Anniversary Programs 5th Anniversary (1994) Introduction The Presidency 10th Anniversary (1999) Introduction Vietnam & Race Sex & Presidents The Dedication, The Writing Process What We've Learned, Memoir & Biography

Booknotes format was simple: One author, one book, one hour. For a full hour every Sunday night, fifty-two weeks a year, nonfiction writers were asked to discuss their most recent work. Beyond the book's subject matter, authors were also queried about their research, their writing process, and their own lives and influences.

Booknotes had another editorial guideline: authors could only appear on the program once in their careers. As a result, the Booknotes archive is a collection of 800 first-person interviews with some of the best known non-fiction writers of the late 20th century. In addition, contemporary political leaders are seen and heard in their own words, as they discuss their autobiographies and memoirs.

The host of the series from its inception was C-SPAN founder and CEO Brian Lamb. Mr. Lamb's studio was intentionally spare-black curtained and simply furnished-as were his questions. The editorial goal was to keep the focus on the author.

Over its many years, Booknotes became an important stop on most non-fiction writers' tours. Series interviews were collected in four best-selling books, published first by Times Books and later by PublicAffairs. In USA Today, Pulitzer Prize winning author David Halberstam called the series, "wonderful," adding that it "connects serious writers in a highly-civilized way to serious readers out there."

Booknotes established C-SPAN as a haven for readers and writers of nonfiction books and led to the 1999 creation of BookTV, which every weekend provides 48 hours of coverage of non-fiction book and author events on C-SPAN2. And, in 2005, C-SPAN launched the BookTV Bus, a 45-foot travelling production studio, which visits public libraries and bookstores, as well as regional book festivals across the United States.

The C-SPAN Networks were created by America's cable television companies in 1979. C-SPAN produces non-commercial public affairs programming about politics, public issues, history and non-fiction books for cable and satellite television, via C-SPAN, C-SPAN2, and C-SPAN3; for the internet, via more than a dozen affiliated web sites; and for radio listeners via C-SPAN radio (90.1 FM in Washington, DC) and nationally via XM Satellite Radio and Sirius Satellite Radio.