In Depth

In Depth is a program that airs monthly on C-SPAN 2 as part of their Book TV programming, and features a different writer each month. Each interview covers the breadth of that author's writing career, and incorporates viewer calls and e-mails. The show is typically broadcast live the first Sunday of each month. The first program was on February 6, 2000, and was a discussion with historian John Lukacs.[1] For the first several years of the show, episodes were not produced during the summer months. From the first episode through March 2019, the standard interview length was three hours. Beginning in April 2019, with Nomi Prins, the standard interview was reduced to two hours.[2]

There have been a few exceptions to the practice of featuring one single author, as with the programs featuring the Strand Bookstore, Frank Williams and Edna Greene Medford's discussion of writings on Lincoln, and John K. Wilson and Jonathan Karp's discussions of the writings of Barack Obama and John McCain.

Sometimes, the profile will include taped footage of the author's own home or office, so as to give further perspective on how they approach the task of writing. On occasion (as with the programs with Shelby Foote[3] and Harold Bloom[4]) entire three-hour interviews have been conducted live at the home or office of the featured author.

In 2018 the series featured 12 authors best known for their works of fiction, as opposed to their standard practice of interviewing authors best known for nonfiction works.[5]