I think of students in college as the best thing to do is to take the teacher, not the course and hear to take these incredible authors and to be in the room, whatever they are talking about. The problem with this festival is there is somebody in every room you want to be with. Douglas brinkley has written biographies of more president s than most of us have ever heard of. Other interesting things a prime focus on the space program. The great space race. Be watching for that. And hes a cnn historian. He has a little basement studio envy of jon meacham. And Margaret Macmillan is trying to make the deal with cnbc. The great historical deal one of those transformative books but so important and jon meacham has written so many wonderful biographies, former editor of newsweek. The assignment is to talk about your favorite historical figure. I want to make that a fun thing so maybe we will get into some other elements. John why dont you start us off with your favorite historical figure. Its often phrased who would you like to have dinner with and i used to say jesus but that didnt end very well. [laughter] margaret has a familial connection here minus winston chiu told. I wouldnt have to say much. There would be a very good set of cigars which is important to me and he was a genuine renaissance man. An able writer, hugely prolific, good painter. My sense is the lesson i take his perseverance. Church will cost about one thing right. If you are going to get one thing right, adolf hitler is the one to get right. [applause] if churchill had died in 1938 even 39, he would have gotten some notices, a british statesman who we said earlier tinged party three times, said he was wrong about gandhi in india and the gold standard, about the sydney street riots but when the crisis of the time came, he was right about world war ii. In my mind it is inarguable we live in a better and brighter world because this man rose to power when needed. He later wrote i felt as if i walked into destiny as a preparation for this hour, for this trial. No one else was sure he wasnt failed. When roosevelt learned of the time difference, friday afternoon in washington and fdr keeps the cabinets to work all week. The cabinet meetings were friday afternoon and he was handed a note if churchill had called to replace chamberlain. He looked up and said i suppose winston is the best man england has even if he is drunk half the time. [laughter] to which i quote our great commanderinchief Abraham Lincoln if thats what it takes i hope they send a case to all of our prime ministers. Is there one for people who want to follow. I have had william will chesters book and i think that i was in my Early High School days and one summer i read and my future friend, evan thomas and Walter Isaacsons book about them so much i didnt rewrite them sequentially and ten years later i was at a Job Interview with newsweek at the time and i said when i read your book and then i reread it was such a good summer. He looked at me and said he would have been a loser. [laughter] it is a wonderful portrait of churchills world the great victorian summer. The other is that not enough people read is my early life which is his best book published 34 or 35. Another book if you havent seen it is called great contemporaries. Favorites rather than heroes because i think heroes are avid interest. Theres the risk by the way if you write about them. Of the lovely thing about discovering people is discovering how human they are. One of the people im fascinated by is someone i suspect most people wont know much about and he founded a dynasty in india that lasted. He came from a small kingdom in central asia and when he was about 12, his father was outfitting his pigeons. Its simply called away carrying the father with it so he became prince of this little kingdom and his uncles arrived and promptly took it from him since he became an exile and got fed up. And the fact that he was extraordinary in those days most people with this type wouldnt have been literate at all. He talks about getting him up and falling out. He sounds but a fraternity boy, i have no idea how i got home. You get this voice i love you go across the countries. Hes not like us but [inaudible] then he conquered delhi and didnt like the climate but said i will do my best to build a garden than he had i sent out my coke was trying to poison me so i sent her and some others to be trampled by elephants. [laughter] if reaches across the country and there is a translation done by some of the smithsonian. Its fascinating. It reminds you there wer are a t many human beings and the other. We should post these online so that the readers know where to find them. I can tell you where the book is. Im not sure that i would like to have dinner with them. The french essayist who lived in the revolution coming out of this country when they were killing protestants vice versa it might be wonderful essays and hes interested. He can never keep his mind on any one subject that he starts off called on carriages and starts writing about the characters and says have you noticed how all of it is some people small differently to other people. I very often he says they must get back to my subject. Its a time when the world is being discovered and exploited. We keep telling them we are bringing the civilization. Between the two of them i think i would like to make them at some point. Youvyou have been talking backstage about the difference between the way they are seen by historians and most biographers. I think we both tend to look down on the other. They are so unimaginative and they dont understand the living, breathing. I think we need to talk to each other and we do both. Good historians understand the people who are part of those times. I wish we could have that. Who are some people that you would like to read more about. Would it be easier for me to say Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt i enjoy reading about food and studying them. George washington is another of my personal favorites that i wanted to pick rosa parks. I was born in atlanta georgia. We lived through when Martin Luther king, my childhood memories in atlanta i remember where i was, i was 8yearsold when doctor king was killed. I got my doctor did and wind oft history in new orleans in the heady magic bus. I would take tha take students e country and they would visit history sites. We went to montgomery civil rights movements. When i go to montgomery in those days there was no memorial for rosa parks. There was a street Jefferson Davis avenue intersected with rosa parks. I wanted to see where she lived december 11955 when the boycott is the mother of the movement. It was the most decrepit underfunded Housing Project she was living in in a room and im not exaggerating her home was the size of this stage. She lived in it with her husband in this impoverished way 