you ar if you want to get in line here as well will be taking questions from the audience aso well. well for doris kearns goodwin, live on booktv on c-span2.oodwin le n (202) 585-3890 if you live in east and central time zone. (202) 585-3891 for those of you1 in the central or the pacific time zone and the mountain time zone as well. well we will begin taking those calls in just a minute. go ahead and ireland. live coverage on booktv on c-span2 and we have people in line. we will begin taking those calls as well. ms. goodwin thank you for joining us here on booktv for another 50 minutes worth of calls from our national audience. let's start with this gentleman right over here in line. >> the relationship between lincoln and frederick douglass in terms of bringing the end of slavery because we often in a sense celebrate the emancipation emancipation proclamation and remarsary but in a real sense blacks were not freed until they were behind the union lines, so there is that time in 1864 we are now at the 150 mark when there was a temptation to have a compromise which would preserve slavery in the south and not bring the freedom that frederick douglass would want. i guess he was becoming even critical of lincoln in public. so they would have at least two meetings that i know of. >> the meetings between p. and abraham lincoln are extraordinary historical moment. douglas was the agitator and wanting to move lincoln further. he was the head of the movement and lincoln had to be the political man figuring out how far can i go planned. some of their early meetings i think there was some tension between them but eventually douglass came to a great respect for lincoln and once he finally opened the doors to african-americans to come in as soldiers douglas played a big role in mobilizing them to come into the army. he was upset that they weren't getting the same pay and the same privileges as the whites and they talk to lincoln about that but the great moment really occurs in 1864 when the election of november is coming up and it's august. you are absolutely right to republican politicians are coming to lincoln and they are saying to him the only way you are going to win this election because the north is so weary of this war and there are so many people that have died is to get this out to the bargaining table and have peace talks and the only way they will do that is if you promise to compromise on slavery. he will still get the union if you compromise on slavery but no way was even thinking about that. in fact he said i will be in eternity if i turn my back on the black soldiers. he turned those politicians out without a second thought. they thought he would lose the election. he thought he would lose the election possibly but it didn't matter. that was his moment of conviction and what happens is despite the despair in the country about the way the war was going sherman takes atlanta and in september the whole mood changes. he wins the election and who does he want the most at his second inaugural but frederick douglas? he brings a man in the first person he says to what did you think of my inaugural, is your opinion i want want. douglas said mr. president if it was a sacred efforts of that relationship between the agitator and the politician had its moments of tension but in the end was an extraordinary positive thing for the men. >> let's take another question from the audience right over here. >> hi. i was interested that you met with barack obama and of course i know he read team of rivals. i wish you would have read the roosevelt book because my biggest frustration with barack obama has been his lack of using "the bully pulpit." i mean i feel whether it's health care or syria or any other issues it seems during elections to have that ability to be verbal and inspire people and then you know i just miss that from his presidency. why do you think that is some also i wish you would eventually do a book about him because i think he has a head full of interesting ideas. >> you know it's a very interesting question i think to ask, to what extent is "the bully pulpit" today as powerful as it was in earlier times? when you think about it when lincoln was speaking to the contrary, the written word was king so the fact that he was such a good writer was very important because the speeches would be pamphlet sized and everybody would read the full speech in the newspaper. if obama were in that time it would have been more suited for him because when you read his speeches they often read better than sometimes the delivery because the teleprompter hasn't been friendly with him in a certain sense and by the time teddy roosevelt came along he was perfect for the technology at this time because he was able to speak in a colorful language that made headlines. fdr comes on an age of the reader with the perfect conversational voice and then reagan and jfk are writes for the age of television. what happens now is even when a president gives a speech on mike earlier times when only three networks would cover it they would break away for pundits sometimes like myself criticizing the speech before it's half over. you are only watching your favorite channel and they only hear parts of the speech. breaking news comes in within minutes so it's harder to sustain a conversation now on an issue but i also do think the lessons of teddy roosevelt a speaking simply and explaining things over and over and over again when he went out on those train trips and i wish obama would go out in the country more and talk in little village stations and get the message simply especially on health care to have explained in the first place what it meant to the country might have taken some of the rumors about it away. so i think it's harder in this day and age and i think that's part of it but i think learning how to use "the bully pulpit" and get out of the white house more. it's harder again with all the vices that take place but to be out in the country is the key and that is what teddy did. on those train trips it was incredible. he would stand for hours waiting and waving to people just