michael korda, former editor-in-chief of simon shuster. his latest book is called "alone: britain, churchill, and dunkirk: defeat into victory." >> that's where the title comes from, it's necessary for years, it's necessary alone. and alone is precisely the point. the british got the army off but as churchill said, we got the men but they have to leave their luggage. they got off, most without their rifles because they were ordered to throw them overboard by the naval officers and most without the boots, but we got off 2,000 men of the british core of the army without which we could defend ourselves. we could not have resisted the germans had they invaded without them. >> rose: continue with nancy koehn, historian at the harvard business school, her latest book is called "forged in crisis: the power of courageous leadership in turbulent times." >> i was in the midst of a great crises when i started on lincoln. i got ill, had cancer a couple of times, my husband walked out on me, my father dropped dead, so partly i was looking at lincoln to help me. it took me a while to get back on my, so i didn't do a lot of work. and i lot lost in blinken and decided that the world did not need another book on link everyone and then went searching for another stories. and in each of these stories is a different kind of animal. so to do this right and discover what was takes a while. >> rose: rucker, korda and koehn when we continue. >> rose: funding for "charlie rose" has been provided by the following: >> and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and information services worldwide. captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> rose: we begin this evening with politics. robert mueller's investigation into potential collusion. after months of projecting calm and confidence mueller's probe could would not affect the president, there is growing concern within the oval office. the unease heightened yesterday afternoon when it was revealed george papadopolous, an unpaid foreign policy advisor on the trump campaign pleaded guilty to making false statements about his effort to forge a relationship between candidate trump and vladimir putin. followed indictments of paul manafort and rick gates. michael korda co-wrote today's article for the lead paper, entitled "upstairs at home with the tv on, trump fumes over russian indictments." pleased to have phil rucker back on the program. these are reports of the white house yesterday. he was up reading your presentation of the indictments coming down. describe for the viewers what this day was like for president trump. >> well, as you said, charlie, the day began early in the morning. the president knew, like all of us, that there was some likelihood, some strong likelihood that the first indictments related to the mueller-russia probe would come down monday morning. so the president turned on the tv and sort of stayed tuned. he apparently, according to sources, did not have any inside information about what was happening. he was waiting to see what would happen with all of us and got increasingly agitated and frustrated with what he was seeing. he did not like the fact paul manafort and rick gates were being so closely identified in the media as trump campaign officials, even though the indictments spelled out alleged misdeeds that occurred before they were working for trump's campaign. trump was on the phone, calling his lawyers repeatedly, sort of trying to understand the legal analysis here, what was at stake, what kind of exposure he miffed, listening attendantively to the television commentary on cable news as he is want to do. then he was late getting to work. he didn't show up in the oval office till well past the allotted time when his staff expected him and it became the subject of some discussion among the staffers in the west wing. >> rose: is the white house alarmed about this? >> "alarmed" is a strong word for the entire white house. i can tell you some people are quite concerned about this, in part because they don't know where mueller is going to go next. it's not clear. the special counsel has not really revealed very many clues here. you know, clearly, the indictments of manafort and gates came. papadopoulos is a figure nobody in the administration expected to come up in the separate indictment monday and they're not sure what's going to happen next. there is a lot of concern and general flynn. >> rose: do we know there are any other closed indictments that have not been opened? >> not that we know of. there may be but not that we're able to report or know about. >> rose: and when you look at yesterday, the white house is saying this is about ten years ago, this had nothing to do with us. >> yeah. >> rose: is that simply putting on a good game face? >> it is. it's one thing for them to say that the manafort and gates indictment had nothing to do with the campaign because, in fact, they spelled out sort of years of international business that these two men did advising different foreign governments and gosh politicians and political parties over the years. that pre-dated the trump campaign. but the papadopoulos indictment, george papadopolous, that is directly pertaining to the campaign. now, the white house line from sarah huckabee sanders, the press secretary, has been, look, this young man was basically a volunteer foreign policy advisor. he had only one meeting with the president, he was not a senior figure on this campaign, and any activities that he might have done to try to broker contact or a channel with the russians, he did on his own, he did not do that as an official on behalf of the campaign, but you have to look back at the history. it was here