Transcripts For CSPAN2 In Depth 20160208

Receptor. Marijuana works we tested it at the cancer society. It was a fun time to walk down the halls. [laughter] it worked in making people eat and having less nausea and vomiting. Now theres other ways of doing it then using marijuana. Two questions. Why does all the research all have to happen within the confines of the u. S. System . And how fast, wheres it going and the other part of my question which is, we all look at things in technology is such a massive part of this and we think literally timewise and we have been pushing for 40 years since the one cancer began. Now here we are, what what do you think the timeframe is . The next five years can be much faster than the last 40 combined. I think we are going at an accelerated rate. Its worse if you pick up a medical journal. Every issue there something new and exciting. I think the timeframe has accelerated. We are doing two things, and then i dont want want to take up too much time. Converting some cancers and chronic diseases. The best example is chronic leukemia. We took care patients at this disease and they are uniformly fatal. Now they can take a pill and they live a perfectly normal life after while the pills dont work the pharmaceutical industry has developed five followup pills that to work. So the patients with that chronic disease are living normal lives taken a pill every day like a vitamin. They still have the disease but its a chronic disease so we can cure them, to a chronic disease. I i think some immediate they are paid some immunotherapy are going that way. As far as the confines of the United States the thing that cancer acted was it opened up a grant system to all of the countries. We support Cancer Research in many european countries. We set up a Clinical Trial in europe and an operating office in belgium and now they do very well. It was the Cancer Institute that set that up. People have major discoveries, that was marys big point. We did not know where a curate might come from and therefore we should not restrict the grant to the United States [applause]. I would like to thank the dr. For this informative discussion and i hope everyone will come up and meet our speakers. Thank thank you so much for coming. [applause]. [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] im next on book tv, in depth with author and former fox news horse eric berne. The author of several books including infamous scribblers, 1920 and his most recent, the golden most recent, the golden lab. He discusses work in answered your questions earlier today. Host author and journalist derek burns is journalism, the first draft of history. Guest yes, and is one of the reasons history make so many mistakes. Journalism is done quickly, according to deadlines, it is very often wrong is something that i have noticed and i understand this is selfserving peter but something that is meticulous in writing history is there are a lot of mistakes in history if you dont go to the primary source. I think that is because journalism is the first draft. What is one of your favorite mistakes . One of my favorite mistakes in history in terms of how it was written . I have to pass and let that percolate. Host we will do that. From your book all the news you write that samuel adams told more lies in print than any other figure of his time, a distinction from which history is not forgiven but honored him. Guest and you would like me to ask blaine that comment. Interest adams made up incidents of british soldiers on the streets of boston. They were there, have in their way with american women, starting fights with american men, abusing, physically abusing american children. He did it because he wanted this country to be independent from Great Britain. He had a tremendous form, the boston gazette which was the leading paper in boston at the time. He thought of himself as a patriot whose weapon, so to speak was journalism. And he was forgiven by history, he was lauded by history because history seems to have proven that our being independent from Great Britain was a good idea. Therefore, however we got there, even if it meant a lot of contrived joururururur means justifying and. Host where did the idea for all of the news on fit to print come from question. Guest actually it was not a book that i really wanted to do. The book before that, infamous scribblers, which is a phrase of George Washingtons, the Founding Fathers in the rowdy beginnings of american journalism. Im sure you will get to that so i will not get to that. It was about journalism in colonial times which was so abusive that people who think highly of the founders, which they should would be very surprised. A publisher i got in touch with my agent and said can he, meaning me, bring that information up to date about falsified journalism. I could and i did. By that time i was little tired about writing about journalism. So you are holding the book open now and it is because he found a mistake it was because i was getting tired about writing about journalism. Host you write sense of omission are often calculated. Guest sins of omission are a good way to tell lies without telling lies. I do not say to you that is a gas lee looking tie, which it isnt. I just do not mention your tie. That is hardly a sin, but leaving out major facts, residential debates are wonderful example. You can easily and im nothing people have done this, because now that im not in journalism anymore i do not Pay Attention to, it is wonderful i recommend it to most americans. But if you are biased towards a particular candidate and that candidate does something foolish, said says something foolish, behaves in any way and i foolish manner, you omit it. Therefore, you tell a lie about the overall scope of the debate. By not including information that is not for your point of view. Host what was fox news watch . Guest it was a halfhour weekly, very highly rated program that analyzed not the events of the past week but the weight those events were covered. The reason i smiled was that fox is a rather controversial place when it did not reflect my particular political views. People who were of the liberal persuasion who watched my show were very defensive about telling me they liked it. It would always be i dont use watch fox it just happened to be on in the background and it sounded okay. So theyre always had to be a caveat at the beginning. Thus why, i understood that the thing that bothered me was someone from the far right would say to me, hey that is eric byrnes, you go get them liberals. I was not going out to get anyone. I had for panelist on i was calling on them to speak. Thats all. Spee1 what kind to speak. Thats all. Host what kind of topics would you cover . Guest the topic that every other show cover. All of sunday morning talk shows, but we covered how they were covered and the two liberals on the show therefore panelists. They always found conservative bias and vice versa. But were all friends. I tried to be lighthearted, witty, comical in the dressing room, in the dream room so we went out on stage and good humor. We never really, in the ten years i did the show, we all liked each other so theres never the kind of contentiousness they see another shows. I dont want to talk about Television Much and i hope you dont. One thing thing ill say about boxes that people misunderstand what it has done to journalism. Theres nothing wrong with having a Television Network that has programs on it that slant to the right. There are newspapers that do that, magazines that do that, radio shows that didnt. What fox did those more harmful to society was it introduced a degree of contentiousness and argumentativeness that had never been there and made civil discourse on civil. Host did the show and . Guest well i ended. I had a a contract that was not renewed. The show went on for a while and i am told now that it is not on. There is a show that does the same thing. But it has a different name. One of the other things i have treated myself to in addition to political ignorance is i do not watch television very much. If the steelers are not playing, i am not watching. Therefore the super bowl is just three hours of filler to meet. Host you say you dont watch it but you spend a lot of time in television at fox, at nbc, at minneapolisst. Paul and you write about television. Your book, invasion of the mind snatchers, televisions televisions conquest of america in the 50s. In your view, does five ot bonds worth deserve a statue in the capital as he has . Well, considering the influence that television has had in this culture, yes. Most people do not know with any invention including the light ball, the automobile, it is very hard to say who the inventor was. Henry ford tonight about the automobile. There were like bulbs before edison but the people we tend to credit as the inventors are the people who got something working to a certain practical point of view. Fonts worth did that with television. When he wanted his patent and copyright he came up with against embassies general David Sarnoff who had more money, more money means more lawyers, even back then it was the same the legal system was the same as i was today, if you had enough money and he was regarded as the father of television. He came as close to anyone man to inventing television. The book to me is not so much the invasion of mind snatchers, its not so much the invasion of television as it is the history of the fifties, as television for perpetrated. I wanted to write a history of the 50s which had been done money times. It had never been done as television per traded. How are africanamericans pretrade on television . Women, religion, bishop sheen had a prime time show which vehemently denounced abortion and that was fine back then. So i wanted to write a history of that. , Television Just happened to be the prison. Host you also bring in the intersection of policy and television. Estes farber is the only member of the house or senate to win an emmy. One of the most gripping events of the early days of television and only came to be known as the key farber hearings. There investigated organized crime. Stores that sold televisions, they would have televisions in the window with some kind of apparatus, loudspeaker rigged up. People would not only block the sidewalk but blocked the streets to watch. America was memorized by mesmerized by this look into organized crime which though Many Americans to know existed. These rough sounding, ruthless names. Im half italian, the half that is in burns. I remember my grandmother when when i told her i saw the godfather she said why do they have to give all those men i tell you names. What im thinking back to the key farber hearings and i think grandma we did it. So he chaired the hearings and those hearings did lead to somewhat of a reduction in organized crime and to a great deal legislation and to an emmy. Host senator key farber regretted the televised hearing. Guest he regretted them largely from a personal point of view. He was a serious man who, because he became a Television Start which was a phrase that did not even exist then, i think he was taken less seriously. I think if you are a member of the senate you probably do not want to win an emmy. Emmys are for actors. He was not an actor, he was, he was a man who had a serious interest in helping to rid this country of organized crime or lessen the impact of it. He thought the overwhelming he thought there is such a thing as too much popularity and most of it fell on him and because of it he was not taken seriously. When you look at the actor who plays robin to batman and never gets another role. How actors complain they had one role they played it for ten years on television, they were so popular, no one took them for granted in any other way, this is an aside but we have a great deal of time here, a really startling moment, the movie that jane fonda starting, Donald Summerlin was a private eye, there was an intense moment when jane fonda went creeping through a factory of some sort, very dark, very quiet, near the end of the movie, climbed up the stairs and she saw light in the office. She open the door and who was there, but jean stapleton. In other words, Archie Archie bunkers wife. In the time between the movie, the movies wrapping and the start of all in the family, she had gotten that role because of it, this incredibly tense moment turned out to be a comedy, oh my gosh, theres edith bunker and it completely ruined the scene. Would. Would they be in favor of the house of representatives today. Yes i think so, it would focus on not one man but what it would focus on so many men and women, back then it was meant that it would be more fair to say that it focused on process than on people. I think he wouldve favored making the process more clear tell the people. Host back to the news that is on fit to print, you write about russell long and his habit guest do i . Host you do. Guest could you give me more of a hint . It has been ten years. Host you talk about how journalists and this goes back to the sins of omission and how he spent quite a bit of time drinking but it was never reported. Guest thank you very much im sorry i needed all that help, i really did write the book. I generally go from one book to another quickly. Im being interviewed about one book i might wind is totally on another. In this case quite a few books have intervened. That was an era when sexual peccadilloes, thats too too lighthearted a word of adultery, but lets say if they were not reported. Drinking was something may be members of the press corps were not committing adultery but they were all drinking so they certainly were not going to report on a legislator who is drinking, especially a man as powerful as long. In a sense, and my friend cal thomas makes a good point here. Back in those days, when members of a house in the senate were not so concerned about campaigning constantly, especially members of the house who went every two years, they tended to stay in washington over the weekend. Journalists got to know legislators. Legislators got to know each other and there is less hostility when it came to compromise. Legislative compromise. Now you have so many legislators and members of the house leaving on thursday night, first thing on friday morning to campaign, coming back monday midday and they dont know, they dont have friends among their fellow legislators. My friend cal thanks for that reason we have the kind of roadblocks that we do today legislatively. Host eric berne