Editor john eppinger who reports on College Fraternity culture. That all happens tonight on cspan2s book tv. The tv recently attended a book party for ken walsh, chief White House Correspondent for u. S. News and world report for his most recent book ultimate insiders a history of white house photographers. Their access to the president. This is about 45 minutes. [inaudible conversation] this is great, a lot of familiar faces. Were going to have some white house photographers and white housefolks and people whove covered all this stuff i do have. Im glad youre here. Were going to have a couple of comoments and stuff. Thanks for coming. Nice to see you. [inaudible conversation] thanks for coming. You got 3in okay, the construction and the traffic . Great. Thanks for coming. Thanks for coming. Good, im glad. Im going to spring talk on you too late in the game but you have tv folks here. Im in the other room. Straight back, i see her back there but everythings good. We will throw you a couple easy question. Thanks, susan. Here you go. You can look in the index, youll be happy. Thank you so much. Oh my goodness. There is, the great motivator. This is, we had lunch and this idea emerged from and fried f salad fish or something, i forget what we had. There was that really narrow kitchen. Do you take charge cards . [inaudible conversation] this is yours. Thank you. That much easier. Thanks jim. We will, youll hear more about yourself in a little while. How are you . Good. [inaudible conversation] i put them in a couple columns. I know Robert Schlesinger might be here. Im sure youve asked him. W but yes, ill catch up to you about that because we will definitely do that. Thank you very much. He has the good news. I see him signing at the top there. I was there sunday. I wouldve been there. We had a nice crowd and now im doing a much of outoftown stuff. Im going to for libraries tomorrow. And then im going to do, im going to, they had to events good you had ann arbor so im doing a museum in the next week im doing the library and then doing the west coast swing. I dont know how theyre going to do that. Hes in grand rapids. Ive done panels with him looking forward to seeing him . Thank you out. [inaudible conversation]. [inaudible conversation] w youre not giving up the world series for me . [inaudible conversation] if the yankees were inthe world series these might as well. If you wouldnt mind, but in your, one for get on for a note. You want me to sign one . You have no idea how valuable thats going to be. . Signing. Thats what youtold me every time. But you dont want dated sign you . Thats if you know me . Its starting to fade but he knows the date. Will have a couple of copies for you and we dont have them with us. Wegoing to give them to you perhaps. Is actually more on their guard. I have a couple things. And i wonder if youd be telling the same story last year. There was another one of arts that gave me. I hope you like it. I have something for you. We have a full set of your books. Is this book 7 . A. I hope were not missing books. That can be remedied. Im really looking forward to this. You been talking aboutthis for some time and integrate topic. Its an interesting and you nt dont. [inaudible conversation] yes, thats right. Were going to do that too. Thanks eafor coming. Hes in the other room. Exactly. Are things going well . Good. Well. This is an interesting time to be in the white house. It is always something. This is my sixth president now. But this is the most unusual situation ive ever come across. Has anyone found this unusual situation . Youre exactly right. But its you know, you learn something about what could go wrong every day. And its now our relationship of course with the white house, the media relationship is very bad. [inaudible conversation]. Caught up with barkley, have you seen her . Im glad you did, okay. m thank you. Thank you very much. Could everybody come on in here for a little bit. Whos in the other room . Can you get those guys in the kitchen there . I think its the wine nearby. Theyre closing the bar. [inaudible conversation] protect some things, but not the wine. Protect your sources. High, welcome. Kind of likea Family Gathering here, this is great. You should have gotten the annual subscription series and saved money on that. Number eight. We will be doing an experimental shakespeare play next time we do have after that but no, this is great. Its ywonderful to be here and thank you guys for areprieve. As i was flipping through kens book which is terrific, theres a wonderful photo of Teddy Roosevelt with that giant grin and the caption, his daughter is saying teddy always wanted to be the baby at the christening, the bride at the wedding and the cross at the funeral. Thats how well my storiesthen told. But its not about him, its about me. But let me tell you about me. I just want to be the emcee at a party, thats my goal. So you guys have gotten a quick glimpse of a couple of the folks are going to talk about itand chat. Hes done it again, keeps digging into this incredible franchise and telling us things that we dont know. This time he had to go all the way down to the realm of photodogs. The white house photographers it was the deucephotographers that were the dogs. But just taking this sense of the visualization that we are also familiar with and some great iconic imagesbut how did they get there . Such a fascinating thing. You look at some of the things that the stories are accounts in their, the obama sitting there with in the situation room when they get bin laden, the culmination of this thing and a couple pages earlier is bush this unbelievably shocked