douglas brinkley. booktv live from tucson. >> good morning. welcome to the tucson festival of books, the world's greatest book festival. [applause] >> my name is jim cook, executive director of the national parks association and sponsor of this session. western national parks association is the non-profit organization partner of the national park service. our purpose is to educate visitors about the history, nature, cultural and recreational opportunities in 67 national parks in 12 western states. .. so as you are here with the tucson national festival of books and the main library western national parks association is very proud to present our special guest today , what a treat to have him back in tucson. with that, i introduce our moderator bill. >> thank you. yes, i am bill bill buckmaster i host a daily radio talkshow on kb oi a.m. 1030 the voice. also you can listen to the program live anywhere in the world. by going to buckmaster show.com. i hope you will check it out. i'm excited to be here at the tucson festival of books and to be talking with douglas brinkley. just to mention about the fest of your tax donation, tax-deductible donation really makes this all possible. it is a free event so we do encourage you to visit the student union south ballroom or go to the website. your gift will sternly make a tremendous a difference. before we get into douglas brinkley i want to mention the way this will work, i will be talking one-on-one with professor brinkley and then i will allow time for your question. we will at least to 20 minutes of questions after our one on one with douglas bradley. mr. binkley is a a professor of history at rice university, he is a cbs news contributor, cnn presidential historian, and a contributing editor of vanity fair. the chicago tribune has called him america is a new past master. his mentor, stephen ambrose called him the best of the new generation of american historians. seven of these books have been selected as a new york times notable books of the years, cronkite one the sperber prize for best book in journalism and was a washington post notable book in the year 2012. the great day lucia, hurricane hurricane katrina, new orleans and the mississippi gulf coast won the robert f kennedy book award. his newest book is rightful heritage, franklin d roosevelt and the land of america. that. that book is actually being released in conjunction this week with the tucson festival of books. it is a follow-up to his a best-selling project, the wilderness lawyer which celebrate teddy roosevelt's spirit of outdoor exploration and bold vision to protect. get this, 234 million acres of wild america. let's hear it for professor douglas brinkley [applause]. let's begin with this being the centennial of the national park service, envision what the national park system would be like without the advocacy of the two president roosevelt's. >> thank you for being here, i am very thrilled to be in tucson. i come here every chance i got. i am launching my book here at your festival because a because a lot of this is a bout arizona. and the beautiful places here, all of the grand canyon state magazine places fdr is really responsible for preserving, the civilian conservation corps for building roads and places to get to. a lot of the wildlife here in wild arizona from sheep and antelope, were all protected by fdr. when we talk about the national park service the first national park is 1872 with ulysses as grants. it is not the centennial and that cents. the revolution and the the revolution in the idea of national parks and public land the preservation kicks off with the presidency of theodore roosevelt from 1901 until 1909. he believed that democracy was about wild spaces and to our heirlooms, taj mahal and places called the tetons or the olympic or big ben, or mammoth cave this is what defined america in the view. it's preserving the american landscape he views the number of mechanisms to get things going while he was in president. one one was to get a national park created. when fdr who loved executive power more than any other president would start signing executive orders and he did so by using the antiquities act of 1906, along with the congressman john lacey of iowa they put through the landed desk at capitol hill in congress, will lacey lance commissioned if you are a westerner and needed to deal with the federal government on grazing rights, mining, gas, etc., et cetera, you would go through this land commission, everyone was kind of nice to lacey. he came up with the lacey act and the antiquities act which really says for scientific reasons the president of the united states can set aside places for the heritage of americans, largely thought to be for dinosaur bones. there were apparently intelligence were digging up dinosaurs all over the west and europeans were stealing these artifacts also people were vandalizing and native american sites stealing pottery and rare objects and the like. antiquities act of 219 oh six was meant for something smaller, maybe 60 acres or 6 acres. roosevelt came to your state, arizona and he came into a territory when he was president. he stood at the lip of the grand canyon and was surrounded by roughriders, the man who served with him in the spanish-american war and many of them hailed from new mexico and arizona, oklahoma, along with plane swells and ivy leaguers. it was a legendary group. the roughriders. he goes to they grand