[applause] and now from the 2018 Rancho Mirage writers festival in california authors and historians john and margaret mcmellon and douglas discuss is their favorite historical figures. Ladies and gentlemen, please give a warm welcome to the stage Douglas Brinkley morgan and john with your moderator, jeff. [applause] well i hope youre having as much fun as i am at this festival. You know, i always think of students in college a few of you were in college few years ago as best thing to do is to take the take the teacher not the course. And here i think is thing that is fun is to tack these incredible authors to be in a room with them whatever theyre talking about. The only problem with it this with this festival is theres somebody in every room and you want to be with but today we have terrific people who i think, youve heard from them all at one point or o another Douglas Brinkley written biography about more president s than most of us have ever heard of but also done so many other interesting things including among ga gazillion and great space race so be watching for that. And to give you gossip he has basement, basement studio basement studio envy of john who has got that msnbc, and margaret is trying to make the same deal with the cbc. [laughter] of course great history in 1919 that transformative book so porpght and john who has written so many wonderful so many wonderful biographies former editor of news weekend and many of his know him from his basement studio. [laughter] from morning joe. The assignment today is really to talk about who is your favorite historical figure. I think i want to make that a free and fun thing. So people who have one or two and why, and then maybe later well duet into some other elements that thinking about writing about people that you love. But john why doangts you start us off with your favorite historical figure. Pledgets the way it is questioned often phrased is who would you like to have dinner with, and i us yod to say jesus but that didnt end very well. So dont want that. So so mine is and margaret has a connection here. Mine is Winston Churchill a i wouldnt have to say much. [laughter] so thats good. There would be a very good bed of cigars important to me, and he was able to it was a genuine renaissance man. He was able, able writer usually prolific he was a good paint or. Just a man of parts as i called him largest human being of our time. And my fence is, that listens i take from the most of all is perseverance. Churchill got about one thing right but if youre going to get one thing right adolf hitler is the one to get right. [applause] so if church hill had died in 1938 even into 39 he would have gotten some notices in the New York Times interest british statesman who would said earlier he changed parties three times if anyone can rad it was character to rerad he was wrong about gandhi wrong about inked why and gold starngd and wrong about sidney street riots but by god when the crisis of the time came he was right about world war ii and i think that to my mind inarguable so we can argue but im convinced that we live in a brighter, better world because this man lived and rose to power when he did on the tenth of may 1940. When he became Prime Minister he later wrote that i fell apart walking as destiny in all of my life in preparation for this hour and for this trial i was sure i should not fail. No one else was sure he wouldnt fail. When roosevelt learned about his being appoint ofpointed becausee time difference and fdr used to keep cabinet to work all week and depending on your point of view that was good or bad so cab thet meetings were on friday afternoon and he was handed a note saying that churchill had been called to palace to be called to replace chamberlain and he read it and looked up and said i suppose winston is best man england has even if he is drunk half of the time. [laughter] so to which i quote our own great war time demander in chief is that if that is what had it take i hope they send a case of whiskey to all of our Prime Ministers. Theres a particular book wrote his own wonderful book, there have been many biography but is there for one who want to follow you you say this is the one to read . Well there are one of the reasons he is large for me is because i read william the book, the first volume the last when i was of an age highly impressionable. I actually read i think i was an Early High School day, and one with summer i read the first volume of the last lion, and my future friend evan thomas and the wisemen, and i love them both so much that i reread both sequentially, and ten years later, so i was in a Job Interview with evan for newsweek at the time and i said i want to tell you, i read your book when i was 13 years old. And then reread it. It was just such a great summer and evan said he must have been a real loser. [laughter]. Dipping in and out of great contemporaries where he did portraits of various spacemen and writers. Margaret wonder two favorites . Favor is of weather then euros because i think heroes are a bit dangerous because you sit tend to see him as better than everyone else. Theres a risk by the way if you read about them you find they have causes. The lovely thing about discovering people is discovering how human they are and they are not like us but they are in some various important ways. One of the people that im most fascinated by and love is someone i suspect most people wont know much about and that is someone called bab or from the 16th century. He came from a very small kingdom in central asia and when he was about 12 his brother who was very was out feeding pigeons and he became friends in the so kingdom. His loving family took it away from him so he became an exile and got fed up. At one point he was giving up any points to have a kingdom and move to china. It was truly extraordinary because the fact that he was later it was extraordinary in those days. Those people his this type wouldnt have been literate at all in the kept us personal general journal. He talks about getting fed up and falling in love