expression on his face when andy carter is whispering in his ear. The continuing of how these things fit together i thinkis so amazing. And im going to let can talk about that but one of the things that struck me was he gets to the wonderful history. Abraham lincoln, master of modern media is the photograph and lincoln allowed himself to be photographed several times and at the end of his career had submitted to 130 autographs. Remarkable. Bill clinton as you can recount had approximately 10,000 photographs a day taken. And pete souza by the end of his career was about 2 million photograph that he had taken and most of them were of f liquor. You can see what this is meant but weve now accepted it so much as a part of our lives in the part of understanding this incredible institution but there are strings behind the scenes and thats what kenneth did a wonderful job of explaining here so were fortunate to have a couple people who know about this, number one miss michael curry. He was a press secretary of bill clinton and has dealt with a few photoimages. So mike, please come centerstage. This is a great opportunity to pay tribute to ken who i dearly love. He has treated me to ride ragu for so many years now and thats the only reason that its ever on the menu. But we get together and we talk about whats going on in washington and i am not an active player. I kind of give up my role in politics and teach this seminary so that proves that the doctrine of the atonement actually has something. [laughter] but we obviously spent many years going back to the clinton years together when we traveled many, many miles together and he knows many of theimages and some of them are in the book. That were interesting during that period. Im not going to talk about them, you mentioned lincoln. I work in a building called the Dorothy Height building. The seventh of pennsylvania, the pink castle thats there, this is not a book, not a story thats in your book. As you reminded me. One afternoon in february 1864, cold winter day the president walked eddown to that building where i work now and he in the Conference Room where we are, Matthew Brady who you do write a lot about had, brady was kind of i want to say he was the tharvey weinstein. Heres is what we would think of as being a producer at that time because he wasnt taking pictures with a big camera that they had at that time. He had a retinue of photographers but one of the photographers came and sat in the Conference Room that we used at our office and typical pr office. But the contest room is the Matthew Brady room because that afternoon in february 1864president lincoln walked down and sat and took the picture that the embryo pictures were made into. Your five dollar bill. I can tell you, when i tell that story toour clients, they are very impressed. But there are many other stories and some of them can knows and kept out. There was one world famously i remember that during my time at the light white house i dont with some interesting storylines. And one of them involved a young intern and then they can starr report, does that ring a bell with anybody . And after that came out, not long after that came out the president of the United States was playing golf. And he was out on the first team, had a big cigar in his mouth. And the reporters, the photographers came to me, showed me the picture and said okay. What are you going to do about this . I said, i shook my head and said okay. They said you get one free pass and those are the guys, the shooters. Some of them that you write in the book at that point. And they said if it happens again, youre toast. But thats an interesting story because it reflects a time in which the press, the public relations, communications operations, they work in some manner in synchronicity. We did not declare them enemies of the people. And we are in a perilous time now because we dont have that kind of engagement. One of the things about washington atinsiders and right now, can would probably agree. Thats not the greatest title for a book right now because washington insiders are exactly what the trunk s establishments is countering and does not think thats what the establishment should be but what the book shows you are the intimate moments in which photographers capture what the presidency is really tabout. And it is a terrific, terrific book because the stories behind the pictures are important. The stories tell about words in their own but can has managed to lead them into a way in which you actually learn more and understand more about what the context is for all those images and its really a brilliant way to figure out what really is going on and uswhat has gone on and maybe its just a glimpse of what we need to have better going on. As we think about where we are right now. Ken, thank you for doing such a great book. Its one ofmany. Youve got all kinds of books out there, air force one, a lot of things that really kind of give you a real glimpse into what really is going on. In our country. So thank you. Ha[applause] thank you, its great. The rules of engagement, theres a total intends book of jfk passing by Marilyn Monroe and hes decidedly not focused on her cleavage. I thought to myself id like to see the three frames before that which didnt get published. With us is susan biddle. Come on up. Susan is an actual white house photographer and a couple of them here. Jeff walberg is here, ralph pie. And susan having discretion, thats what white house photographers must have and you have to force storiesout of her so im going to ask you questions. But i will tell one little thing. And what reminded me was this wine. The