canyon and says looking out over there great divine abyss and says do not touch it, god has made it, you can only bar it, borrow it, leave the grand canyon alone. [applause]. he did a similar thing with the redwood trees in california. people would name individual redwood trees and commercialize it, he physically started ripping the sides off the trees and said this is a cathedral you are defecating this redwood groves. it is driving the conservation message home. congress or senate was going to mine the grand canyon for zinc, or copper whether the roosevelt gave a good speech or not. they did not want as a national park. so roosevelt put that antiquities act which was supposed to be for 60 acres and saved 600,000 acres. you can clap for that [applause]. he say that 600,000 acres and when asked, that's illegal it went to court. he declared it declared it a national mountain you met with with executive power. it was legal that he did it. when asked why he said they settled science a show me a better example of erosion at work. it is world-class world-class erosion so we have to study it. that begins this revolution in conservation. i wrote my first book about the inner roosevelt and john mere, and the gang back in that period of time, the early progressive era. i recognized that the big player becomes franklin roosevelt who is president from 1932 until 1945 who is enamored with his distant relative but he called him uncle ted. theater roosevelt oversaw the marriage of eleanor and fdr and conservation was in their family blood. when the national -- this is the centennial of the national park service in 2016, and august 2016 woodrow wilson, after being prodded by stephen mather, great conservation activist and franklin lane, secretary of interior and horace albright, they got together, there, there was a summit at berkeley about the anniversary streamlined again, not just having a national park like yellowstone and yosemite, the u.s. army running them, it them, it was not a coherent system so woodrow wilson in those three gentlemen i mentioned in august 2016 made it the national park system. but the big game changers fdr because when roosevelt becomes the presidency in the midst of the great depression, just days after he said we have nothing to be about fear itself, he took took a ride and a card with horace albright, one of the guys who did the 1916 act and they drove to shenandoah national park which roosevelt wanted to see made into a huge park and at that point he talked to albright and said i want all of our consolidation of all national monuments, alt military military battlefields, all big historic sites, the mall in washington d.c., all brought and stripped away from other agencies and put into a national park service. it is about american heritage. suddenly, they became the pet agency of the new deal and fdr built the modern national park system. he started saying, and hiring unemployed men, gave them a dollar a day to come work in places like arizona, to build visitor centers, civilian cap conservation corps planted 3 billion trees dealing with d4 station in the great plains in the southwest. that is where my book picks up on this tree army of roosevelt and how he uses these people to build incredible structures and start doing heavy duty preservation of our national heritage. there was tremendous opposition early on to both wrote so well to what they wanted to do. we almost did not get the grand canyon national park. there was tremendous opposition, in florida the plumage for the birds, they would use all of these plumes and fashion. it pretty much had driven some of these birds to extinction, correct? >> yes. the reason you need a federal government and not state laws, birds do not have state boundaries. you can say we are protecting our birds in massachusetts and if they land in florida they can be shot and killed willy-nilly. there is no protection of birds. so species were being eradicated. the other roosevelt for example wrote the last recorded document we have of the passenger pigeon he saw near charlottesville virginia. now that bird is extinct, the last bird, martha died in 1913 and a cincinnati zoo. the extinction and the species is what really concerned theodore roosevelt a great deal. it did the same for franklin roosevelt. fdr's mechanism was again he had people coming in and say -- the reason they slaughtered all the birds was because any woman in the audience to hear me would have come years ago for a public lecture wearing bonnet with ornamental feathers. just like you see the pictures of the buffalo that some people say 30-60 million use to go across the great plains, in florida they would come with some i automatic weapons and these and gotten them all down, plucking the feathers and stilling the eggs. we were decimating species. the flamingo used to be all over florida and now luckily there is a remnant survival birth in the bahamas but we drove them out of florida. roosevelt, theater roosevelt was told this and he said let's go to the indian river and pelican island and declare it a federal bird reserve. and he said i so declare it. that became the birth of u.s. fish and wildlife, although fdr creates fish and wildlife. what theodore roosevelt does is establish 51 federal bird reservations with executive power. from the allusions to the gulf islands off of louisiana, the parts of key west, all over. big ones, the yukon yukon delta, and alaska put aside