Adapted by Norman CorwinDramatic ComedyCharacters: 2 male, 1 female

Simple Set

Carl Sandburg's works, adapted by Norman Corwin, as first performed by Bette Davis and Lief Erickson, and a host of others in New York and on tour. The best of the Pulitzer Prize-winner's verse, including some previously unpublished; and prose, including the biography of Lincoln; and interspersed with optional American folk songs from his songbag.

"Playful and serious, childlike and wise, commonplace and fresh, homespun and poetic, distinctively American and daringly boundless...Dry in its wit, like a prairie philosopher, and passionate in its convictions like one of the Lord's prophets." - The New York Times

"The snappers that mark the endings of so many Sandburg aphorisms are unfailingly comic, impudently infected. 'Some day they'll give a war and nobody'll come' pops out at you with innocence and ease, and becomes devastating thereby. The 'goofyisms' that give the evening a gay and idiot shrug in its final few moments are read with the soft shoe elan of an unretired vaudevillian."-The New York Herald Tribune

Memos to a New Millennium: The Final Radio Plays of Norman Corwin presents, for the first time ever in print, a treasure-trove of radio plays spanning fifty years in the extraordinary career of radio's most famous dramatist. Subject matter for Corwin's radio plays varied greatly. He was equally at ease writing light comedy replete with mischievous rhymes as he was in crafting history lessons that although written with poetic language, strike hard and fast, delivering their import with expert efficiency. Be it universal human rights, the power of prayer, the atomic bomb, the origins of a national holiday, the birth of the Statue of Liberty, the meaning of democracy and freedom in America, the struggle between science and magic in our world, or an earnest memo to the Third Millennium, Norman Corwin tackled it all with poise, humor, and, above all, conviction. Beginning with Citizen of the World, his final production for the CBS Radio Network in July 1949, through his Peabody Award-winning years at United Nations Radio, and culminating with his National Public Radio series finale, Memos to a New Millennium broadcast on December 31, 1999, this book covers the last half of the twentieth century as only Norman Corwin could.