and/or your favorite history books or books that you think people that are interested in listening to what we've been talking about auto read. what's interesting? being an angler file you know, i've got a bias the brits do biography. i won't say history because they're two different schools, but they do better biography better than anyone particularly political biography politically off, but particularly authorized biography here. that would be the case of death. i mean, we just i mean you could see the critics understandably rounding on the authorized biographer because it would be seen as well. that's what the name suggests. the brits have a different attitude. and a different approach authorized biography can be and is seen as being every bit is legitimate. and intellectually honest as any other form another thing that brits do the they're snobbery in this country. frankly about the academic versus a non-academic biographer the fact that matter is look at look at the great. biographers see i insisted biography great biography is literature. first if it's unreadable, what is the point of writing a book? let me interrupt? you're not a phd you do not. i'm not a phd barbara tuchman famously said the best thing that ever happened to her. a history student was not getting a phd in history because she wanted to write. for more than other historians she wanted to reach a mass audience. but she never condescended to that mass audience. she never dumped anything down. i mean you read i mean tuckman is a gorgeous stylist. and why you may disagree with some of her arguments? you certainly cannot find fault. with the rigor of her scholarship or the skill and talent of her narrative pros and to me that's there's a role model. i mean to combine an academics rigor. to go through those hundreds and hundreds of boxes of paper, you know. to to expose yourself to the views of of scholars who may very well disagree and from whom you can learn something. to subject to extra scrutiny the most sensational you know, there's an old line the newspaper business that that's a story too good to investigate. honest biographers there's no such thing. and i've always taken the tap the more sensational the material. the higher the standard must be to validate it or incorporate it. so name some historians that you've always admired and i'm not particularly looking for contemporary, but just people that you think really know their craft and have known their craft. well, obviously today, i mean you look at david mccullough who has a journalistic background? and i wrote for american heritage. i of the great. what does it say about? popular culture which to some people is an oxymoron? and that's the problem. what does it say that we don't have american heritage? you know that in this as a magazine that this is incredibly diverse. divided culture of ours cannot room for or the resources for american heritage when there is clearly. a huge audience out there and david, you know. rights, like a dream. works incredibly hard at his craft but is also incredibly generous. the ford book, i mean, i don't mind saying the fourth book in some ways. it's genesis, you know once i had with david numerous years ago now we're sitting at the hey adams. that wonderfully historic atmospheric hotel across from the white house. where henry adams america's greatest historian there's someone once lived great the greatest american henry adams. i think i think you know parkman. is certainly i think alan nevins. as you know, alan nevins wrote an eight volume. that's something that's missing today. no one publishes multi-volume. anything robert carrow is is in some ways the exception that proves the rule. there are any number of of people deserving of that kind of treatment but the publishing world. doesn't permit it. and i don't know maybe that's good or bad. but you know, i still read lincoln samberg's lincoln. i know that it has serious flaws. particularly the first two but i'm the prairie years, which is more poetry than history. but my god, it's it's hypnotically readable edmund morris. to simply to read edmund morris's tr three volumes written over critically over a period i'm guessing of 30 years. the third volume is a very different. author from the first volume i mean i think of edmund as a romantic. someone growing up who was for whom tr? was a magnetic figure and if you think about tr's life before he became president, i mean it is it's the most colorful larger than life. um, you know story that you can think of and then in some ways the presidency almost imprisoned him. i mean again the second volume is is wonderful, but it's different from the there's a rollicking swat buckling quality about the first volume that you literally just cannot put down and in some ways. it's a young man's book about a young man. and then there's the president and the third volume. is in some ways bleak. and unsparing and absolutely honest. intellectually honest and honest in the portrait of a man. whose aging fast? who is deprived of power? which is like oxygen? to him and it's a you can do an ellijayak book that patricia wrote patricia o'toole wonderful historian. she's a fourth coming biography of woodrow wilson, which i'm sure will be wonderful. she wrote a book about tiaras post presidency. that feels very ellijay not sentimental but elegy, which is this poignant almost painful. sense of sort of what proves did at his best. edmonds tr in retirement is not at all elijah it's it's just it's this. aging man with a questing intellect. for example, i mean i came away with with much enhanced respect for tr's intellectual. qualities curiosity but a man in some ways corrupted. by the need to be not only the center of attention. but to wield power. what do you think of? was it seven volume series by duma malone and what would he think if he published today? yeah, but whatever you think of what has happened to jefferson historically happy. why not? first of all carol again being a notable exception to the rule you have to be a genius. to conclude if someone cares enough. about a historical figure to write six volumes about them they're probably