so they could see their president. even one moment when he was disappointed because he was waving at a group of people and they didn't respond in any way until he found out there was a herd of cows. [laughter] i think there are lessons to be learned about speaking simply, saying your message over and over again, using metaphors that people understand whether the arsenal of democracy or the fire hose or the square deal in knowing you have to reach the masses of the public, not just with the words that you use that might sound better but may not stick as much. >> we are here in washington d.c. in the next call comes from san diego. this is david in san diego. hi david. doris kearns goodwin. >> caller: good evening. i enjoyed all of your books. i wanted to ask you if you have ever thought, ever given any thought to writing a history book for high school or even elementary because you have an actor bringing history alive. it's not something that most people -- young people today understand. >> thank you so much for that question. in fact one of my sons michael goodwin is a history teacher and an english teacher and so we have talked about the importance of having history at that level be brought to kids. once you capture them then, for the rest of their lives they will love history. they may not become an historian and he has done a wonderful job in our town in concord. we have all those sites, those revolutionary war sites in all the literary people al alcott and thoreau and emerson. he has created this experiential semester long program where he takes the kids out to all the sides during the semester long program and they become lovers of not only history that anguish and even math science and art because he shows how it all comebacks -- connects. education is the most important thing still in this country for opportunity. when we worry about what's happening in the inner cities and when we worry about the fact a lot of a lot of people don't have the same opportunities that they do even in other countries that they are not getting out of poverty education is the key. that's only one piece of it to make it love in high school the subject has to start much earlier and make them love school. america's democracy depends on it. it's the most important thing. [applause] >> i just wanted to thank you for writing your book about the brooklyn dodgers and explaining, explaining how about you and your father closer together. my father gave that book to me in brooklyn. he gave it to me shortly before he died and that it brought us closer together so thank you. [applause] i cannot thank you enough for that. thank you so much. what happened is ken burns did a documentary on the history of baseball and came to interview me and it was a lot about the brooklyn dodgers and the red sox, these two teams that almost always one but almost always lost in the end. these beloved teams so i'd saw this program. somebody asked me whether you write about a? i never would have thought about writing a memoir and it meant so much to me because my parents died when i was young. my mother died when i was just 15 and my father died when i was in my 20s. i had never really gone back to my hometown. i eventually grew up in long island but the book allowed me to go back home and meet my old friends again. most importantly i spend my life bringing peace presence to live to bring my father and mother back to life and bring this team that we loved so much, the dodgers, back to life. as i is that a thousand times the way i think i love history was from my father teaching me when i was six years old the mysterious art of keeping score while listening to baseball games so i could record the history of the afternoon's brooklyn dodger game. he comes home at night without letting me know he even knows what the score is and of course he does. i recount every played every inning. he makes me think i'm telling a fabulous story. i'm convinced i learned the narrative of art because i would blurt out the dodgers one of the dodgers lost. there was too much drama in the two hour telling away. i learned you have to tell the story from beginning to middle to end. i have boys and i love the red sox. i sometimes go to those games imagine i'm a younger with my father. it means that's how you keep memories alive. i am sure you being close to your data and talking to him again talking to them again he's alive at this moment just like my parents were when i i wrote that book so thank you so much. [applause] >> phil you are on with the doris kearns goodwin. >> caller: i want to thank you very much for making history come alive. it wouldn't be the same if you hadn't written your incredible books. i have one question related. between the two crucial events between lbj, jfk and lincoln who do you think felt the most stress link lincoln with the emancipation act or jfk with the cuban missile crisis and lbj dealing with vietnam all important in the history of the u.s.. >> whoa that's an incredible question. i think lincoln later said that if he had ever known the stress that he would be under from the time he was elected in november of 1868 to fort sumter in the middle of april of 61 he wouldn't have felt he could have lived through it. the idea that the country was splitting apart, that he might be the last president of the union, that he had to make a decision about whether to put re-provisions of fort sumter he couldn't have imagined he could have withstood the pressure. i think the only way he did in some ways was that he had known adversity all of his life and come to so many failures and difficulties before that there were some deep inner confidence. i suspect in some ways nothing quite matches that. probably that moment of the cuban missile crisis decision when jfk has to decide what he's going to do and he knows a nuclear war might have been a possibility, those 13 days that bobby kennedy talked about probably pretty much equal the sum of what lincoln was but maybe not quite as much. probably the most emotional pressure that somebody felt was lbj. think about it, we are now celebrating so much of what he