[inaudible conversations] >> how are you? >> good. >> here's bob more sis. >> of course -- morris. >> how are you? >> happy occasion. >> yeah, this is great. >> a lot of familiar faces, and we'll have some white house photographers and white house folks -- >> good. >> -- people who have covered all this stuff like you have. >> eager to hear more about the book. >> so i'm glad you're here. >> going to have a little talk? >> yeah, we're going to have a couple of little surprise moments, so -- [laughter] thanks for coming. thank you. hey. hi, nice to see you. >> hi, ken. >> thank you for the invitation, and my husband. >> yes, nice to see you. hello. nice to see you, hi. yeah, i feel great, oh, okay, great. thanks for coming. you got in okay? the traffic and the construction? >> perfect. >> 30 minutes to here exactly. >> great. hey. thanks for coming. >> how are you? >> thanks for for coming. >> thanks for having me. >> okay, good. too late in the game, but we have our tv folks here, so that'll be nice. mark is in the other room. >> oh, good. around the corner? >> straight back. but everything's good? >> good. >> we'll throw you a couple of easy questions. [laughter] >> thank you. thanks, susan. [inaudible conversations] >> you can look in the index, you'll be happy. [laughter] okay, super, thank you so much. oh, my goodness. there he is, the great motivator. [laughter] >> [inaudible] >> this is the -- we had lunch, and this idea emerged from -- >> no. >> -- platters of salad. >> really? [inaudible conversations] >> where was that little -- [inaudible conversations] [laughter] >> this is mine. >> oh, well -- i'm thinking this is yours. >> okay, that's yours. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> okay. now, this is yours. [laughter] thank you. >> [inaudible] >> okay. thanks, jim. you'll hear more about yourself in a little while. [laughter] oh! al, how are you? well, good. >> have you had a chance to read about me -- [inaudible] >> i have had a chance. i put him in a couple of columns. >> yeah. i wanted to do a sit-down with him. >> yeah. well, i know robert schlesinger might be here. he was -- >> [inaudible] >> you did see him? yeah. i'll catch up to you about that, because we'll definitely do that. >> congratulations, by the way. >> thank you very much. >> yes. he has the good news. and who are you with -- [inaudible] >> right. >> and it was great. >> right. because i did it, i was there sunday. >> i was out of town, or i would have been there. >> yeah. well, we had a nice crowd, and now i'm doing a bunch of out of town stuff. >> tomorrow? >> i'm going to the -- [inaudible] library tomorrow. and they've got two events because, you know, they're in grand rapids and ann arbor. so i'm going to the museum, and then the next week i'm doing the library, and then i do a west coast swing. >> [inaudible] >> i don't know how they're going to do that. >> he's in grand rabids, he's writing -- rapids, he's writing a book about gerry ford. >> i'm looking forward to seeing him. >> well, i am thrilled. >> thank you very much. just out. just literally just out. thank you, al. >> okay. i have all the others. >> okay. well, then let's talk -- >> [inaudible] good luck. >> let's have lunch next week. >> back here next week? >> yeah. in and out. well -- >> hello. how are are you? >> you're not giving up the world series for me, are you? >> no, no, absolutely not. >> [inaudible] [inaudible conversations] >> it's the yankees -- if the yankees were in the world series, he might have -- >> that's what i thought. >> we would like two books, if we could, and if you wouldn't mind -- [inaudible] >> do you want me to just sign one? >> just sign one, yes. you have no idea how valuable that's going to be. >> oh, well -- >> you know what? i'll sign -- >> that's what you tell me every couple of years. >> that's right. >> but do you, you don't want the date, just -- >> the date would be great, yeah. >> that's if you know the date. >> well, it's starting to fade on me. >> well, he knows the date because -- >> right there. i've already done that. [inaudible conversations] >> we don't have them with us though. >> oh, really? >> we're going to give them to you, perhaps -- [inaudible] see you over at the house. >> oh, okay. >> you'll like them. actually -- [inaudible] >> yeah. pointing out something the other day -- [inaudible] because i have a couple of things from -- >> oh, in the -- >> one is the calendar you gave me last year. then there was another one that was a plaque that's hanging up. >> well, i hope you like, we have something more you. >> okay. and, of course, we have a full set of your books. >> oh, good. so now is in your daughter -- >> we would love that. >> would that be one? >> yeah. is this book seven? is. >> eight. >> it's book eight. >> yes. >> i hope we're not missing one. >> yeah, that can be remedied. >> true, but -- really look forward to this one. you've been talking about this for some time, and it's a great topic and interesting anecdotes. >> well, mike -- [inaudible] is supposed to be here. he's putsing around somewhere. >> and are we going to be blessed with some