at "the washington post" in 2016 where then candidate donald trump revealed george papadopolous on a list of advisors for his foreign policy team and, during that same trip to washington, trump was actually photographed in a campaign, but he certainly was involved in the campaign and a foreign policy advisor by the candidate's own announcement. >> rose: well, the other question that comes up frequently, other than about flynn and where is the case about michael flynn stand, it is this notion of whether this will become so tough for the white house that they will reconsider firing bob mueller. >> yeah, that's an interesting notion. i've not heard white house officials speculate about that, at least not in our conversations with me, but it certainly is something to think about. i know there's a great deal of concern not only in the white house but around the white house and sort of the broader trump political orbit about flynn. there was a sense of relief, frankly, monday that the indictments were for manafort and nonflynn because there was a feeling indicting flynn would be a much more heavier political blow for the president because flynn actually made it into is it government and served in the government at a very high level if only that first month. >> rose: and he was with trump a lot. >> that's correct, and at his side throughout everything from debate prep to rallies to the convention to the transition planning. general flynn was a key figure on the presidential transition, helping advise the president on who to hire for a number of senior roles. >> rose: what do we know about general kelly in the white house yesterday? >> i can tell you general kelly is trying to keep things running when it comes to everything not pertaining to russia -- so that's th the tax cut agenda, preparing for a high-stakes, 12-day trip to asia, the president will be leaving friday on that trip and kelly is preoccupied with that. he also did an interview with fox news channel's laura laura m and stumbled into comments about the civil war. >> rose: are we going to have the people at the white house closing the wagons in a circle, understanding this is now warfare? >> based on my reporting today, i can tell you there is actually some disagreement within the president's broader political circle. some figures including steve bannon, the former chief white house strategist, have been privately urging trump to take a much more combative approach with mueller to try to discredit the special counsel, to try to point out that a number of lawyers and investigators working with mueller have contributed to democrats in the past and are, you know, by the white house's account partisan figures, to just do everything they can to muddy the waters here, and what the president has been doing so far at the urging of his lawyers is to actually cooperate with mueller to try not to provoke him or be too antagonistic publicly but to provide the documents when he's asked and kind of do what he needs to do with the expectation or hope, at least, that this investigation comes to a close pretty soon. but there are no indications that this investigation is going to be over anytime soon. by all accounts, mueller seems to be just getting started. >> rose: ty cobb seems to be arguing, whenever he makes a statement, we're cooperating in full with the committee, we want to help them reach a rapid conclusion. >> that's right, and i think they are cooperating in full, certainly with the document production. they are hopeful that there will be a rapid conclusion and, in fact, sarah sanders at the white house press briefing podium repeatedly over the last few weeks said this white house expects the investigation to be over soon because they don't believe there is any collusion, but there is no indication from mueller and his team and the investigators that they are on that same time frame and this very well may stretch well into 2018, which i think will be a real headache for the white house. >> rose: the general consensus is, correct me if i'm wrong, so far, no one's seen hard evidence of collusion? >> that's right. there's a lot of smoke. there are a lot of different moments that we know mueller is investigating including that meeting at trump tower in the summer of 2016 that donald trump, jr. and jared kushner and paul manafort were a part of with the russian lawyer. but there does not appear, as far as we know, publicly, to be any direct evidence of collusion, but tha that does tht isn't to say it doesn't exist. >> rose: what's the biggest question for you? >> frankly, what mueller knows and what does he have and if there is any harder evidence of collusion. i mean, it's been very difficult to trace mueller's steps throughout this whole process. we've talked a lot about the russia probe and there have been a ton of news reports about the russia probe thanks in part to the great investigative reporting that's been going on, but we have really no visibility into what the mueller team is finding, and they have access to documents that we as journalists cannot see and don't have access to. so we're trying to piece together the puzzle without knowing all the pieces mueller has, and mueller has been very discreet in terms of not signaling anything publicly. he's done no interviews, no public comments, and we're sitting here trying to basically read the tea leaves and report facts as we learn them and piece it all together in public. >> rose: we assume he's seen the income tax returns, don't we? >> i think that's a fair assumption. i don't actually know whether he has or not. >> rose: philip, thank you so much. philip rucker of "the washington post." back in a moment, stay with