did in those first years of his presidency. the civil rights act, ending segregation in the south of voting rights act providing the precious right to millions of black americans open housing medicare aid to education and public television. he had a legacy almost unequaled up to his great hero fdr and then got into vietnam and watched in those last years of his life that legacy being cut into and not knowing how to get out of vietnam and getting stuck in it and getting worse an celebrate the 50th anniversary of the civil rights, all four presidents except for bush senior who couldn't come were there. and recognizing he had indeed left a legacy but he didn't know that before he died. that pressure was of a deeper level probably even than these other extraordinary, and a credible question that no one has ever asked me before. you did it. >> thank you very much for your wonderful work. i can't think of anybody who has greater insight into the presidency, the use of presidential powers, significance of presidential decisions, choosing assistance to lead you through it. and i wonder if you ever thought of yourself becoming a leader of this country? country? because i can't think of anybody who would be better. >> thank you. >> it would be like a combination of all the greatest presidents you have researched. >> if i were younger. you know, when i was young i did think about going into public life because i think still, however we may disparage politicians nowadays given the dysfunction of our legislature in washington, there is still something so rewarding about being in public life. and knowing that you can make a difference for people, and i love being with people so i know i would love all that part of it, but not having done it when i was younger just means that those experiences that you hope to gain overtime a believing and knowing what it's like to take that responsibility but it's one thing that these guys in my head, and i would like to believe a would know what to do but i think probably a at this e if i'd started it 50 years ago, it might even something i would've loved to do but i think now i better just stick to writing about it and hopefully giving advice to other people who might be taking it on. and hopefully the best result of people reading these histories like when i was signing books there were some young people who came through the line who will say they began to like history to some of these but if they not only begin to like just about go into public life and want to do something in this country, then i will feel i really have influenced that next generation. that would be pretty good. >> we do want to acknowledge public officials here. a longtime library and of congress and right here in the front row of lost mike. >> and the next question for doris kearns goodwin comes from glenn in michigan. >> caller: thank you all very much. my question per se is one about national media then and now. back then there was the spanish-american war which was kind of a made up war. .. was -- and 100 years later we had the iraq war and we will probably be getting back into that again soon. my question for you with the muckrakers a lot of the national media is -- for whoever's in power. [inaudible] >> thank you sir. we got the point. >> i think it's both better and worse. it's hard to know. you are right to the tablet influence on the spanish-american war when those ss-marke really did into a war that there is no real reason for us to get into. at i wrote about were a vey different brand of journalists and they investigated their subjects weather was standard oil or the railroad abuses or meatpacking plants with such integrity that their story still stands up today. the worry i have a twin then and now is that those stories that they wrote wrote were red and gobbled up by people, 10,000 word stories in magazines and they would become part of the conversation. today i don't know who would be supporting investigative reporters for two years as mcclure did to do that real research. they wrote it would we be reading it given the attention span that is so fragmented today where people are not even reading the full newspapers much less magazines and they are reading blogs on facebook. i don't know we would be able to have sustained long conversations about butter issues in the public are. entertainment gets into issues and it's not just the media's fault. it's our fault. i think of spectators today but it's really critical especially now as we face this potential threat with isis. if we are going to get deeply involved were more deeply involved there has to be a national dialogue. it has to be a congressional debate about it. we have to really understand what it's all about. half of us don't know exactly what's going on. this is what fdr did so well in those years leading up to world war ii. he knew there was an isolationist sentiment in the country that he thought he had to be involved in what's happening in europe. step-by-step the educated us through peacetime draft to the lend lease program until finally even before pearl harbor we were beginning to mobilize. if we are going to get involved and engaged in these places around the world we have to know a lot more than we did when we went into iraq. we often know more if we are going to get above the middle east with what's going on. that's part of journalists responsibility that part of our leaders but the person in the congress to get a big debate going before we flowed into something that we don't want to get into. [applause] >> thank you both for your books but also just your presence in the way you speak with the audience is really wonderful. you have looked at the president in the 19th century in the 19th century in the 20th century and now in the 21st century. for the first time we may at some point have a woman as president. what does that mean as you think about this book on leadership? how might it be different? what are the lessons they would take and what would be different for them? >> it's a great question that i'd love to be able to think about. in fact in the book on leadership that