remarks? >> yeah, we're going to do that too. barkley's in the other room. hey, how are are you? >> [inaudible] >> yes, right. exactly. things going well? >> slowly but -- >> yeah. well, this is, this is an interesting time to be covering the white house, huh? [laughter] it's always something, you know? this is my sixth, my sixth president now. but this is the most unusual situation i've ever come, so -- >> well, has anyone found this a usual situation? >> no. >> that's exactly right. that's exactly right, yeah. but it's, it's, you know, you learn something about what could go wrong every day. [laughter] >> and it does. >> yeah. and, you know, and our relationship, of course, with the white house, the media relationship is very, very bad. >> [inaudible] fake news, that's all you do. [laughter] >> where have i heard that before? where have i heard that before? well, anyway, have you caught up with barkley? have you seen her? >> i just wanted to say hello to you. >> i'm glad you did, okay. i'm glad you could come. >> great, thank you. >> thank you very much. thank you. [inaudible conversations] >> okay, folks, can everybody come on in here a little bit? who's in that other room in the wall of silence? can you just get those guys from out of the can kitchen there? [inaudible conversations] >> i think it's the wine there nearby. >> they're protecting the wine. [inaudible conversations] >> they're protecting the wine, but that's not necessary at "u.s. news & world report". [laughter] protect some things but not the wine. protect your sources. [laughter] that's the only thing anybody's liable to steal. so, hi, welcome. it's kind of like a family gathering here. this is great. ken walsh book party. you should have gotten the annual subscription series, you could save money on that. [laughter] number eight. we'll be doing an experimental shakespeare play next time -- [laughter] we do hamlet after that. no, this is great. it is wonderful to be here with ken and you guys for a reprieve. i was flipping through ken's book, which is terrific, and there's a wonderful photo of teddy roosevelt with that giant, you know, meat-eating grin, and ken cites the caption, the famous daughter who was saying, you know, teddy always wanted to be the baby at the christening, the bride at the wedding and the corpse at the funeral. [laughter] >> he stole one of my stories, but go ahead. [laughter] >> it's not about him, it's about me. [laughter] all i wanted -- [laughter] >> [inaudible] >> we're in washington, right? but let me tell you about me. [laughter] i just, i just want to be the emcee at a ken walsh book party, you know? that's my goal. so in this, you guys have gotten a quick glimpse of this, and we've got a couple other folks here who are going to talk about and then ken. of you know, he's done it again, what can i say. keeps digging into this incredible franchise and telling us things that we don't know. this time he had to go all the way down to the realm of photo dogs -- love that expression. actually, the white house photographers were the non-dogs, it was the -- >> news photographers. >> -- news photographers that were the dogs. george bush, ken recounting that in a wonderful -- recounts that in the book in a wonderful way. but just taking this sense of the visualization we're all familiar with, with the great iconic images, how'd they get there, who did them is such a fascinating thing. and you look at some of the things that the stories that ken recounts in there, you know, the obama sitting there with, in the situation room when they get bin laden, culmination of this thing, and then a couple pages earlier is bush with this unbelievably shocked experience on his face when andy card is whispering in his ear, mr. president -- you know, the continuum of how these things fit together is so amazing. one of the things that really struck me was he gives a wonderful history. abraham lincoln, right, master of modern media -- which was the photograph -- and lincoln allowed himself to be photographed several times. and at the end of his career, had submitted to 130 photographs. remarkable, extraordinary. bill clinton -- [laughter] as ken recounts had approximately 10,000 photographs a day taken. [laughter] and pete souza, by the end of his career with obama had two million photographs that he'd taken, and most of them were on flickr. you see what this has meant. we've now accepted it so much as a part of our hives and a -- our live9 and part of this institution. and that's what ken has done a wonderful job of explicating here. we're very fortunate to have a couple of people who actually know about this. number one, mr. mike mccurry was press secretary to bill clinton -- [applause] and has dealt with a few photo images -- >> thank you. >> so, mike, please come center stage. >> take center stage. this is a great opportunity to pay transcribe you -- tribute to ken who i dearly love. he has treated me to ragu at tosca for so many years now that i think it's the only reason they still have it on the menu. [laughter] but we get together and talk about what's goingen in washington. i'm not an active