is our guest this month. He is a journalist and author and we will show you some of his books and then we will look at the connection of all of these books. Our author broadcast blues came out in 1993. The autograph in modern fable, his one novel the spirit of america, social history of alcohol came on 2004. Infamous scribblers, the founding. Infamous scribblers, the Founding Fathers in the body beginnings of american journalism, 2006. The smoke of the gods, 2007. Virtue, value, vanity, the Founding Fathers in the pursuit of fame came out 2007. All the news on fit to print that we have been talking about, 2009. Invasion of the my end snatchers, 2010. His most recent books, 1920 the the year that made the decade roar came out last year. The golden lab, the haunting story of quinton theater roosevelt as his latest book. Eric, you have the colonial era turnofthecentury, the media, what is the connection between all of these books . They all have topics that interest me. Im an avid reader. I personal library at home has about 2000 volumes in it. Ill be damned if i can find a connection between topics but i read, in the case of the most recent book which has a subtitle the haunting story of quinton and Theodore Roosevelt, i have read a lot of buy biographies, i have 14 in fact, 14 of those 2000 books and everyone, i came across an incident that was sometimes footnotes, sometimes a sentence or paragraph, but it struck me as a fascinating story, fascinating way to get inside roosevelts mind. Nobody did it. Now the reason is that roosevelt probably held more government positions at various levels than any other man in our nations history. You could write a whole book about theaters job as Police Commissioner in new york. Or theater roosevelt as a conservation. I saw something in my reading that was a small section in that painting. I thought of that section were explained in great detail, the right colors, the right shading, there are be a story about the return roosevelt would not only be fascinating, that would probably be changing minds of people about roosevelt. Give give people Something Different to think about. There some people who dont know the story so i would like to pretend that i am a suspense novelist is not going to blow the ending. I will tell you the three elements i saw on the other books but i saw could be put into one story in which is what the golden lab does, he was the most man ever in the white house. He was the best father, best parent, okay father is the word. I dont know about mothers in the house. Best father in the white house. His son quinton is his youngest and favorite. Those are the three elements which are joined with a few certain stances that had nothing to do with personality that led to this book. So in this case the topic came from my thinking that something very interesting have been neglected. Host you also get into roosevelts relationship with Woodrow Wilson, with with William Howard taft in this book. Guest i had a very different motive for this book. Most books about Theodore Roosevelt and i measured are between one and a half and 2 inches thick, the ones that i have. I dont know if it is easy for viewers to tell and these are peters notes, this is not one and a half or 2 inches thick, the way i wrote this book was to see how much i could leave out. Because i wanted to tell, i wanted to concentrate on the center of the mural, not all the important events on the outside. Yes i left in his feelings towards Woodrow Wilson, all of the major events of his life for their. But, and all places i include his reaction is somehow involved. For instance when he decided not to run for a second full term. Mckinley was anasinated and served one after being reelected. There was an incident in which theodore and quinton were watching the parade for taft and quintons reaction is he is saddenned and that was an important part of the story. When mckinley was assassinated that had to be in the book but the main reason it is there is he cut out black fabric and put them around the arms of figures he had in a book he made. When asked why he said sol solemnly he is said for president mckinley. So cover everything but not to the extent morris did in three volumes about roosevelt. But enough to make it a tale of Theodore Roosevelt but making sure quinton was edging in did that book spring from your previous book on 1920 in any way . No, and if you try find connections, peter, i wish you well. The 20s have always interested me and i think interest a lot of people. In me reading not only did the decades come up a lot, which they always do with american history, but the year came up a lot. It was the year of the ponzi scheme and i think that was better known to people because of bernie may daf than himself. I will try to list everything that happened in 1920, but some of what happened, like the terrorist attack, have reprecussions. The problem about writing about a year is you have to find a story or narrative. You cannot have chapters called january 1st or january 2nd. I really embraced that challenge of trying to get characters in the book in places where they would not normally come. Before hardings presidency i was able to say that Warren Harding looked as if he had been a character in the book and it was a challenging book i had to write because of trying to find a narrative. And the narrative is a little loose but that is what years are. Events dont happen to satisfy the needs of autumn which i think is cosmically unfair but it doesnt happen. You said that you didnt want to list everything that happened during that year. I made a list of the issues in 1920 and i will read them off, let you riff on them and compare them today or whatever. You have marcus gafshy and race relation, prohibition and wane wheeler, the women vote the only year by the way that two amendments to the constitution were passed 1920. Flight is coming into vogue. You have prosperity, you have inequality, you have terrorism, you have labor and rest. You have got the rockafellers and harlem and so on. One thing i thought who would annoy the man who did the jacket design for 1920 is there is a chapter, a small chapter, but explains by the flapper was the most inappropriate symbol possible for that year. And i would think if i were planning a jacket design for a book called 1920 it would be the first thing i thought of. It turned out it wasnt and it wasnt a problem. Let me Say Something about prohibition. You mentioned wayne wheeler. He was a mousy man in appearance and i think he was called Something Like a dynamo in trow haves. He organized the first powerful Action Committee in the country and its purpose was to create prohibition. There was never a time when the majority of us wanted to make alcohol illegal. But wheeler and his people went to the churches and talked to the people in charge of the churches saying if we put out literature that notes your Church Supports alcohol and isnt in favor of getting rid of alcohol it isnt in favor of your church. Went to politicians saying if we let it be known alcohol is an important part of your lives, something you want at your disposal at any time, your constituents might wonder about you. People might think about bribery and that is in essence what he did and what many lobbyist do today in one way or another. He was able to do one of the most remarkable things that has been done in this country and that is make the sale, manufacturing and distribution of alcoholic beverages illegal. Drinking was legal but the rest of it wasnt. Were there socalled 1 ers in the 1920s . What are 1 ers . Extremely wealthy. Sure. I dont know if it would be 1 . But carnegie and frick and others. It is an educated guess, but i would guess, i think it is worth mentioning there was probably a greater disparity in wealth than there is now. Was this a prosperous country . It was a prosperous country beginning to rot from within. In 1920, there a couple of examples of not stocks that were doing poor lee poorly, but what was it . Corn . Rice . Wheat . I cannot remember. But something that a person would have seen as a coming negative. Was happening in the grain market. There were clues that bugs were crawling up through the big bullaging barrels of prosperity. Nobody saw them and nobody wanted to see them. But as early as 1920 somebody could have seen them and somebody could have warned the populus which peter would have paid no attention. This is from your book the spirits of america. You write the revolution war we read was conceived in the watering holes of colonial american was almost as a side and we never ask why. Why . It would astonish people to know how important alcoholic beverages were in colonial times. What you might have had for breakfast this morning if you were a colonial would be a rum and the bells range out at 11 and 4 and this was equivalent to a morning and afternoon happy hour. People stopped to drink. They drank alcoholic beverages with every meal. Children were given alcoholic beverages to toughen them. This makes us suspect alcoholic beverages were not as powerful as they are now but no one knows that. There is no bottle of 1778 chard nay around somewhere we can open and check it out. What it is hard to thing think the founders were able to do everything they did intoxicated. It wasnt just the high. There was a strong belief in the medicinal value of alcoholic beverages and i think it came from the notion that other forms of medicine had had powerful taste and the thought is if there is something wrong in your body, and you put enough rum in your body, whatever it was would get drunk and die. Were some of the famous Founding Fathers drinkers at well . All of them. Thomas jefferson wrote the declaration declaration of independence with a glass of bread wine at his elbow. Ben franklin wrote a song favoring his wine. Washington might have drunk the least but when leaving the white house was it called the white house then . No, the president s house. When he left he installed a brewery. Alexander hamilton was an occasional drinker. John adams kept a tended bar in his fathers tavern. Patri Patrick Henry was also a bartender for a while. I dont know who i am missing but not a tea total. Back to spirits of america, you write that buying votes with booze during the early years of the republic, washington didnt start the practice but used the practice. I think that is a wonderful story. Here is how the first informal, very informal political poll came about. One of the ways that you try to attract votes and putting a bigger liquor vat in front of your polling place. He who bought the most beer bought the most votes. The practice was to dip into the the vat of the person for whom you had voted. Assuming you did that, then somebody who came along at 3 304 00 and looked into the vats and saw which one had the least liquor could go on the air saying early projections are that George Washington will win the Virginia House seat because he only has seven inches left in the barrel whereas his competitor has 12 inches. Washington lost his first attempt to get a seat on the Virginia House of burgess and went to the equivalent of a Campaign Manager the Second Time Around and this is almost a quote do not spend with too sparring of a hand. It is mentioned how much washington spent in the book but hard cider was poplar, rum, different kinds of whiskey and washington was elected the second time. Was there any connection between tainted water and the use of alcoholic beverages . Yes. Coffee wasnt drunk for several reasons. It was hard to get the beans. But you mixed the means once in the proper form with water. The british drank tea so we didnt want to do that. Alcohol beverages were perceived as not only the most beneficial for your health because they killed what was going on inside of you that should have been killed. But they were the safest to drink as well. How important was tobacco in the colonial era . It was more important in the precolumbi precolombian era. If you drank a certain mount you will not feel the same way if you had not drank thereat amoun. You will be a little tipsy and the native american tribes felt that state was a religious state and made them more susceptible to being able to communicate with the gods. With regard to tobacco it was more interesting. Tobacco smoke was thought to be a medicine. Let me get this out of the way now. In the 17th century in paris there was a doctor who cured women, do you remember this . Is that why you are sitting there apprehensively . He killed women who were hysterical by blowing tobacco smoke into the vagina. The notion of tobacco smoke being a cure for diseases lasted a century. Tobacco leaves back to premodern times the primary was of them was to smoke at the temple. And tray as you smoke and the prayers were translated by the spoke up to the celestial realms. My first thought was the native americans must have been disappointed because tobacco smoke doesnt go up very high. But they were quite adaptive in their thinking and what they came to decide was invisible heavenly hand had reached down. And there is great controversy and in one case to substances, tobacco, that are virtually banned everywhere. And again, i am just what drew you to the history of tobacco . There had to be some spark that got you into that. Somebody said to me my father was an alcoholic and nobody told me my father was an alcoholic. I knew that. I could have phrased that better. My father was an alcoholic who smoked four packs of cigarettes at his peak and someone asked me the same question you did. I said i read history and i thought the incident about prayers being transmitted by smoke and how the Founding Fathers drank were just inherently interesting. But somebody said isnt it interesting your father is an abuser. People dont preach usually. And someone asked when you start writing history do you need a point of view . And my answer is if you write history with a point of view i dont want to read that book. I dont care who you are. If i know you are a brilliant literary republican or democrat i dont want to read your work. I dont want to read an authorized biography. That tells me the truth may have worked its way in somehow but in terms of alcohol and tobacco i have just never been able to decide whether my father had anything to do with it simply because if he had, and here i am psycho analyzing myself, wouldnt i have wanted to preach in one paragraph at least, wouldnt i have wanted to i could have attributed to it someone else. I could say there are statistics