i'm going to be working on right now i think i'm going to have a separate chapter on eleanor roosevelt just because in a certain sense she got her power originally from her husband's position then after he died and she could afford to be when he was in power much like frederick douglass the agitator constantly pressuring him to do more than he could do. he had to be political and pragmatic and once he died she had to incorporate into herself a politician in the agitator. she became a figure in her own right the way that a woman president would be now. i have been reading studies from harvard business school on the differences in female leadership and male leadership. they still talk about females being more collaborative, more emotional intelligence at some point but the dual problem that women have if they are to competent and they are aggressive they are looked down upon. if they are too kind they are looked down upon for being weak so how to forge themselves with the strength that women have from not having been in power for long time and from being collaborative and working with families and being the smoother overs without losing that decisiveness that they need is going to be interesting as more and more women get into power. all i can say is versus a country it certainly is about time. we are so far behind the entire world. [applause] >> this is his booktv on c-span2. doris kearns goodwin the 14th annual national book festival. kelly and lost all of those california you are on the air. >> caller: thank you so much for your presentation. the question i was looking at a target announced that i want to say thank you for the response you gave to point to go about the importance of what's going on in the world today and the need for us as active as to speak out and voice the problems that we see. thank you. >> you are very welcome. in fact it's interesting the clue or the gui wrot and the importance of act of his own. he said the end onto all about us and without citizens taking on an active role in our country, we despair over what is happening in washington, the dysfunction of the legislature, the fields of one another we despair of our money in politics, which i think is the poison in the system. [applause] it's all up to us and we can't wait for somebody else to do it. >> i want to take it back to "the bully pulpit" for a minute. you talk about technology being a factor in president's ability to harness "the bully pulpit" lets say and what occurs to me that the last democratic president is that they were so brilliant in their campaign in harnessing "the bully pulpit" and had such a difficult time as president is doing the same thing. why do you think that is? is easy to say it's much easier to run a campaign than it is to rule but how was it that people who seem so proficient and brilliant at it as they are campaigning for office seemed to lose that ability completely want to get into office? >> it's an important thing to try to understand. part of it is that when you are campaigning you get energy back from the people, and so it's not just a question of you saying things. you are feeling vibrations from the people and what happens is when they get into the white house they get too cordoned off. they see people but they don't have that same energy that comes from seeing them every day the way they do in a campaign. then they get in a teleprompter in the teleprompter is a pretty cool device. people like reagan who had been an actor before knew exactly how to do it to make it seem like he was talking just like fdr could do on the radio. most of them i think i feel compelled to read from a real script because they are so afraid they might say something wrong. if they say one wrong thing a gaffe becomes the thing that everybody talks about. it means the spontaneity is lost to the slayer during a campaign. it's homeless like they have a girdle on them when they speak before a teleprompter and they lose some of that naturalness which is again why i think those addresses from the oval office much as they may be necessary at times it would be so much better if the president got out and they were on trains and the speeches are given in front of people. even when fdr gave his fireside chats when it was just a microphone he is talking in front of you people there so he could pretend he was actually talking to them even though he was talking to the people in their living rooms. so that i think somehow they have to keep that vital connection with the country and the white house still has become too insulated from all of our recent presidents other than their campaigning. i think maybe that's part of a difference. besides you are right it's easier to promise and a campaign than to make decisions and have to explain them when there are people that don't like you etc. etc. but there's something about losing their connection to the public. that's why lincoln was so great. every morning he had people come in your ordinary people and they could talk to him about whatever they wanted to. after a while his secretary nicollet and hey said we don't have time for these ordinary people. he said he were ron beazer might public opinion bats. did i forget the popular assemblage from which i come i will lose my strength. i think that's what they lose in the white house. when they lose that they lose their ability to communicate the same way they did when they were on the road. >> jim is calling from newport news virginia. jim muir on the air. >> what was the most in fascinating thing you learned about abraham lincoln? >> i guess i knew that he was a great statesman but this isn't a thing. i don't think i realized what a great politician he was. that was the great pleasure in seeing how he was able to deal with people, seeing how he was able in the middle of a tough cabinet meeting to reach over and tell a funny story and make people laugh, how he sensed the mood of the country and sense what was happening with a great sense of timing, knew when to do what. i mean those where political instincts that somehow when you see him you think of him as this wouldn't figure