player, i've kind of given up my role in politics and actually teach theology at a seminary now. that prove that is the doctrine of atonement, actually -- [laughter] has something. but we have, you know, we obviously spent many years going back during the clinton years together when we traveled many, many miles together, and he knows many of the images. and some of them are in the book that were interesting during that period. i'm not going to talk about that. i'm going to talk about -- you mentioned lincoln, and i work in a building called the dorothy hite building, you all know the pink castle in pennsylvania? this is not a story that's in your book, so i'm actually going to criticize you -- >> as you reminded me earlier. >> right, right. [laughter] so one afternoon in february of 1864, cold winter day, the president of the united states walked down to that building where i work now. and in the conference room where we are, matthew brady -- who you do write a lot about -- had, you know, brady was kind of, i don't want to say that he was the harvey weinstein of -- [laughter] >> there's a book for you. [laughter] he's what we would think of as being now a producer at that time because he was not, he wasn't, like, taking pictures with a big camera they had at that time, he had a whole retinue of photographers. but one of the photographers came and sat in the conference room that we use at our office, you know, typical p.r. office. but the conference room is the matthew brady room because that afternoon in february of 1864 president lincoln walked down and sat and took picture that the engravers then made into your $5 bill. i can tell you, when i tell that story to our clients, they are very impressed. [laughter] with that. but, you know, there are many other stories, and some of them ken knows and kept out. there was one you all famously remember that during my time at the white house i dealt with some interesting -- [laughter] storylines. and one of them involved a young intern, and then the ken starr report, does that ring a bell with anybody? came out. and after that came out, not long after after that came out -- after that came out the president of the united states was out playing golf. and he was out on the first tee, and he had a big cigar in his mouth. and the reporters, the photographers came to me, showed me the picture and said, okay, what are you going to do about this? and i said, you know, shook my head and said, okay. and they said you get one free pass. and those were the guys, the shooters, some of them that you write about in the book at that point. and they said, but the it happens again, you're toast -- but if it happens again, you're toast. [laughter] but that's an interesting story because it kind of reflects a time in which the press -- which ken is a part of -- white house, communications, public relations at the white house, they work in some manner of sin promisty. we did not declare them enemies of people. and we are at a perilous time now, because we don't have that kind of engagement. one of the things about washington insiders, like right now ken would probably agree that's not the greatest title for a book right now, because washington insiders are exactly what the trump establishment is countering and does not think should be part of what the establishment should be. but what the book shows you are these intimate moments in which photographers capture what the presidency is really about. and it is a terrific, terrific book because the stories behind the pictures are important. the stories, yes, tell a thousand words in their own, but ken has managed to kind of weave them into a way in which you actually learn more and understand more about what the context is for all those images. and it is really a brilliant way to kind of, like, really figure out what really is going on and what has gone on and maybe just a glimpse of what we need to have better going on as we think about where we are right now. so, ken, thank you for doing such a great book. it's one of many. one of, you know, he's got all kinds of books out there; air force one, you know, a lot of things that really kind of give you a real glimpse into what really is going on in our country. so thank you. [applause] >> thank you, that's great. the rules of engagement, there's a wonderful photo of jfk passing by marilyn monroe and his eyes decidedly not focused on her cleavage -- [laughter] and i thought to myself i'd like to see the three frames before that. so with us is susan biddle. susan is an actual white house photographer. there's a couple of them here, by the way. [applause] you know, ralph is here. and susan is, you know, having discretion as white house photographers must have, has asked me to force stories out of her. so i'm going to have to ask her questions. >> okay, but -- >> but -- >> but i will tell one little thing. >> okay. voluntarily. >> and what reminded me of it was this wine. [laughter] >> doing our job. >> president bush 41, i worked the last year of reagan and all four years of bush 41. so the only photograph is of him in the bed with all the grandchildren