Reading your book, maybe i am reading in to this but did you talk with the queen in crafting your book . Well, the queen, as a policy and is probably sensible from her standpoint, which is that in her entire 60 year reign she has never given an interview and that has helped probably to preserve her mystique and is kept her from having to pick and choose who she might give interviews to. I was lucky to meet her three times and private social settings and i describe her three times in the book. At each of them was brief, but revelatory and in each case it gave little glimpses of that private side, that gaiety of spirit, the flash of wit and so, they were very valuable to me. I also watched her a lot in different settings. I traveled with her overseas. I traveled with her around the u. K. So i could see how she interacted with people. In addition to interviewing people there were lots of other ways that i developed my sense of who she is and how she goes about her job. Was she aware that you are writing this book . She was, yes. She was aware. I initially approached the palace when i got the assignment from random house and wrote a very polite letter and got a very polite letter back saying we appreciate your interest and a lot of people are interested in writing about the queen. We have a hard time choosing somebody but fortunately i had a group of people who helped enormously with the diana book. Some of them had worked for her. Some of them were her relatives and they became my advocates. And went to her senior officials at Buckingham Palace and said yes shes an american, but she has a body of work that shows that she writes fair and balanced books and it would be a serious book. It would be a theory thorough book. After six months they briefed the senior press people and she gave them permission to give me their cooperation which was very helpful. Pamela, orange california, good afternoon. Good afternoon. Its a pleasure to be able to see and hear her. Ive enjoyed her entire body of work but especially this Seminal Research that she has done on this fabulous figure in our lives. I think she has pretty much answered my question which was going to be how was she able to interview and get access to the people surrounding the queen and get all of her questions answered and i just want to thank you so much for filling in the background on this wonderful figure ms. Smith. Thank you. What was most fun was when the range of people i was able to talk to and again the help of ducking him palace was very valuable because i would get in touch with some of her Close Friends who were naturally a little nervous about possibly speaking and they would call the palace and the palace would say, we are helping her. Use your own judgment and decide what youre comfortable with. So i got to talk to people who really knew her well and relatives send dog trainers and people who ran her estates and the manager, her horse trainers. It was crown jewelers, politicians who knew her and members of the clergy so what i loved with a book like this is getting many angles of visions, some quite intimate and some people who had very focused intent like the portrait artist for example. A very informal time with her and saw a whole different view of her than other people. Finally Sally Bedell Smith, why do we care about the royal family like we do . They are an extraordinary institution that binds britain together through their continuity, their connection to british history and today really, theres a term which is not terribly good but they call it the welfare monarchy. The queen and all the members of her family spends so much time supporting charities, can and should beating their names and their efforts and you know, they reward people for good works and they set an example of service. The queen of course has the extraordinary advisory capacity. She has led an exemplary life. She is the light above politics. She is one of the most highly respected leaders in the world. She has done all kinds of things behind the scenes to preserve for example the commonwealth which is a former British Empire that could have easily fallen apart over issues like apartheid. She cares very much about the environment, about the small nations in the commonwealth that face particular challenges like the island nations. There are just so many things that she has contributed to that the british people feel indebted to her for having done. And as i have been going around the country, talking to groups, i detected a kind of wistfulness almost on the part of people. Why dont we have somebody like this who can unify the country, who can be the light above politics . She perform some really valuable service. A Elizabeth Mcqueen is the name of the book, Sally Bedell Smith is the author. Thank you for joining us on booktv today. Thank you all for being here. That is going to close out our coverage of the 2012 National Book festival. Thanks for being with us. This will all reair overnight on booktv on cspan2. Now more booktv continues. Visit booktv. Org to watch any of the programs you see here on line. Type the author or book title in the search bar in the upper left side of the page and click search. You can also share anything you see on book tv. Org easily by clicking share on the upper left side of the page and selecting the format. Booktv streams live on line for 48 hours every weekend with top nonfiction books and authors. Booktv. Org. Up next on booktv, after words, with guest host Michael Kazin and coeditor of dissent magazine. This week oliver stone and historian Peter Kuznick discussed the untold story of the United States, a companion book to their