and then he discovered alcohol. He was muslim but he loved drinking and he loved taking drugs and he sounded like a fraternity boy. He said i got so drunk last night they tell me they dont know how i drove home. I got on my horse and they say i just rode like a maniac. You get this extraordinarily personal voice which i love. Hes not like us. You think what a nice man and everywhere we went he would build a garden and a built beautiful gardens then he would come to delhi and he didnt like the climate that he would build a garden. Wed be talking about gardens and about how beautiful they are and then he said i found out my cook was trying to poison me so i sent her trampled by elephants. Just wonderful contrast. I recommend it. It reaches across the centuries and a translation done by the smithsonian. Its fascinating to remind to their great number of human beings. Something we should do is post these on line so their readers. I continue where the book is. I think i would have had to drink a lot and suddenly be trampled by elephants. Michelle for french essayist was the most symbolized inhumane person coming out of that dreadful century when catholics were killing protestants and vice versa. Hes interested in literally everything. He starts off calling on carriages and he starts writing about different kinds of carriages. He says have you noticed how odd it is that some people smell differently than other people in the waters off at that and any waters off of the flowers. Every once in a while he said i must get back to my subject. He gets back for one minute and then he goes off to these normally civilized and he keeps on saying we tell them, we keep telling those people that live there im not sure we are bringing them anything of the sort. He has this wonderful openness and willingness to question. Between the two of them i think i would like to meet them at some point. Before we drag you into talking backstage about the difference between the ways these issues are seen by historians versus biographers. Could you talk about that for just a minute . Theres a slight cold war sometimes between story or some biographers and we tend to look down on the other. Historians i biographers yes they go on about their feelings but they dont understand the times in the context and biographers say about historians they are so unimaginative and all they do is talk about rate historical times and they dont understand the living breathing suffering human beings in the middle of it. I think we need to talk to each other and i think we do both. Good for situate their people in their times and good historians understand the people who are part of those times. We do have a cold war i think. You are behind that a cold war anyway both sides of that particular divide but who are some people you love to write about or who you would love to have dinner with . Ive been doing a lot of panels on president s so its easy for me to say Theodore Roosevelt who i used to say was my favorite president , franklin roosevelt, they are my stars in president ial history. I just adore reading about both been studying George Washington is another one of my personal favorites but i wanted to pick rosa parks because the reason i pick rosa parks as i was born in atlanta georgia. We lived there when Martin Luther king was my childhood memory was dr. King in atlanta. I was eight years old when dr. King was killed. I subsequently bounced around and i taught history in new orleans and i had a thing called the magic bus. I would take College Students around the country and we would visit history sites. We created one for civil rights tours. We went to birmingham and atlanta studying the Civil Rights Movement but i would go to montgomery and those days there was no memorials for rosa parks. There was one street named after her Jefferson Davis avenue intersected with rosa parks boulevard that i wanted to see where rosa parks lives on december 1, 1955 when the montgomery bus boycott kicked in and she became the mother of the movement. It was the most decrepit underfunded Housing Project she was living in and in her room without exaggerating, her home was the size of the stage. She lived with her husband raymond in this impoverished away yet her integrity level was so high. She didnt go to college but she went to an Industrial School for girls where they taught home economics. It was one of the booker t. Washington Industrial Schools in the south. Then she worked her way and would do things like work as a secretary for the naacp for no money. Ed nixon who is the big kingpin of the railroads, the Porters Union she would file all those things and keep it all but i couldnt believe with rosa parks there was nobody that ive written a serious book about here. Theres taylor branchs volume. There were 200 books on Martin Luther king but nope looks on parks. Wed like it to be an africanamerican woman. She said im not that. I brought like three of my books to her to get my credentials to interview mrs. Parks in all of this and that neither was walking back to the Consulate Club in d. C. Where i was staying and Elaine Steele called me and said i didnt like hearing myself telling you that. You are a good historians. You write a lot. Theres nothing wrong with you so im going to have you spent time with mrs. Parks. I started going with her. I was with her when she got her congressional old metal on capitol hill with the wheelchair. Stay with her on eighth street. I went with her to Beverly Hills where she spent time and i went to detroit where she was a microscopic history on the underground railroad. Your apartment overlook the Detroit River and her apartment was in the exact spot where john brown and Frederick Douglass. I would spend time with her and i would Advertiser Newspapers and show her the newspapers because she would say oh my gosh that orange soda wheeze to drink it because she had a frame of mind only to say the same thing when i read transcripts about number 155. It turned out to be an amazing woman. During world war ii she tried to get africanamerican