.

This review ran in the Rocky Mountain News "Books" section March 14, 1999.