documentary series. In it they argue that u. S. Leaders must chart a course for the future by first facing what they call the countrys troubling history of drifting further away from its democratic traditions. Host hello peter and oliver. Ive taught with peter at American University. Let me start by having both of you talk about the theme of this and how you wrote it . Guest i was invited in 1996 to go to this class at American University researching oliver storms america and one of the classes i was very popular. I went very impressed with it and the range of students and afterwards peter suggested that there was a great story about the atomic him in the atomic bomb always fascinated me because i was born the year after it was dropped and it was in new york city, the center of the world and my father was republican and a conservative. He served in world war ii as eisenhower said the bomb was the umbrella, the mushroom under which it grew and anything we did was in the shadow of that. So i was curious about it and the bomb story really does have another origin. The book about the scientist of the 30s and above all the mentioned this figure about Henry Wallace and how he couldve been president in 1944 but he was bumped by the political bosses. That led of course to the 45 decision by truman. Then we begin the origin of a great idea for a documentary or a movie and he wrote a script. It didnt work for me, but 10 years later it haunted me that story in washington and he is still teaching a class when i came back. We decided to go ahead and do it. Mandari about wallace and the bump. That one hour turned into ultimately our eyes are bigger than our stomachs and we tried a 12 Hour NationalSecurity State story from the 1940s to now and it actually started in 1900 with the philippine american war but the spanishamerican war and then in 2012, we started 1940 in the series. The book two years after our series we decided hey this is getting very serious and we know im going to be called on this because of my back round in making movies. People will say this is part fiction and part fantasy that we decided to go ahead and go with this book. Peter took over the book. I was running the series, the film and we were cross fading all the time and checking each other constantly but it took about four and a half or five years now and that is where we are today. Host go ahead. Guest we have been friends for that whole period since 1996 and then we decided we were going to go ahead with this project and i have thought we could do it in that year and it would be a 60 minute documentary. I got to see oliver new york two weeks later and we did a 10 hour series. What i felt would take one semester ended up taking four years, four and a half years. I was surprised how Little Information you can convey in a 60 minute documentary. Each episode. The book goes to an 800 page book and we cut out 172 pages to get down to 800 pages. We also wanted to get the footnotes in the sources and much more detailed discussion of this material because we know its going to be challenged and we are offering a perspective that is not a mainstream perspective and we wanted to have our sources out there when we did get challenge. Host and it was addressed to people like my daughter and my sons who had been at the High School Level history. You could read this book and see this documentary and its tough but you could understand it at 16 or 17. At College Level you start to specialize in much of this is available to students. We really wanted to my daughters history books even today when you get for example to the hiroshima, there is no mention of an alternative possibility. The americans had to drop the bomb to save americans lives because the japanese you dont hear about the russian side of the equation and you dont hear about the other choices that could be had. Host it stirred up a little controversy and expected it to. Something that obviously historians argue about and will and have already elicited commentary. The cold war is obviously essential to what you are writing about here and to the film. And, perhaps im wrong but as i read it youll argue pretty much that the United States is primarily to blame for the war, that stalin and the soviets would have been, would have been open to welcoming a continuation of the Wartime Alliance between the two countries but it was american actions primarily with some allies, the british for example which began the cold war. Is that an accurate portrayal . Guest i would say thats accurate. We certainly dont consider stalin blameless in all of this and they certainly dont downplay stalins fertility or the terrible things that were done in the name of the soviet union under stalins leadership. I think thats important a factor in that if you look at the broad history of the United States relationship with the soviet Union Beginning in 1917 and 1918 when the United States first sent troops into the soviet union as part of a broader counterrevolutionary force led by the british, then the United States to refusal to recognize the soviet union until 1933 under roosevelt, and then in the 30s the soviet union was pushing very hard for International Consensus and trying to stop hitler. That led to antifascist forces globally in the communist in the antifascist movement in the United States after that but during the war after germany attacked the soviet union in 1941, then the United States and the british decide that its important for the soviet union is to keep the soviets in the war. They were caught so offguard that the british were concerned that the soviets would capitulate at that point that the United States offers