because of the pictures. in those days when you take pictures they can't even smile because they are clamped to a vat. their head of clamped to a chair and i had no idea how funny he would be. i had no idea how much i'd enjoy laughing with him every day. we know he have that sad temperament but i think what was so pleasing was to hear those stories that he would tell over and over again that he would laugh so hard that he would be convulsed with laughter and so would the people. those instincts, i remember once when i was on colbert or stuart and i said to them and it's true if he were alive today he could be on with them one-on-one and he would be that quick. he would be that funny and i would not have guessed that before he started. seeing that sense of humor and laughter is such an extraordinary him emotion. they say it makes people money and it makes them last longer. lincoln had that side of him that i wasn't aware of it was pretty great. >> was passed just as vigorous as teddy roosevelt in his trust busting? >> yes, taft was more vigorous than teddy and his trust busting. taft really did believe that bigness itself was a problem. teddy only felt that you should bust the corporations that were not living by the rules of the game but he didn't think ms is one of the debates where having today that fitness alone was a problem unless they were using unfair or unethical means to gain their problem as monopolies. once taft came in he busted more trust than teddy did. he had more lawsuits than teddy did. he believed in the importance of keeping small business and the vitality of the business world going by not letting lords -- large corporations swallow up too much and i don't think has been given enough credit for that side of him. that was a very strong part of him. >> the next question comes from diane in walnut creek california. go ahead diane. >> caller: hi doris. i want to thank you for "the bully pulpit" and i have a lot of reading to catch up with. i love you so much and i have to read everything ever written. my questions about taft. it was fascinating and i thought it was sad in a way that he was so strong that he prepare an attack from doing what he loved to do and what he would have been so very good at. have you made any personal judgments about her? >> is so interesting that you ask about nelly because i think she's one of the more intriguing first ladies i have read about or learned about. here is a young girl growing up in cincinnati who has dreams when she is young of having her own ambitions realized and get her brothers go to harvard and yale and her parents tell her she is supposed to come out in society. even then she just loves going to the local bars and talking to working-class people and wanting to do something herself. she becomes a teacher and think she will never get married because she wants to have the sense of life. she was just born too early in a way. but then she meets young will taft and falls in love with him and knows that she will be its partner because he tells her, i need you. she is stronger in some ways than he. she certainly loves politics more than he does in your question will rightly suggests that certain times he was offered a job on the supreme supreme court which he wanted ever since he was a child in a way that at first he couldn't leave the philippines. he felt he had too much duty there and he knew he was in line for the presidency what she really wanted so he turned those jobs down and did become a political candidate more probably in some ways to please her and to please teddy roosevelt than himself and i was part of the problem. but then sadly you wonder what would she have become as first lady had she not had a stroke months into the presidency because she already started doing things for working-class people. she brought the cherry blossoms to washington. she opened up potomac park for people who become for concerts at night free and be able to mix with different groups. she had great thoughts for what she would be a public person. though never had been on healthy suffered a terrible stroke within months. she was never able to speak in a connected sentence again and when i think about what happened to taft's presidency is not simply that he wasn't was in the public leader or he didn't speak to the public and use the bully bully pulpit buddy love this woman so much that he spent hours with her trying to teach her how to speak again so she could be that public perceptions and say glad to see you, happy you are here. it shattered his entire presidency without question. luckily for taft much later in 1921 he does get appointed supreme court chief justice in the last decade of his life he is probably happier than he has been before. he said he had forgotten he was president and nelly realized in those last years that this is what he wanted. it's not like she wanted it only for herself. think she honestly thought it would be great at it without absorbing fully that unless you love that job presidency is hard enough unless you love and want to be in the limelight and want to be the decision-maker is going to be a really rough time as it turned out for taft. finally he becomes a respected and beloved chief justice of the supreme court. >> thank you for answering these questions doris kearns goodwin. you have touched on this a bit especially have talked about how teddy roosevelt and other presidents were able to harness the media in order to get their messages across to the american public. i was wondering what it was about that time, teddy roosevelt's time as president that led to such a growth and investigative journalism and in addition to that i was wondering what you thought in our current time we see media democratizing to a great extent but at the same time it's undermined to some extent investigative journalism. how do we keep investigative journalism alive in our country today and also how mike leaders harness the new media in order to reach people? >> those are really important questions. i think what happened at the turn-of-the-century is a lot of people who went into journalism were already