on the bed? he was actually vice president then. he was not president. so i'll tell a story right after he was president in '93 when he left the white house and i was up in kennebunkport. and you guys remember the ordeal the year he was running for president about the checkout thing? >> yeah. [inaudible conversations] >> social safeway. >> yes, right. yeah. so anyway, i go up to kenny bunk port, it was june of '99 3, and they invited me to come over for lunch -- '9 3. it was a beautiful day in kenny bunk port, and they had the table set up on the back deck and i got there, there was one other man, and mrs. bush hadn't arrived yet. he said, sit down. so i said, okay. he said would you like some wine? and i said, sure. and so he poured me some wine, and he said, well, aren't you going to taste it? and, i mean, i had barely had time to say hello, he wanted me to taste this wine. i said, okay, sure. had a sip. he said, what do you think? i said, well, it's very good. and he said got it by the case at sam's club. [laughter] and it was kendall jackson chardonnay. [laughter] [inaudible conversations] >> so how do you maintain that relationship? i mean, you're in these people's lives, right? not only, like, there, you're taking pictures of them. how do you create boundaries? how do you create that relationship. >> you know, you can ask the question who creates it, the other side or my side, you know? but i tried to, i always tried to show as much about the man as i possibly could because i thought that was important for history. not just the pomp and circumstance, but who this guy really was and his family and behind the scenes as much as i could possibly do. but, you know, you maintain a professional relationship, and ken mentions in the book one time when we were killing some time before another event, and he said to me, susan, come on upstairs to my office, i've got to work on a speech, and you can just wait there until this event happens. so i said, okay. so then he starts working on his speech and he turns to me and he reads a line, and he says, what do you think of this? [laughter] i felt like, you know, my head was on fire. i couldn't hear. it was, like, what? the president of the united states is asking me what i think about a line in a speech? and so of course i said, well, it sounds fine. [laughter] but, you know, that's sort of the danger of a lot of people around the president. i think they get, they have that feeling of not being able to say what they really think. and i don't have any idea what his line was, because i was so nervous. but the people that are there all the time, you know? >> yeah. >> they do get intimidated by the president. >> did you find instances where there was something going on and you decided you just didn't want to take a picture on your own? >> no. >> you could choose -- >> i think the journalistic background came through. >>. right. you came out of a newspaper background, so you wanted to shoot everything. did they ever tell you no? >> no. i mean, sometimes i couldn't stay in a meeting. we never stayed in very long, but sometimes if the topic were sensitive -- >> yeah. >> -- he would say something. >> were there ever shots where you thought they were kind of staging it because they wanted to show a certain image? >> i didn't feel that. except, you know, when you're on the campaign trail, sure. everything, every campaign event is staged, of course. >> right. >> but in terms of my regular stuff, i didn't feel that. >> yeah. so you were getting, getting the real view of who they are. and did they both -- you had two presidents. did they both feel in the public eye the same person you saw in private? >> pretty much, yeah. i would say so, for sure. like reagan, you know, he was funny on stage, he was funny in real life too. and george bush is very funny too. he's very funny. and maybe that didn't come across quite as much because people wanted to make him seem more presidential and maybe funny isn't presidential. i don't know, what do you think? >> there's a lot of image making that goes into the white house. >> yeah. >> but the thing about, what ken writes about in the book is the authentic images that really give you a glimpse in who these presidents really are, are the ones that are lasting. leaning over with the little guy -- >> love that picture. >> i mean, that's -- i get a tear in my eye every time i see -- >> that's the picture where a staff member at the white house, an african-american family brought their little son in, and the son murmured, barely audible, to the president your hair looks just like mine. does it feel like mine? and so president obama say said, why don't you see for yourself. and he bent down, and the little boy touched the top of his head, and the president said what do you think? and he said, yeah. [laughter] it was actually a wonderful moment indicating his serious -- >> he took this r0e8 model idea -- >> a character trait could empathy. [laughter] >> and then my other favorite photo on the opposite side of the coin, richard nixon in a staged photo, obviously, walking on the beach in his wing tip