that show overuse of alcohol leads to a dissolution of 14 marriages. But there is nothing like that in the book. I am not very fond of the prese present. I am happy to be here today. But i try not to get to close to the present in my books. In the smoke of the gods, one has to go to 1964, the Surgeon Generals major report that changed everything. But i like to stay away from the present. Eric burns, how old was your father when he died . I didnt know him well. I think he was in his late 70s or early 80s which means he could have been 135 if we would have taken care of himself. He was a slender man, a good athlete as a young man. Not just a drunk but an abusive drunk. Where were you raised . I was raised in what started out as a healthy steel down and by the time i went to college it was a dying steel town and the last few times i have been there it was a dead steel town. The ghost towns of america are the towns that used to produce steel. Pittsburgh is a big, beautiful wonderful thriving place but the small towns built on the river. Ambridge named after the american bridge company. S subsidy of u. S. Steel. Those little towns, fever falls, and other towns, they are ghost towns. They are remarkable sights. The last time i was in the area i asked a friend of mine to walk through he had been the chief of police to walk through ambridge with me because i wanted to see it. And so i know first hand what a dead community is. And i thought i would like to write about that. And may some day. What do you remember about steel and the importance of steel . Remember the smell . I remember black sugar. You dont know that term, do jow . Black sugar is the name for the granules that came from the smoke stacks and were so insidious that if you closed the doors there would be black sugar on your kitchen table. If you washed your car, left it out in the driveway, three or four hours later you could write your name on the hood. There is no more black sugar and there is no more employment. Our guest on in depth and author and journalist eric burns. If you would like to dial in we will put the numbers up. You can see there is a lot of talks we have covered if you have been listening 2027488200, east and central, 7488201 in the mountain and pacific time zones. You can make a comment via social media as well. You can go to facebook. Com booktv and you will see video of mr. Burns at the top and you can send an email or send a tweet at booktv and finally if you just want to send a text, this isnt for phone calls just text, 2027179684. When did you leave embridge and why . To go to college. And i never went back. And i think the why is fairly obvious. How did you get into this business . I always wanted to write. My first goal was to write for the new yorker in the 30s which shows i had a certain problem problem with chronology. My second was to have a column in look magazine. I ended up chairing an office with bety rollins and sharing a slot on the today show. I wrote maybe five novels that were not published and decided perhaps i should write nonfiction and went back to the old maxim of write about what you know about and that is how broadway broadcast blues came about. But there was never any doubt in my mind i wanted to do this. I got into Television News because i as a young man of not significant intellectual breadth i didnt know what to write about. I thought if i lived the life of a Television Journalist i would write stories that went away quickly but i didnt want to do that. I wanted peter slen to have what i wrote on a table in front of him one day. Broadcast blues came about and writing about books after that came natural. Television always came fairly easily to me. So there was almost always time in the day to write and now that is what i do fulltime. The golden lad is the next book, come i dont want to talk about, is finished which and i am working on the one after that. What is the topic of the next book . I dont want to talk about. You made your daily living in broadcast television. I did. Someone once said i made a great deal of money in a little bit of time on television and a little bit of money and a great deal of time writing books. Is this profitable . Can be. I didnt lose money on any of these. But something that i am particularly proud of in terms of self analysis is are you holding the joy of books in our hand . In the joy of books there is not a whole chapter but a section about why writers write and my conclusion was that at least for me the answer is power. I write was as a fairly typical person i dont have much power. I dont happen how much power donald trump has ultimately. He has many people to whom he has to answer in his business, the president of the United States has the great many people to whom he has to answer unless he goes behind the back door. Most of us lack the power. But what i can do, and of course a novelist has more power because they can create the world, but what i can do with the world created is i have the power to decide what it meant, i have the power to organize the events in such a way that i can make them clearer, that i can eliminate errors if i have seen errors. I am very conscious of trying, whenever it is possible, and it often is, to be a little whity and i feel strange saying that. Being a little whitty when i can in a book. Witty when i am sitting there writing my power is complete. I am dictatorial and then a voice calls down would you get up here and set the table, please . And i lost my power from the joy of books, i have never been inspired by another author but what inspires me is the constant struggle to put the english language to his best possible use. When i do that i feel like a painter who got all of the colors, shade of light, and figures composed in just a way. I have always wanted to create art as much as relaying information. Were you able to rely information via television . Yeah, but that is all i was able to do. A Television Reporter who creates art is not serving journalism because journalism is straightforward presentation of the facts. And like mine, nbc decided to try to cover what was done and created a segment called Cross Country for the todays show and a gentlemen named jack perkins and i were the two correspondents and i guess you could say it was art of a low grade. And i dont know if art is art if is on television. I guess it is. But i just dont like the way it flutters away. Again, i want the satisfaction of knowing it it is going to stay there. That it can be read by others, that it can be known by others at other times, and that relaying information just wasnt enough for me. I wanted to do something i thought was more creative. I left nbc to do a project at pbs which would have accomplished that but pbs ran out of money partway through. But the series was three hours on the history of spoking, thee hours on the history of drinking. So quite a few years later i found my notes and i had two books waiting to happen and i got back into the my dictorialil mode. The first line saying peter pan was an important book in your childhood. As an adult it troubled me. I am old enough, even though i look dashingly young, i am old enough to remember mary martin as peter man. I love the notion of a place you could escape to like never land and loved the notion of being able to fly. As a parent, i got to think of peter pan as insidious because peter wanted to take the darling family, the name of the family children away from their parents. I was a parent are kids with very strong feelings which i still maintain for my two children. And i thought peter pan, if he had his way, would take my children to a place i could never find. So i changed my opinion of peter. We will go through this later but you have a list of the most influe influe influential books for you. You write about attending a book burning, i think it was. That was a story for nbc. It wasnt one book. It was a town cleaning out books deemed inappropriate for students. I dont remember all of the names but classic literature tended to be the victims of book burnings more than just average books. Guest and just wasnt going to stand for that and was going to do what he thoughting he should do and not thought he should do and not be under the sway of foolish adult priorities. Well, im a lot older than 20 now, and i think Holden Caufield has changed immensely. I think hes a spoiled, whiny brat who didnt appreciate what was done for him. And i think that could be said about a lot of other people too. Host erin burns is our guest, and now its your turn. Claire in huntington station, new york, youre on booktv. Good afternoon. Caller good afternoon. Thank you very much for taking my call. I consider watching this show all the time as Additional College education. It is so informative. I really enjoy it. Id like to ask mr. Burns about the water crisis thats going on in flint, michigan, now. Hes mentioned some things that i think relate to it. He raised the question about water and alcohol, and he also mentioned pittsburgh and whats going on there. I dont feel that this water crisis is being adequately reported on. I feel that it should be the number one story, it should be reported on every day. Im tired of hearing about what donald trump thinks of ted cruz and ted cruz thinks of donald trump. How do you feel about this whole thing . I feel that 100,000 people have been poisoned in an american city, and its just not being talked about that much. Host all right, claire, lets see if eric burns want to opine on that issue. Guest i dont think i have anything constructive to say. I saw a lengthy piece done either on 60 minutes or i cant keep them straight, 20 20, dateline, a major piece done on this. Im not particularly qualified to make a judgment on whether its being covered number. Covered enough. I can say, claire, i realize thats a disappointing answer for you, but i dont follow journalism to the extent that i used to. But i certainly agree with you that the story itself is a major story and deserves a great deal of not just coverage, but investigative work which is to say the careful looking into the causes of this and how the causes can be prevented. Ed newman, remember ed newman from nbc, a colleague of mine . Ed newman said, well, what we need here is some good journalism, a good investigative journalism. Or as we used to call it, journalism. Host well, take claires comments and take it back to your experience at nbc. Were the same discussions, arguments, controversies held back then which is we need to give more time to this story, less time to story x . Guest always. Every day there were two or three meetings involving the anchor, the executive producer, a few other people, yes. I would get phone calls maybe at 4 00, lets say 2 00. I was told i had 1 45 to start editing. Later id get a call saying, no, youve got to make it 1 20. I cant do that because of the way ive constructed it. Youve got to make it 1 20. So, yes. By and large, network news is peopled by extremely conscientious men and women who under very difficult circumstances, i think, do the best they can. Host 1 20 on network news. Is that pretty precious . Guest define precious. Host was that a good amount of time . Guest no. Not for anything. And it was pretty short. Of course, i worked at nbc a long time ago, but i my pieces for nbc nightly news when John Chancellor was the anchor were between a minute and a half and two minutes, i would say. Host daves calling in from glenshaw, pennsylvania. Hi, dave. Caller hi. Love the show. I get a lot of ideas for books that i read from the show. My question for mr. Burns, he talked about being from a Small Community down the river from pittsburgh. I live in a Community North of pittsburgh. Pittsburgh seems to have rebounded from the steel disasters and has become a tech, going into the tech stuff with google and facebook now opening up places near carnegie mellon. Does he have any ideas or theories as to why some of those other communities such as am bridge and a lot of those other old steel towns havent been able to rebound and become productive communities . Thank you very much. Guest i think one of the main reasons, dave, is size. Pittsburgh always had the size to provide the facilities that would draw companies there. It had the skyscrapers. U. S. Steel never left even when it had to turn its manufacturing emphasis to other goods and services. Pittsburgh never relied entirely on one industry. It was a big city. No big cities depend entirely on one industry. The small talk towns, however, d and when that industry went away, the towns went away with them. Host eric burns, i think it was in 1920 that you write that there were, like, 3600 labor strikes in that one year alone. Just some phenomenal number. Guest yeah. Host what was going on . Guest what was going on is that the picture we have of the 1920s being a carefree time is totally incorrect. What was going on was that the socalled robber barons were treating their workers as if they were prisoners of war, virtually. The hours that they worked, the days that they worked, the salaries, if you can call them that, the pocket change that they were given for their labors just appalling. And a good indication of what life was like for the average man and woman. Women did a lot of work, you know, with clothing. The triangle shirtwaist fire killed nothing but girls, young women. Most young women didnt have short skirts with fringes on the bottom, and they didnt dance on tables at nightclubs. That was just a few. You asked me a while ago about journalism being the first draft of history . Well, journalism emphasized always the sensationalistic. Well which was a more sensational story, these women dancing on tables or women sewing buttons on collars, on shirtwaists . The women dancing on tables. Journalism was the first draft of history. So history adopted the flapper. History was wrong. Host dana, oakland, california. Good afternoon, youre on booktv with eric burns. Caller well, thank you. Im enjoying this show immensely myself, and thank you, mr. Burns and cspan in general. I want to ask you, mr. Burns, about a small footnote that you made yourself in regards to your family life as a child where you mentioned that your alcoholic dad was also abusive. I want to thank you for your honesty, youre the opposite of mission, you put it in there. And id like to ask how that affected your mother, yourself, your childhood, your siblings if you have some and your trajectory, and if you have any other insights on how people could heal as an adult of an