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. One of the booker t. Washington schools from the south had been she would do thing things that s a secretary for the naacp for no money. Nixon who was the big kingpin of the railroads and the porters union, he would fight aloft with things and keep the ball. But i couldnt remember that the famous rosa parks, nobody had written a serious book about her. Im not kidding, 200 books on doctor king, nothing on the rosa parks so i decided i was going to write a biography of rosa parks. The ironic three of my books to her to get my credentials and that night i was walking back to the club in dc. You are a good historian and you write a lot. Im going to have you spend time with mrs. Parks. I would stay with her on eighth street in Dupont Circle and go with her to Beverly Hills where she spent time and detroit where she was a microscopic on the history of the underground railroad enters apartment overlooked the Detroit River and was on the exact spot john brown had met frederick douglass. I could spend time with her and find old newspapers and show her because she would say that orange soda we used to drink it, because she had a frame of mind only to say the same thing when they read transcripts of december 1, 55. An amazing woman. During world war ii, she tried to get africanamerican kids to go into libraries. They couldnt even get a book in the public library. She sued alabama for the right to vote and to field reports on women that were raised in alabama by white men and was covered up. I started realizing this very christian woman everything about her, Methodist Episcopalian Church and later in life she adopted them as buddhism with her christianity. She used to tell me i am mixed race. Everybody says im africanamerican. Im scottish, irish, cherokee, and the end she would rattle them all off. Getting an opportunity to write about her and i started doing the buck when i turn it into my publisher i got back you are the biographer, what is your dark side . There isnt one. The reason montgomery buses because she would do after School Programs and t teach peoe and always dressed to the nines, never swore and the only agreement i made with mrs. Parks as i let her read my book before publication when the final was done just for ever but no editorial comment and she called me, she called my wife and saidi said i have one change you must make. I dislike she said you called my husband and alcoholic and she was a heavy drinker but not an alcoholic. She didnt like that term. I rode very welthey rode very wt about him in my book and so it was one of those things when you get to know somebody this disadvantage is writing about a living person as a biographer because they feel like you dont want to hurt them but in other cases, this experience really uplifted my life. I have three kids that are from 11, 13, 14yearold theyll study rosa parks in school and i get to go to the schools have told them that you can make the difference. Stand up for what you believe in, stand up against injustice. Great people can be every day peopleeverydaypeople, and i this important to remember that. It doesnt have to be president y and world leaders. It can be us. It can be you and mrs. Parks is a great vehicle for that lesson. [applause] that is a great story. You know, as i think about the impact on young people which is so important for all historians, one of the ways to learn is also through weather prediction or movies Hidden Figures, for example. I dont know how accurate it was but it was a story none of us knew. Is there anything like that but you think has been wonderfully displayed and it is inspiring. There is very much an example right now which is Katharine Graham and the proposed. Saying that it is like when Lyndon Johnson was in vietnam and they turned left into the gi said that thats not your helicopter. He said they are all my helicopters. [laughter] the other story about that is a recluse on saturday night, sunday night usually in washington we had an item in the front of the magazine about the sitting senator, not here that was just woefully wrong. The senator called mrs. Graham on monday morning and let her know he wasnt wildly pleased with this. I happened to be in his office, he was the bureau chief. She got the call from the senator, hung up the phone and call the thing. I could hear her voice on the phone. Charmingly but ineffectively, quoted phil gramm. He said im sorry but as your husband said it supposed to be the first rough draft of history and in the wonderful voice i heard the phone why does it have to be so rough. [laughter] i think they captured her. She would have been thrilled. I think how much she would have loved this portrait. And the peace recently she was cut out of all of the president and mrs. Smith. Shes not in that movie and this is kind of a needed correction of the record. Is there somebody that you think of that got a wonderful historical portrait whether it is in a novel or a movie. I am always moved when they realized historical figure is interesting enough. I said to someone the other day you may have seen the old robin hood with kevin costner. He comes over as a deeply caring feminist man [laughter] which is unconvincing given the times and marianne is a photo feminist with whats going on around the words. I am a bit worried when we try to recover people. One of the good things that has been happening, finding people they forgotten about or never knew about. One of the great things i think about womens history when i was at the university to now, we found women who should have been celebrated about were not. The black american women who work whose contributions simply were not recognized, and i think that is one of the things history can do it can uncover people who made a difference. For some reason they just were not paid at gentoo at the time, they were with the wrong gender or the wrong social class. And i think that is something we are doing a lot of. On this very complicated but anything that weakens the interest and i think im like some, shes kept very much to the historical record shes used it but have kept to the record. I think the book is almost always better than the movie. I will say the book and the movie wouldve tremendous and i thought also that Something Like to kill a mockingbird thereve tremendous. We are talking about Hidden Figures in history. When youre working on a book you to discover under some figures you are working on the big person, Theodore Roosevelt and then you realize the person i should be writing about this the name everybody should know. Rachel carsons silent spring i found the Supreme Court justice documentation of all this stuff from the Supreme Court and you are like spin it how was he getting this information . He was a member of the wilderness society. He started going over the country writing these books called my wilderness