shoes. [laughter] having a natural walk in nature. but clearly the other side of it. so last question, susan, and thank you for -- what'd you do with the other, like, ten million photos that you took? >> gave them to the bush library. and i went down there about a year ago and just started going through stuff, because i wanted to look back and see if i found anything else, you know in. >> great. all right. well, we'll look forward to that one. all right, susan, thank you. and now it's time for the star of our show. [applause] >> thank you all for coming. i want to thank brian and mike and susan and everyone else, my wife barkley who's here who's a professional researcher, and she's a fabulous researcher, and she's responsible for a lot of the research in the book, if not most of it. so i just want to recognize barkley. [applause] and i also want to mention we have jim -- [inaudible] is here. jim and i went to college together. we ran the college daily at rutgers many, many years ago. and it was a few years ago from where we are now that jim and i i were having lunch, and he is a tremendous motivator because we talked about the idea of this book. and so i want to thank jim for being so persuasive in talking about the idea. so where is jim? >> here. >> oh, there he is. anyway, thank you very much. [applause] and ralph is here who was a white house photographer for bill clinton. and so i want to thank so many of you for coming. you know, mike talk about that moment with the cigar with bill clinton. i was aware of that, but there are a lot of other examples of photographs that almost didn't happen, that white houses controlled and that sort of thing. there's a famous story about franklin roosevelt, and this is in the book, where franklin roosevelt, of course, his legs were paralyzed from polio, and he didn't want the country to know the extent of his disability. and he had really a conspiracy with the photographers, the news photographers not to show this. very rare to find a picture of him with his crutches, in a wheelchair. you can't find some of them, and we have put one of them in the book. but a new photographer would show up at the white house, and the news photographers who were veterans would literally slap the camera down when they tried to get a picture of the president being carried somewhere. they said we don't want the bad guys of the world to think our president is vulnerable and weak. so there was a real, there really was a conspiracy of silence there or imagery. and this has happened a lot. there's a lot of other interesting stories, of course, endless stories. the famous story of cecil stouton who was jackty's chief photographer -- jack kennedy's chief photographer. before that they had government employees who took pictures occasionally, but he had a photographer to take pictures of he and his family, because he realized the importance of imagery. remember all the pictures that kennedy had taken with the children, and he'd have cecil take his picture. he had an outside photographer who actually worked for "u.s. news" for a while, an out commercial photographer, and jacques lowe. anyway, these people took lots of pictures of kennedy, and they'd show him the prints before they were published, so to show how different the system was in these days -- in those days. and he'd say you can't mess with these. remember the picture of john kennedy jr. in the desk? we all remember that picture of him looking out that little door. jackie kennedy didn't want pictures taken of the children too much. she felt they were being exploited. president kennedy didn't feel that way. jackie went on vacation to greece finish. [laughter] he called stanley and said get over here, i want you to take pictures of me with the kids. and that's when they got the picture of young, little john with his pajamas and robe in the desk. he called it his little cave, so it was actually something he really did use. the other interesting things, when cecil stouton was with president kennedy in dallas when he was assassinated, he took the famous picture of president johnson being sworn in. and he was taking the pictures, and johnson wanted these pictures taken to show the constitution endured and lives on. and so he wanted cecil there. he made it to the plane, he stood on a couch, snapped a few frames, and the camera didn't work. so he almost didn't get the pictures. he had to jiggle a little wire in his camera, and he finally got them on the third or fourth shot. but he did get the pictures. many examples of this, many from the clinton era, some interesting pictures there. and, of course, pete souza who worked for reagan and worked for president obama. sort of took this whole white house photography idea to another level. he wanted to become sort of the alpha photographer. he wanted to be the guy who had the most pictures and the best pictures. and he actually kept some of the news photographers from getting pictures so they could use his. and there was some hard feelings there. we talk about that in the book too. the most interesting part of this is getting insights into the presidency. and this is what