abusive alcoholic. Host dana, why do you ask that question . Caller i think that it is a root cause of a lot of continuing problems in our world, and unless you dig out those roots, the weeds will grow back. Host is that something that youre familiar with . Caller yes. Guest let me say that, and i said earlier that i thought someone would find one of my answers unsatisfactory, dana. You certainly will. Thats not anything i want to talk about, and i dont think its appropriate to this program. I will say one thing, that perhaps i felt all children feel somewhat powerless even in the best of families. They cant help it. Theyre little. Decisions have to be made for them. I might, because of my father, have felt a little less powerless than the average child and, therefore, wanted more than the average child to become powerful through writing. But as far as how that affected me in personal ways, i dont think thats our topic here today. Host this text message for you, eric burns, what contributed on the whole to your maintaining objectivity given everincreasing inclinations to the contrary we see today . Guest you know why thats hard to answer, peter, its because its so obvious. I dont, i mean, thats what a historian is supposed to do, tell the truth. The book about tobacco, the smoke of the gods. If you tell the truth about tobacco, you write an antitobacco book, because thats because youre telling the truth. Tobacco is a very harmful substance. But i adopt think its hard to be i dont think its hard to be objective. Maybe its because there arent subjects i dont write about subjects that i have a deep personal connection with. Well, even when i did, when i wrote about alcohol, i just thought there was a great deal of interest there, and i never thought really of my father. So im happy to say, and i think this speaks well of me [laughter] that objectivity is simply i just never thought of anything else. Host michaels in union town, pennsylvania. Hi, michael. Caller yes, sir, how you doing . Host how are you . Caller all right. I want to talk to mr. Allen there. I worked at claireton work. Im from union town right down here between morgantown and pittsburgh. Im sure you know where thats at. And i got a job there in 1974, and everybody, everybody that lived in clariton worked there. You couldnt find a parking place in the morning to go to work. I dont know, theres a lot of talk about all, you know, the air and all this stuff, but i, my thing was we all had at that time, in 74, we had some good jobs, you know . I mean, when i got that job, i come right out of high school. I had, the first paycheck i came home my dad told me he was a marine for 23 years, and the first thing he said to me was dont you quit this job, boy. We had blue cross blue shield, i could go to the doctor, i could go to the dentist, you could do all that stuff. I dont know, it seems like the world changes. You know, we used to come out of there and, you know, every gate at clariton, there was a bar at. Wed go have a couple beers and go home, and it just seemed like, i dont know, you know, you had the steelers, you know . These guys, if you worked on a sunday, these guys would bring pots of guest yeah, i understand the point that youre making and, peter, i know you were just about to do this host no, i wanted to follow up and ask him guest but it doesnt have anything to do with what were talking about here. Host right. But i think hes talking about a past society. And, michael, do you miss that life . Caller oh, i miss that life greatly. We didnt, you know, i dont know. Everybody now is, you know, everybodys all, you know, and i understand about the air and this and that. But, you know, pittsburgh back then and you know in 70s, that was just the way, you know, it was a steel town. And im not saying we dont need to clean up the air or nothing like that. But its the idea that we all went to work, everybody worked, you know . Like i said, clariton host all right. Michael, i think we do get the idea. Eric burns, anything you want to comment on there . Guest no. No, thats something i was discussing in a personal vein, not in the vein of something i wrote, and i have no comment to make other than what i did make already. Host text message, how would you describe todays media both in print and tv and the u. S. Educational system . Guest oh, come on. Thats just much too broad. Host do you have any comments youd like to make on that or any opining youd like to do . Guest well, how did it begin, todays media . Host todays media. Guest yeah. Heres my point on oh, im really going to alienate some viewers. Heres my point on the media. Its a grammatical point. Media is a plural noun. When you talk about media, you talk about dozens and dozens and dozens of different outlets. I cant possibly comment on every one of them except to say i think there are too many, and most of them arent trustworthy. The educational system, it doesnt work. I dont know how to fix it. Host michael, port chester or, new york, youre on with author eric burns. Caller hi, mr. Burns. Im going to probably have to light up my kindle and buy some of your books. One of the things i wanted to maybe circle back to is your book on tv and how it affected im a first generation americanitalian, if you wish, and how it helped me accultureate and develop my language in terms of english and the outside world. Because at, you know, by the time i reached university age, i was lucky enough to get a good education and be one of two of the first people to graduate from college. So in a way, the tv and its language and its presentation of good and evil helped my development. Guest well, its, its a good point about the language, and its a very common point. And just think of what a great Teacher Television was even with the worst of programs, because your dads off working, your mother has a lot to do at home. Shes preparing dinner, Something Like that. She might wish she had time to work with you on your language, but she doesnt. But it seems to she doesnt hav. You can sit and watch television. And in terms of what was the second thing he said, developing values . Host it helped develop his values, yes. Guest some of his values. Thats probably a fair thing to say about television in its earliest days, because all of the, all of the sitcoms had families that were ridiculously, what do i want to say, ridiculously wholesome lives. And thats a great thing. I wish my family could have been ozzy and harriet or the andersons on father knows best. I dont look at those shows and laugh and say how unrealistic they are. I look at life today and say its too bad that life isnt closer to making those programs realistic. Host ken cubia texts in i went to Ambridge High School and remember eric playing basketball [laughter] his father was my teacher. Guest yeah. Caller ing what he says is on the mark. Does that name ring a bell to you . Guest no. And, ken, im sorry that it doesnt. Memories of my playing basketball require a great deal of thought, because i didnt get into too many games. Thank you for your call and for your compliment. My dad was a muchbeloved math teacher, actually, at ambridge high because he was sober during the day. He got up in the morning, and he went to school and didnt start drinking til after school. And thats the end. Id like that to be the anybody else who has a call about my father, hang up. Thats enough about my father. Host well, lets try a non sequitur here. From virtue, valor and vanity, you write the Founding Fathers sought a kind of fame we do not know today. They sought it through behavior seldom exhibited anymore and even less often brought to public attention by Media Outlets attracted to freakishness and violence more than civic benefaction. Could you please expound on that statement . Guest that guy can write. Occasionally. Thats a wonderful point. And im glad you brought that up. As a matter of fact, i had this is the only book i ever had arguments with the publisher. I wanted the title of that book to be the Founding Fathers and the pursuit of fame. And i was lucky to get it to be the subtitle, because i thought the notion, wait a minute, the Founding Fathers wanted to be famous . Thats a fascinating idea to me. As a matter of fact, the book im working on now that im not discussing with you has, talks about that, because its relative to the main theme. Their belief was that fame can only accrue to you if youre known for work that advanced the public good. Thats the only way. In those days if you werent a famous singer, you werent a famous be anything, you could be notorious which a lot of people think is a synonym for fame. Another grammar lesson. It is, in fact, the opposite. But they were it was such in the degradation of fame, and weve gotten to a point now which fame is so degraded that, you know, you have i mean, whats a kardashian . What is a kardashian . Other than a famous person . The Founding Fathers worked hard to deserve fame, and they john adams more than any person, any of the founders believed that he would not be regarded by posterity with sufficient appreciation for what he had done; ie, he would not be famous enough. What did he do about it . He kept working harder on governmental documents. He became the president of the United States. Thats how you achieved fame. Host would they appreciate, do you think, all the monuments, streets, towns named after themsome. Guest yes. Especially ben franklin. He was so open about it. I deserve to be famous. Look at all the things weve done. Can we argue with him . Host patrick, pacifica, california. You are on booktv. Our author is eric burns. Caller oh, mr. Burns, really great to interview. I was so impressed when your host asked you a question and you had this reflexive moment, and you were honest enough to say nothing about it the question instead of making something up. [laughter] not mine. [laughter] that was so good. You just dont see that on tv. Its amazing. Anyway, i just wanted to youre such a really compelling story, and youve just been so many places. Were ant the same age about same age, actually, im just a recentlyretired mathematics teacher myself. But i am, wanted to ask can you about the recently Peter Dale Scott put something out on about behind the north korean nuke crisis. And so he was going over, you know, whats transpired since, you know, 53 and how many opportunities to make some negotiation, you know, with them. And i dont know if you remember the mouse that roared. I mean, even when i read it at 11, the companying discussion in middle school was about how the [inaudible] of grand penwick was modeled after north korea. And now we have this petulant, idiot child ruler, kim jong un, and hes got his own q bomb and his own delivery system, and all he wants is some attention. So i was wondering if we could maybe send ambassador Dennis Rodman to flatter him and negotiate an end to the 70year embargo and maybe throw in an nba franchise or Something Like that. I mean, if you think this is crazy, compare this to u. S. Foreign policy in korea in 74. I just wanted to ask you if you had any comments about the lunacy of u. S. Relations and any solutions that you see on the horizon. Guest Dennis Rodman sounds as good as anything else to me. Host eric burns, in your study, writing of history, do you see connections to today . Guest oh, sure. Sure. History is believed to be cyclical. The United States, the model for the country that became the United States was the roman republic. Cicero, who was like ben franklin in that he craved fame, cicero was the hero of all the Founding Fathers because cicero was the philosophical Guiding Light behind the roman republic. Which, in effect, became the United States. And connections just go on endlessly, peter, yes. And as a matter of fact, thats one of the fascinations of studying it. There are two things that appeal to me about history. The first is you can learn so much about the roots. You cant understand without the present. One of the callers used the word roots. You cant fully understand the present without knowing the past. So the past helps you know the present. The second appeal of history to me is the past gets you the hell away from the present. And thats appealing to he too. Host during our political coverage of the last couple of weeks, weve heard from several viewers that theyre looking at donald trump and Bernie Sanders as president ial, to support those two. When you go back in history and look at some of the politicians and some of the leaders, some of the standouts, do you see a Bernie Sanders or a donald trump in the mix back there . Guest well, if so, they were regarded as so freakishly inconsequential that they are not in the history books. So, no, i dont see one. Thats not to say there werent people who wanted to be president who were Bernie Sandersish and donald trumpish. But there was, theres certainly never been candidates the quality, youll forgive my use of the word quality and know what i mean, of the candidates we have today for the presidency. Host what was Woodrow Wilsons reputation as he left the oval office in 1921 . Guest well, as you know, he was paralyzed. Hed had a stroke a couple of years earlier, and one of the chapters in 1920 is about americas first female president who was mrs. Woodrow wilson. And for a year she was the president of the United States because her husband, her husband was not functioning because of the stroke he had, and there was no provision in the constitution for what to do about a case like that. When wilson left the white house, his reputation was is severely damaged because he had staked it on the league of nations. As a matter of fact, most people believe that it was the league of nations that gave him the stroke; ie, he worked so hard, traveled so far and made so many trips around the country. After the senate had voted the league of nations down. They voted it down twice. They voted it down the first time, and wilson said, okay, im going to the Pacific Northwest to talk to people. And it was on that trek that he had haze stroke. It had his stroke. It actually wasnt a stroke, but it was close enough to that. I dont know the precise medical term to use the word. So there were two primary factors from wilson left audience, im sorry, left the tion of the White White White h; think for the man and a lack of respect for the politician. Host how reported was his health . And you can look at fdr and how reported his health was as well, but how reported was wilsons health . Guest ive read, let me just say parenthetically, that