parts of west virginia. fdr comes in and says let's streamline it. we have some of these reserves but the ducks of america have been slaughtered, geese almost out of existence because when the midwest for example dried up in the dustbowl, there is no water stop places for birds. it is fdr says we are going to make the bird reservations at night national priority. when you are hungry here is a president same birds are priority. he says if you can build bird fly waste those migratory spots, those hotels for birds, that will also help water supplies for areas so in drought years they have a reservoir. it became a huge saving of the birth under fdr. he created a duck stamp making all hunters pay a fee. all of that money went into buying land for new national wildlife refugees. in the back of my book, rightful heritage i have a a whole list, it will blow your mind how many national wildlife refugees fdr saves to protect vanishing bird species but to help repopulate the country with duck, geese, swans, he did for example in a state like texas that never like the federal government much. he went to the port -- near the golf and now it is the place you go to see the whooping cranes. fdr did that, he went fishing down there for tarpon, recognize the bird rich environment, signed an executive order saving it. he wanted the cranes saved, and on and on in every state to save bird life but also mammals, particularly the mammal life here in arizona. >> and you mentioned the dustbowl, many, many of us have the images of people in oklahoma and in the central states that were out of their homes and had to leave the great migration. you mentioned the impact on wildlife. >> it is devastating. by the the time franklin roosevelt's president and 33, we had shot up the country. we had that big agriculture just took everything, no crop rotation, mashup sought soil erosion everywhere, d4 station, we were dealing with an america that had been stripped bare by the extraction industries, by big timber, by mining, they did not care, it is fdr came in and said -- my book, the land of america he said we are going to bring the land back. many people talk about the great depression about wall street and the stock market crashed, the big story is what happened to agriculture in rural america and how suffering and not just the dustbowl but chronic drought, soil erosion, d4 station, fdr whenever he would go and say occupation on the form, he would write tree farmer. he grew trees, that is what he did, he was a christmas tree farmer for churchill's christmas trees were from his tree farm. so that hobby was forced tree, he believed any country in the world that d4 stated it was going to die. all you had to do today is if you fly over the hispaniola look at the dominican republic you'll see trees, look at haiti they d4 state. so roosevelt roosevelt said we have to plant these trees, now we write about the planting out here, he did a shelter belt of giant trees like miles long of trees to try to stop the wind from the dustbowl from blowing. if you go to north dakota you are looking at 35 national wildlife refugees, saving, saving it all over the place, giving ranchers easement to work with the federal government to rebuild their land, setting up soil erosion workshops to train farmers on how to properly bring the american landscape back, not only did he go on to save national parks, places like the everglades and big ben, channel islands, joshua tree, the olympics and all of that. but he is really push the state parks, if fdr had the national park service going into states that had no state parks and said get a state park system and all of the states. if you go to florida about the birds in florida, fdr goes down there and basically creates the park system and truly puts work relief, money, we are going to save this otherwise you will lose florida and he pushed through the protection of the everglades which was a bitter fight that does not come to its final manifestation when truman's president but it is franklin roosevelt in correspondence that i have with ernest co., naturalist, naturalist of florida that he writes, fdr writes nationalist audubon people all of the time wanted to say the local species. here here in arizona it was the boy scouts of arizona, under major general burnham, one of the founders of the boy scout that was here that did a massive arizona campaign to save the desert bighorn sheep from extinction. if you go down, i wrote on the acreage, the mountains, those are all fdr, one -- organ pipe tactics is an fdr executive order here. desert botany became a big thing for fdr. protecting the southwest which people would just rape and not think it was a fragile beautiful landscape. i tell tell the book a story about obama, hamilton. pasadena socialite who is a new dealer for fdr and she started collecting pictures of the joshua trees. she became the apostle of the desert. not with ansell adams quality, she was able to insinuate that in 1933 a meeting to meeting to the white house because she had been a donor and have been part of the new deal movement. roosevelt had her in, in a wheelchair and shows them all the photos and says okay, a million acres, we'll do a million acre joshua tree, now some of you are environmentalists and some had to back off, there is lisa and mining interests, that's for lawyers to do later, i am just declaring it. [laughter] as stalin said about fdr, he said that churchill would