i try to do in a lot of these books to try to get, find a way as a white house correspondent of finding new insights, new ways of looking at presidents. and this, i think, was worth doing, and it was -- i did find, i think, a lot of interesting insights really through the eyes and the lenses and the observations of what i call these ultimate insiders. and i know that as mike said the idea of being an insider is not the best image particularly for donald trump supporters these days, but that's what these folks are. they really are ultimate insiders. they see things that nobody else gets to see. they see a range of things that people don't get to see. the private, the public crisis, success, failure, and there's fabulous pictures. and as susan said, you go to the archives and go to the presidential libraries, you can look through thousands and thousands of these pictures which i have done, and their ours. they're the country's. they're the public's if they're taken by the white house. it's yours to see, and lots of them are online now. so you can really get really valuable insights into the president. and the last thing i wanted to mention is some of the photographers over the years were really admired as, you know, fabulous photographers, and they were. but what they've told me and what every photographer who's worked at the white house has said is that it's not enough to be a good photographer. you also have to have the trust of the president and and the first lady in particular. some photographers did that, some of them didn't. nixon never gave trust to his photographers, a guy named ollie atkins was his chief photographer. nixon was very disdainful of him. he didn't think that image would work. for one reason, he thought he would never look as good as john kennedy who defeated him in 1960, and he was right about that, and he always blamed his photographer. how come you're not getting great pictures of me? lyndon johnson felt the same way. how come you don't make me look as good as john f. kennedy? well, that wasn't going to happen. [laughter] nixon had a rule, six and out. he'd let the photographer take six frames, he'd listen for them, and he'd tell him, you're out of here. so we don't have a lot of these great private pictures of nixon, partly because he didn't trust the photographer very much. the presidents who did end up trusting the photographers end up getting this conveying them privately that i think helps everybody and helps history. the last point is what about donald trump. he does have a white house photographer, sheila craighead. she has been taking photographs in the white house before -- [inaudible] first lady. but the question is what do we see of donald trump today? do we see the private pictures of him with his grandchildren? with his children? with his wife, with his family, personal moments? the answer is, no. there's really only two cases where he's done that so far. him walking across the lawn with the two grandchildren, and he had a kid who wrote him a letter saying i'd like to mow your lawn. they did have the little boy over, and he did mow the lawn with one of those giant i mowers. trump didn't quite look comfortable with the scene. but the thing is, he likes that image of him scowling. the menacing, angry donald trump. and i'm just wondering when he's going to realize that photography can actually help him. [laughter] it could expand his appeal. i don't think he's reached the level of trust of photographers, both his own and news photographers, to let that happen. that's one big question having written this book i have now, when will donald trump realize that this is something that can actually help him and he doesn't have to be distrustful of this process so much. i don't know if it's going to work, i don't think it will. i think he's going to remain distrustful. but it's something we can watch. in any case, this is a wonderful book for me to write because i learned so much myself about the presidents and the photographers. i've come to respect the photographers so much over the years. i wish i'd been able to that talk to some of the early photographerses, particularly a man who was lyndon johnson's chief photographer, recognized by the photographers -- i see ralph nodding his head here -- as one of the best. a fabulous, fabulous photographer. and he really pioneered the idea of the photographer as a storyteller. not just getting pictures of the president behind the desk or at a podium, but each photograph telling a story of some kind. and he was terrific at that, and that's what the best white house photographers have tried to do since. and that's what i tried to do in the book, tell the story of the presidents through the observations of photographers. so thank you very much for coming, and i'd love to sign some more books. [applause] >> all right. buy a book. it is a great read. if you don't like to read or find it difficult, as i do -- [laughter] there's a lot of great photographs. [laughter] but a toast to ken who's done it again. ken and i have worked together for almost 20 years, and he keeps doing it. and it's fabulous service