Cautiously Optimistic - Essays Across the American Landscape - By Peter Funt

$15.95



How is the American spirit holding up in these difficult times? Peter Funt, syndicated columnist and host of TV`s "Candid Camera," looks beyond the headlines to find out. In six-dozen essays, Funt uses a light but penetrating touch to take the nation`s temperature.

"I`ve always been fascinated by small slices of life," he writes. "During my time in broadcast and print journalism, as well as in entertainment television, I`ve looked for the smaller items that, when taken together, create a bigger picture of who we are and where we`re headed." Funt`s columns appear regularly in The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, and many of his op-eds formed the basis for these essays.

Funt`s canvas is very much like the real world we deal with every day. Sure, Americans are concerned about taxes, education and crime. But we also care about mobile apps that talk back to us, Paul McCartney`s hairdo, and raccoons that destroy our lawns.

"On `Candid Camera,` Funt explains, "we celebrated the American spirit, and in the last five years of traveling, interviewing and researching, I`m happy to report that the spirit remains strong. That said, my opinion pieces often focus on the negative. That`s inherent in news and commentary; we don`t dismiss all the good, but we search out those things that need to be fixed."

In "Cautiously Optimistic," Peter Funt finds the good, the bad and the occasionally hilarious. These essays are designed to make you think, but also to smile.

Also available through Amazon.com (regular Amazon shipping rates apply). A Kindle version can also be purchased through Amazon.




A highly readable collection of often-witty essays
By Clarence Fanto
Columnist, The Berkshire Eagle
As curator of the "Candid Camera" legacy and long-time host or participant on the still well-loved series that helped launch the "Golden Age" of TV, Peter Funt offers trenchant, savvy and often humorous essays covering a wide spectrum of American life, from politics to media to the animal kingdom, and much more. Updated from columns originally published in leading national newspapers and syndicated to smaller media outlets, the collection can be savored as bedtime reading, on the beach this summer, in the airport awaiting a delayed flight, or just about any other setting imaginable. This book celebrates the indomitable American spirit through the eyes of a lifelong student of the human condition. Folks who despair over the darker shadows that engulf many aspects of American life these days will find their spirits uplifted by the optimism, cautious as it is, that the book`s title promises and fulfills.

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"A gifted storyteller, Peter has a way with words
that is just captivating."

--Bill Thompson, The Bookcast

Hear the full Bookcast interview: click here.

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