Charles Kuralt is a national treasure, a reporter and man of the world who was to many the real and true voice of America. To several generations Kuralt was the Mark Twain of television, a wanderer transfixed by the richness and greatness that he found in practically every corner of the country. The project that Kuralt was working on before he died was An American Moment with Charles Kuralt, a series of brief television essays about the people, places, and ideas that define the national spirit: the man who handcrafts the president's shoes; the Keeper of the Flame on Liberty Island; Paul Bunyan's hometown of Bemidji, Minnesota; the Pony Express Museum; cowboy hats; Ferris wheels; and more. Kuralt's longtime friend and CBS colleague Peter Freundlich, who wrote and produced the American Moment series for television in collaboration with Kuralt, has edited and collected the essays for this book.