several things. The soviets made several demands and they promise materiel and they had a hard time delivering that for a number of reasons and for a couple of years. Stalin said if you give them airplanes and other equipment we need to stay in the war, the United States tries under the effort of other people who are not quite assistance air in providing that so the second man was they wanted the same territorial concessions they have gotten from hitler in 1939 pact that their main demand was for the second front. They were fighting and the history of this period, the americans and the british throughout most of the war were fighting 10 nazi divisions combined and the soviets alone were fighting 200 through june of 44. And so, they were desperate for the United States to open up the second front to western europe and the british. Roosevelts stalin to send molotov the top general to washington in may of 42 and in june of 40 to the United States issued a Public Statement saying we are going to open up the second front before the end of the war, before the end of the year 1942. We promise that publicly and get we dont open up the second front until june of 44 and that is partly because the british refused to go along with this. The United States and the british get involved in what marshall calls peripheral and marshall and eisenhower opened up a second front and the United States when instead to basically defend the British Empire. There was going to be a lot of mistrust between the United States and the soviets particularly during the war. The seeds of the cold war actually are visible during the war. In certain tensions of course because the second front is the soviets had on their own and largely defeated the germans after stalingrstalingr ad and for pushing toward Central Europe and Eastern Europe. Said the United States lost their military initiative by that point and we had lost the diplomatic so there are certain deals being made, deals between churchill and stalin in october of 44. Dividing up the british forget 90 of greece and the russians would get 90 of bulgaria and hungary and they divided up that way. It was pretty cynical. But when roosevelt dies, in april of 45, his last telegram to churchill was, we always have these minor disagreements with the russians but we end up resolving them. So lets not make a big deal. Theres no reason we cant maintain friendship after the war. When truman gets in there on april 12, 1945, immediately takes a different course. Roosevelts alliance with the Wartime Alliance with the soviets was still strong at that point the truman turns to advisers who roosevelt never trusted in the first place and didnt pay heed to. People like burns and second day he flies burns through his private plane and burns gets german the same message. The soviets are breaking all of their agreements and they cant be trusted. And so what we are going to see is within two weeks the u. S. Policy toward the soviet unions going to change in april 1945. By the time theres the big meeting on april 23 with molotov and on april 23, the United States had changed course. And so at that meeting truman and molotov meets with his advisers and they are divided. Stimson, marshall, leahy are all telling him dont rake with the soviets. Stimson says very clearly, stimson secretary of war and he understood and he says the soviets have a much better understanding of their own security especially around poland and we do. Host if i could and drop for a minute, stepping back from those details do you think it was realistic for these two powerful nations, continental powers each of whom had i think its fair to say an empire, one informal and won a little more formal because the soviets obviously had different smaller states under their control and couldnt keep control of the Baltic States are moving into Eastern Europe with the red army dominion wasnt realistic for these two powers of very different ideological bases to really get along and were they really destined to have a cold war and luckily never really had a hot war except through proxies. These details are important but who knows of course if Roosevelt Roosevelt and stalin as you know himself through the heads of the French Communist Party told the american communists in april 1945, get ready for the class were to continue in effect. Dont believe that peaceful coexistence is really going to last. Around the same time as roosevelt is dying actually. Did you want to chime in on that . Guest u. S. Specific questions about the french and you want to do with that first . Host the larger question. Guest not a cent historian but looking at world war ii in a different aspect than i ever did as a young person when it was victory at sea. What im talking about is i would not downplay the British Empire. Thats the biggest empire of all. We are a coming power and so is russia because they grow during the war. Dont forget they armed themselves and they remake themselves. Its an extraordinary story of migration reconstruction and dedication to the people in the losses of the soviets, whether its 22 or 27 million whether stalin kills, doesnt matter. The ideas the whole nation plunged and there was a crucible for them, a great war. The british, churchill is a fascinating overlay on this because he has a different motive it seems. Once the british islands are saved by the battle of britain, his goal seems to be truly to regain the empire. He said it did not become Prime Minister to dismember the British Empire. And the whole concept of going to north africa, sending troops off to the southern nazi empire in italy in the balkans, regaining greece which is a tremendous