kids to go into a library and they wouldnt let africanamerican kids in montgomery evening get a book in the library. She sued alabama for the right to vote. She women that were raped in alabama with by white men and was covered up that i started realizing this tamir very christian woman. Later in life she adopted buddhism with her christianity. She used to tell me that i mixed race. Im africanamerican, im scottish, cherokee, creek and she would rattle them all off. So getting that opportunity to write about her and when i turn the book into my publisher i got back you know that you are the biographer what is your darkside . I said there isnt one, honest. She would take care of the reason montgomery roses because she would draft a School Program to teach people and always dressed to the nines, never swore and the only agreement that i had made with mrs. Parks was that i would let her read my book before publication just for error but no editorial comment. She called me, she called my wife and she called me and she said i have one change you must make. I thought, what could i do . You call my husband raymond an alcoholic and he was a heavy drinker but not an alcoholic. It was generational. She didnt like that term. I wrote very well i thought about raymond in my book and so it was one of those things when you get to know somebody there disadvantages about writing a bout a living person is a biographer. You dont want to hurt them but in other cases the experience uplifted my life. I have three kids, 11, 13 and a 14yearold. They all studied rosa parks in school and i get to go to their schools and tell them that you too can make a difference. Stand up what you believe in and stand up against injustice. Great people can be everyday people. I think its important for them to know you dont have to be president s and world leaders. Mrs. Parks is a great vehicle. Thats a great story. [applause] is a think about the impact on young people one of the ways they learned whether its through fiction or movies there was another panel but we will talk about. They are sometimes distorted that sometimes they are true. I dont know how accurate it was but certainly was an inspiring story. Is there anything like that where you think theres a figure that has been wonderfully displayed and you brought that person to life to a world that otherwise wouldnt have known them and thats inspiring . There is very much an example right now which is kathleen graham. When you were the editor of newsweek. I worked with her. There were a bunch of helicopters on the tarmac and the g. I. S had no mr. President thats not your helicopter. He said son, they are all my helicopters. We all worked for mrs. Graham. The other great story is the newsweek would close on saturday night and it would appear sunday night usually in washington. We had an item in the front of the magazine about a sitting senator, not here, that was woefully wrong. The senator had called mrs. Graham on monday morning and let her know that he was not wildly pleased with this. I happen to be in his office. He was the Washington Bureau chief. Mrs. Graham got the call from the senator. She called evan i could hear her voice on the phone. Now i think its meryl streeps. [laughter] evan charmingly but ineffectively quoted phil gramm who had said maam im sorry but your husband this is supposed to be the first rough draft into wonderful mrs. Graham voice. It doesnt have to be so bleak so raw. [laughter] so i think they captured her. Several of us knew her and she would have been beyond thrilled. I just think how much he would have loved that portrait. She was cut out of shes not in that movie and its kind have been needed correction of the record. Is there someone that you think of that has a wonderful historical portrait whether its a novel or movie. Im always worried when we decide to historical figures and interesting enough and tries to update them more. Some of you may have seen the movie with Kevin Costner and Kevin Costner says hes a caring feminist demand which is unconvincing given the times. Maid marian is there protofeminist who insists on women having equal share in whats going on around nottingham. Im a bit worried when we tried it recovered people and bring them up to date. I guess we are always doing at finding people we talk about. One of the things about womens history for example through that we have found women who should be celebrated. The black american women who work at nasa whose contributions simply were not recognized. I think thats a useful thing that history can do is uncover heroics are lost people. For some reason they werent paid attention to at the time. They were the wrong gender or they came from the wrong social class. I think thats something that we are doing a lot of. There are wonderful biographies being written and one that hillary thats all has done about a whole generation of people in england and its very complicated and very difficult. I think she has unlike a lot of historical novelist and filmmakers she has kept very much to the historical records. She has used it and she has kept to the record. I think the book is almost always better than the movie. I will say sophies choice, the book in and the movie were both tremendous. I thought also like kill a mockingbird the book in the movie are both tremendous. It does happen and thats a very happy moment. I thought the movie was good and the book but we are talking about Hidden Figures in history. When you are working on a book you do discover under some figures. You are working on the big person be the other roosevelt than many realize wow the person i should be writing about is and im writing on t. R. And conversation when pinchot is a the name everyone should now put a recently found out the woman figure of Rachel Carson and silent springs but i found the Supreme CourtJustice William o. Douglas who was doing a documentation and ddt and all of this was playing in court. He was an environmentalist but how was he getting this information . Because he was a member of the Wilderness Society which was