us. >> rose: michael korda is here. he was the editor in sheaf for sinal shuster for over 40 years. political author and historian. his latest book is called "alone: britain, churchill, and dunkirk: defeat into victory." it is both a history of the evacuation of dunkirk in may 1940 and also a memoir of his family's experience in wartime london. pleased to have michael korda back at this table. welcome. >> delighted to be back is that you are looking fine, my friend. >> thank you. >> rose: my great grief and sympathy over the loss of -- >> thank you so much. >> rose: who suggested this book? >> barbara suggested this book after i wrote a biography of robert e. lee, a very long biography, she asked me if i would consider not writing another long biography. i said, what would i do instead? she said why don't you write a short book about something you know? it's three or four years saying you will never guess what i just read about t. roberts or robert e. lee and it gets boring after a year or two. i said, what? do yodo you have any idea aboutt i should do? she said, dunkirk. i said, she's right. i had no idea at the time anybody was going to make a movie about dunkirk. >> rose: a movie you said good things about. >> i loved it. i think it is not only a good movie. i think it's the best war movie you've ever seen. >> rose: best war movie. absolutely. >> rose: not just about world war ii or dunkirk, the best war movie? >> because it's a new way of making war movies. >> rose: why? first of all, it doesn't have scenes in which you have a lot of generals sitting around a table explaining to the audience the germans are here or here. so it has no explanatory scenes. secondly, you see everything through the eyes of just four people, and they never meet each other. there's no connection between them. and you see what's happening through their eyes. so you see through the eyes of the fighter pilot, through the eyes of somebody on the sea, through the eyes of somebody on the beach, and that's a quite revolutionary way of making a war film. i have to say tha that that "als exactly the opposite of this. i have to explain what led the british army to a beach in dunkirk in the last week in may and why they ended up there and how we got them off. so the film, which is wonderful, is really the last section of my book, and my book is an explanation of how it actually came to pass. >> rose: churchill, you have a quote from churchill speaking to the house of commons, june 4, 1940, on the completion of the evacuation of dunkirk, quote, i have myself full confidence we all do our duty, if nothing is neglected, we shall prove ourselves able to defend our island home. ride out the storm of war and outlive the menace of tyranny if necessary, for years, if necessary, alone. >> yes. that's where the title comes from, "if necessary, for years, if necessary, alone." and alone is precisely the point. the british got the army off but as churchill said, we've got the men but they have to leave their luggage. they got off most without rifles because they were ordered to throw them overboard by the naval officers and most of them without their boots. but we got off the 200,000-man corps of the british regular army without which we could not possibly have defended ourselves in 1940. they could be rearmed, they could be given new boots, but without them we could not possibly have resisted the germans, had they invaded. >> rose: what's the significance of it? >> huge asking, i think -- huge significance, i think. first of all, had we not gotten the army off, i think churchill's hold on the war cabinet and the house of commons and his own party, which was very weak then -- he had only been in office for the best part of two weeks -- might have faltered, might have slipped from his grasp. >> rose: his reign in part was built on hope. >> halifax already opened discussions with the italian ambassador in london about the possibility of mussolini inquiring of hitler what the terms might be for peace. and there is actually, in the book, which is like the centerpiece of what i wanted to write about, there is a moment when halifax reveals to the war cabinet of nine people that he is talking to the italian ambassador about what the german terms would be for a british surrender. and churchill is dubious, is against it, but is not at that moment able to squash it. and he goes down to a meeting of the larger cabinet of 30 people and, in a room behind the house of commons, a small room, he stands on a desk and speaks to them and, at the end of it, he says, "if our long island stories end, let it end with each of us lies on the floor choking on his own blood." and the entire cabinet applauds, claps him on the back, cheers him and, as he's returning to ten downing street from the house of commons after this, a naval officer, an aide, comes up to him to say that i believe 17,000 men have been removed from the beach on dunkirk that day. with these pieces of news, churchill goes back to the war cabinet and says to halifax that he must break off any negotiations with the italian ambassador, that we are never going to surrender, that to start or inquire about german terms is to end, as he put it, on a slippery slope. so it is the moment at which the decision is taken that whatever happens, britain will fight on. >> rose: we'll fight on the beaches and everywhere else. >> everywhere. >> rose: i thought hi might say anyone who dare considers negotiating with the italians shall find themselves on the short end of a hangman's noose. >> he would have liked to have done that but he knew better than to go too far with his own war cabinet and halifax at the time. he sent halifax to washington