to all of us to understand the strange world of the white house, and ken's the man. hopefully, you have the complete set. if you don't, follow up. [laughter] we'll get it -- all right, ken. congratulations. [applause] >> well, drink up. thank you. >> perfect. >> thank you, sir. >> thank you. [inaudible conversations] >> all the pictures got taken at the funeral, and they looked at one picture -- [inaudible] saluting his dad. >> right. >> and i can't remember if he was the one who took the picture or if it was in the newsroom -- >> yeah. >> it was one of those iconic pictures. >> that's the salute at the funeral. >> right. do you know who took -- >> there are two news photographers that claim -- >> oh, i see. >> -- that they have the only image. one was a guy named sam sterns, and the other was a guy named farrell. one worked for the new york daily news, one worked for the upi. but they both said they got the imagine. >> it was fascinating. they must have -- [inaudible] and somehow so this guy was telling me they were looking at that picture, and everybody said, yes, that's the one. >> right. exactly. yeah. >> make history. i mean, it was obvious. >> right. right. yes, and it did. but now how should i make this out to? >> oh, tobi. >> tobi? >> uh-huh. [inaudible conversations] >> let me think of, there are these pictures where everybody knows where and when. >> absolutely. that was one of them, you're right. thank you very much, sir. thank you. good. well -- [inaudible conversations] >> nice to see you. >> i was going to throw a curveball at you, but i could tell you aren't really set up for taking assaults from -- [inaudible] [laughter] it reminded me of -- [inaudible conversations] churchill, and i was going to inquire if you had anything as revealing and timeless as an image when -- [inaudible] pulled that cigar out of churchill's mouth. >> right. >> he got that bridge rent -- belligerent -- >> well, there's pictures of that kind. i mean, as far as iconic pictures of presidents, you know, there's a picture based on historical moments like president obama in the situation room when the raid killed bin laden, that's become an iconic -- the swearing in of lyndon johnson has become ab iconic picture. >> [inaudible] i can't think of anything that has the -- [inaudible] >> yeah, well -- >> such a short, whatever, it was a ten minute -- >> right. right. >> and who would with ever go up and snatch a cigar out of churchill -- >> well, yeah. >> if he didn't make it on the image, he'd make it on the -- >> that's right. [laughter] >> couldn't imagine doing whatever could be -- [inaudible] >> right. >> i was over at the river center -- [inaudible conversations] >> i am, i am trying to make that happen. it just takes a while to get this stuff organized. >> i'd be glad to deliver a book to -- >> oh, sure. yeah, that's be -- that'd be great. >> [inaudible] >> oh, okay. >> and it was very timely. >> are you connected to them? [inaudible conversations] >> i wanted to tell you thanks for bringing up the early roosevelt years. >> oh, good. >> i thought -- [inaudible] >> oh, really? fireside chats. >> new technology. [inaudible conversations] >> that's right, yeah. [inaudible conversations] >> yeah, no, he did. yeah. >> it was really -- >> well, we have a picture of him being carried out of a car can, which is a very rare picture. because he didn't want anybody to know that he had the disability. >> no. didn't want anyone to know. [inaudible] >> yeah, exactly. right. so anyway, thanks, mary jean. thank you, thank you. [inaudible conversations] >> here is a look at some of the current best selling nonfiction books according to "the wall street journal." former white house photographer pete souza's behind the scenes look at the presidency of barack obama. next is inventing joy: a memoir from inventor and entrepreneur joy mangano. then rhee drummond offers her recipes in the pioneer woman cooks. that's followed by thyroid healing. and in fifth, oprah winfrey provides insights from her most meaningful conversations with the wisdom of sundays. our look at the best selling nonfiction books according to "the wall street journal" continues with biographer walter isakson's leonardo da vinci followed by bobby kennedy by chris matthews. after that is capital gains, a memoir from renovation expert and hgtv host chip gaines. then pulitzer prize-winning biographer ron chernow explores the life of ewe lizzies s -- ulysses s. grant. and wrapping up with brian kilmeade's history of the war of 1812's battle of new orleans if "andrew jackson and the moore cl of new orleans. -- miracle of new orleans." you can watch some of these authors on booktv.org. >> good evening. good evening to each one of you. [inaudible] i want to welcome you to the -- [inaudible] i am holmes adams, chairman of the board of the foundation and also the national advisory board. our mission is to preserve the literary legacy of -- [inaudible] and to encourage writers and readers of literature. the eudora welty lecture is a collaborative enterprise whose mission is to promote the

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