The essays in this book have all been crafted from televised C-SPAN interviews. They were selected from over 1,360 interviews conducted over the 25 year history of our two Sunday night interview series, Booknotes (1989 – 2004), followed by Q & A (2004 – present).

Following in the style of previous C-SPAN books, the transcripts of the interviews have been excerpted and the interview questions were omitted to achieve an essay style. Essays are minimally edited in order to preserve the individual voices of our interviewees. We took care to remain faithful to each person’s original meaning. Brackets and ellipses were used to indicate where words were, respectively, added or deleted within paragraphs. An extra space between paragraphs of an essay signals that we have pieced together non-sequential portions of the interview for clarity of thought.

All of the essays in Sundays at Eight are presented in traditional C-SPAN style – without commentary, allowing readers to form their own opinions about the people and issues we have selected for inclusion.

While the interviews presented here have been shortened and edited into essay format, in keeping with C-SPAN’s public affairs mission and commitment to providing the entirety of what we produce, complete transcripts and videos of the original hour-long interviews are available online at www.c-span.org/SundaysatEight.