Looking Backward, Seeing Forward,

With ‘Century’ Co-Author

REDDING — Ridgefield resident Todd Brewster, co-author of the nationally acclaimed New York Times #1 best-selling book The Century, will speak at Christ Church in Redding on Sunday, October 22, at 4 pm. The topic of the talk, which is open to the public free of charge, is “Looking Backward, Seeing Forward: Lessons from the Last Hundred Years.”

Mr Brewster is a producer with ABC News. He joined the network in 1994 to help anchorman Peter Jennings create The Century, a multi-episode documentary television series which appeared on ABC and The History Channel in 1999.  The television series was nominated for two Emmy Awards and received the Overseas Press Club’s Edward R. Murrow Award for Best Television Documentary.

The Century book, which Mr Brewster and Mr Jennings wrote together, was conceived as a companion to the television series, but after its initial publication to rave reviews in November 1998, quickly took on a life of its own. Hailed by Time as “a richly satisfying chronicle,” The Century spent 45 weeks on the best-seller list. With more than 1.5 million copies sold, it is now the most successful companion book in publishing history, outpacing even Ken Burns’ landmark volume, The Civil War.

Mr Brewster, who was a writer for Time-Life for over a decade before joining ABC, will organize his talk around some of the themes of the book and show some of the extraordinary photographs culled from hundreds of archives for The Century.

He will also read excerpts from some of the oral histories conducted for The Century. These interviews formed a distinguishing feature of The Century, in both television and book form. Working from the premise that the 20th Century was “the century of the common man,” ABC interviewed hundreds of people whose only qualification, says Mr Brewster, was that they “could remember well.” Edited versions of those interviews appeared throughout The Century book.

Through the voices of these people, the book tells the story of the last hundred years as it was lived not in the halls of power, but in living rooms and main streets across America, and much of the rest of the world.

Examining the story of technology’s place in twentieth century history, Mr Brewster will ask whether our own time, with its enthusiasm for an Internet-driven future, is so different from the society of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, when the “Age of Invention” fueled a similar zest for science and technology. He will demonstrate how much of 20th Century history was pushed forward by a tension between the forces for change and those championing tradition.

Mr Brewster will show how the 20th Century transformed the American economy. Finally, Mr Brewster will demonstrate how the life of the fighting man changed, from the trenches of World War I to the hi-tech warfare of the Persian Gulf.

Mr Brewster is a resident of Ridgefield and a Christ Church, Redding, parishioner. He and Peter Jennings are working on a new series and book, looking at the changing identity of the American people at the outset of the 21st Century.

Christ Church is at the intersection of Cross Highway and Route 58 in Redding. For more information, the church can be contacted at 938-2872.