go up to you and cozy up and sneak his hand in your pocket to steal a coin get something little border definition, is something that he use the money -- he would smile and greet you and jan both hands into your pocket and grab everything out. that is what he was doing on behalf of protecting these wonderful places that we're celebrating its national seashores fdr created all of this when he created this in north carolina brought that into the pork park system. >> he was going to fight the spanish in the war of 1898, he was really excited about going to cuba but as you talk about in a chapter in the wilderness warrior, he was really excited about the wildlife that he would encounter in tropical america. >> yes. when theodore roosevelt went to the spanish-american war and got all of the roughriders together at the manker hotel in san antonio when the hotel still exists there, a wonderful old-style hotel if you go to san antonio you should visit. he brought these men to tampa bay and they had three mascots with them, golden eagle, a cougar, wild mountain line it, but they got it as a cup from new mexico and a dog, they had three mascots with them and here's fdr going training in tampa bay and cuba and he's writing his bird reports wherever theodore roosevelt when his first book was the summer birds of the adirondacks. he wrote that as an undergraduate. he died writing about pheasants, fdr, if you go to his home in hyde park new york you will see all of the bird collection, in those days they would shoot the birds because there is no dna testing and what you would do is you would shoot a bird, and scholars if you are studying eastern bluebirds you would have 100 caucus carcasses to look at variation so we could create a guidebook of what species are here in north america. one of the great finds in the fdr book as i found an early essay that fdr wrote about wildlife sure enough it was never seen before a new document and as i continued my research there he is as president franklin roosevelt goes all the way out to hawaii to visit that national park he wrote about as a boy to go see the volcanoes of hawaii because it had been a lifelong fascination with him from doing those kind of childhood reports. we all a tremendous amount to theodore franklin roosevelt for saving our heritage. for not plundering our country and they did it in so many different ways it is almost hard to exaggerate the legacy of the two of them put together. >> you had mentioned a woman environmentalist, hoyt i believe her name is, what about mrs. roosevelt? eleanor roosevelt, what role did she play? where she is enthusiastic as for slater about this passion that fdr had for saving our land? >> a great question. i write a lot about eleanor roosevelt to end their marriage in their book as i have to. what i think scholars have missed about their marriage is they had a shared love for an echo system, a treasured place, a sanctified landscape, the hudson river valley. that river meant everything to them and they would go on birdwatching trips together, fdr was more of an enthusiast than she was. i write about in the middle of world war ii them going to find golden eagles and together and more importantly she wrote in her my day columns regularly about america's woodlands, force, lakes, lakes, species, she worked with the audubon movement, she tried to get progressive laws for animal protection, she was a true equal, fdr had a little more passion on how to do it, he was more into the science and the biology, she was more of a pastoralists looking at beautiful places, but she wrote better, she was a better writer about the natural world than roosevelt was. she said about her husband that he has a map mind, people often take of him as an intellectual she said he had a map mind, what he meant new every county line, every river, every forest, he just left maps. that is why why he was such a great president, both saving our american heritage, he knew all of these, you couldn't beat him on naming a river, lake, he was a was a master of it and he mastered the globe so during world war ii he knew where the ports were, that map of knowledge that served our country exceedingly well and he lived, he went sailing everywhere as president. here we are on the eve of world war ii in 1938 and franklin roosevelt signs up with us the smithsonian institute and goes to the galapagos to follow the trail of darwin. he disappeared for three weeks. [laughter] this was in 1938, world war ii doing collecting and you and say well theodore you still like to find new big elkin grizzly bear. they were looking for the smallest burrowing shrimp for this miss sony and institute. they got all sorts of new creatures and documentation about this incredible voyage to the galapagos in the middle of fdr's presidency on the eve of world war ii. >> they were great travelers, both presidents, it it must have been in the genes or something because you look at the travel that teddy roosevelt did in the amazon area, that trip i believe believe almost killed him didn't it? >> here's an interesting fact for you to remember, theater roosevelt would get terribly seasick. he would vomit if he got on water. he had a bad stomach. he liked seen ahead of him, his favorite landscapes were flatland and prairie, now not only is ex-president did he go to the amazon and do this incredible journey and he went to africa and spent a year recording natural history of africa, i do