only photograph of president bush, i work the last year of reagan and all four years of bush 41 so the only photograph is of him in bed with the children, all the grandchildren on the bed. He was Vice President then, he was not president so ill tell a story right after he was president in 93 when he left the white house and i was in kennebunkport. You remember the ordeal the year he was running for president about check out things . Yes, right. Anyway, i go up to kennebunkport. It was june 1993 and they invited me to comeover for lunch. It was a Beautiful Day in kennebunkport and they had the table set up and i went out, rehe was there. There was one other man and mrs. Bush had arrived yet and he said sit down. I said all right, he said would you like some wine . I said sure report me some wine and he said are you going to taste it . I had barely had time to say hello and he wanted me to taste his line of i said sure. Abhisit. He said what do you think mark i said its very good. And he said got it by the case at sams club. Then it was Kendall Jackson chardonnay. So how do you maintain that relationship. Youre in these peoples ig lives. Not only there, you are taking pictures of them. How do you create boundaries, how do you create that relationship . You can ask the question who creates it . The other side or my side . But i tried to, i always tried to show as much about the man as i possibly could cause i thought that was important or history. Not just the pomp and circumstance of who this guy was and his family and behindthescenes as much as i could possiblydo. But you maintain a professional relationship and can mentions in the book one time when we were killing some time before another event and he said to me susan, come upstairs to my office, i got to work on the speech and you can wait there until this event happens. I said okay. He starts working on a speech and he turns to me and the briefs the wine and he said what you think of this . I felt like my head was on fire. Ldi couldnt hear so he was like what, president of the United States is asking me what i think about a wine . And i said it sounds great. Thats the danger of a lot of people around the president. I think they get, they have that feeling of not being able to say what they think and i dont have any idea what his mind was because i was so nervous but the people that are there all the time, they do get intimidated bythe president. Did you find instances when there was something going on and you decided you didnt want to take a picture . Know. I think the journalistic background came through. You came out of a newspaper background so you wanted to shoot everything. Did they ever tell you know . Know, sometimes i couldnt stay in a meeting. We never stayed in very long but sometimes some topics were sensitive, he would Say Something when were there ever shot where you bought that they were staging it because they wanted to show a certain picture . Fi didnt feel that. Except when youre on the campaign trail, sure. Geevery Campaign Event is staged, of course but in terms of my regular stuff, i didnt feel that. You were getting the view of who they are. Did they both, the two president s, did they feel in the public eye the same person you saw . Pretty much, yeah. I would say so for sure. Reagan, he was funny on stage, he was funny in real life band george bush was very funny too. Hes very funny and maybe that didnt come across quite as much ndbut people wanted to make him seem more president ial and maybe funny isnt verypresident ial, i dont know. What do you think . Theres a lot of image making that goes into it but the thing about what can writes about in the book is the authentic images that really give you a glimpse into the movies president s really are are the ones that are lasting. The obama one leaning over. That, i get a tear in my eye every time. Thats the picture where a staff member at the white house, our family brought their son in and the sun murmured barely audible to the president , your hair looks just like mine. Does it feel like mine . President obama said why dont you see for yourself and he bent down and the little boy touched the top of his head and the president said what do you think . And the little boy said yeah. Its a wonderful moment and hes this role model. Its a trait called empathy. My other favorite photo on the upper set side of the coin, Richard Nixon staged photo walking on the beach in san clemente and wingtip shoes. Having a natural walk in nature. But clearly the other side of it. Last question and thank you, what did you do with the other 10 million photos that you took . Gave it to the president ial library. I went down there about a year ago and started going throughstuff because i wanted to look back and see if i found anything else. We will look forward to that. Thank you and now its time for the star of our show. [applause] thank you for coming and i want to thank brian and mike and susan and everyone else, my wife was here who is a professional researcher and shes a fabulous researcher and shes responsible for a lot of the research in the book, if not most of it so i want to recognize her. And i also want to mention we have jim koester is here. We ran thecollege daily at rutgers many years ago. And it was a few years ago from where we are now that jim and i were having lunch and he is a tremendous motivator because we talked about the idea of this book and so i want to thank jim for being so persuasive in talking about the ideas so where is jim . He is. Anyway, thank you very much. Now ralph langer is here who was a white house photographer for bill clinton and so i want to