They publish lots of different local books. He had the distinct privilege to publish Abraham Lincolns bestselling book. A lot of people do not know that he wrote one. When lincoln ran for the senate and lost to Stephen Douglas, they had their famous debate. There were a couple of people from newspapers transcribing the debates, writing down shorthand and then a couple of days later, they would print it in newspapers. That way, people who did not attend could read about what happened. For most people, the story stopped there. This is breaking news. Lets move on. Lincoln, after he lost the senate race, he worked hard to gather those newspaper transcript. He worked hard. There are at least nine surviving letters of him gathering these newspaper transcripts. He cut them out and pasted them in a scrapbook. You can still see it today at the library of congress. He is making these tiny little edits in pencil. If one paragraph is not accurate, he is cutting it out and putting a different paragraph in its place. This book contained almost 100,000 of his word. Almost as many as Stephen Douglas. Lincoln went to try to find a printer. This was not easy because lincoln was not someone who was prominent at the time. With the help of somehow Ohio Republicans they brought the , book out in 1860. It was an enormous bestseller. It sold 50,000 copies. If you adjusted by population, it is the equivalent of a bookselling. 5 million copies today. This book came out in time for lincoln to be helped to become the nominee of president. Voters would write lincoln letters about this. When they asked him what he thought about this issue, he said look at my book. This book was essential to circulating his ideas and legitimizing him as candidate. When the first reviews came out they would say here is the book , from Stephen Douglas and abram lincoln. They could not even get his name right. The book played a huge role in lifting him to the white house. That is what led him this man visited lincoln after the presidency. Lincoln said it was good to see you. He said it should be, after all, i am the one that helped you become president. All that lincoln could do was smile. I think he appreciated it. One of my favorite lincoln letters was after he heard that the book would be published. He said this was the greatest complement i ever received, that somebody wants to publish my book. Tell me about the concept for the book. Craig is the untold story of president s and their books. One thing that is really fun and surprising is that this is a history that as long as American History itself. I talk about two different types of books, Campaign Books like lincolns and they use a book to help them run. Then legacy books, what did i do in the white house, what did my enemies say and what do i say . The First Campaign book, that comes from Thomas Jefferson. The first legacy book comes from john adams. This is a really deep history. It is a brandnew angle on the presidency. I started working on this book 10 years ago. I had to make a list of how many books there are even out there that fit into this rubric. There were a lot of them. What in your mind is the value of judging a president or presidency by his writing . Craig it reminds me of what history felt like not just to president s but regular people. Sometimes we forget about this because there is a lot of different media including Television Shows like the ones we are on. When lincoln is running for president , books and newspapers were the mass media. When you think about a book, helping somebody run for the white house, it also tells you something about what it was like to be alive as a president ial candidate or voter. It was a distinctly him and angle on these issues. It shows a humans side of the president. There is something about writing that if you try to put your thoughts or feelings into words, you have to slow down, think what am i afraid of . What am i scared of . What do i want . That is true of president s just like everyone else. I tried to go behind the scenes and really find the details. I felt like i was founding even our most wellknown president s i was finding them at their most human. How did this all gets started for you . Craig it was back in 2008. I was in graduate school at the time. Back in 2008, i was in graduate school at yale. I was going to politicos website and clicking election year. It was an exciting election. Books were making a big difference. Barack obamas books were everywhere. John mccains books were everywhere. This was making an impact. This felt special and new but is it . What i found is that history is so much deeper than i expected. It goes way back. There are so many books that had a huge impact that lifted people to the white house. It gave them a chance to make a memorable case with their legacy. It took me 10 years because there was a lot of groundwork too late to even be able to write a book like this because there were not precedents. If you like reading history books, this will tell you the history about yourself. What was Calvin Coolidges favorite bookstore . How did the Printing Press work when Abraham Lincoln was president . What happened to the phd . Craig my mom would like me to say that it is still in progress. When did you say that there was a book here . Craig it happened pretty quickly. I would go to really Good Research libraries and get in those card catalogs and look up John Quincy Adams by his last name. How many are there by him . Making that list it was , astonishing how many were by them. Herbert hoover wrote a mining textbook. There