in myers. it takes a rare. writer to rouse himself from his bed every morning for 30 or 40 or more years say boy today. i'm going to to write about someone i detest. that's the what i call the prosecuting attorney. school of biography and and you know it exists and no doubt. there are. gratifications the funny thing is i'm sort of i don't belong to either school. might sense is you have an absolute obligation. to your subject and your readers to avoid an agenda whatever it may be. and if you have an agenda. at the outset you've better -- well work your way out of it. um, you're not you're not writing a book to tell reader what to think. you are as objectively and dispassionately as possible. i mean you want to be passionate about what you're doing because it takes over your life. and you want to be dispassionate in how you do it? so that otherwise how can you have credibility? how can you be seen by right by a reader who doesn't know you i may not know your work. you're asking a lot of that reader. you're asking that reader to trust you. you're asking on faith. now over time you're right enough books. hopefully, you know you read your critical mass of readers who at least have reason to believe in you. do them alone clearly worshiped? at the altar of thomas jefferson it's a remarkable series. it's a definitive in a factual sense. and yet he missed. maybe the most important. thing about jefferson um more to the point and i don't want to up on my own. but i mean more to the point. he dismissed. as impossible knowing what he knew about jefferson. it just didn't square. with his lifelong documented portrait simulator talking about we talk about sally fairfax, and they and the now more or less means sally heming. i'm sorry. i've got my founding fathers affairs mixed up. yes, sally sally hemmings who was most people now agree jefferson's mistress. and the mother of multiple children what about because it's closer to what you've written about. what about james flex there or douglas southall freeman franklin. well, you know the wonderful thing flexor wrote a wonderful. for volume biography of washington and i would really urge people. i know it sounds formidable. the one volume can't begin to capture. the richness and why because flexner was an art historian. which means? flexner wrote with his eyes it's a very visual. you are there flexner has it's one thing. to be able to see it. it's another to be able to make others. see it. and not only see it. but immerse themselves in it see that to me is great biography. great biography is almost claustrophobic. in its intimacy, it's it's putting you in the room a small room with a larger than life figure for 700 pages and throwing away the key. the intimacy may be almost uncomfortable. but even that's what he painted. a portrait of washington at his times. and and i like freeman. who again is a marvelous example of a journalist? and from richmond from richmond the story is you know freeman not only wrote six volumes. he died before the seventh which was completed by a couple graduate students. but he also wrote four volumes on lee. he wrote four, i think four volumes on leaves lieutenants. i mean his output was extraordinary the story goes and the secret was very he never wasted. time what he visited, new york. there are stories of people seeing him on the subway writing. i mean literally not a moment was wasted. um, is a very old-fashioned. but any event admirable trait his washington to my way of thinking. and and both series, you know, they they have value. is washington is much less vivid. for one thing he for reasons. i've never quite understood. almost never quotes washington and the fact that matters in 1932, there was a 30 plus volumes, you know, i'm walking with papers. and so there was a there was available a scholarly reliable. set of washington papers, but for some reason. freeman shied away from that so i i you know, i would recommend anyone if you've got time and you want a vivid. encounter with washington read read flexner so i've heard you say by the way, juan karen out. i shouldn't forget contemporary whose also established himself quite quite rightly well at the, you know sort of the peak of and who writes? great. big exhaustively researched books that succeed as literature i actually was about to ask you something related to ron turner. i've heard you say that you will not see. the broadway musical hamilton. yeah, that's true. i love you know, i love broadway. i love musicals. hamilton and you know i i'm it's only fair that i annotate that with the observation that i have seen as everyone see there's a phenomenon and it's a wonderful phenomenon that there are lots of young people who are coming to history. through hamilton. there are people who who can who can sing the lyrics to every song just as i could to carousel. you know, well my fair lady. but for different reasons, so it's it's an ideal exercise in a way and that is wonderful, and i i salute the creators of the show. it's simply not my cup of tea. it's simple as that. what does that mean? no hip hop, and it's just not you know, i don't i don't question. it's legitimacy. i don't question. it's you know actual substance. i'm just talking about as an experience of going to the theater. you know i go to the theater to escape. this all too depressing temporary world in which we find ourselves, but hollywood doesn't make my kind of movies anymore, you know great big historical epics. they don't exist. oh, so anyway. but but also you know. having gone to a great many broadway shows over the years, you know and and harboring. i guess you could say a hobby of following. musical theater, you know you develop tastes and preferences and dislikes i wouldn't be interested in seeing a country western. musical for the same reason it's just you know, it's as simple as that, but the things in your life that are you seem to spend most time with you mentioned earlier hurricanes. you've tracked them for years hurricane freak. i want flew into one in 1985. it was a weekend in november. very late, of course for the hurricane season. and it was a hurricane named kate in the gulf