of 35,000 photographs that remain of Franklin Delano roosevelt, two show him with braces or any kind of assistance for walking. The other part of the question . Host is about Woodrow Wilson. How reported was his condition. Guest oh, how reported was it . That was a time when there were newspapers didnt have bureaus in washington the way they do now. Of course, there was no television. It was not known by the general public. I will say it was i wont say it was not known at all, it certainly was not known well. It was known by foreign leaders. The ambassador to france reported back to one of his superiors that he had just had a conference with mademoiselle president. So those people who had dealings with the government knew. But in terms of minute who lived in kansas of somebody who lived in kansas and was depending on maybe a brief wire Service Report for his or her knowledge of what was going on in washington was unlikely to know. Host kip, wexford, pennsylvania. Please go ahead with your question or comment for eric burns. Caller hi, eric guest wait a minute, kip jones . Caller ing yes. Guest hello, kip. Caller how are you . Hey, its ironic that that fellow from ambridge called and asked about the basketball question because my question was did you ever consider writing a historians perspective of the little engine team that could at westminster that won the National Title . I know that buzz had a book about it, but did you ever think about it writing about it from the historian perspective . Host kip, how do you know eric burns . Caller we went to college together. Guest and it was westminster that had a championship Small College basketball team. And the answer is, no, kip, i never did. It never occurred to me that there was a particularly interesting angle. Plans if id known the players perhaps if id known the players better, i would have seen that angle. I think its hard to write about sports in addition without avoiding cliches, and youll appreciate this, peter. I avoid cliches like the plague. [laughter] host well, eric burns, weve had several pennsylvania calls, so i think its time to introduce a little bit of video to this program, and this is from wqed. The winner is craig hyberger, he goes to Mount Lebanon high school. Hes 17 years old and will be graduating this year guest and well be stepping up very soon. Lets bring craig over. Good to have you with us. Thank you very much. Its an honor to be here. Why did you personally want to make a movie that made a statement about drugs . What personal experience of yours is there in the movie . It was just the overall feeling of school and the futility with trying to communicate, you know, in the classroom which is a difficult thing at high school. Maybe we should say its not just Mount Lebanon no, yeah. Host that was march 5, 1971. Guest which one of those was i . [laughter] host you were not the blond or the black woman. Guest okay. So i was the one with the longer, longer hair. Host yeah, right. Guest well, i sounded relatively intelligence, dont you think . Host what was that show we were watching . Guest it was called lifestyle. It was on the pbs station in pittsburgh, studio d, studio a was mr. Rogers neighborhood, and my first mentor in television was fred rogers who i said on fox when he died that i didnt think there had ever been a person who used television for better ends than fred rogers. And i believe that strongly. I was, i was a friend of his, and i was sorry to see him go. And an interesting little aside is that the stage manager on that show was a guy named Michael Douglas. Not the Michael Douglas, but Michael Douglas went to out to hollywood to try to make it as an actor, and he was told when he went to sign up with the union that hed have to change his name, because there already was a Michael Douglas. So he said, for some reason he thought of buster keaton. He said, okay, Michael Keaton to. And it was that Michael Keaton. Host what was fred rogers like off the set and without the sweater . Guest the same. There are two people in my life ive met who were exactly the same on the air as off, fred rogers and bill oreilly. Dont ask. Host well, i could come to a quote if youd like me to. If youre going to open up that door. Guest may i go back and close it . Host you can close it. Guest yeah, lets close it. [laughter] fred was the same man. Fred was the same man. Host gordons in roanoke, virginia. Hi, gordon. Caller hi. Thanks for taking my call. My wife and i are very regular viewers of booktv, and we recommend it to all our friends and everything, and i think booktvs just wonderful. Mr. Burns, youre a little bit younger than i am, im 80. I was interested in your book 1920. Ill have to get it. My parents were both 19 years old in 1920, and i cant picture them as flappers or anything. But my question is, im an engineer, and its sort of an engineering question. Youve talked about how the media popularizes things and reports things and so forth. Where do you get your information about, that you report about history of 1920 . Guest i get some of it, i start out by getting it from the books that ive read, information that i know i can trust because one of the dicta of journalism is that you get multiple sources. And so same thing writing history. If several books go along with it, thats the same thing as having several sources, because if the history goes back far enough, obviously, you cant talk to the people. But then you go to what are called the primary sources. For instance, my book, current book, the golden lad the haunting story of theodore and quentin roosevelt, i went to sagamore hill, the roosevelt residence, and was the first historian i think because there was so much dust, literally so much dust on the box that the curator who was showing me through said i dont think this box has ever been opened. It was letters between theodore and his children which did not really interest most historians because theodore did so many more important things on a political basis. The golden lad i think of as more of a parental book than a political book. But i got my information, and i got my feelings for what kind of people quentin and theodore were because i read every letter that passed between them. And thats what you do if its possible. You get a kind of outline from popular sources, and then you start checking and filling in the holes with the primary sources. Host this tweet for you did you admire edward r. Murrow . And if so, why . Guest no, because i was too young. As a journalist, i was taught to admire edward r. Murrow and saw no reason not to. But i was, boy, its just what a pleasure it is these days to be able to say that im too young for something. I was a little too young for murrow, and so like most people, my feelings about him are based on reputation as opposed to any knowledge from working with him, working with his coworkers, anything like that. Host 202 is the area code for all of our numbers if you want to dial in and talk with author eric burns. Weve covered a lot of topics so far. Weve got a little over an hour to go. 7488200 for the east and central time zone, 7488201 if you live in the mountain and pacific time zones. You can send a text as well, this is not for phone calls, this is for texting, and weve read several texts so far. 2027179684, and thats for text messagings. A couple of other ways to get through on social media, facebook. Com booktv. You can leave a comment there. Or you can email us at booktv cspan. Org and, finally, you can send a tweet booktv is our twitter handle. Well, every month that we have an author on in depth we ask him or her to talk about some of their influences, some of the books theyve been reading or are reading. Here are some of eric burns answers. Host eric burns, who is j. C. Furnace . You list him as one of the authors that you like. Him or her . Guest he is Joseph Chamberlain furnace. Im so embarrassed to say that my favorite historian is he. Hes written some epic histories and by epic i mean 7, 8, 900 pages. And he is my favorite historian because he has covered so much ground, and he has a sense of humor. I dont know why historians have no senses of humor. Im not talking about jokes, im talking about saying things in a witty manner end when its appropriate. Manner when its appropriate. And he does it better than anyone. But ive never heard his name mentioned, never. Ive never heard his name mentioned, so i dont know if hes furnace host is he a contemporary . Guest no. He wrote his memoirs in 1983. I happen to be reading them now because i just found them and died in 1989. Host in the joy of books, youve got lists of some of the books that have made a difference for you or that you felt influenced you, and one of the books you list is a book called broadcast blues dispatches from the 20year war between a Television Reporter and his medium. It was a book we were unable to find. Its written by eric burns. Guest i remember that book even though you were unable to find it. And it was let me just say that it was the source of the ive done very well. Im happy to the say this. This is humility speaking, not brag doe show. Im happy to the say that ive done well over the years with critics. This was 35 years ago, that book now is so quaint, i recommend it to all of you because [laughter] because itll tell you about a world of journalism that doesnt exist anymore. What was wrong then has been superseded greatly now. But what i did in the book, peter, was i used myself. I talked it was a cross between a memoir and a book of journalistic criticism. And i used myself for the criticism. I mentioned my name. I used the first person pronoun several times. I talked about having gotten stuck interviewing a really foulmouthed guy and how we could because we got sent all the way from chicago to the bayou to do it how we could falsify the story. It was feature, and still use little sound bites from him when he didnt say the things he was saying. And there were a couple other examples, too, of things that i, that i did that werent as ethical as they should have been. Nothing compared to whats happened since. The doltish woman who reviewed the book for the New York Times said mr. Burns gives a good portrait of some of the problems of Television News, but what he doesnt seem to realize is that he is guilty of these sins just as much as anyone else. It was the point of the book, that i was guilty of the sins as much as anyone else. And this person says but what mr. Burns doesnt seem to realize. I dont know who the person was, but thats the dumbest review ive ever come across. Host well, some of the praise for your 2015 book 1920 the year that made the decade roar, New York Times book review called it lively. Burns convincingly dispels a number of popular beliefs. You have praise from the washington post, publishers weekly, kirkus, the washington times. Book host ronald, baltic, coe in for you what effect did Marcus Garvey have on Race Relations in 1920 . First of all, who was Marcus Garveysome. Guest let me also say immodestly that kirkus one of two principal organs in the Publishing Industry that publishes reviews of books in advance of their book publications so that, you know, the bookstores know what to order, named it one of the best books of 2015. All right, now back to humility, or at least neutrality. Marcus garvey was one of the leaders of, one of the africanamerican leaders of 1920. His movement was to have africanamericans go back to, go to liberia. Marcus garvey is best known for his attire. He wore a tricorner hat which is what was worn. We dont, do we have a picture of him up, peter . I cant host we do, yeah. Were going to put a picture of him up here in a second. Guest okay. And he had a great problem in being taken seriously by some people because of the way he dressed. His j. Edgar hoover was very troubled by him, because he was such a powerful speaker. Once he got 25,000 people into the old, old Madison Square garden. And hoover was just afraid of a man whose vocal power was so great that it could rise such emotions among, you know, people like africanamericans. And as hoover knew, you couldnt trust people like that. So he had garvey very carefully watched. Eventually, charged him with embezzlement and other crimes. It is not clear to this day whether garvey was innocent. The best guess would be he wasnt, that it was hoover being hoover. And, eventually, he was deported, and his scheme to have his own fleet of ships that would carry africanamericans out of this country to liberia failed. Host text message, craig in sacramento. With the avalanche of data for historians now, how do you see them coping with processing it all in coming up with coherent histories . Is there more data now today than there was . Guest more Historical Data . I dont know. I know that its more easily accessible. It used to be when i first started writing history, you know, i went to the Benjamin Franklin collection at yale. And ive develop to a lot of ive gone to a lot of, you know, the Theodore Roosevelt collection, lots of collections. Now a great number of those are on line. And you can just sit in your home and get the information. I would say for a historian, no, it cant be considered a problem to have too much information. Maybe what it does is make you more careful in what information you select. For instance, if somebody has compiled all the tweets about thomas jefferson, you can probably skip that. But if there is more information, then itll take you a little longer to write the book. But since that information is more easily gotten, maybe it wont take you a little longer because you can get it online. So i dont think thats a problem. Host dan is in bridgewater, new jersey. Dan, please go ahead with your question or comment for author eric burns. Caller two questions. I was raised in [inaudible] with sort of the glue that holds us together, the rail on which the nation moves and so forth. And when i came here, i found very little [inaudible] in fact, it used to be said that anybody who wanted to stay in academia and couldnt pass College Algebra would usually go into history because there you didnt have to know quantitative [inaudible] that raises the question about the technical know how of most historians to deal with technical resolutions that happened [inaudible] and the second question was theres a [inaudible] could you tell me why you think that the cold war which was so [inaudible] to a lot of us, and maybe some of the kids didnt go through it, but [inaudible] the direction its just not being