created in 1935 and he started going all over the country writing these two books called my wilderness. Everybody would come through and he came up the leading stopgap environmental figure. Yesterday i talked to karl rove about the arctic refuge. To come back and to tell eisenhower, they werent friends at the time. Bill douglas was a democrat. He was doing those kinds of things all the time. The person i think we have an obligation to once in a while like scott hurd told us in his introductory talk about the library of america writing in world war i or chance to give voices to others, in my life the book that is to me as a boy growing up which is jack kerouac on the road. When i became part of the establishment i was at the century club in new york and jack kerouac, a bomb. Hes never going to be in the pantheon of greats. The whole council of Foreign Relations people, what are you doing kerouac for . It used to annoy me to no end because i knew on the road was a special novel and not just that but other kerouac books. So i started a campaign to get him in the library of america and they did it. Its the roads novel of jack kerouac. We have two volumes by jack kerouac with whitman and Frederick Douglass that. I thought he belonged in the american pantheon. Id like to do that with thomas was of North Carolina who is being derided over time. Its out of fashion now but wolf is a very potent voice. Im wondering if each of you would talk for just a minute about who you would like to write about now. And i know you were writing about James Madison right now. Do you have about jan back . Im particularly interested as somebody youd like to write about it but your publisher says says. No publisher would ever say that. Its cynical california. An academic view. [laughter] the ivory tower people. They are any number of events that i think would be lovely. I have a fantasy bucket lists. Im fascinated by the six days between the attack on pearl harbor and hitlers declaration of war on the United States. At t. R. Did not move against germany though germany moved against us on the 11th of december. The longest five days of churchills life because he was suddenly terrified and the republicans who are specifically oriented were going to keep fdr from fighting a european war and focus on the pacific retailer made three mistakes from which he never recovered allowing the pef to escape from dunkirk in june of 41 and declaring war on the United States unilaterally. My sense is and this is a biographer wandering into history without a pass is if you take any one of those mistakes away and the outcome of the war might have been different. He could have made to but he made three. John cash has made a great contribution i think by writing these very focused books. His five days in london is the basis of the darkest hour. To go to the point about screenwriters making characters more adjusting, the great achievement of that film which i think was nominated that is out now is they had the good sense of getting out of churchills way in terms of his language. I havent seen the screenplay but ill bet that 75 of what i heard watching it is actually from his letters, from his speeches, from him. A lot of screenwriters want to make it their own. When you are dealing with churchill that handled the language better than anyone of shakespeare its a better way to get out of the way. See that there was a conversation the other day about this. She was talking about one part of it. You remember the focused was on the upper ground. If you said that for all the Johnny Walker red is he might have. But even then probably not. Its a little bit like the bible. Its true but not accurate. I dont want to get in trouble with any biblical lets say that the point of view. Margaret anybody you would love to write about if you decided you wanted to be a biographer instead of the historian . Yes, theres several people. I would love to have written i may rethink it. Roosevelt seems to be a complicated intelligent happy and very important person who made a real difference in the United States. Theres a wonderful biography. Eleanor roosevelt. Hooted i say . Fdr must be one of the most difficult to be person to be married to. Think shes absolutely fascinating. I want to do a biography about someone who must have never heard of who wrote a few bad victorian poems who was an absolute rogue and travel around the world wrote a diary which was published and his wife cut all the bits out. Nobody knows about him and i mentioned it to my publisher and she said no. That they have that way of thinking and they see dollar signs in their minds and they say no we just dont think it would sell and they were absolutely right. What you do is so complicated. You have to live with us and what someone told me once a very nice woman who did a biography who had a father who was equally strange who threw up when off to live in saudi arabia and work for the saudi king in the 1930s. If you go to saudi arabia you can meet him. He has a whole second life there and monroe did a biography of him. She said they came to hate him so much that it was absolute misery. So painful to write because i couldnt bear to spend any more time with him. Choosing a biography is like choosing a partner. You have to be careful. Im curious doug and scott have you ever had an experience that who youre writing about and you want to find them totally and had the do that and secondly someone you are not really happy you found that you have to deal with them. Let me just comment on this. I do think that her example it is intimidating. They teach a style. One of the great either first. Hes amazing. He is doing a new biography style on Theodore Roosevelt. There has been so much written on Theodore Roosevelt that is easy to be intimidated that theres not a role for me but you go for it. I would encourage you to do eleanor roosevelt. Theres still a lot of material in a way to do a very powerful bagger fee. I tend to think that if they dont have the big dog are free they need to be done. With that said this conference