of mexico. well, simultaneously ronald reagan was in geneva. having his historic meeting with mikhail gorbachev. and i was then on the hill working for pete wilson. and someone on the staff who work with it it's department. um, i be forever grateful. contact paul, you know while washington works pulled some strings. and got a journalist bumped. oh from this air reconnaissance flight eight of the storm. and i said you but you're going to be in mississippi and you know eight hours. they flew out of a key swore. i think it's keith's work air force base biloxi keesler keesler, okay. anyway but but it didn't end there so i got there. you saw in your life away you sign a document because i've been through training. so i was a nephite they they strapped you into plane. they converted c-130s. and the remarkable thing is you are literally strapped in. crosswise and the side of the plane is glass. they've been modified so you could sit there and literally watch watch the storm. you know. and and they make four passes. you're in the storm eight hours. in the hurricane itself, you're in the air. 14 16 hours but anyway, depending on how close it is to land. and at this point it was you know, it was a category three hurricane the strongest. november storm on record at that point and so i thought well that's pretty good. you know, i'm getting you know something for my money here. and and i'll never forget that what they call the stadium effect. it literally is, you know, well developed, but sure hurricane you have this. very clearly defined eye wall. and you look down and you can see the ocean. and flocks of birds that had trapped in the eye. aimlessly sort of and even so we did that but then i also is it and i had someone else had pulled some strings and i had a seat in the gallery. when president reagan returned from geneva he spoke to the nation and a joint session of congress reporting on his trip. literally. i think the helicopter landed on the hill and he you know so i had to get from mississippi back to dc in time for the speech that night eight o'clock or whatever and i just i just i walked into the gallery, you know, literally i just as the president was was walking into the into the house. so there was a memorable that was a memorable day. i started to say other things like you love to go to expositions. yeah, i'm a world's fair. freak out. the first was the new york fair and 64. i've been in nine. since and abu dhabi is on my bucket list in 2020 why? but not well obviously why not exposition you see i said earlier an escape. from the world we inhabit there's nothing like a world's fair. i mean it literally is a fantasy land. it's it's life lived at a different pitch. it's the artifice of bringing a hundred countries a hundred cultures together in one place. for example, my mother my long suffering mother in 1992. i said look. i'll take you to spain. she didn't you know. okay, you know well, she fell in love with we got there, but the reason was the universal and international exposition in 1992 for the columbus clinton tenerary was in seville. so unfortunately, we made the mistake. it was late in the run. don't ever go the last two weeks of a fair because everyone everyone and his brother wakes up to the fact that it's about to close. we waited for nine hours outside the canadian pavilion. and i am notoriously impatient. and she observed more than once that i would not wait in a line anywhere except a world's fair. so something about walking through the turnstiles that your character it's his transformed. i have you know wonderful memories of every fair and i can't wait which is the next one that you've seen other nine. montreals expo 67 who's 50th anniversary. we just observed was without a doubt. just magical incredibly ambitious a thousand acres on man-made islands in the saint lawrence. can you imagine anyone proposing to do that today? i mean the environmental impact statement alone would would take more time than you had to build the fair? but it was it was a vision. launched by visionaries um extraordinary english it had optimism of the mid-60s. i mean walking back you can there are lots of things you could laugh at. but even more things that you can take heart from and also it was also the fair where cinema and cinema techniques took a leap forward multi-screen. i mean, it was just a whole different way of seeing the world. you've made pilgrimages. to queen victoria's gravesite. oh, well, yes, and it's not others. it's only open two days a few days a year. why the angle not only that but i made a pilgrimage to the isle of white? where her home? is where she died in january 2001 i've stood in the bedroom and mentally genuflected well, he is funny noel coward. whose autograph pennings in my bathroom along with all sorts of british notables had this lifelong obsession about napoleon. he read every book. he had libraries of napoleona. if there is such a word and i feel that way about queen victoria. victoria herself and the victorian era i mean, i don't romanticize it i'm not blind to the to the inequalities to the to the grinding poverty. to the class structure. i'm not a celebrant. but i am insatiably curious and every new biography about victoria and they keep coming. i you know order and read and devour how good a writer was winston churchill. it was extraordinary writer. i guess technically you would say was an extraordinary dictator. because he dictated. most of his major histories and that's an art form. i kind of imagine. cheating to someone. i mean i had to do it. for a number of years obviously just doing correspondence and other you know is a library director. and i never got really comfortable. with it but you know churchill. who is a protein figure who? i think deserves. in many ways is there is the largest figure of the 20th century? he also had a very practical. since he was living. hand to mouth hand a pen. i mean he was living article to article. in the 20s and 30s not a wealthy man. he went through his writing and and he cranked it out and i have no doubt. there's all there's a lot of boiler plate. in in the accumulated cannon but and and there's