discussed at all. It was just something that was in the hands of advocates of one side or another, and now that we can look back on it and see how important it was and what it really was, nobody seems to be interested. Theyve more interested in [inaudible] host all right, thank you, dan in bringwater, new jersey. Eric burns . Guest well, he fired quite a bit of ammunition out there. The thought that came primarily to my mind is that the problem, if there are problems with historians, there are greater, for want of a better word, problems with people who dont have a great deal of interest in history. Sometimes if youre a historian you can have difficulty finding an agent because the agent thinks he or she wont be able to sell your book. If he or she is able to sell your book to a publisher or, it wont be for enough money to make it worthwhile for the agent to get his or her 15 . And to me, the problem goes back, at at least in my experie, to the way history is taught, the way history was taught in public schools. It was taught without any enthusiasm for me, it was taught without any relevance which is to say is there a way and the answer is always yes is there a way to tie this historical event to the present. What can we learn about the present from this historical event. History seemed to attract the dullest, the least interested of the teachers. I happen to know a woman who teaches fourth grade and teaches history and every other subject. And she and the people she works with make history a viable, living thing by having the students act out parts. Theyre studying, believe it or not in fourth grade, the silk road. Well, students are stationed, so to speak, at various points along the silk road, and theyre doing reports on it, television reports, theyre making maps. If you do this kind of thing, the you put the students into if you put the students into the history as opposed to read the history at the students, i think everything changes after that, and you become more interested as an adult in, to use the example we just heard, lingering effects, if there are any, of the cold war. Host steve in stafford, virginia, text message. Eric, im embarrassed to admit that as an avid nonfiction reader i havent read any of your books. Which one would you recommend that i start with . Guest well, steve, i is that a text . Host yes. Guest i dont know much about technology. Host do you have a phone . Guest yeah, but its a flipup. Im what id like to do is know whether or not i could find out whats something about steves interest. Host okay. Steve in stafford, if you could follow up that text and send us another one and tell us what your interests are, and well go from from there. In the meantime, well talk to thomas in green castle, pa. Caller hello, eric, i am a historian, and i have watched over time the president ial nonpartisan rankings which evaluate president s each year. My question to you is why president Dwight Eisenhower is now ranked fifth behind lincoln, washington, fdr and Theodore Roosevelt. Guest well, could i just change things around host you can riff all you want on that. Guest ask you the same thing . [laughter] i have no idea. Id like to know who ranked him there. Im baffled. Do you mind having a guest whos baffled, peter . Host where would you rank the prime ministers given what youve read the president s given what youve realize, studied, you know, the traditional list, washington, lincoln . So lets put those two out of the way. Guest forgetting those host forgetting those two. Who else have you read about, worked on, researched that caught your attention . Guest well, let me say this, i think the three most interesting, interesting and thats a valueneutral word interesting men ever to serve in the white house served consecutively. Let me make it a question for you, peter. They served consecutively in our lifetime. Host kennedy, johnson, nixon. Guest nicely done. They are the president s, along with roosevelt and washington and lincoln, about whom i have the most books. Nixon did tom winter, the liberal columnist of the New York Times, once wrote a book called one of us. It was a biography of nixon, and by one of us he meant hes a liberal. And he was. The people who hate him dont know that. Affirmative action, Richard Nixon. Food stamps, Richard Nixon. Opening the doorway to china, Richard Nixon. Im not advocating that Richard Nixon was a good, moral man, im simply telling you that this was one of the joys, for me, of reading history, to see the complete Richard Nixon, to know that the most powerful figure at least in my lifetime and certainly in the 20th century which is to say the man who had the most potential to affect the course of this country was lyndon johnson. Lyndon johnsons power over congress was monumental, and he said once to someone wouldnt it be a shame if i got known for this this was his word pissant little war in asia instead of what im trying to do at home . And, of course, kennedy for his various transgression, his sex appeal, many other things, i find those three the most interesting. I would put none of them on mount rushmore. Host and from the book invasion of the mind snatchers, a connection here. The 1952 president ial campaign in what was spent on television, 7. 3 million was spent by the republicans to elect Dwight Eisenhower, a quarter of that amount going to television. The democrats only had 2 million to million to spend, and in 2004 it was estimated that only 55 of the money spent by the two parties during the president ial campaign went for television. Because of mistake in studies its now believed that one or two drinks a day is actually healthy, but those studies, 54 of them are all flawed. Wow wonder if youre thinking about doing writing about alcohol and how it has damaged society historically as well as today. Guest thank you for your comment about the book. The answer is, no. Ive written really all i have to say about the history of alcohol. Theres certainly much more to be said because i stopped writing, i think, in 1959, when oklahoma became the last state to repeal prohibition. As i said, i dont know why bit i just dont like to get too close to the present. Its bad enough to have to live in it. I certainly dont have to write about it. So, i think im done withalcohol. Host the American Library association, i believe it was, gave awards to both the spirit of america, social history of alcohol, and the smoke of the gods, a social history of tobacco and youre the only nonprofessional guest nonmake. Host to win that award. Guest twice. Host twice. Guest the award is called the best of the best. The only two books ive publish with an academic house is which means peer review kansas members as awful as most Academic Press books are because of how academics write, i dont write that way. So my books are safe to read. But you can trust them, because they have been probably trust them. Theyve been read very, very carefully by two people who are experts in the field, and that happens before you have a deal with the publisher, but, yes, they were called the best of the best for their years and i was and remain very much honored. Host at one point, 50 of all men, you write, Smoke Cigarettes in this country, 35 of women today its 25 men and 21 of all the women. Mark im sorry, we just had mark and are moving down to sam in north pole, alaska. Hi, sam. Caller hello, sir. My comment is regarding americans paying attention to history and actually learning from it. Its not an american tradition. We look at vietnam, we were lied into that war. That information came out later. The gulf of tonkin was basically fabricated. Ten years later lied into the war in iraq and recently as came out with the Hillary Clinton emails we were lied to overthrow gadhafi in libya. Guest but you learned, didnt you . Now must have hurricane from someone, a journalist or historian becauseom know about these lies. Absolutely. I think a growing number of people are waking up but we still let it happen over and over again. Eight years of the war in iraq that they same thing happened in libya, and it just as crazy actually probably going to be the next president that is its the war policy, and real quick i want to pivot back to woodrow will son. One of the worth president s ever had, thank income tax, federal reserve, world war one, all terrible thingness our hoyt, and thank you for taking the time to listen to me today. Host thanks, sam. Guest thank you, yes. Host well to go back to Woodrow Wilson, in your book, 1920, you talk about how he was not very adapt at politics when he became president of princeton and not very good at it al all guest campus politics. Host right, campus politics. And he had to learn. Other. Guest let me say that Woodrow Wilson although he was in favor of the income tax, he didnt originate it. The first income tax of any significance in this country, the kind of income tax we have today, started in 1913, and that no, that is wilson, isnt it . Gosh, i lost myself knew neighborly. Host depends on what month it is. Guest no, im sorry. Host he took office march of 1913. Guest thats right. Thats right. My apologies. Thats right. But the momentum certainly for that had built the financial need was already there. Wilson didnt just out of nowhere come up with the idea for the income tax. The momentum carried wilson to the income tax. Host ron is calling in from randle, washington. Ron, please go ahead. Youre on booktv. Caller yes. Mr. Burns, do you have any appreciation of the writings of earnest hemingway . Host whoa die you ask that question . I just love his life, the way he lived it. Host what about his writing. Caller pardon . Host do you like his writing as well . Caller not as much. Host why . Caller well, except a few as far as, like, the old man in the sea. But i appreciate the history of his life, his biographyies, the people he used to run around with, the expatriates. F. Scott fitzgerald, i was just wondering what mr. Burns thought of hemingway. Host ron, thank you for that. Guest well, ive never liked hemingway as an author. I think hes monumentally overrated in terms of being a human being, he could be a terrible human being. F. Scott fitzgerald got hemingway his first publishing contract by begging his editor, trading ffitzgerald trading on his good name with his editor to publish hemingways first book, and hermingway spent years trashing just savaging verbally fitzgerald and to say you admire how he lived his life because of the people he knew, we cant go over all the people that he knew, but its hard to admire a life really admire a life are, adopt you think, peter, that ended the way hemingways did . Host well, to answer that im going to your joy of books book. This ills the joy of books list. I am not a literary critic, not an academic, not a regular contributor to the new york review of books, which is to say that in my reading, i am strictly an amateur but amateur in the best sense of the word. It is in this spirit, spouting my strengths and professing my weaknesses i have a list of 572 books that have given be joy over the years. And one of those books is the son also rises by new orleans hemway, and the great gas guy and tender is the night by f. Scoot fitzgerald. Guest the sun also rises . Host yes. Guest do you have a pen . Host i do. Guest x it out. I have no idea how that got there. I read it again host the joy of books list, eric burns guest maybe i felt compelled to put something be hemingway in. I raved it again. Read it a second time three or four years ago, and host so well take that out for the new edition. Guest cross that out. Heres the plot. Some people go to a party and get drunk and say lets go to another party and get drunk, and then they go to other party and get drunk, and someone says lets go to another party and get drunk, and someone says theres a bull fight going on, lets go to at the bull fight and get drunk, and they watch the bull fight and get drunk, and then come back to wherever the hell they are, paris, and get drunk some more. Thats the plot of the sun also rises. Host theres what we would consider classics but some contemporaries on the list and that includes tom wolfe, or scott turrow, robert frost. Why are they on this . Host you human being of turrow as a spence or thriller writer, steven king as well. Guest stephen king is a suburb writer. Took him a long time to be recognized as that. The New York Times finally, two or three years ago, selected five best Fiction Books of the year, one was 112263, by stephen king, the day kennedy died. I wish that king would just hold back a little with a certain folksy quality that he has to him that goes to me, a little bit too far, but i said after i read the first few of his books that when people think of horror eventually, they will think of stephen king and that think of edgar allen poe, and i wrote stephen king a note 31 years ago. I was with nbc. I said i travel a lot and i enjoy your book, Something Like that. He had just finished publishing christine. And he said, its interesting that i should hear from someone i he put it in quotes know, because i just saw you at three mile island. And thats the one thing i would never be able to write about, is Nuclear Power run amok. I appreciate your report and ill look forward to reading more of you. Ive been offered so much money for that because its stephen king admitting theres one thing that frightens him so much he wont write about it. 31 years ago. Hes a good write jeer march 29, 1979, you were at three mile . Guest was i . How do you know that and i dont. Host thats the date it occurred. Guest oh. Host or the day after. Guest any god, youre prepared. So i was there, yes. Host how close were you allowed to get to that . To the reactor. Guest well, enough so that they were in the background, they were clearly seen in the background. Dont think three mile island, if i remember correctly, was ever as dangerous as the media their sensationalistic bent made it out to be. Certainly not to be taken lightly. But i remember being a little surprised at being able to get as close as i was and a little unwilling to get closer. Bunny in indiana asks via text message what subject have you not written about but would like to . Guest i would like to write about either about the del vikings, the dell vikings are a due won group from the 60 asks and wrote one of hi Favorite Music in history, including bait of the beethoven and most sadder. The song is come go with me. They were the first integrated group. They met at an air force saying to make the