made me think about a few. Ive done so much on natural history. James madison is big want to do. James monroe, nobody has done a big look on james are narrow. He could have gone a third term. John quincy adams in the monroe doctrine, a lot would be able to be done with monroe and no one has done a biography. Im aghast that theres not a big biography on cesar chavez. There is cesar chavez boulevard, Parc National highways, everything and yet nobody has invested in the life and times of cesar chavez. Those are examples about how you think about it. Or forget it, and love to ride on George Washington because im intimidated. Theres so much. I would have to do like margaret did with china. I would take off that George Washington at valley forge and just at valley forge. Im not so good at the war period even though i wish i was. Can i Say Something about a stray observation . Doug talked about life books or the full meal. You do soup to nuts or do you do a piece of it . I think the biggest threat and i dont want you to drag you all into it. But we do is netflix. Let me explain. Tv is now so good. In the case of deregulation working he broke the monopoly of the networks. And technology. And technology but it turns out theres an enormous amount of talent and my sense is, i try to write short walks. Bush 41 used to worry about Mission Creep. Ive got Mission Creep but 20 hours however long it takes ultimately to read a single book book. That time is by and large being used watching the leaked british chronicles. Can i just ask how many of you have watched a really good british acorn tv. Anyone of you subscribe to a current tv . Thats really amazing. Maybe this is unfair but have you found yourself more often talking to friends not about what you are reading but about what you are watching . That is definitely happening and let me try this out to. How many of you find yourselves listening to books as much as or maybe more than reading books . Thats another phenomenon but looking at the three of u. S. Writers because youve all had books that are now red and accessible that way. Do you care whether somebody reads your book or listens to at . I dont. My work is done as long as you pay for it. [laughter] ive got children to feed. The funny thing about the book she said i read a book and its like a child. I send it out to the world and what it makes of that world is on its own. Ive done the book and extended out. Whatever happens to the book. What a loving mother. Jacqueline has a maternal instinct. I know what she means though. Stutman you can do anymore with it. You get emails saying you should have done this and you should have done that and its too late. The book is done. We are not going to change it. Very few writers and republish it. Largely in agreement that if i had a choice between someone bringing me a book on kate stein or i would like to kate stein book. I used to work as tonight manager of second story books in washington d. C. And then i worked at book dog for larry magid tree. Even now thats my hobby first editions, book collections building and americana library. As a book man thats what id like to sew the books, i understand it. I listen to usually memoirs when i commute from austin to Rice University where teach but to me theres nothing like a tangible book. It does make the choice of a narrator hugely important. When your contract is done do you have a choice for the narrator of the book yet written . We have the same editor as you know. [laughter] my arrangement is i couldnt choose them that i got to consult. If they asked me something. Maybe thats what it is. I listen to a focus book by students to the readers and we would all agree on the one that we like the best. I had a dream narrator to the bush 41 book. I want sam waterson to read it. Raising one with another another. If you want connecticut i will give you connecticut and he couldnt do it. I was lucky. Ed herman read one of mine and tragically died. I love ed what he did all of mccullough. There was a very nice person who told me how much you love my book on truman and the young Theodore Roosevelt. Despite teen Doug Brinkley and everyone called you david brinkley. I dont want to hear your complaints. Sam and cokie really like you. Im not lying my first book was through Yale University of press on dean acheson and someone i knew owned a bookstore. They threw a nice party for me in their new york penthouse. I was a young kid in my first book sitting at the desk of my signing pen on dean acheson and lo and behold in a tuxedo was Walter Cronkite in line. I thought wow the guy watched in ohio is coming to my book signing on dean acheson. I kept an eye on him and i was talking to other people. When he got up to me he said that was a wonderful time we had sailing together. [laughter] he thought i was davids son. You are in that position to say well you know. I corrected him and i watched them slink out. A whole category on this i was on stage with a varied prominent person interviewing him and he kept asking me, as you wrote about your hamilton point. You think i am how did you handle that . Something like this happens. How many of you have had someone walk up to an airport and they are convinced you are some other person . I used to be someone phil donahue. I got such great treatment. The show went off the air but i got good treatment. A great jim baker story. Jim baker ran the only time he was on the ballot in the loss. He was on his way up to the ranch that friday after the election to his wounds. He is filling up his truck with gas and an old boy walks up to him and says anybody tell you that you look a lot like jimmy baker . Baker said yes, sometimes. Doesnt that just as you off . [laughter] we will never be off by this terrific panel. Please join me in taking these wonderful people. [applause] [inaudible conversations] in 2018 Rancho Mirage writers festival continues with a conversation between authors dave barry and scott turow. [inaudible conversations] ladies and gentlemen please give a warm welcome to scott turow and dave barry. [applause]