were these really intimate and important books. I realize that Abraham Lincoln, Calvin Coolidge, ulysses s. Grant, jefferson, adams there , were so many examples of these books mattering. I started to realize that there was a story to tell here. You alluded to the history of Nonfiction Book publishing in america. Why do you tell that story . Craig that is what helps us realize how important these books have been. Even if you read a lot of a good biography about a lot of the president s, their books dont come up. They are not essential. Biographers and historians have a lot of work to do. They are worried about biographers and historians have a lot of work to do. They are worried about the policy. My books are about the human side of running for office. Without that context, you cant realize how important these books are. I will give you an example from lincoln. When lincolns book came out, it was a best seller. Slavery was a huge issue, everybody wanted to know where the candidates stood. It was a bestseller because of Steam Powered engines. Trains were finally widely available. It was much easier to move a book from one city to another by train. Before there were trains, you had to move them by horseback or horse carriage, and books are heavy. If you want somebody to deliver a book by mail, they are not going to do it because there is only so much room in the saddle. In the saddlebag. Then Steam Powered engines helped because of Printing Presses. Printing presses had been similar to what gutenberg had done. One person takes the arm and pulls. Then they started to get powered by steam engines. That made it faster to make books and cheaper. That made it easier for people to buy books. If you want to know about the history of bookstores and books, i have a lot of material about that. I like books. I think it helps us appreciate how these books mattered in their own times. When did readily available reading glasses become a factor . Craig the 19th century as well. I like those small details because you dont think of them as a technology but oil lamps, reading glasses, does really matter. It is hard to huddle up next to a fireplace and read a book. The more light you have to read by, the better reader you can be. I have one footnote that make me laugh. There is a passage from one reader. He is such a fun character. He says i will only read biographies for the next year. I love nonfiction. He goes to the church and there is an oil lamp there. The pastor knocks over the lamp and there is a fire. There was a lot of chaos. He said why didnt we just stick with candles . Candles, oil lamps, those are technologies just like smartphones. Everyone has the darn internet. You mentioned footnotes. Your book has about 60 pages of notes filled with stories like this. How did you do all of this research . Craig slowly. It took 10 years of work. A lot of the work was looking at the history of nonfiction publishing and figuring out how president ial campaigns work because there were really important shifts in how you can run for president. How did you support yourself . I lived in the midwest. That helps because the costs were low. My wife works. She is actually a book editor. I was fortunate to get a generous book deal, that helped. We made it work. There were not a lot of travels or fancy splurges. I wanted my first book to be as good as i could possibly make it. What was the biggest aha moment . Your biggest discovery . Craig lincoln. Another came from candidate. From kennedy. The fact that people have this vague sense that john f. Kennedys was written by someone else. I looked at thousands of pages of documents and i try to summarize that and show just how little work kennedy did. Then i found this humans side of how much kennedy cared about the book. He is a senator, he is a celebrity. Being an author, it did not seem to be on the front of his mind but he would write his editor letters and say i was at the airport and i did not see any copies of my book there, can we fix that . Why would a senator noticed Something Like that . I think he cared about being an author. As a firsttime author, what was it like picking up the wall street journal and seeing a fullpage positive review of your book . They said it was the best book on the presidency in years. Craig i cried. Ill be honest with you. To work on something for 10 years and then have it described in those terms and have the reviewer do a great job summarizing what is in the book, he love the publishing side, the president ial side. It meant the world to me. It meant a lot that i started my book tour and talked to regular readers to have them tell me about president s and their books. The fact that it took 10 years to get there makes it all the sweeter. There could be more down the road. Before we dig into individual stories, i wanted to run through a quick fact. Which president wrote the most books . Craig Teddy Roosevelt. I dont know that i ever crunched the numbers specifically but it cant imagine anybody other than Teddy Roosevelt did it. It was well over 30. You have to define whether a pamphlet is a book or a collection of speeches. I feel confident it was Teddy Roosevelt. If he were here, he would be announcing that fact. Who was the most gifted president ial writer . Craig it was probably lincoln. Just in his style of his speeches and books. There are also some surprising president s. Calvin coolidge, maybe even history fans dont have his presidency at the front of their mind. He was such a talented writer. I found a New York Times article where they said that Calvin