billboard top ten. They did it with my favorite song, and i was able to get in touch with them, but we just couldnt work it out. I dont know if they didnt believe me or what i wanted to do was tie in the del vikings, who were from pittsburgh, and i did a piece on them for the today show once, which is howl i had the contact for them. I wanted to tie their story in with the story of what was happening to pittsburgh at the time, and the steel industry. I had some ideas for a connection. But id thereof write either that book or the same kind of book about the marcels, who recorded blue moon. Let me also in my defense say that i really do like a great deal of Classical Music and have tickets for the metropolitan opera in early april. Host back to your 572 books on the joy of books list, some of the contemporary nonfiction authors you include, include paul johnson, doris carnes goodwin, david mccullough, peter collier, and david honor horwitz, two conservative writers and albert spear, inside the third reich. Certainly wasnt an endorsement of his policies but inside the third reich is a fascinating, fascinating book, one of the things i remember was hitlers concern not just for architecture but for interior design, that his office was long and narrow so that when you entered, you had a long walk to get to him. Plenty of time to be intimidated. His desk was up on a platform. There was a tall desk. His chair was raised. So, he wanted a setting which would completely dominate the most selfconfident of people, and he was greatly interested in architecture as a means of cowing the population because of his show of marble power. Fascinating book. Host anthony, new york city, thank you for holding, you on with eric burns. Caller hi, mr. Burns. Im enjoying this program very much. I asked a question to the person who answered the phone, what you might think of hl menkin and bill buckley. I knew bill buckley and im a member of the menkin society. Host how did you know william buck lee. Guest i ran for office with his brother james. When james was elect senator, i ran for new york state controller. I didnt win but i got to know the Buckley Family and knew the late priscilla, a marvelous family, and i got to know bill over the years, several articles published in National Review and just a great admirer of his. Host those are two names also on your joy of bookses list. Guest well, i knew bill as well, not very well. I had done a couple of stories related to him, but h. L. Menkin just delighted me. He is the only American Writer i know who i identify, whose style i can identify, after a couple of sentences. You give me two or three sentences, plucked anywhere from anything he wrote, and i will know its menkin. Thats how different he was. That what a master he was of using the english language help was not someone you wanted as an enemy because verbally he was as asir pick as acerbic as could be. Just his name makes my smile. I if you have not heard about menkin and you care about the language, youre missing something that shouldnt be missed. Host did he write about politicians. Oh,ey. He lords to cover elections because he loved to diminish all of the candidates. He never said a good word about any of the candidates, and im thinking whose oratory was it harding maybe. Me menkin described hardings orator as Something Like a string of wet sponges. Im not doing justice to it. Its like a string of wet sponges tied together. He did it better than that, but he could think the way no one else thinks, his metaphors, his comparisons, a delight. I love menkin. I have every book he ever wrote and every biography about him. Host kent, irving, texas, hi, kent. Caller hi, peter. Thank you for a great job youre doing. You always are prepared as has been alluded to several times by mr. Burns if want to thank mr. Burns for coming on and sharing his wisdom and knowledge about the history as well as his comments on his books. I know he probably realized it would be uncomfortable, which it obviously has, and its been a great show. Booktv is such an asset to the country. And thats about all i had to say. I appreciate yalls candor and the things you touched on. Something that pops into my mind is one of the funniest, probably fairly serious, too us about history and the way its been written about, like our Founding Fathers were such righteous people and heroes. They were actually traitors of the english government. Right . They were sent here, their trips paid for, and i think washington worked with a man named mccain farland which was hired by the British Government survey the land, which they ended up with a lot of. So, anyway, just pretty ironic. But thats people take care. Host kent, thank you for calling in. Guest let me page a point about the stamp act. To call the Founding Fathers traitors is not as treasonous a statement as it sounds. The stamp act, i think, more than any other single sin, if you will, committed by the British Government toward the colony, ired the colony and sam adams to rebellion, but the stamp act first of all, everybody in Great Britain paid the same tax, exactly the same tax, on documents, as we were asked to pay in this country. We had free protection from in the french and indian war from british troops and the stamp act was a way of getting back some of that money. The stamp act should not have been a cause of rebellion, and i have found myself thinking, as i have written about it, especially in infamous scribblers because i was write about how the stamp act was written about, that if it had been perceived fairly and paid as we owed it for what Great Britain has done for it, my god, what would the course of hoyt be . Would there have been still been a war . If the primary cause didnt exist . Host that kind of goes to what neil in charlotte, north carolina, texts into you mr. Burns in the view of the many moments in history which seem to turn on timing alone, have you ever entertained thought thoughts of the course of the American Revolution had it occurred in a different time . Guest no. Ive never thought about the revolution ocuring at a different time. I thought about it not occurring. There were other grievances that we had other than the stamp act that were more legitimate, but as i said, the primary cause of the incitement, the journalistic incitement for war, was the stamp act, and the stamp act was fair. Was fair. Bob in stony creek, new york. Hi, bob. Caller hello. Host were listening, sir go ahead. Caller im sorry. Okay. To eric burns, have you ever considered teaching history in the Evening Division of a college . The reason i ask is that i was subjected to boring history teachers who put me to sleep at 9 00 at night. You would not have been one of them. Guest thank you very much. Yes, i have thought about it. I have contacted a few colleges in the area where i live, which is fairfield county, connecticut, and havent even gotten the courtesy of a reply. I suspect that im far more qualified to be aned a junction professor of hoyt than a lot of people who are. Id like to do it on a parttime basis because i like to share anyone i think likes to share his enthusiasm, and the college in my neighborhood dont seem to be interested. Host not even a courtty si senate not even the courtesy of a reply, no. Host whoa do you think that is . Guest i dont know. I dont know. One person wrote back and i said attached is my resume. Some somebody wrote back and said, we dont have an opening now. By the way in academia, we call a resume a cv, curriculum vitae, and i wrote back and said, fine you call it what you want. Im not an academic. Attached is my resume. I probably wasnt getting that position. Host jim in anchorage, alaska. Hi, jim. Caller thank you for taking my call. Based on your study of history in the United States, id like to know what your thoughts are concerning the middle east and not what we could have or should have done but based on historical facts to date for the United States going forward, what in your opinion should be our approach to the middle east . Guest im not qualified to answer that question. Im not. Host john in winfield, alabama, textmessage as someone who taught elementary age writing classes, i wonder what childrens books, if any, were special to you, what have you written that you felt like really captured your voice as a writer, and who did you first read that made you want to write . Guest childrens book, your voice as a writer, and who are those first influences . Guest well, ill still forget one of themle im very absent minded, as William James once said, absent mindedness is present mindedness somewhere else so thats my excuse. My parents werent were beth school teachers, music and math. Never saw either one of them read a book. I dont remember books being read to me, although that might just be my memory, which kicked in in a very poor gear, when i was very young. Peter pan comes to mind. What second . Host when did your find your voice as a writer . Guest it took me longer than it takes most people. I think i had to get fiction out of my system. The idea of bag great novelist. I was probably in my 30s, mismid30s, and frankly i think this is something that any author who cares about his work should say, i think im still trying to find it, or trying to keep it. When i get up in the morning my goal is to write that day perfect prose, and when im finished with a book, to write a perfect book. I never will, and thats great. Because i have a constant incentive to do better because ill never reach my goal. Host you write every day . Guest yes. Host how long . Guest if things go well, i can write for four or five hours if not, ill stop earlier, but its really if you think a lot, you get physically tired, and i think a lot when i write and its physically tiring. Whats the third . Host it was related to the first, when did you get the idea to start writing. Who are the writers that got you the idea to start writing. Guest writers didnt do that. It was just me. I wanted to write before i had writers whom i admired. Host you steve ven stafford. He wants to know which book to start with and i you asked his history help said my primary interest is u. S. History and prominent u. S. Characters in u. S. History in the 20th 20th century. Guest okay. Ill give you two, steve. This will be easier to get because its recent. Read 1920. The year that made the decade roar. Probably not in stores anymore. It came out last may, but easily host is there a paperback edition. Guest the paper baeck will be out in august. Fortunately i am saying the hard cover sales have been good enough that the paperback has been delayed. So you can wait until august if you want. Also, i think you would find the book invasion of the mind snatchers. Whats the subtitle . Televisions inconquest of america in the 50s. Host you got it. Guest you write enough and sometimes the titles of your book escape you. That youd that book is six years old and have to get that through amazon. So those two books. And i thank you for your seriousness, for your taking my question to you seriously about your interests so i could recommend, and your writing back. I appreciate that give and take. Host christine in mcclain, virginia. Please go ahead with your question or comment for eric burns. Caller hello. I was surprised to hear you say that you couldnt admire hemingway because of his suicide, and i wondered if you felt the same about all the other authors authors who have d their lives in the same way, like virginia wolfe and sylvia platt, et cetera, et cetera. Guest you know, i think thats a great question because i have to think about it. The reason is that what you may have done is you may have caught me in a bias there. I dont never thought much of hemingway as a writer, and ive Read Everything he has written. And this false or maybe it was genuine but machismo, his cold of life, i thought was tedious. But in asking the question you ask, i guess i would have to know more about sylvia platts wife and virginia wolfes life, but it may be that you caught me in antihemingway bias and i would have more admiration for others. I applaud you for that. Thats a very good question and something worth misthinking about. Host bob in thousand oaks, california. Hi, bob. Caller hi. You mentioned that youre from pittsburgh, and im an old westender. I dont know if youre familiar with the west end of pittsburgh. I have a question for you, though, about albert spears book, inside the third ric. And i remember reading in that book where he said that the germans never had a chance to win world war ii, and that in fact the biggest single problem they had in russia, unbelievably, was a shortage of horses. Do you remember reading that in that book . Guest no, i dont. Its been too many years. I dont remember the shortage of horses. I do remember his view about not thinking the germans could win, but obviously you found it interesting as well. Host well, beverly emails in to you, beverly scofield, santa mariearch california. Im a writer who finally published my first book at the age of 75. My interest seems to be in writing fiction set in historical events. What is your opinion about historical fiction as a genre . Guest when i read about history, want to know the history. I want to know the truth. So i dont read much historical fiction because i never know what to believe. That being said, one of the best books ive ever read in my life, which came up earlier, was the roy pathtime. And ragtime and it was easy to tell what was fiction and nonfiction. When henry ford or member like that was showing up at a characters house, at the house of a person who didnt exist, well, you know that didnt happen. So theres a way to write historical fiction and not confuse the reader. If you can do that, fine. But if you confuse the reader by just twisting events a little bit, making them happen at a different time, making them happen in a different way, i dont care for that kind of thing because if the subject ever comes up, even just in my mind, i want to know the truth. Host henry ford makes an appearance in the spirits of america. Henry ford also favored abstention, you write. The jews, he thought, were trying to conquer the world through the use of liquor to befuddle the brains of the christian leaders and the automaker would not let it happen. Guest henry ford was a notorious antisemite, and notoriously ignorant about virtually anything. His opinions certainly not to be taken seriously. His cars are. Lets leave it at that. You can drive a ford. Just dont listen to anything