thank many of you for coming. My talk about that moment with the cigar with bill clinton, i wasnt aware that there are a lot of other examples of photographs that almost happened, that the white house has controlled and that sort of thing. Theres the famous tori about Franklin Roosevelt in the book where thank Franklin Roosevelt, he had legs from polio and he didnt want the country to know the extent of his disability and he had a conspiracy with the news photographers not to show this. Very rare to find a picture of him with his crutches, in a wheelchair. You cant find some of them and we put one of them in the book but the new photographer would show up at the white house hoand the news photographers who were veterans would slap the camera down when they tried to get a picture of the president being carried somewhere. We said we dont want the bad guys think our president is vulnerable and weak so there was a conspiracy of silence there or imagery. This is happening a lot. Theres a lot of other interesting stories, the famous story of cecil south and who was Jack Kennedys chief photographer. Kennedy is the first president to hire a chief photographer. Before that they had Government Employees took pitchers occasionally. He had a photographer take pictures of he and his family because he knew the importance of imagery. All the pictures he ilhad taken of him with his children, he would have scott take his picture and have daily traffic who worked for us news, an outside commercial photographer and jock low but anyway, these people took lots of pictures of kennedy and they would show him the prints before they were published to show how different the system was in those days and hed say you cant miss with these pictures and it made their careers, a lot of these e photographers. Remember the picture of john kennedy junior in the desk, you all remember that picture of him looking out the little door . That almost didnt happen because Jackie Kennedy didnt want pictures s taken of the children. He felt they were being exploited. President kennedy didnt feel that way. The kennedy went on vacation to greece and called stanley traffic and he said get over here, take pictures of me with the kids. Thats when the got a picture of littlejohn and his desk. He called it his islittle k so it was something he did use. The other interesting thing is when steve stout and was with president kennedy and dallas when he was assassinated, he took the picture of president johnson being sworn in and johnson, one of these pictures he was taken realizing the importance of this photograph , he wanted cecil there. He made it to the plane and stood on the couch, and after a few frames the camera didnt work so he almost didnt itget the pictures. He had to jiggle a wire in his cameraand got them on the third or fourth shot. Theres manyexamples to this. Many from the clinton era , interesting pictures there. And of course , the souza who works with reagan and worked for president obama and took this whole white House Photography idea to another level. You wanted to become the house photographer. He wanted to be the guy who had most pictures, the best pictures and he kept some of the news erphotographers from getting pictures they could use his and theres hard feelings there but we talk about that in the book. But the most interesting part of this is getting insights into the presidency. This is what i tried to do in a lot of these books. Try to find a way as a White House Correspondent finding new wife ways of looking at president s and this i think was a work doing and i did find i think a lot of interestinginsights. Really through the eyes and lenses of the observations all these ultimate insiders and i know that as mike said, the idea of being an insider is not the best image for donald Trump Supporters these days but thats what these folks are. They are ultimate insiders. They see things nobody gets to see. They see a range of things people dont get to see. A private, the public prices, success, failure and these fabulous pictures and as susan said, you go to the archives and the libraries, you can look through thousands of these pictures which i have done and there are. Theyre the countries, their public. If there taken by the white house so its yours to see and lots of them are online. So you can really get a very valuable insight into the president s. So the last thing i wanted to mention is some of the photographers over the years were really admired as fabulous photographers. And wthey were. What they told me and what every photographer whose work at the white house is said is that theres not enough to be a good photographer. You also have to have the trust of the president and the first lady in particular. Some photographers who did that, some of them didnt. Nixon never gave trust to his photographers. I guy named allie was his chief photographer. Nixon ugwas very disdainful of him. He didnt think that image would work. For one reason he thought he would never look as good as john kennedy who defeated him in 1960 and he was right about that. He blamed his photographers and said how come youre not getting rid pictures of me. Lyndon johnson felt the same way, why dont you make me look as good as john f. Kennedy. That wasnt going to happen. But nixon had a real fix and he let the photographer take big frames, listen for them and he tell them youre out of here. So we dont have a lot of these great private pictures of nixon partly because he didnt really trust the photographer but the president s who did trust mthe photographers and not getting this conveying of them privately which helps everybody andhelps history. The