book tv. on cspan2. >> and now i'm book tv we want to introduce you to a author whose name is mike purdy. mr. purdy when you do for living? >> i'm a presidential historian, i do writing on my website presidential history.com. i do writing for interviews for a lot of media on the intersection of president trump history and politics. >> are you classically trained to string? >> i am not, it is something this been a passion my whole life. and so it has been fun to do that writing now, and to be able to actually publish a book. >> and we want to talk to about that book it is "101 presidential insults". was that concept come from? >> it comes from many, many years of relationships between these 44 men who have served as president. sometimes good relationships sometimes really bad. sometimes they started out good, and that went sour. and so i began collecting these quotations and then i started thinking about the political environment we live in today. and i thought, this would be timely to demonstrate the fact that these quotes and these snipes by these men have been around since the founding of our country. >> a lot of these guys did not get along did they? >> they did not. and sometimes they got along and then they didn't. so i think one of the classics is jon adams and part of their careers they were great friends and collaborators. they had a big falling out as they found themselves in different political parties. and then about a dozen years before their death adams writes this wonderful heartwarming letter to jefferson and he says you and i ought not to die before we have explained ourselves to each other. and i always think that is such a good statement, that we could learn from today. how do we explain ourselves to one another in this political environment. >> and you have a quote hear from thomas jefferson talking about jon adams. and mine showered but seeking popularity and eaten to a honeycomb with ambition yet weak, confused, uninformed, and ignorant. where did you find that? >> the interesting thing about that quote is it was just months after adams was elected president and jefferson was elected vice president. and so they did not have a very good relationship with one another. [laughter] and then did that affect that administration? >> absolutely, absolutely. just imagine today if we had a president and vice president from different political parties, that would totally shape the environment. >> it also seems at least from your book, that presidents ran against each other, or followed each other had a particularly bitter relationship. >> absolutely that is very well said. you can look at 1912 which probably prior to 2016 was the most bitter campaign we've ever seen. see had incumbent taft trying to defend the white house theater roosevelt who he is running, and then democrat woodrow wilson. >> and it was vicious. especially roosevelt was quite creative with the things he lobbed against taft. and wilson got into the fray and taft fought back as well. one of the things i learned from the book is there's a lot of quotes that we hear or read about that these presidents have said about one another but you can't find them anywhere. so one of them was in 1912 it's reputed that theodore roosevelt said that taft had the brains of a guinea pig. so it's a great memorable line, but it's nowhere to be found, at least that i could find. >> so here you have theater roosevelt talk about william howard taft is a fat head. where did you find that? >> where did i find that i think that was in a newspaper clipping from may of 1912, i want to say. and both taft and roosevelt were making swings through ohio, and newspapers were reporting on what they said. >> you use a lot of quotes from richard nixon in his conversations with monica. >> i think that is when his presidency and nixon was a little more unfiltered perhaps. or at least is coming out and we are getting a window into some of his thinking, some of his mind. >> one of the more unusual relationships with jimmy carter and gerald ford. very bitter campaign in 1976. >> oh yes it was incredibly bitter. they hated one another, and yet when they both went to sit out funeral, after the presidencies, they have been spending a lot of time on the plane and realized they didn't like each other. and of course at gerald ford's funeral jimmy carter spoke and said probably know too presidents have ever enjoyed such a close relationship as they did. they became very, very warm and their friendship. >> harry truman is also quoted in here couple of different times. he was willing to speak on the record i guess. >> he spoke on the record. some of what he said was said contemporaneously, unfiltered somewhat. then a lot of it came out of the 1961 book the oral history book where he would pontificate on earlier presidents. and he would say i think he said franklin pierce was a complete fizzle. so he definitely had choice things to say. >> who is he talking about when he said this, this is harry truman again. he was the coldest man i ever met, he didn't give a damn personally for me or you, or anyone else in the world. as far as i could see. >> sounds like fdr. >> why would he say that about his predecessor? >> while fdr and truman had not much of a relationship quite frankly. truman was somewhat of a dark horse becoming vice president, and truman of course was only vice president for a few months before he died in april 1945. so i think they met once during roosevelt's fourth term the beginning of his fourth term. >> who did the art on the front of your book? art was done by an artist at a new york victor and i had a lot of fun talking about concepts and what it should be, and i think he did just a delightful job capturing some of these presidents, who were some of the more vocal outspoken ones. looking at them quite angry. >> when we go through this book, our world today, is no different is it? >> it is no difference that is one of the things i learned from doing the book is that these insults have been around forever. i think the difference is that in the early days of the republic, many of the quotes were written down in a private letter, and a diary, private conversation that somebody then reported on. whereas today and increasingly so, it's been in books, speeches, and now on twitter of course. and i think today, the level of what we see in the public square is much more vitriolic and much more intense and frequent them we ever had before. but it's always been around because this is politics. >> given that we are in a social media era, people are not writing the letters they used to and e-mails are more prevalent. is it tougher for historian? i think it's definitely tougher. you don't get the kind of unfiltered thinking of these men, all you get is the posturing that comes out on social media. and i think social media along with other factors is one of the reasons why we have such a polarized society. not only social media but there's a lot of fear in our society and a lot of people who are afraid to people who speak differently, look differently worship differently than they do. all these factors combined, and the speed of our news cycle, just continues to escalate things. >> prior to developing yourself as a prudential historian what kind of work redoing? >> i worked for 30 plus years as a contracting manager for state and local governments in washington state dealing with construction contracts and consultant contracts. >> presidential history.com bubble people find there? >> they will find my blog were included lots of interesting things, the most recent was a guest post from someone from the andrew johnson national historic site and she tells the story of how they found some new records of andrew johnson's. these things are hiding in people's addicts and museums at all. so i got a blog there, i got a couple of videos that re-creates what it would look like if modern-day tv, newscaster was reporting on some key events in presidential history. there's a lot of resources on there in terms of links to books, presidential sites, things like that. >> so when you look over your shoulder at that building over there what are your thoughts? >> i think about jon adams statement when he writes to abigail, so he lived in the white house five months only and he says may none but honest and wise men ever live under this roof, rule under this roof. so i think about that and i think about the long traditions that we have in this country with the presidency. >> here's the book it's called "101 presidential insults", what they really thought about each other and what it means to us. the author is mike purdy. :