henry said. Host rick in florida, hi, rick. Caller yes, good afternoon. What a shame we dont have more authors and writers like mr. Burns. I was wondering on his list of authors where graham green fell into that category and ill hang up. Guest yes host rick, rick . Caller yes. Host why do you like graham green . Caller the quiet american. I dont know if you ever read the book. Host all right. Thank you. Guest i think theres a long list of graham green books in there, isnt there. A couple different lists and im looking at them. Not on nonfiction. And guest he didnt write the hoped to fair , the quiet american, and travels with my aunt. Guest travels with my aunt which was nonfiction, by the way, but i had a great admiration for graham green. Host troy in bethel, missouri. You are on book tv. Please go ahead. Caller peter, pleasure to talk to you, sir. I really respect your work, and you reached your true calling when you got to booktv. Mr. Burns, i thought it was great that you mentioned that you fascinated by Richard Nixon earlier in the program, because i, too alphas nate by the map. I think hes probably the most brilliant politician of my lifetime, and i turned 50 last month. I thought wickers a book was outside standing, one of us. One modify personal favorites. Where would you rank harry truman in terms of president ial rankings . I admire that man, too, and i think i couldnt rank him probably about fourth is where id go. You guys have a good day. Host thats troy in missouri. That goes back to where we began, journalism as the first draft. Guest i want to answer that off to the side a little bit. I dont know where id rank human but heres a wonderful story about truman. Truman was a haberdasher, an average guy, and his secretary of state was dean ache which isson, who had atchison who had a long mustache that curled up at the end. Walked with a kane but didnt need a crane. Went to yale. Antithetical in every way to harry truman, and harry truman used to use big words when he talked to atchison and mispronounce them, and atchison said that was one of the reasons he admired truman so much, because it proved that truman, although he had no come patriots who shared his intellectual interests, and who would know how to pronounce the words he was reading, kept at it anyhow because he wanted to learn, atchison would subtly correct him and admire him for that. A book which i dont think has been written about the relationship, the friendship, between these two very unlikely people, would be a wonderful piece of reading. Host eric burns, if somebody wants to contact you do you have a webs or a way for them to email you . Guest i dont have a web site. What i would suggest is host you dont have to suggest anything. Guest im just wondering if my publisher has a web site. Host your publisher will have a web site. If you go to the back you can see it. Who the publisher. Guest its the books are transcribed by norton pegasus. The flying horse. Pegasus. There will be a www. Pegasus. Com and they would forward anything to me, but a as im a true historian, in that i am a ludite and i technology and i are not simpatico. Host doug, silver spring, maryland. Caller good afternoon. In getting back to h. L. Menkin, really fine writer but the thing i always found disturbing about him is he can be incredibly vicious, and i sort of wonder, arent there other ways to go about this . Im thinking specifically of his piece on Williams Jennings bryan after his death. The bottom line is sometimes i just find him a little too vicious and i find that disturbing and id like to hear your comment. Thank you very much. Guest thank you very much. Its probably a point no, not probably definitely a point i should have made. And sometimes all of us who are writers and have our certain stylistic, shall we say, quirks, go too far with them. I agree with you. Menken went too far. What he said about bryan he was entitled to say, but to say it as an obituary was to go too far, and youre wright, what so it great about reading menkin, he savages the pom possessty of politicians which means he is always on the edge of going too far and youre right there, times when he goes over the edge. Host robert young, email earlier you allowed that you wouldnt trust writings by either republicans or democrats, presumably on historical subjects. Then a bit later you reference ayn rand, freudian slip or in support of her or view in opposition. Further, is at all possible to write history on a blank slate . Guest i have no idea about the ayn rand reference that. Had that had to do with the fact she black sugar would not have affected her because she would appreciate the i dont know what it means to write history on a blank slate i think i do. Were all humans and we have our opinions. I dont know that i said i wouldnt trust a book by a democrat or republican because most people are registered in a party. I wouldnt trust books written if theres a point of view it should come out of the book. I dont want anybody to go into a book with a point of view. Ann coulter, i wouldnt read a book by appear coulter if i it were all about what a wonderful guy i am. People who have established reputation on one side of the aisle or the other there are liberal ann coulters, god forbid but those people theres no point in reading books by them. George will, a conservative, has just severely criticized ann coulters books for her errors. Host linda tweets in to you and she hey not have been listening earlier how would you compare Abraham Lincoln to Teddy Roosevelt as fathers during their white house years. Guest Teddy Roosevelt was a better father. Teddy roosevelt i dont knoll how Teddy Roosevelt did what he did in 24 hours a day, but Teddy Roosevelt ran through the white house grabbing the kids, playing what they called scary bear, pillow fights were to the roosevelts saga more hill what touch football was to the kennedys of hyannisport, and roosevelt let his kids quentin came in opposite with snakes rapid around his arm wrapped around his arms and neck. Theodore at the time was talking to the secretary of war, and looked at him and said, why dont you go next door, there are couple of congressmen waiting to see me, and just go chat with them. So thats what happened. Theodore sent him to scare the hell out of these congressmen. Now, im not saying that there werent parents, fathers who loved their children as much, but no one gave the time that theodore did, either in person, the direct playfulness, or when the children went away to school. Host the book 1920, why the Flat Iron Building on the cover . Sunny dont know. The artist did that. And i thought it looked good. Now, wasnt in 1920 when the flatiron building caught fire. I believe that was 1913. If thought that was the year it was built. Guest before 1920 the fire i have no idea. Thats the best jacket he submitted. I thought it looked great. So did everybody else. Host jim is in woodruff, south carolina. How, jim. Caller hi. Host were listening. Caller yeah. I was wondering if eric had read any of thomas wolfes books, and i had met thomas wolfes brother back in the 50s when i was a child. His name was ted wolfe, and in the book, he was at lukes, and luke stoddard, and fred wolfe actually stuttered, and i was wondering if he thought that the city of asheville got very angry about his writings of his books. Host talk about tom wolfe, hest listed in your joy of books as well. Guest no, hes not. The other tom wolfe. Host im sorry. Guest the younger tom wolfe. Thomas wolfe is someone who i never really appreciated because of the for the same reason i dont appreciate the plays of eugene oneill. Just an undo verbosity that put putts me off. Die know from historical reading that, yes, the city of asheville was for a time very upset with its native son for how it was portrayed. Host i apologyite, it is tomwoman, bonfire of the vanities. Guest i think virtually every one of hi nonFiction Books is in there, too. Ive read them all. Bonfire of the vanities was the only work of fiction he had written at that time. Although i probably wouldnt have listed the other two. Theyre not as good, i dont think. Host well, speaking of plays and playwright writhes, playwrights, what it mid strut. Guest my first play which won the emerging playwrights competition in 20. Had its first production at pittsburgh playhouse coincidentally in 2012, and here in 2016 it stale awaits its second production. I finished the second play, which is perhaps moving close to production. When i grow up, i would like to be a playwright because at the end of the lonely process of writing, i love the communal aspect of working with good actors, talking about what i had done, and like having a party after being in solitary confinement for a long time. Writing is lonely. Host what is the theme of midstrut . Guest if i stand up, will that throw the camera off . Host i dont know if it go for it, fred says. Just be careful of your mic and your ear piece. Those are the two things you have to be careful of sunny cant believe im doing this. This is the position you normally think of when you think of a majorette, one leg up, the baton under here, and i decided to call this midstrut. Its bat guy who finds out he has six months left to live and has to decide what would be most valuable to do in those six months. He decided it would be to have sex with he is in his 50s to have sex with a woman who was a majorette in high school and who he admired from afar. So, turns out she is married, but her husband just had his first affair, so maybe she is ready to listen. And he comes and says, listen, its nothing personal but i was wondering if you would have sex with me. Just once. I dont want a relationship, just a onenight stand. Going to die. And thats all i say about it because im hoping that people will have the chance to find out what happens after that. Host vince is in spots vain ya, virginia. Hi, vince. Caller hello go go back to h. L. Menkin again you mention you have all of his books and im not trying to sharpshoot you but i wonder if you have adventures in diversion, the rarest book, he was 19 or 20. It was his attempt at prose, and he was so embarrassed by his effort that he undertook to destroy as many of the copies as he can. So theyre now very rare. I wonder if you have assistant you can comment on the attempt of authors who are brilliant essayists or commentator and trying to write prose. Guest they do write prose. I if you write essays youre writing prose, show dont understand the question. As far as that book by menkin is concerned, no, i dont have that. Never heard of it. As far as im concerned he was successful destroying the copies. Host robert in price, utah. Youre on booktv. Good afternoon. Caller good afternoon. Mr. Burns, which book are you most proud of and which one do you think is the best example of your style of writing . Host youll have to answer that without any help. Guest well, infamous transcribe easterlies can the founding father and the rowdy beginning of american journal jim is im told considered the definitive work on the subject. I dont know. Its the one id say is most representative of my style. Host what is your favorite. Guest its always the one im working on. The joy of books, i like the joy of books allot bass i wanted to cover every aspect of the experience of reading from the writers point of view to the readers point of view and the talking about getting into why does a reader read, and what i said before about characters changing over the years. That pleased me. Im glad you brought that up. Maybe thats it, because it deals with something that has been my entire life. Host infamous scribblers was i think i saw somewhere thats been your best seller. Of all your books. Maybe im wrong. Guest 1920 will be. Host congratulations. Guest thank you. Host anthony in shirley, new york, hi, anthony. Caller yes, hi. Thank you, cspan, for taking my call, and thank you, mr. Burns, for your body of work. My question to you is do you ever see the United States government as we now know it today ever coming to an end, and if at some point in the future do you ever see our democracy morphing into something less democratic as the years go by . And thank you, sir. Guest youre welcome. Im not i said this once before. Im not qualified to answer a question like that, and i dont think any human being is. I could take a guess but host want to take that guess . I think the United States will eventually be conquered by a country which destroys our technology. We will not be taken over militarily. We will be taken over electronically because we will not be able to communicate and nothing that we depend on will work. Host this text message since you said you do not understand technology, how too you write your books by long hand, 2009 writer or word processor. Guest word processor. Whats the most advanced thing i can do . I can cut and paste. Host you can get on the internet sunny can get on the internet, yes, thank you. And obviously its once you get on word its a type writer and i know how to save and it how to click it and send it to my agent, but i dont know what a spreadsheet is, for instance. I couldnt do a spreadsheet. You dont want one do you, peter, from me . Host another text message how mr. Burns described hl menkin is exactly how i would describe burns itch wouldnt ever want to get on his bad side. I have thoroughly enjoyed listening to him. I find his firey blunt candor beautifully unsettling and deliberately refreshing. I wonder what h. L. Menkin would like to interview. Guest beautifully unsettling is a wonderful little phrase. Thank you. Host frank, las vegas, hi, frank. Caller hi. How are you today . Host how are you, sir . Caller fine. Well, tomorrow is my birthday. Im coming up on 90, and what im interested is a book that i read 50 years ago by greenburg, and it had to do with only in america, and he wrote that ford was antisemitic, but he discarded antisemitism and what happened was he burned all the books he had but i never did find out in all the years these years, why he did that. Mr. Burns, have you got any information on that . Id appreciate it. Host frank, what have you done for a living over your 90 years . Caller in my 90 years the biggest thing was electrical. I was with the department of water and power in large. I ended up as a dispatcher, electric system dispatcher, and your comment on the fact that electricity the grid could be wiped out if we ran into that condition, and thats something ive read just heard about in the lights pout a book just written