last point is what about donald trump . He does have a white house photographer, sheila. She has been taking t photographs in the white house before the first lady but the question is, what do wesee of donald trump today . Do we see the private pictures of him with his grandchildren, with his children, with his wife , the answer is no. Theres only two cases where hes done that. In walking across the lawn with two grandchildren and he had a kid who wrote him a letter saying id like to know your lawn. And he did have a little boy over and he did mow the lawn with a giant mower but trump wasnt comfortable with the scene. The thing is, he likes that image of him scowling. The menacing, angry donald trump and im wondering when hes going to realize that photography can help him. It can expand his appeal but i dont think is reached that level of trust of photographers, both his own and news photographers to let that happen. Thats one big question having written this book. When will donald trump realize that this is something that can help him and he doesnt have to be distrustful of this process . I dont know if its going to work, i dont think it will. I think hes going to remain distrustful but its something we can watch. In any case its a wonderful book because i learned so much myself about the president and the photographers. I come to respect the photographers over the years and i wish id been able to talk to some of the early photographers, a man named yamamoto who was johnsons photographer who recognized his photographers and i see ralph nodding his head. As one of the best. Fabulous daughter for. And he really pioneered the idea of the photographer as a storyteller, not just getting pictures behind the desk on the podium but each t photographer or photograph telling a story of some kind and he was terrific at that and thats what the best photographers have tried to do. Thats what i tried to do in the book, tell the story of the president with photographyand observation. Much for coming and ill be glad to sign some more books. [applause] its a great read, you dont like to read or find a g different book as i do , theres a lot of great photographs. But a toast to canon whos done it again. Can and i worked together for 20 years and hes keeps doing it and ofits fabulous. Its a service to all of us to understand the strange world of the white house and can is the man and hopefully you have a complete set. If not, we will get it from amazon. Congratulations. [applause]. Thank you. I cant remember if you was the one who took the picture or if it was one of those iconic pictures. Thats the funeral. The sun shooting right. There are two news photographers that claim based have the only image. One was a guy named sam stearns and the other was a guy named harold. One worked for the daily news. One worked for upi but they both said they got the image. What they both did is get an image. They didnt get the only one. They must have Something Different on the table. Somehow they were looking at that and everybodys idea. Thats the one. Exactly. They were obvious. So. Who should i make these up to . [inaudible conversation]. That was one of them, youre right. Thank you very much. Nice to see you. [inaudible conversation]. [inaudible conversation]. Theres a picture based on historical moments like president obama in the situation room when the raid killed bin laden. Thats become an eye swearingin of lyndon johnson. Thats become an iconic pictures so there are a number of those. Theres, that its that sound aspect of it. Is forest portraiture, i cant think of anything that has the proven with that harsh picture . Right. And who would ever go up and snatch the cigar . If he didnt make it, he couldnt imagine going up and doing whatever could be incarcerated. I am trying to make that happen. It just takes a while to get this stuff. It was very timely. Thanks for bringing up the roosevelt years. I thought it was very a quick incorrect. [inaudible conversation] we had a picture of him being carried out of the car which he didnt want anybody to know he had a disability. Everybody loved him anyway. Anyway, thanks mary jane. B heres a look at some of the current bestselling nonfiction books according to the wall street journal. Topping the list is former white house photographer keith souza is behind the scenes look at the presidency of barack obama. Next is inventing joy a memoir from inventor and entrepreneur troy mangano then keep drummond offers her recipes in the pioneer woman cooks. Thats followed by medical medium thyroid ruling by Anthony Williams and in fifth, Oprah Winfrey provides insights from her most meaningful conversations in the wisdom of sundays. Our look at the bestselling nonfiction books according to the wall street journal continues with biographer Walter IsaacsonsLeonardo Da Vinci followed by Bobby Kennedy by msnbc host chris matthews. After that is capital gains, and then work from renovation expert and hgtv post chip gains and pulitzer prizewinning biographer ron turned out explores the life of president ulysses s and wrapping up our look at the bestselling nonfiction books according to the wall street journal is news host brian joe needs history of the war of 1812 battle of new orleans. In Andrew Jackson and the miracle of new orleans. Some of these authors have will be. On book tv. Watch them on our website, booktv. Org. Will, good evening ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the Westport Library my name is bill harmer im the executive director of the library and is thank you for coming out this morning. This evening. It you would, please take a moment to silence yourel