the rest of the days of war as our ambassador in the days before air conditioning. >> rose: this is about dunkirk but also about churchill because you know this history and i also want to get to your own family. in your judgment, what was the genius of winston churchill? was it brilliance? was it rhetoric? was it connecting dots? what was it? >> all of those things are, of course, important, but he had the one thing without which nothing great can be accomplished, which is courage, and that's the basic core of his beat, he was never afraid, even as a young man in cuba, in the 19th century, and the cubans were fighting. churchill said, it is exhilarating to be shot at without result. >> rose: right. and although he had layers of phobias and problems beneath, but he had a fundamentally courageous outlook on life and on politics, without which nothing can be accomplished. >> rose: courageous and optimistic? >> courage gives you optimism. it's difficult to be optimistic if you're not courageous. but i think courage is the distinct churchill-ian quality, an absolute lack of fear. i think second to that, he was wise. he understood absolutely that the channel is wider than it looks and the germans would not have an easy time, if we could put together another army and arm it, making that 21-mile crossing to england. >> rose: we just had jen ette conant here whose father had a very significant letter einstein wrote to the president saying you have to develop an atomic apon because if you don't the germans will get it. >> rose: history depends on these moments. i think the moment in which -- first of all, the moment in which einstein wrote the letter is of extraordinary significance, but also the extraordinary significance is the fact that roosevelt took the time for somebody to explain to him that the letter was important and that he must read it and think about it, and he did. and churchill, for all that people accuse him of being bombastic, argumentative, and he was all those things, was capable of listening to advice, of taking it, of changing his course, when he needed to. he was a man born for the moment. >> rose: and, so, your family of the theater -- >> my mother's side, yes. >> rose: on your mother's side. >> she was a significant stage actress, and my father was a very significant actor. he won an oscar for thief of baghdad in 1940 which i have on my desk. >> rose: is that right? i have two things on my desk to give me inspiration. one is a bronze bust of winston churchill which was a gift from david mccullough for whom i edit for decades and a very kiir friend, and the other is my father's academy award for "the thief of baghdad." i look at those every once in a while and say, well, if they did what they did, i could surely do something. >> rose: just tell me about the family and how they evolve. >> they evolved because my uncle alex, my father's elder brother, he had three brothers, born as jews in the austria hungarian empire in a small hungarian farming village. my father made his way to budapest, changed his name to korda and became a film critic at age 17 and directed his first motion picture age 21. he drew his brothers into his orbit, as it were, because my uncle went on to become a very famous director. he did among other films "cry the beloved country," the four feathers, jungle book, and my father came an academy-award-winning art director and the three brothers together, when they made movies with the three of them working on it were a formidable team. >> rose: you wasn't to hungary at the time of the uprising? >> i did, 1956. >> rose: and were given the great national medal from hungary. >> i was. >> rose: is that on your desk, too? >> that is on my desk, actually. it's a little flashy for daily wear, but every once in a while i like to look at it? what's this? >> that merely signifies i was in the royal air force. i wasn't worn my full getup. >> rose: when? national service in england and served in the royal air force two years. >> rose: did you maintain your love of flying? were you a pilot? >> no, i was a wireless operator or a radio operator on aircraft and i hoped always when i was a boy, despite poor eyesight, i would have a lot to do with airplanes, and two years in the royal air force not only fueled that desire but i've never looked at an airplane since without any feeling whatsoever except wanting to sit in first class and having a glass of champagne. i'd just as soon never go in the cockpit of one again. >> rose: robert e. lee. monuments to him have been torn, crashed down. what don't we know about robert e. lee or what should we know about robert e. lee? the argument being made, obviously, as you well know, is that robert e. lee rebelled against the country in order to save slavery. >> that's an unavoidable conclusion. i think it's certainly right for people to be taught to condemn rebellion and that they should be taught why that rebellion took place, how it grew to the size that it did. all of that is perfectly justifiable. but on his own terms, we look to robert e. lee because he's arguably one of the greatest american generals. he was a man of great dignity, great honor, great spirit, and his surrender in 1865 is one of the great moments in american history. >> rose: why is that? because both men carried it off with dignity that is truly amazing. when lee had signed the surrender agreement and he walked out on to the porch and was waiting for his horse traveler to be brought up, grant raised his had hat and all the union officers raised their hats to lea, lea mounted and raised his hat to them. they begain to fire a 100 gun salute to victory and grant with great annoyance said tell them to stop