Coolidge is the best literary president since lincoln. He wrote a thank you letter to that author because it to him. Because it mattered to him. You talk about president ial reading as well. Who were the most voracious readers . Craig for a lot of them, books helped make them president s today. Ronald reagan or harry truman, it was their local libraries that gave them that boost. That is where they started getting ideas and thinking about history. Harry truman was the biggest lover of history. Ulysses s. Grant was one of the guest fiction readers. He read so many novels. He got demerits as a cadet at west point for spending too much time in the library. That made his book stunning. President trump often says that he does not have time to read many books. What other president s were not readers . Craig Lyndon Johnson was not much of a reader. His wife would joke that he had not read a book since he was in college in texas. I am sure that is not true but i dont think reading a book is the most important thing you can do as president. It is understandable that they are busy and they have a lot going on. But i value books and reading books on the way to the white house or taking some time to read can be a useful way to step back from all the excitement and news happening around them. Johnson and trump are two good examples. You mentioned a legacy books and Campaign Books as the two types. James buchanan wrote a legacy book. How did that help him since . Craig it did not help him. Nothing was going to help him. He was not a good president. People in both the north and south realized it. He decided that he wanted to write a book. He tried to recruit some friends and say i have all of my letters and papers, why dont you come write this book defending me . He did not get any takers so he said i have to do this myself. It is a book that is not very rewarding to read today. It is a book written in the third person. Writing an autobiography like running for president has changed a lot over the course of American History. Because buchanan did not want to appear too arrogant, he wrote in the third person. James buchanan is writing mr. Buchanan did this and that. There will be a little bit of writing and then a long document. Even if he was the best writer in the world, i am not sure it could have saved him. The New York Times ran a review after the book came out that said buchanan did not wait for his enemies to write a book, he wrote a book himself and everything you need to attack him is right there in the book. Buchanan eventually told his friends to stop sending him reviews. Bill clinton talked about the importance of writing an autobiography or memoir. Lets look. I concluded from doing this book is that everyone who is fortunate enough to live to be 50 should sit down at some point and write the story of his or her life even if it is just for yourself, your children, your families. It is important what you remember, how you remember, what you forget. It is important to come to terms with the life that you lived and think about how you wish to spend whatever years are remaining. Everybody talks about how terrible book writing is. I enjoyed it. And i have written every word of this book. Think about president s. What does the whole genre of president ial memoirs do to that presidency . Where does it fit in how scholars judge . Craig when president s write about their childhoods, those passages are the only place that scholars can get that information. In Harry Trumans memoirs, there is a wonderful story about his Favorite High School history teacher. You will find that in every truman biography and that comes right from truman himself. The books are very valuable for those early formative years. They become less valuable by the time they get to the time of real political power. That is when the president s tell their own version and use a little spin. That is when scholars have to sift and evaluate what the president said happened. But i think there is value in seeing how somebody spins. If you see how they view themselves, you can try to understand what they were trying to accomplish at times. In my own book, that is when i tried to take readers behind the scenes. I can give you a good example from president clintons book. It is a very proclinton book. I dont know how we could expect it to be otherwise. Instead of running through all of the points he made in my life, i tell the stories of how they worked on the book. He wrote the book. He was late on the book. He was a procrastinator. They got this book with millions of dollars writing on it. His editor came and slept on his couch to make sure that he made the deadline. I think those stories can be as important as the book itself. When did ghostwriters become part of the picture . How should we understand the president s personality if someone else is writing his words . Craig it is a good question. There are lesser president s who did the work themselves. I would push back against the idea that a ghostwritten book is automatically inauthentic or automatically up or book. I just dont think that is true. If we want to talk about the history of ghost writing in america, we have to start with George Washingtons farewell address. When it came to the time of the writing, washington got help. It was James Madison and Alexander Hamilton who helped put his ideas into words. They were his ideas. They landed with such impact because they had washingtons name attached. He was very involved in the process. He said this is the style i want. It is washingtons speech. I dont know is this