First broadcast (with link to transcript / video) | Author | Book | Subject matter |
| January 3, 1999 | P.J. O'Rourke | Eat the Rich | Capitalism; Economy of Russia; Economy of Sweden; Economy of Tanzania; Economy of Hong Kong |
| January 10, 1999 | John Morris | Get the Picture: A Personal History of Photojournalism | Memoir/Autobiography; Photojournalism |
| January 17, 1999 | Dava Sobel | Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time | History of longitude; John Harrison; Longitude prize |
| January 24, 1999 | Michael Ignatieff | Isaiah Berlin: A Life | Isaiah Berlin |
| January 31, 1999 | Peter Kann and Frances FitzGerald | Reporting Vietnam | The Vietnam War |
| February 7, 1999 | Harold Evans | The American Century | American Century |
| February 14, 1999 | Virginia Postrel | The Future and Its Enemies | Social change |
| February 21, 1999 | Annette Gordon-Reed | Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy | Thomas Jefferson; Sally Hemings |
| February 28, 1999 | Robert Famighetti | World Almanac and Book of Facts 1999 | Reference work |
| March 7, 1999 | Tom Brokaw | The Greatest Generation | Military history of the United States during World War II; United States home front during World War II; Great Depression in the United States |
| March 14, 1999 | Allen Weinstein | The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America The Stalin Era | History of Soviet and Russian espionage in the United States |
| March 21, 1999 | Richard Shenkman | Presidential Ambition: How the Presidents Gained Power, Kept Power, and Got Things Done | President of the United States |
| March 28, 1999 | Norman Podhoretz | Ex-Friends: Falling Out with Allen Ginsberg, Lionel and Diana Trilling, Lillian Hellman, Hannah Arendt, and Norman Mailer | Memoir/Autobiography; Neo-Conservatives; Allen Ginsberg; Lionel and Diana Trilling; Lillian Hellman; Hannah Arendt; Norman Mailer |
| April 4, 1999 | Booknotes 10th Anniversary | N/A | Excerpts from and interviews about the first ten years of Booknotes |
| April 11, 1999 | Amity Shlaes | The Greedy Hand: How Taxes Drive Americans Crazy and What to Do About It | Taxation in the United States |
| April 18, 1999 | Max Frankel | The Times of My Life and My Life with the Times | Memoir/Autobiography; The New York Times |
| April 25, 1999 | Randall Kenan | Walking on Water: Black American Lives at the Turn of the Twentieth Century | African Americans |
| May 2, 1999 | Mary Soames | Winston and Clementine: The Personal Letters of the Churchills | Winston Churchill; Clementine Churchill |
| May 9, 1999 | Betty Boyd Caroli | The Roosevelt Women | Roosevelt family; Eleanor Roosevelt; Edith Roosevelt; Alice Roosevelt Longworth; Corinne Roosevelt Robinson; Corinne Alsop Cole; Sara Delano Roosevelt; Martha Bulloch Roosevelt; Anna Roosevelt Cowles |
| May 16, 1999 | T.R. Reid | Confucius Lives Next Door: What Living in the East Teaches Us About Living in the West | Culture of Japan |
| May 23, 1999 | Jean Strouse | Morgan: American Financier | J.P. Morgan |
| May 30, 1999 | Bill Gertz | Betrayal: How the Clinton Administration Undermined American Security | Foreign policy of the Bill Clinton administration |
| June 6, 1999 | Roger Mudd | Great Minds of History | Historiography of the United States; Gordon Wood; James McPherson; Richard White; David McCullough; Stephen Ambrose |
| June 13, 1999 | Joseph Stevens | 1863: Rebirth of a Nation | 1863 in the United States |
| June 20, 1999 | David Kennedy | Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War | History of the United States (1918–1945); Timeline of United States history (1930–1949) |
| June 27, 1999 | Jon Margolis | The Last Innocent Year: America in 1964 | 1964 in the United States |
| July 4, 1999 | Floyd Flake | The Way of the Bootstrapper: Nine Action Steps For Achieving Your Dreams | Motivation |
| July 11, 1999 | Michael Korda | Another Life: A Memoir of Other People | Memoir/Autobiography; Simon & Schuster |
| July 18, 1999 | Michael Cottman | The Wreck of the Henrietta Marie: An African-American's Spiritual Journey to Uncover a Sunken Slave Ship's Past | Henrietta Marie |
| July 25, 1999 | Dan Rather | Deadlines & Datelines: Essays at the Turn of the Century | Memoir/Autobiography; Journalism; CBS News |
| August 1, 1999 | Richard Gephardt | An Even Better Place: America in the 21st Century | Memoir/Autobiography; Economic issues in the United States |
| August 8, 1999 | H.W. Crocker | Robert E. Lee on Leadership | Robert E. Lee; Leadership |
| August 15, 1999 | Elizabeth Norman | We Band of Angels: The Untold Story of American Nurses Trapped on Bataan by the Japanese | Angels of Bataan |
| August 22, 1999 | David Atkinson | Leaving the Bench: Supreme Court Justices at the End | Supreme Court of the United States |
| August 29, 1999 | Mark Pendergrast | Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World | Coffee |
| September 5, 1999 | Leslie Chang | Beyond the Narrow Gate: The Journey of Four Chinese Women From the Middle Kingdom to Middle America | Memoir/Autobiography; Taipei First Girls' High School; Chinese Americans |
| September 12, 1999 | Jay Parini | Robert Frost: A Life | Robert Frost |
| September 19, 1999 | Richard Cohen | Rostenkowski: The Pursuit of Power and the End of the Old Politics | Dan Rostenkowski |
| September 26, 1999 | Linda McMurry | To Keep the Waters Troubled: The Life of Ida B. Wells | Ida B. Wells |
| October 3, 1999 | James Glassman | Dow 36,000: The New Strategy for Profiting from the Coming Rise in the Stock Market | Dow Jones Industrial Average; Economic growth |
| October 10, 1999 | Stuart Rochester | Honor Bound: American Prisoners of War in Southeast Asia, 1961-1973 | American POWs in the Vietnam War |
| October 17, 1999 | Witold Rybczynski | A Clearing in the Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the 19th Century | Frederick Law Olmsted |
| October 24, 1999 | Michael Kammen | American Culture, American Tastes: Social Change and the 20th Century | Popular culture |
| October 31, 1999 | Patrick Tyler | Great Wall: Six Presidents and China, An Investigative History | Sino-American relations |
| November 7, 1999 | Eugene Robinson | Coal to Cream: A Black Man's Journey Beyond Color to an Affirmation of Race | Memoir/Autobiography; Race in the United States; Race and ethnicity in Brazil |
| November 14, 1999 | Fred Maroon | The Nixon Years, 1969-1974: White House to Watergate | Richard Nixon |
| November 21, 1999 | Alfred Young | The Shoemaker and the Tea Party: Memory and the American Revolution | George Robert Twelves Hewes; The Boston Tea Party |
| November 28, 1999 | Winston Churchill | The Great Republic: A History of America | The United States of America; History of the United States |
| December 5, 1999 | Edmund Morris | Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan | Ronald Reagan |
| December 12, 1999 | Michael Patrick MacDonald | All Souls: A Family Story from Southie | Boston |
| December 19, 1999 | Robert Conquest | Reflections on a Ravaged Century | Naziism; History of communism |
| December 26, 1999 | Tom Wheeler | Leadership Lessons from the Civil War | The American Civil War; Leadership |