not know if you realize that he came to your state and lived for a while in arizona hiking through the grand canyon he had saved. he then went and lived with native americas and wrote an article, he participated in a rattlesnake handling ceremony on his way from arizona into utah to see rainbow bridge. that is how committed he was, as x the president he wrote a very distinguished scientific piece on the tortoises of florida. franklin roosevelt wanted to go to galapagos because a distant relative had written one of the best books about the galapagos pre-darwin. so the family had a real connection with the galapagos and fdr and harold hick us were trying to make the galapagos a world heritage park or jointly run between ecuador and the united states. fdr also wanted to have the big bend jointly run between the united states and texas, and glacier jointly run with canada. these did not happen because by coming up the state department with complications but roosevelt, he was are ready system seen that echo systems don't know borders. they they cross over the river on both sides. if you're going to protect you have to refrain from artificial barriers. right before he died, the big issue that roosevelt was pushing was conservation is the basis of world peace. with the old forster and his father for it was old man near death, pincher and fdr post the altar at the time were to save the united nations were going to create a global standard of conservation, they were pushing to go that far, when fdr died, that movement whitman nowhere be cause truman's people came in and they were much more less idealistic. less conservation conscious. less wanting to please the big corporations. in that kind of global environmental movement squelched. we could certainly use it right now. it is a pity that he did not get to live an extra year to get that done. >> what would they be thinking right now, the roosevelt that they could see today's conservation policies? >> i could tell you in if theater roosevelt were alive, or fdr, they would have brushed out the slate of candidates like dandruff. [laughter] these guys, roosevelt or giants, these guys because they put public service first, they were about about making america really truly the special place to live. but theater roosevelt, keep in in mind that when he went to africa, william howard taft fired gifford his forster that stayed on because he blew the whistle that they were coal mining in that national forest in alaska, that was the roosevelt reserve. pinchot got fired because they were letting cut companies out of seattle dude no money blown up the mountains in alaska because taft thought the conservation had gone too far. after tr came back and got the last laugh, he created the bullmoose party in 1912, split the republican party into and came in second and taft finished third. the most successful third-party movement in american history was the bullmoose party. incidentally, but franklin roosevelt once he got polio a big thing was not to seem like a weakling and what he could do was build his upper body strength. he look like a big-time wrestler if you looked at his upper body because of all the late weightlifting he would do. on the high seas sport fishing, he had terrible health problems, today there might be something for him form but he had terrible sinusitis, all of the time which he would not have when he was at sea. with a little bit of sun, his polio condition and his health would go upward. he spent like one out of every four days of his president on water, he would go all over because he felt so alive and also they call it blue mind night nowadays, but if you live near water features it is supposed to help clear your mind and you are able to think clearly, it's why so many people are attracted to living on coastal areas and the like, he had that. he loved the ocean, salt spray, he would use the ocean spray's now when they have sinus trouble just because that salt opens up the sinuses. >> let's start lining up for questions. i know you have a ton of questions for professor brinkley. while we are getting ready for a first question i want to ask you about the civilian conservation corps, talk a little about that. occasionally we hear that can be reinvented or reenergized, cranked up may be to help and clean up some of our national parks. some of your thoughts on that please. >> it was next ordinary success that civilian conservation corps and we could use something like that today. it is difficult because back then even unemployed men looking for money they had to give their whole paycheck to their parents, even if you were 20 years old. money had to go back to your family, you are only allowed to keep a little of it for personal expenses. it wasn't public welfare, it was was hard work with the money going back home. one would get a sense of self-worth, they would get up, they would wear uniforms, they would work these hard jobs on roads and on for street all day in remote areas. i don't know if we created leisure ideas in american life. young people want time off, i have i have to go to this or that, i don't know if you could militarize conservation in that sense in today's generation. there are programs doing like the civilian conservation corps but it has not taken on the imagination of the public but i think it's a great idea to get young people involved with the state parks, have schools adopt state parks, were talking about nature