C-SPAN founder and Booknotes host Brian Lamb’s appearance at George Mason University in September left at least one prominent member of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences impressed. Jack Censer, dean of the college, attended the Sept. 21 events, which featured a reception in Fenwick Library and a discussion with Lamb and historian Richard Norton Smith afterward in the Johnson Center Cinema, and recently recalled his positive experience of the day.
“It was a really interesting, entertaining and fun experience,” Censer said. “Between the community presence and the student audience, I’d say there were more than 200 people packed in the Johnson Center Cinema.”
Lamb and Smith discussed the impact of the Booknotes series, which ran on C-SPAN for 15 years and 801 episodes. During each episode, Lamb would interview an author of a non-fiction book for an hour (only once did Lamb interview a fiction author), in order to get to know both the author and the work better. Lamb shared stories with the audience, but displayed a keen sense of curiosity that made him an excellent interviewer on the show.
“This was a day to honor him, and he displayed the most innate modesty and decency,” Censer said. “He and Smith bantered with and asked questions of the audience, and he was more interested in learning about them than he was about being on stage himself.”
Smith said the Mason community had an excellent opportunity to pry into the mind of one of America’s most distinguished digital scholars.
“It’s hard to imagine anyone who has done more, not only to promote books, but to change the way Americans look at their government, than Brian Lamb,” Smith said. “He’s an authentic cable revolutionary, and this is a chance for the Mason community to ask him about the state of electronic democracy, and anything else on our minds.”
Of the 801 books featured on the Booknotes program, Lamb estimated that he has read more than 75 percent of them cover to cover, demonstrating a vested interest in his interviewees. Seven of those books were written by Mason authors, and Lamb’s connection with university president Alan Merten was one of the reasons the Booknotes collection now rests in Fenwick Library. Lamb and Merten served together as military social aides during in President Lyndon Johnson’s White House administration.
“The great thing about C-SPAN is that you get information from the widest ends of the political spectrum, unfiltered,” Censer said. “He built that from scratch.”