that, we're all great americans now. it is in that spirit we have to view lee. yes, he chose not to command the american army di. >> rose: which he was offered. which he was offered in 1861 and said he could not raise his sword against his state, his children or neighbors, and absolutely he fought with unbelievable skill for five years, but he managed to bring off a surrender which i think made it possible to join the two parts of the country together again, whereas we could have had, had he not done that, guerilla warfare going on between ourselves and the confederates for years later, we did not. >> rose: what is the biographer's art? >> well, first of all, to tell the truth, which is always difficult to do, and secondly to get at the facts. >> rose: the truth is not always easy to find. >> i mean you can't write a biography of someone with your mind already made up about who they are or what they thought or what you think of them. you have to go into a biography and open yourself up as you would to the other person and learning who they are and what they're about. and that's one aspect of it because, without that, there's no excitement and suspense. you're discovering that other person. the other thing is that the ability to get out of them what the greatest moment in their life and the most important moment in their life was. it very often isn't the big thing, necessarily. i think that it sometimes is but there is no question having written a biography of eisenhower that, for eisenhower, the major moment was not being elected to the presidency of the united states. >> rose: it was normandy. it was normandy. june 25, 1944, the night before d-day was the most important moment in his life. >> rose: where he that did to make the decision to go or not to do. despite the weather. that was the great moment in his life. with lee, it is, i think, because it was a tragic mistake, with lee, it was the decision to fight at gettysburg. >> rose: gettysburg, to join the battle at gettysburg. >> yes, big mistake. had stonewall jackson been with him and not dead, lee would have gone around mead's arm and gotten between mead and washington. but stonewall died in johnsonville and lea made a costly mistake. >> rose: is it fair to say had jackson not been killed on his horse as he was that the war might have been different in some way? it might have been -- >> we never know, of course, what happens if. stonewall jackson actually died off his horse but shot riding his horse. >> rose: died a few days later. >> yes. i believe had stonewall jackson been with him on the day before gettysburg, that he would not have attacked meade and gone around meade. >> rose: the irony of this, and correct me history, stonewall jackson at the time the war began was not considered a great general. >> no, he was teaching artillery. >> rose: yes. and was regarded as clumsy and something of an oaf. but he was an enormously skilled general. >> rose: general eisenhower. general eisenhower i think comes in for a bad rep as a president and general. i think he was a very, very good president. i think he was a great general. he understood that the germans would be defeated by getting on to the continent of europe and pushing them back because we had more men and more weapons -- not as good weapons as they had, but more of them, than if we kept pushing, they would break. and he was right. >> rose: are there ten things the germans might have done and they would have won the war? >> one is going too far, but i think if d-day had failed and we were unable to mount another invasion for another couple of years, that it's not impossible to imagine that stalin and hitler might have made a deal that enabled nazi germany to survive in some form or another for a long time, and who knows what would have happened after that. we know, of course, that since we had the atomic bomb, we might have used it on the germans, probably would have, but, yes, that's the critical moment. the critical moment was the first day of d. day. >> rose: and the breakthrough that took place. >> absolutely. >> rose: and the mistakes of romney. ( laughter ) romle. >> romle. had he been there earlier that day and hitler been willing to release to him the fort pander divisions, d. day could have been a much bloodier event than it was. >> rose: and such are the means of which history is made. >> the little things that have huge consequences. >> rose: let me talk about books. a number of years, 40? >> 48 years. >> rose: and ho so here we are,e amazon revolution. has the significance of books changed? >> no, not in the least is that the power of books, no matter how they're read -- and it's my impression it said some people turned back to wanting to read books like this and not ebooks. >> that's possible. yes. you have the one in your hand and i don't but there is a certain tack tile fascination to a book. >> rose: you can't carry them where you can take kinding. >> can't make notes. >> rose: right. but if you're going to read, say, the new book on leonardoda da vinci. >> rose: walter isaacson's book. >> yes, doesn't matter whether you read it on the kindle or the book but the main thing is you read it. the number of people who will read a book is not i think smaller than it ever was before. they are reading it in a different way, now, and they will read it in different ways in the future. i mean, eventually -- >> rose: it's the same way you read your newspapers. >> because there was a time at which the book was thought to be a revolutionary object and people said it's not nearly as nice as a scroll, and it's not as pretty as opening parchment, and the book was seen as an ugly, technological change that disassociated