book ghostwritten or not, i go is this a good book or not . This is from 1957. Mike wallace was talking to drew pearson. Lets watch. You wrote that kennedys father, Joseph Kennedy is spending a fortune on a publicity machine to make jacks name wellknown. No candidate in history has had so much money spent on a Public Relations advanced build up. Jack kennedy is a personable fellow but he is not as good as that Public Relations campaign makes him out to be. He is the only man in history who won a Nobel Peace Prize on a book that was ghostwritten for him. Pretties tuff stuff pretty tough stuff there. Were people debating this concept at the time after he won the Pulitzer Prize . Craig the Pulitzer Prize was the turning point. That is important to understand in the history of the book and in terms of understanding kennedys psychology. The book comes out in 1956. Over the course of that year, it is a hit. It is on the New York Times best sellers list for weeks and weeks. It elevates kennedy from being a senator from new england to being a national figure. In 1956, kennedy very nearly gets the Vice President ial nomination. That is a big surprise. Kennedy had a meeting with harry truman. He was an expresident but he was in the party infrastructure. They meet at the at trumans hotel suite. When kennedy comes out, they ask him what they talked about and he says my book. If the story stops there, i think it is a happy story. Kennedy had the book written by someone else and we can talk about the Details Behind that. There is good ghost writing and dad ghost writing. This is an is example of good ghost writing and bad ghost writing. This is an example of good ghost writing. When i was working at the kennedy president ial library, i found documents that showed for the first time that jack kennedy was involved in securing that Pulitzer Prize. Kennedys it was said that kennedys father wanted that Pulitzer Prize. He told another historian, i would rather win a Pulitzer Prize then be president. He got himself the prize. In new york city, in washington dc, people had been gossiping did kennedy write that book . I wonder how much money they are giving out with those royalty checks. The pulitzer made it a moral and ethical question. When i was at the kennedy president ial library, i looked at the letters kennedy was receiving and librarians were sending him letters and asking him if he really wrote this book. You would not accept that prize if you did not write it, that is not the right thing to do. It was a moral question. In the long arc of history, does it matter . The book was being referenced during the recent impeachment debate. There is an award given out by the Kennedy Family foundation on an annual basis. Does it matter . Craig i think it matters in a very humid and personal sense. Human and personal sense. Does it matter as much as what kennedy did as president . No. This showed what he was willing to do, his values and how he treated people. Ted sorensen did most of the work on the book. In the preface and acknowledgment, kennedy did not even mention sorensens name. Sorensen gives it an edit. Sorensen says you should mention me. Kennedy puts it back in. Then when the scandal came about, sorensen and kennedy both would refer to the acknowledgments and say that this is all above board. But that credit only existed because sorensen had to remind kennedy, maybe you should give the person who actually wrote the book the credit. That is not the cuban missile crisis in terms of historical import but it is a him and it is a human choice. It is a human being that decided this is how he wanted to act. It is ok to think in those terms. There was a story much farther back in history where an author claims authorship. Can you tell the story of eliza hamilton and her claims that her husband wrote George Washingtons farewell address . Its a crazy story and one of my favorite ones in the book. The fact that it was washingtons speech is what mattered. Alexander hamilton famously died in a duel, and his reputation had hit a low point. Its a crazy story. It was like a spy novel. There was a bundle of secret documents that was sealed and waxed. Hamiltons supporters would pass it around. These are people who were loyal to hamilton. One of the people involved with somebody who really cared about Alexander Hamilton. One of his sons would try to go to the house and be nice. When that did not work, the other son came along and was very menacing and tough. That did not work. It took a long time. It was one of those stories where people were gossiping. How much of this is hamilton, how much of this is washington, washington had nothing to do with it himself. He did not claim authorship in the way that someone like kennedy did. It is an example that americans have always loved gossiping about president s. John kennedys success inspired nixon to publish his own. Craig he published it in 1963. We have a clip of nixon talking about it. Lets watch that and come back and talk about him. This was my ninth crisis, writing a book is very hard work. I know you interview people on your program. I have seen them and i admire authors. I am not saying that in terms of myself but it is great i it is a great ordeal for me. I dont write easily. You have some notes on the yellow pad. I write outline after outline and i dictate to a machine. The written word is very formal. I have good people that work with me. When i get down to crafting the final product, it is a great burden for me. Every time i finish a book i say never again. Lets start with six crises. What