...over the past several weeks, whenever you've seen someone interviewed on a news program, particularly on the cable news networks, due to the COVID virus, we've all been seeing a lot of the inside of people's homes. And in many cases, they set-up their Zoom/Skype/Smartphone camera with nice, well stocked bookcase as a backdrop. Well, my wife and I have been having fun commenting on the types and titles of the books that we can recognize during these interviews and so far, there have not been many surprises. A lot of political and historical titles, which can be expected. Many biographies, again, not unusual. The occasional popular novel, some classic, some modern, etc.
Tonight during the Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC, she interviewed former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who was promoting his new book. Pretty normal stuff. Of course, we immediately started looking at his book collection and found ones on Einstein, Ulysses S Grant, Benjamin Franklin, Eisenhower, pretty much what you'd expect, but then I spotted five books just off Gate's right shoulder, as seen below, circled in red:
The subject of those five books was W. C. Fields, not at all what I was expecting. Now I like W. C. Fields' films, but I don't have any books about him in my collection (and I have over 800 books in the bookcases in my den/office). Anyway, it goes to show you that even someone like Robert Gates, a former Secretary of Defense, ex-CIA Director and veteran of the Air Force, enjoys some light and in this case, humorous reading.
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