deficit disorder but people, kids do not know what the mountain ranges, they don't know the name of a tree, the name of their bushes near them, we need to teach natural history and high school or middle school so kids start learning to create a new generation of conservationists. what fdr did by training all of those young men, the principles of conservation they became conservationists who led the 60s environmental movement. there is a direct link to what fdr did into the environmental environmental movement of the 1960s, rachel carson was writing pamphlets on the sea for fdr's wildlife, i write about her in her book and later she writes silent spring, it's it's all going out of these new deal programs, the modern of our mental movement is really modern and bored out of the new deal. because even places like maryland is where they started saying how do we bring animals back into the wild, how do we -- so they would raise beaver and they realize that beavers were needed for echo systems. leopold and his almanac delivered the famous wildlife conservation committee reports fdr. he hired leopold and ding darling, the great cartoonist and thomas back and they came up with an amazing wildlife conservation plan which said we have to go by millions of acres and eat them over to the species. we did that. part of my book, i think it is a victory for america that we got 550 wildlife refugees but the downside is people always wanting to dismantle it. they want to say it is not right and then we do not fund them. we treat our heirlooms terribly. i'm hoping on the centennial of the park service we stand up and say we love our national parks, let's take care of them because it is a fraction of our tax dollars goes into these wonderful natural resources that we all get to share. we on these. we on the grand canyon and big bend. they are the envy of the world believe me. >> are grand canyon international park system. first question. >> i hear the koch brothers and their friends have assembled this almost 1,000,000,000 dollars to elect candidates who want to completely do away with all rules and regulations regarding the fossil fuels, fracking and all of this. it is really a scary thought. i'm wondering, does the other side of this, the people who are environmentalists, do they have funds and today have lobbyists, to the hip people that work to protect our land and to do these things? >> as you all know and we are in 2016 election it is a battle and people want to continue to save these places. the national parks and not debated as much because congress passed them, it is a lots of these wilderness areas are national forest were trump, or ted cruz, or any republicans come in and want to immediately gouge those landscapes. they want a sagebrush rebellion. they want to go in the keystone pipeline became a metaphor for the kind of conservative movement believed to open up all these places that the federal government is controlling. don't kid yourself, the environmental movement groups are strong, whether it is a national park association or national park foundation, audubon, sierra, the wilderness society, one can rattle off a hundred of them. they do their job. they bring consciousness. unfortunately it has become a little bit too partisan like democrats, people want to vote for hillary clinton's are environmentalists and republicans are not. theodore roosevelt was republican, john lacey was republican. ronald reagan who we do not think of as an outdoor person he signed 51 wilderness or 50 some wilderness areas. that's how far now, you think one of these guys running now are going to sign wilderness bills? the republican party has gone very extreme right and part of it is at the federal governments locking up these lands. this is what fdr came in strong when he did because we had to grow the grasslands because the dustbowl happened because of bad cattle ranching and just killed all the grassland. all the chapter was just going and to keep water supplies going and keep places force it. >> thank you sir. so you have such an amazing grasp of the lives of these two men if you could speak to either one of them today what would you ask them? >> i would like to ask them what we can do to get out of the political gridlock we have americans turning on americans and it saddens me when we are a constant war with each other. i do not think it or neighborhoods neighborhoods it's that bad but our politics have gotten so terribly dysfunctional. i would also want to see who fdr would appoint to the supreme court to fill justice scalia. he appointed the great supreme court justice on conservation, fdr did, william o douglas william o douglas of washington. fdr wanted douglas to be president. douglas was ahead of his time on issues pertaining to the environment and as it pertained to the american west in particular. >> you are a presidential historian and i will get to your question but you brought up the election of 2016. some of your thoughts ray quickly, have you ever seen anything like we are seeing today? is there historical precedents for this? >> the point of history is to remind ourselves that our own times are not uniquely oppressive. you have to go lecture on the civil war and you are looking at battle of bull run and the confederates in the confederates one bull run and lincoln stuck in the white house. thousands thousands dead and the killing fields of virginia and maryland. the scorched earth of the south in civil war. it is hard to think donald trump showing you that his stakes are real. it becomes very childish in those ways. with that said, meaning we have had it worse, one has to admit this is a surreal, bizarre and i'm afraid embarrassing moment for our country where instead of his public service of the roosevelts, we are getting a bulgarian-ism of just the worst aspects of american culture coming to the forefront. it is due to many reasons, talk radio,. 