did that do for his political aspirations . Craig it was important because he had just lost that election in 1960. Kennedy asked nixon to come to the white house after. Nixon could tell how tired kennedy was. When they were done, nixon mentioned that he was thinking about writing a book. That perked kennedy up. He said i think every politician should write a book, it can help your standing in the political realm. That is what nixon did. He worked on a book. It cover different moments, different crises. It really picks key moments from that persons life. It was a bestselling book. It helped him begin to reestablish himself as a politician and begin that second act that led him to become president. After watergate, he authored several more books. How does this change his reputation post watergate . Craig his president ial memoirs were hugely anticipated. It was breaking news when the page count came out. It was intense interest after that. After that, the books became less newsy, they were more philosophical, books about governing philosophy and politics. It is amazing to think about his reputation after watergate and talking about humans beings and people who make personal decisions, i think he and watergate is a very revealing episode. He was able to become the person you see in that clip, the senior statesman whose views on relations were sought out by other president s. Thomas jefferson, a wellknown lover of books. His famous quote i cannot live without books. Is on coffee mugs everywhere. How many books did he own . Craig 6000 and 7000. Then he started building another collection. You credited him with the First Campaign book. Craig it is called notes on the state of virginia. It was not a Campaign Book like Abraham Lincolns. The story started a little earlier for jefferson. He worked on that book in the 1780s. It came out more than a decade after he ran for president. It was essential, it was a huge flashpoint in 1776 and 1800. This is when Thomas Jefferson and john adams are running against each other. To understand why notes on the state of virginia were so important, we have to talk about how campaigning worked in that time. Nowadays, president ial candidates want to be everywhere and make their case to voters. Early in our history, it was the complete opposite. If you went out to everyone and said i want to be president , that was proved to most voters that you were not the right person to run for president. The idea was that you should be humble. It should be other people advocating for you and your ideas. Most president s stayed home and stayed quiet. There was a public silence around john adams and Thomas Jefferson. What that public silence did it made a vacuum. Something needs to fill it. That is where notes on the state of virginia came in. It so the equivalent of. 5 million copies. It was one of the most important books any american wrote in the 18th century. It was a book that defended america to its european critics. People knew and respected that book. When Thomas Jefferson was running for president and not say much about it, people looked to his book. We have Roger Wilkins talking about jeffersons notes on the state of virginia. In the end, you have to believe that what he wrote in notes on the state of virginia is his deep belief in black inferiority. He thought that blacks were stupid, lazy and ugly. He said it more eloquently but that was the gist. More than any of the other virgina founders, he seems more unable to distance himself from the ownership of slaves. People wonder how the author of the declaration of independence can square his views on slaves and slaves slave ownership. You answer that to your own mind in your book. What are your thoughts . Craig this is another troubling example of where going behind the scenes and looking at somebody sitting down to write can reveal something about who they are as people. Jefferson offers bigger, broader comments on how slavery is a moral evil but then because he is jefferson, he slips into this rational, scientific discourse. He says lets look at the difference between lack americans and white americans. His conclusions are what we just saw. They are troubling. They are written in a way that makes him sound scientific but i think it reads even worse. Jefferson thought that black people were inferior not because of their circumstances but because that is who they were. If anybody wants to give jefferson a pass because of the standards of his time, no. He showed this to his contemporaries at the time. He said if you believe they said i dont think this is right. You are not talking about humans in a way that is just. Jefferson says this is only my hypothesis but he wrote what he wrote. He never changed his mind. As an old man, his book was very popular. You will oversee a few books in bookstores and in jeffersons time, his book was that book. Printers asked him if he wanted to change anything in the book. He said no. That includes the dehumanizing passages about black people. One set of memoirs that is available on bookstore shelves is ulysses s. Grants. What is the circumstances of him writing that . Craig its almost an unbelievable story. He was a wonderful writer. When he was a general, some of his orders were reprinted everywhere in newspapers. They introduced people to his literary style that was concise, funny and concrete. He was a tremendous writer. Publisher after publisher said your book would be the biggest selling book of any civil war figure. Do you want to do it . He did not want to. What changed his mind is that he went through a