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    American Sketches: Great Leaders, Creative Thinkers, and Heroes of a Hurricane
    American Sketches: Great Leaders, Creative Thinkers, and Heroes of a Hurricane
    American Sketches: Great Leaders, Creative Thinkers, and Heroes of a Hurricane
    Audiobook9 hours

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

    Written by Walter Isaacson

    Narrated by Cotter Smith

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    About this audiobook

    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.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio
    Release dateNov 24, 2009
    ISBN9781442304086
    Author

    Walter Isaacson

    Walter Isaacson is the bestselling author of biographies of Jennifer Doudna, Leonardo da Vinci, Steve Jobs, Benjamin Franklin, and Albert Einstein. He is a professor of history at Tulane and was CEO of the Aspen Institute, chair of CNN, and editor of Time. He was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2023. Visit him at Isaacson.Tulane.edu.

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    Reviews for American Sketches

    4/5

    59 ratings8 reviews

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    • 5/5
      A fantastic book about leadership I highly recommend it s 10 out of 10
    • 5/5
      Very detailed and pleasant voice reading it. I enjoyed this book and the great information provided because it covered a lot of different people and ideas.
    • 4/5
      Great book to read. the first half is harder to read since has more politics engaged.
    • 1/5
      Usually like his content. Couldn’t get past the first few minutes.
    • 3/5
      A collection of Isaacson's reviews, interviews, and biographical sketches. Some are almost too glib or trite to be taken seriously, but a few were interesting, including those on Bill Gates and James Baker. I do wish, though, that he had kept to the biographical sketches and left out the last section of the book, which meandered off to discuss other things.
    • 4/5
      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 write in the idiom of the day and is not far from his natural oral presentation. I highly recommend hime for a quick sense for any topic - he seems to be well balanced and attempts to present the facts minus the ideology or where he does bring in iideology he shows it as such.
    • 2/5
      I was all ready to give this book five stars. Discussions about the author's choice individuals who influenced history in the 20th century: I learned a lot about Albert Einstein, for example. That's the reason that I got the book in the first place. However....during the last 20% of the book; the author, a journalist, reverted to his favorite causes. One was how customers should pay for the content in the changing news business--a self licking ice cream cone; in my opinion. I thought that irrelevant to the book's theme. Do that again, Walter Isaacson, and you've lost at least one reader.
    • 3/5
      I had previously enjoyed Walter Isaacson's biography of Ben Franklin, so I was looking forward to reading this one. The format was less biographical and much more of a commentary as Isaacson compiled here a number of past editorials, essays and introductions written about presidents, cabinet secretaries, business executives, scientists, authors and Woody Allen. The Allen piece doesn't really fit in with the rest of he book, and was rather lame.Isaacson is obviously enamored with Einstein's life, and he draws from his biography of the genius scientist and finishes with his essay for Time magazine naming Einstein the greatest individual of the 20th century.The pieces on Reagen, Clinton, Kissinger and Nixon were interesting, while those on James Baker, Buffet and Gates were less so for me and at times required real commitment to keep reading.I do like Isaacson's approach and his general avoidance of taking political shots and relying on his journalist training to just get out the facts.