sort of critics now who read the example the second world war memoirs as being self-serving and distinctly incomplete. some of that it was left out for political reasons. remember he returned office. and there are things he couldn't say or he didn't feel he could say he things criticism for example of his friend eisenhower. he was in politic and in that sense it suffers. beyond that there's a sense that it's special pleading in some ways. he famously said that he intended to look good in history because he would write the history and people have taken that at face value, but the book still hold up and above all they hold up is as literature. in all the time you've spent thinking about presidents and been around presidents and political figures. have you ever kept a diary? never did. wide and i should regret it if it was worth regretting. i don't know. probably lazy you've never gone back and written things down after you had a conversation with somebody like that. oh, but i could probably count on the 1a and currently you talk about memory. i mean for most of my wife at least i've had a i've been able to remember. and it's it's again. it's odd. it's a it's like things that you need to remember. you can almost wool yourself. to remember now it's also true. it's interesting now. in my sixties i will get the transcripts. for example the ford book and those hundred and sixty or so interviews that i did and now of course i'm drawing upon them as part of my research and i i'm struck not so much by miss remembered. but what i failed to remember there are you know? this is wonderful story here. and i and i would have missed it if i hadn't gone back and and check. the transcript so but no a diary, you know in retrospect. yeah, you know, i find a manual of someday and here i mean i should feel guilty. you know the queen as kept a diary queen elizabeth has kept a diary all her life. and works on it every day. and can you imagine someday some authorized biographer? you know, it's going to be admitted to the royal. archives, and they're going to throw open the first of these. hundreds of biomes and you know, i'd like i'd like to be i'd like to be there. which american president have you spent the most time with either in office or after? well gerald ford, i mean as you mean physically living conversation back and forth. yeah. yeah. i i think i got to know president ford who well. what reagan of course i mean i and i don't want exaggerate our intimacy. but i was there. i chose there when the alzheimer's letter. was written i got a call. already made to the fact that it was going to come. i i remember i'm will never forget. the last conversation i had with president reagan. you know, he used to come up to the library and the alzheimer's letter was in i want to say october of 94. was a fall of 94. and i was there for another year and a half. he would come up. and i take him through temporary exhibits. and the like and or you'd sign books or you know, but i mean he was still he was still actively involved. and and immensely proud i mean very modest because i'd sat in meetings with when they were first. designing the exhibits and he was incredibly humble. i mean he, you know couldn't believe there was going to be this institution with his name on it and that i'm convinced that was genuine. but at the same time he's he was very much it was done. he was very proud of it. i was proud of his legacy to both he and mrs. reagan that that meant the world. but anyway, the thing i will never forget. can be early ninety six just before i left. and he came up. and we went through a temper exhibit and has lunchtime so so we're going to have lunch. and we're going to a place over 10 to 12 miles from simi valley. when the library was located and so they said well, you know get the back seat with the president and which was which was nice. i appreciate that because they realized it was my last chance to be with him. and you know, i don't know. i can't explain it or justify it but i guess when you're younger. you're willing to take chances or say things that you would be too cautious and say later. i remember we were sitting back there. this is the last chance i have to. talked to ronald reagan and it just popped out i said, you know i'd be really really interested to know what did it feel like to be shot and of course i was referring to the march 1981 assassination attempt and you know, he didn't and i will actually titan and i realized he was talking about being shot in the movies. his experience in the westerns where he was quote shot. and of course famously, you know, his he loss of hearing in one ear came about as a result of a of a gun going off apparently too close, but and it was just it was just you know a remarkable. experience, you know, and i realized then what? the progression of the disease you know, he was famous with a great storyteller. well he didn't ever tell a lot at least he would if you asked but he he didn't volunteer a lot of stories about the white house. he talked a lot about hollywood. any most subject he most like talking about was his boyhood in dixon. and above all his experience as a lifeguard the thing he was proudest of was. he saved 77. lives as a lifeguard and he had very interesting and to me at least was a real. window on his intelligence and character he he instinctively understood there were differences. between men and women and how they reacted to being saved. man, of course pretended that they was unnecessary, you know women on the other hand were much more. truthful much more honest and sometimes much more clinging, you know to their savior, but it took me first of all, even at that point in his life, you know, he he'd been an observer. you know, the first thing you want to be. as a boy was a cartoonist. and you think what is a cartoonist a cartoonist is someone who steps back? and not only observes or reproduces but thinks there's a message in the cartoon. and i i sensed. i mean no great revelation, but i sensed at reagan was much much more intelligent much more observant. and much more remote from which to observe so anyway it was the sort of thing you don't