terrible bankruptcy and he became ill with cancer. He does not have enough money to pay his butcher. He has no money and he is dying. It becomes difficult for him to even speak or swallow. He works so hard on his book. One thing i do in my book is reproduce a page from early in the process when he is starting to write it. I think it puts you there with him writing. He is crossing out words and stopping midsentence. He gets momentum and then he realizes that he cares about the writing. He pours everything he has into that book. His wife helped him, his sons were Fact Checking the book. His publisher made it one of the biggest and best sellers in American History at that time. America was waiting to see if he would finish it before he passed. Craig this is an example of how these books have been so central to American History. These books, in their own time periods, because of the publishing history, they were news. They were at the core of what america was thinking about. The country knew that he was sick, the country knew that he was working on a book and newspapers would have headlines like general grant went for a walk today. He did not sleep well last night. General grant managed to write three pages. These were new stories. There were telegraph lines that ran from houses close to his two other offices for updates. The updates happened in real time by the standards of that time. The country was obsessed with it. While he was racing to finish his book, there was an army of booksellers, a lot of them were civil war veterans that would have one less chance to celebrate the and they served under. They had a careful script. The first line of that script was i am here to talk to you about the book you have heard so much about in the newspapers. This was news. It was a book that every american was excited about. Grant wrote a book that lived up to that. He had lost his money with bad investments with his son. How much money did his son make . Craig it was hundreds of thousands of dollars. If you adjust, it was more than 10 million. That was not a perfect adjustment but a paycheck comparable to what president clinton earned for his and president george w. Bush did for it set these families of her life. It did not burnish his reputation for a long time. He was pretty low. What happened, why did that not have the effect that he wanted . Craig it is a curious fact. It was serve other president ial authors to take note. He writes a good book. It is a wild bestseller. Once grants book comes out, his reputation starts to stumble. Newspaper critics say why arent there more things about ulysses s. Grant . It was because the south did a much better job in the literary world than they did in the civil war. There were a lot of historians who were prosouth. They wrote history that celebrated the south. They wanted to make granta look like a bad president , a butcher and a drunk and elevate robert lee as saintly. In that literary work, it was the south with the amazing resources and grant was a terrific general. The southern historians were calculating writers as well. They overwhelmed grants book. That book was one that writers are respected and that readers like but in terms of defining grant as a general and president , it did not have the effect expected. Its only more recently they have seen his true reputation. If you are a president and you want to write a book that defends yourself, history says write a personal book instead. If grants book cant save his reputation, what hope do you have to write a book thats going to save your reputation . Dont worry about the political debates or the battlefield, tell a personal story. There have been very successful grant biographies published. Did they change anything . Craig williams did. It came out a couple of decades ago. Also, another book by joan. Its one of the finest books written about grant. It does not just tell the story of grant but his reputation at the same time. It is a book that i highly recommend. You referenced Theodore Roosevelt as our most prolific writing president. Wilson as well. You say that their first books are their best. Why . Craig they were young and passionate and they had a lot of energy. They were really thinking of themselves as writers at that time. Being a writer and a politician are not always the same approach. They dont require the same skill. A writer looks for complexity, what is the core of this problem . What is the back story of this problem . A politician needs to simplify. Roosevelt started his first book while he was a student at harvard. He was obsessed with it. He would sit in class, the book was about the war of 1812 but specifically, the naval side of that conflict. Roosevelt would sit in class and daydream about british ships battling. It was all he could think about. He did incredible, original research. He went to archives to find out the size of ships, how many cannons they had, he would draw diagrams about how the ships moved in battle. That helped him understand something important, patriotism and heroism are not the best explanations for history. A great example in roosevelts book is oliver perry. He won this great battle and people named towns after him. People thought it was this underdog victory. When roosevelt went back to research, he found out that the reason that he won that battle is not because he was brave and heroic, it was because he had better ships. Once roosevelt got to being a president himself, heroism and patriotism were what he cared about. He did a 180 as a writer. Wilson, how did he use his study of congress