you from the pleasure of reading a scroll. but now the book is becoming a rather outmoded object, although we're still fond of it, but two generations from now, don't you think that the people who invented the apple phone will invent something you take out of your pocket like a pocket handkerchief, open it up, put pt where you want and you read it wherever you want to and the whole contents of the world's libraries will be contained in a cube like this. >> rose: it's a glorious day. it is. people will always want to read books but that doesn't mean they have to read them in the form that you and i are familiar with. >> rose: "alone: britain, churchill, and dunkirk: defeat into victory." the magnificent story of what happened there and how it was inspiration for winston churchill and inspiration for a nation and how it was a powerful personal story of people who wanted to make sure that they brought their boys home. >> absolutely. >> rose: thank you, michael. thank you for having me. >> rose: back in a moment. stay with us. >> rose: nancy koehn is here. she is an historian at the harvard business school. she holds a jaiment e. roberson chair of business administration. her latest book examsens the life of five historical figures who triumph after insurmount upable obstacles. it's called "forged in crisis: the power of courageous leadership in turbulent times." i'm pleased to have her at this table. welcome. >> thank you so much, thank you for having me, charlie. >> rose: perfect title, forged "forged in crisis." >> crisis is a crucible. it's an opportunity to get braver, find your muscles of moral courage or get smaller, bitter, angry, and the five people chose the form course. >> rose: how did you choose them? >> they chose me. i'm an historian. we work conductively. i have a nose for 25 years after doing this at harvard business school, so part of it was that's a good story. parsons battle with breast cancer, shackleton's attempt to save his men. partly i realized early on because, as you know, as student of lincoln, i started with lincoln. >> rose: yeah. and i was interested in how did he deal with this emotionally? what was the engs persons of living inside that ambitious, humorous frame like? and i thought, i want to understand the experience of living in the perfect storm. so the second way i chose them was i needed documentation that could help me reconstruct the emotional experience of these people. so lots of people i would have liked to write about. i couldn't because i just didn't have that. last but not least, i wanted five very different people because, in the end, charlie, the insights of these stories are absolutely universal. so i didn't want to choose just political leaders or just american leaders from the 20t 20th century, so i wanted, if you will, like a tappest bar of people and experiences we couldn't deny as a way of finding our best selves. >> rose: what questions are you asking? >> how coz a crisis make or break a leader? what do they learn about themselves in that moment that forges them, that allows them to have really significant, worthy impact, worthy of decency and moving the boulder forward, so i'm asking how dud their experience and the lessons they learned of navigating through the high winds and big waves help move a big mission possible and change the world? last but not least, how in the heck are these stories from history relevant right here, right now? remember the book took 15 years to write, so i wasn't planning -- >> rose: 15 years? from start to finish. >> rose: why did it take 15 years? you're a busy person, that's why. >> thank you for the graceful excuse, charlie. that's not what happened. i was in the midst of a great crisis when i started on lincoln. i got ill, got cancer a couple of times, husband walked out on me, my father dropped dead, so i was looking to lincoln to help me. but it took me a while to get back on my feet, so i didn't work for a while. then i got lost in lincoln and decided the world did not need another book on lincoln, then went searching for other stories. and each of these stories is a different kind of animal. so to do this right and discover what was takes a while. >> rose: how did you come out of your own crisis? >> well, a combination of saying, kind of shaking my fist at the ceiling like scarlett o'hara. >> rose: raging. there was a lot of raging, why me, how could this be happening, and then kind of with god as my witness, i'm going to make something good of this! and the book is partly response to that. >> rose: so the good that came out of your struggle with divorce, illness, loss of parent. >> losing all my money, let's add that in, too. >> rose: how did you lose all your money? >> nasty divorce. it was the harvard retirement, but all i had, kid from a lower-middle class family. >> rose: yeah. the good that came out of it, what i learned from these people and the fact -- >> rose: what did you learn about yourself? >> oh, i learned that i'm stronger than i know, i'm too easily frightened -- i'm very, very easily frightened. i've got an little braver, and these people have taught me something. and i spent too much time asking why this was happening. >> yeah, exactly. way too much time with why. that's what i learned. >> rose: and secondly, any amount of time seeing yourself as a victim is wasted. >> absolutely. you know, il like these people who -- all of whom failed many more times than they succeeded, part of the reason they could be successful in crises like lincoln is because they had so much mileage with failure, charlie. >> rose: mileage with failure. that's a great phrase. >> mileage with failure, that's one part of the lincoln story