1,000,000,000 reasons why why this is going on. i find it troubling when the press has about 15% approval rating in congress has a 10%. it's like people don't like congress i don't know who that 10% is who think they are doing that joe that conservation thing went up to protect the arctic and had a thing with the congressman when i was testifying with congressman young from alaska. he is a real conservative right wing guy who just drill baby drill of the arctic. i went back to my university and i thought i bet texas has a lot to big oil people and i just have been a bear same fight with this congressman. i heard from conservatives, you earned a spur, i don't agree with you with the issue but i'm sure glad you told the congressman off. people just despise the dysfunction in washington d.c. right now that they will go with the bernie sanders who deals different or trump who is different just to send a loud message of dissatisfaction home. >> i grew up on a farm in north dakota, only only 2 miles away was a national wildlife preserve with all sorts of animals. i remember riding a bus to school in the winter and there was snow fences built by the ccc. into the 60s they were still admire. my concern is sustaining our parks. with the population population growing every year in america, how do we sustain them and keep them beautiful? >> great question. in my book i had to pull out so much happened in north dakota and i did of the wildlife refugees i did a map of the wildlife refugees that i had to pull north dakota out separately because every 2 miles - mike the federal government came in and called it limited interest conservation programming just control that, that is the great bird breeding grounds right there in those. potholes of north dakota. we have got to continue to just love the national parks, get involved with be a friend of one of the parks, stay engaged a vote a vote for people in the senate, in congress and the white house that are going to prioritize. the deferred maintenance of our national, forget the parks, places like independence hall, it is pathetic, we are not taking care of our historic structures. this is the first sign of national decay and decline when you cannot take care of your country's historic places. we have leaking rooms, mold, yet when people try to trim the budget down for the parks so let's hope we can get a sense of robust budgets and keep talking about that is what we need. love the national parks and be loud about it. >> they are our heirlooms. >> you point out in your books that fdr was an avid reader of maps, another hobby that he have and i am interested if you pointed this out, he was a very fervent stamp collector. every step tells a story story and many of those stories have to do with conservation. did you investigate that, how stamp collecting helped him with his thirst for geography? >> if we didn't know better i would think that you are a plants. [laughter] it is a very major part of my book. he actually designed stamps. he would design them for the parks. he designed them for the glacier national parks where he would do drawings on little pencils and say i want to stand for the national park and made to look like this. he started a series of stamps for all of the national parks to bring consciousness to them. he did this stamp series because he declared 1934 the year of the national park. that's when he went to hawaii and up to glacier and did a live radio broadcast from glacier national park. that had never been done before, alive president from middle of a glaciers are fairly remote today to send a loud message that there's nothing so american as our national parks. >> i have been collecting u.s. stamps for 50 years. i i had to read your book. thank you. [applause]. >> helen davis from atlanta, georgia. >> how are you doing. she did an incredible book on the ccc which is an extraordinary guidebook that she did with her husband and is he here? >> my husband, read davis. >> the davises and have done our country great service. remember they used to be the wpa guide that fdr would do all the places in america. nobody had done at ccc guidebook of any note, they took on that task. >> thank you. [applause]. i have a comment about the previous question. that is that the ten stamps that were done in 1934 to promote the parks, those were photographed, five of which by george grant, he was the first chief photographer of the national park service. to will by ansell adams and three were by commercial photographers. george grant is one of the unknown elders of the landscape photography. our new book is about him. i had to share that. >> great. there were ten in the series, yosemite was one, right? can you give us a couple of the other. >> let me call my husband up because his memory is better than mine. >> zion became one of the big -- one of the things fdr did in utah was try to make it a -- do you know that i do high and utah voted for

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