when he became president . Craig its the same trajectory, where the first book is full of original research. Wilsons first book is still considered by political scholars today. It was an intellectual event when it came out in the 1880s. It was a transformational book that did a lot to shape the academic arguments over the next few decades. It is interesting that it is called congressional government. Thats because for a lot of the 18th and 19th Century Congress , was the seat of power. If you wanted to be a reporter that covered the action, you didnt go to the white house, you went to congress. That is where the media paid attention. Wilson did a great job of explaining why that was in his book. Of course, when he became president , he and Teddy Roosevelt were two of the president s that did the most to make the modern presidency of today. The president now appeals to the people and defines ideas and leads the parties. Wilson and roosevelt did more than anyone on that count. Wilson made his own book outdated because his book talked about congress and how powerful congress was. When wilson was the president , he was able to irrigate that power to the presidency. We live in the age of lot blockbuster deals for president s. The combined memoirs of the obamas may have made as much as 65 million. When did the blockbuster start . Craig the 1980s. That tells you as much about publishing as the presidency. Part of it was that the presidency was becoming more glamorous and celebrated. Ronald reagan did a lot to achieve that considering his background in hollywood. The Publishing Industry was changing in the same ways. Walden books showed up in shopping malls. Those kinds of changes allowed hardcover books to sell millions of copies, not hundreds of thousands. That allowed editors to look for certain kinds of books, books where people came with a platform, an idea, a brand behind them. In the 1980s, lots of figures published bestselling books that were everywhere. They would go on tv to talk about them. A good example is donald trump. Before he was a political candidate, he was one of those blockbuster authors with the art of the deal. Now we are seeing president s writing midstream rather than after. How does that change the presidency . Craig things change so quickly that people who left the Reagan Administration were publishing their books before people in the Carter Administration published their books. They were leapfrogging because publishers and political figures were seeing that there was a lot of money to be made in this. I honestly dont know that we have quite come to terms with what these changes meant even today. You can see that with john boltons book. That is not out yet but it has been widely discussed. There are ethical and moral questions about should it have , been presented in a different format . Those questions dont have answers yet because were in the middle of this change both in politics and publishing. Do publishers make money off of these books . Craig they do. They did not for a while. Ronald reagan got an advance of 7 million. They lost quite a bit of money on that. Since 2000, publishing has figured this out. The obamas advance was astronomical. Michelle obamas did quite well. I have to imagine that Barack Obamas will do even better. Publishers have started to realize they can sell these books in a certain way. Blockbuster publishing is working for them, which is why i dont think it is going anywhere anytime soon. You mentioned the art of the deal. We have this clip. This is the story of signing the book the art of the deal. Timess one of the first someone has intervened in that way. He said i want to do a book with this guy. I arrived at random house with a mandate of doing books of this kind. Biographies of highpowered figures. I went to see trump with this publisher. I took a big russian novel i had with black and gold paper around it, put trumps name on it and said this could be you. He agreed. He wanted the trump name slightly larger. How significant was the deal . Very significant. It was not twitter that made him a national figure. It was that book. Because it was a blockbuster. A newted him from being york city figure national two a figure. Thebook came out and sold thousands of copies. It really defined a style and an image that he still used when he ran for president so many years later. Peter plays a role in cspans publishing history. He went on to found his own nonfiction Publishing House and they brought our cspan books to market. I want to get that on the record. He brought the art of the deal and Barack Obamas dreams from my father to market. It says the Publishing Business publishes lots of kinds of books, and thats what we should celebrate about it. Peter aust must was the one that signed the deal but that was obamas second deal. We think of obama as such a polished person and speaker and president ial candidate. He got the father from kenya and the mother from kansas. It all just clicks together. His background explains how people can come together. It is a great story, it is one that helped him become president but it was not an easy story to piece together. It was in writing this first book that he was able to piece those stories together. It was not a simple process. He got the book deal, he wrote part of the book, he sent it in. The publisher did not like it. He got married in october to michelle. A couple of weeks later, he lost his book deal. Obama finds that he does not have a book deal anymore. He also owes his publisher part of the advance that he already spent. He