that is new in this book, and as a result of all those failures, right, you learn that -- being a victim, getting brittle and defined by a crisis doesn't serve your and it certainly doesn't move the boulder of goodness forward in any way. >> rose: did they all have different mental makeup, meaning not intelligence but emotional stability and emotional intelligence? >> they did. they all had different emotional makeup. they had had different degrees of emotional stability. what they shared in common was an understanding relatively early in their lives that using what today we call emotion ail wareness, lincoln wouldn't really have known what that term meant, was an asset they could harness and get better at. the most important aspect of that awareness, charlie, was a decision each of these people, again, pretty early on, if you would initially by narcissistic ambition to get better not only in terms of the things that they were checking off on their ambition list but to get better in terms of what they could make of themselves inside, everything from learning to read, but also lincoln, developing the extraordinary powers of emotional discipline and forbearance as president. >> rose: were they all -- what gift did they have? take bonhopper, a man who gave his life to help people survive nazis. >> so i think his gift was a combination of building -- you know, angela duckworth would call his muscles of grit and resilience. >> rose: wrote grit, saying grit makes more difference than any other individual factors, how much you warrant and how hard you are prepared to get it. >> and these people developed plenty of grit and big muscles. >> rose: they probably had it before then, didn't they? >> they had some but got better and better. bonhoffer, by the time he's been on the gestapo watch list for five years, has gotten much better, less fearful, much better at showing up and dealing with his life under watch, under the threat of arrest, and even in prison, he grows exponentially in terms of his levels of cowrming and what he's willing to face and write and do in an 8x10 cell. the gift of evolving like that when the stakes are so high, that's a gift is that you bet it is. >> and they all have some of that. he has it in a way that to me is quite poignant because, in the midst of trying to assassinate hitler, he never loses sight of the serious moral consequences, right, of taking even the life of such a tyrannical and terrible man, in the interest of a higher good, save more people, because he had inside information about the final solution and, yet, he never shies away from both the moral consequences but also from the ability to see life from all kinds of perspectives, great empathy, perhaps, is a way, a roundabout way of answering your question. he has extraordinary reserves of empathy and, remember, you know, he's born to this privileged family. it's not like he was born a slave as douglas was. >> rose: i'm interested also in the idea of courage, whether that's something you acquire by -- do you acquire courage because you simply are presented with a situation and either you have it or don't in or do you learn how to be courageous? >> well, it's a great question. i'm in the latter camp because these people, and they've inspired me, they've taught me that you can get braver, you can get more courage, just like, you know, grit or resilience muscles. resilience is a muscle you develop. i think courage is not so dissimilar, but it's interesting with douglas, he's the best example of this, although lincoln is pretty scared the first month in august, he can hardly make a decision about fort sump at the because he's so -- fort sumpter because he's so frightened. douglas gets braver by taking a little step into his fear. >> rose: tell them who frederic douglas is. >> escaped slave, becomes an important member of the abolitionist movement in the north. doing a book without douglas seeing the political ground and political will for the proclamation of emancipation -- >> rose: he was essential to the emancipation. >> as essential as linken. they're book ends. >> rose: they are. they're book ends of the transformation of america. >> rose: rachel carson is also in this list. >> she's my favorite. >> rose: not because of gender? >> no, because -- partly because she had breast cancer and it killed her. she's outrunning the clock. all your viewers an listeners won't know that he had metastasizing breast cancer and she discovered it midway through the writing of silent spring and knew she was on to something very powerful, dangerous and important and trying to outrace the clock. her brave ri, the fact that she's this quiet, shy, retiring person, charlie, i mean, and the fact that she changed the world in that book, that she did her homework so carefully, that she does it with such grace and dignity and that she shatters our myths, our current myths of that leadership. shshe's an introvert, a retiring person, a writer, and you can argue she's been more powerful and influential than many presidents. so i have a very special place in my heart for her and i have a sense of how difficult this was for her to do. >> rose: she informed your life as much as linker or anybody else? >> and her brave ricalls to me as much as lincoln's. >> rose: and shackleton, we know the story because of documentary films made about him. >> yeah. but i start the book with shackleton because it's so dramatic i want in an attention-starved age for people to keep reading so i start with the most dramatic story, charlie. you can't stop once you start, right? >> rose: you want to know what happens. >> you want to know what happens. because as well as i know the story, and i know