had a very good agent who was able to get him a second deal. He went to these offices they wanted to meet with him. He was impressed that obama came in and he knew what he wanted the book to be about. Once he was able to figure those things out, it took a lot of reading, revising, took a really good editor to help him. Obama put that book together. In that book the themes showed , up in his speeches and president ial campaign. Writing that book helped obama understand his life and future political appeal. Did you see other president s develop life narratives that they used on the campaign trail . Craig yes. If you can tell your life story, in a way that connects not just to who you are, but the ideas and issues that you stand up for, it is really effective. Leaders have multiple ways to respond to it and remember it. Calvin coolidge is a great example. His literary style was very clipped, concise and funny. He was known as silent cal, even though he had two fantastic books. We should remember him as much for his words as his absence of words. That stern and buttoneddown and serious approach lined up with his politics and his traditional style of american approach to american life. Readers and voters responded to both things. We have president obama talking about writing dreams in 1985. My father was a black african. My mother was a white american. Much of my life was spent trying to reconcile the terms of my birth that divided heritage with the realities of race and nationality, tribal identities that exist not just in this country but also overseas. That this book is not so much a memoir as a journey of discovery for me, making some sense of my family. Craig that is the father from kenya, the mother from kansas, those lines showed up in the Convention Speech and when he ran in 2008. Somebody in Hillary ClintonsCampaign Said we are not running against a person, we are running against a story. Thats what gave his campaign momentum. He solve that story and figured out that story and that is what supercharged his political appeal and some of the ideas he stood for. We are almost up in our time with you. In a review in the washington examiner, one writer was critical of the fact that you did not include james k polk. How does he end up on your cutting room floor . Craig first of all a diary is , not a book. John quincy adams wrote wonderful diaries. From garfield, diaries allow us to know that he was reading civil war books. Diaries are good sources. I wanted my book to tell a real story and to be a coherent book. To do that, i had to make cuts. There have been a lot of president s that wrote a lot of things. What interested me was the story of their books and how important their books have been to American History. Focused on their books, what they were reading president s , reading other president s. No offense to polk but his story is not one of the best stories. I did not want to waste pages on it. Do you have a favorite . Or if people havent spent much time with them, wheres a good place to start . Craig i like Calvin Coolidges autobiography. It came out a 1929. I dont believe it is in print anymore, but someone should change that. It is a wonderfully personal book. Followedresidents have that approach, i got to list every fight i was in an say why i was right in every one of those fights. Calvin coolidge did not do that. His book is a sixth as long as grants. It is a wonderfully personal volume. The example that stood out to me and what made it such a celebrated book in 1929 when it came out centers on calvin , coolidges son. His son died while he was in the white house. He developed a blister while playing on the white house lawn. In the era before antibiotics, that blister became infected and it killed him. Calvin coolidge was able to tell his side of the story. He said i was the most powerful person in america and i had no power to save my son dying right before me. Any parent, any child can relate to that story. It is a story of being the president but also being a humid being a human being. That is what coolidge did in his book, he told the personal stories that told us what it was like to be president. I think that is what our president s should do in their books. That is what i try to do in my book, show that personal side. If more president look toward coolidge as a literary model, i think we would be better off as readers. The book is called author in chief. It has been a pleasure to spend an hour with you. Craig thank you so much. All q a programs are available on our website or as a podcast on cspan. Org. Next week on q a, Catholic University professor Matthew Greene talks about the careers of notable speakers of the hazor the u. S. House of representatives. That is sunday, february 23 at eastern and pacific time. Monday night on the communicators, from the state of the net conference, we will discuss technology in the internet with congresswoman Kathy Mcmorris rodgers and ellen weintraub. Watch monday night at 8 00 eastern on cspan2. Monday, president s day, cspans washington journal is live from mount vernon, the home, library, and museum of George Washington with the ceo, doug bradburn. Also, its the start of museum we, highlighting museums with exhibits exploring the american story. Watch museum week next week on washington journal. Next, prime ministers questions from the british house of commons. Boris johnson fielded domestic and Foreign Policy questions from Labour Party LeaderJeremy Corbyn and other members in the house. The support for affected areas in the area, and we work closely with o