this as well as the wrinkles in my face, it still is jaw-dropping. his ability to overcome so many obstacles for so long and, as you said early in the top of the interview, against seemingly insurmountable odds, you know, it speaks to our age. it speaks to each of us to find our, you know, better, stronger selves and get to. >> rose: did all of them have doubts? >> absolutely. so that was something i didn't expect to discover. they had not just doubts, they had crippling moments of doubts and, on many occasions, each of them when they're in the thick of it. one of the things that fascinate me is these people get to the edge of the qasem of doubt and they're about to do a dive in and give up. and then by a hair's breadth, they step back and don't plunge over and as frost would say, that has made all the difference. >> rose: the road not taken. ight. i was fascinated by how they, inch by inch, got back from the edge of cliff of doubt over and over again. so, yes and yes and yes. >> rose: where do we teach leadership best in america? is it military? is it -- >> it's probably in the military. there may be some theology schools -- >> rose: i was going to say that. >> schools of divinity where we're teaching leadership with moral purpose and the obstacles of bringing goodness to the world so that we train people to be ready for those obstacles. it was oliver wendell holmes who said derricks scribing the civil war, injured many times, oh, our hearts were touched by fire. i think in places, like in schools of divinity, we touch the students with fire, and we need leaders who are touched by fire and public interest and putting others first. >> rose: putting others first is a pretty essential quality. but all of them are narcissistic, you think? >> that's another interesting thing i didn't expect to discover. they all start off like many of my students and myself in my 20s and 30s, like i've got to accomplish this. it's about this next thing, checking this off the list. and then somehow in different moments in each of their journeys, the "i" gives away to what martin buber, the 0t 0th century philosopher would say, the thou, serving others, where they discover their own identity and true power serving others. hearts touched by fire. >> rose: when you look for the best definition of leadership, where did you find it? >> i stumbled on this from david foster wallace no less. >> rose: one of the favorites on this program. >> i know those interviews well because i'm such a student of david foster wallace as an individual as well as writer. he wrote a very interesting article about the first john mccain presidential campaign back in the rolling stone and rips very wallace-like on leadership and writes this, "real leaders are individuals who help us overcome the limitations of our own weaknesses and laziness and selfishness and fears and get us to do harder and better things than we can get ourselves to do on our own." >> rose: boy, i like that. aren't we longing as a citizenry for leaders that can do that for us? >> rose: i think that's a big question in this moment our history. where are our leaders and what are we expecting out of them? >> we're not seeing enough of what most of us want and need when we think of courageous leaders. >> rose: i think a great leader how in present times or in past, they have to have some sense of the ability to define the moment so that it becomes a paramount concern. >> that's a great -- that's a very astute observes vacation. it's about frame -- observation. it's about framing the mistakes of the moment. we're gathered on the battlefield, the final resting place, here's what we the job of the living, is right, the great task before us is to keep -- renew our dedication and here's what's at stake, the government of the people, for the people and by the people shall not perish from the earth. every courageous leader owes it to the followers, to boulder of goodness, to frame and follow that moment, to give us our role in it, what are we called to do? to do harder, better things. what's at stake and finally what are the tradeoffs we must lac make to move to something better? that's the fundamental challenge with which we find ourselves. >> rose: do you teach leadership at harvard? >> the history. >> rose: beyond the history. the history of leadership is in fact teaching leadership. >> well, for an historian, it's about as good as we get and i think it's pretty good. i proudly say that. >> rose: "forged in crisis: the power of courageous leadership in turbulent times." nancy koehn. thank you. >> bless you. >> rose: thank you for joining us. see you next time. for more about this program and earlier episodes, visit us online at pbs.org and charlierose.com. captioning sponsored by rose communications captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org >> rose: funding for "charlie rose" has been provided by: >> and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and information services worldwide. >> you're watching pbs. >> announcer: this is "nightly business report" going global. the bulls seem to be in control across the globe, as indexes far and wide hit new highs. rush to ing to showrooms. why are more americans driving off with new cars? when the unexpected happens, a life changing event strikes suddenly. our sharon epperson shares her story to help you avert a financial catastrophe. those stories and more on "nightly business repo" for wednesday, november 1st. good evening, everyone, and welcome. it feels like the entire world is in rally mode. at one point today all three of the major u.s. indexes were at record levels. a pretty good way

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