being affected by the mood of reform that was spreading not just in journalism but it was in churches, it was in the academic world, it was in the settlement houses. there was a common sense that something had to be done about the problems of the industrial order. they all came from a place where they wanted to have an impact so journalism became the place for them. and then once you get a group of journalists as there were at this one magazine who become so respected and become national figures and more magazines want to do it and it has a multiplier effect. it was in some ways that was the subtitle of the book the golden age of journalism. there are still tablets out there but this group is lionized in history still. clearly there are still people who go into journalism with that desire today and in some ways perhaps even though i talked earlier about the diminishing attention span that our internet brings to us but also as a platform for people that allow their stuff to get out there with less cost perhaps once their job is done and can reach more people, the social media people. just as long as you have the integrity of the process of investigative journalism. we do have places, propublica as they are in their place is doing. i just think we need a lot more of it and we need the credibility that when people read the stories the facts are such that we can't just look at them in a partisan lens and say we don't like this person for this person or those newspapers that we don't have to believe it. they have to be that hard hitting as these guys were at that time were you couldn't deny the facts they were producing. >> joe from statin island new york. hi joe. if we could put joe aside, i'm sorry about that. it's not very clear. we will go to this young lady over here. >> i love you for saying i'm young, thank you. my name is cary. i am a real investigator and i'm a real journalist. >> array. >> you are being tag teamed accidentally. everybody is a journalist with every pda we have every moment is a potential public moment. my focus though is the intellectual property and the effect affect of what we create and how it has taken on. i'd love to have you opine on that please. >> i wish i could but i'm not sure what you mean. give me an example. >> your book is reproduced overseas. your alias and identity is taking an abridgment of the writer publicly -- publicity in the right of privacy. >> there's no question that these copyright things and publishers are going to have to keep up with the times. you are absolutely right. there is so much simpler to protect in an earlier time and you are right and books get into other languages sometimes you don't even know that they have been sold to these companies and they are there. i don't know enough about what the answer is but vigilance at that time and doctors are banding together and all sorts of ways right now for what's going on. they need to know more than i know because your question raises a problem that i haven't thought about initiative in a chauvinism author be thinking about it. i will listen to you. you will tell me so. >> doris kearns goodwin's publisher simon & schuster and she dedicates "the bully pulpit" to her editor alice mayhew. >> indeed simon & schuster today those people who i signed books for the paperback edition isn't even coming out for a couple of weeks so this is its first baptism here at this very place today. >> good evening and thank you for being so gracious with your time. if you are not a writer of a presidential biography on the obama what would be your central themes and why? >> if i were writing about president obama? i guess one of the reasons why it would be hard for me now to write about him is that i need to the distance of time to be able to read the stuff of the moment. i would need to know the memoirs of the people who were working with them. i would need to see the letters that he wrote. i would need to put into perspective where the health care thing is going to be 20 years from now. i would need to understand more about winding down those wars in iraq and afghanistan or whatever is happening now, that i can't see the moment which is the only reason why except for my relationship with lbj which i felt the need to try and capture because it was so intense and so emotional at the time i haven't been able to write about anybody recent. so i think if i were to live a couple decades from now it would be a fascinating period to write about. first of all obviously no matter what the fact that we broke that barrier and the first african-american became president will forever be a shining moment in our history. i have been able to have a series of historians dinners that we do want to hear with my fellow historians mccullough or mr. brands from texas or doug brinkley, evan morris and become as historians and give him advice. it's really been fun to watch and absorb those pass lessons of history. so i think is a person, i have read obviously his autobiography which was extraordinary and i suspect when he writes his own memoir about the something but it will have to be some younger historians looking back 20 years from now i think i will capture him fully. maybe you. >> john is going from san diego. john, you are on the air. cocco good afternoon ms. goodwin. you grew up in brooklyn and you love the brooklyn dodgers that the personality of that whole brooklyn dodger team was the great jackie robinson. i am wondering if you would think of that subject but i think you would be the person to do that. >> no question he was like you are on the brooklyn dodgers. i would like to believe it was because i was a young civil rights advocate but i think it was more when i was five or six years old that he would get on race and steal second and then he would steal third and steal home and completely rattled the other pitchers. he was such an exciting vital player. in fact all of my childhood i kept wanting to get his autograph. i never could get it. you guys get them at the park in those days. you could pay for them but you had to wait in lines in his line would be long. finally when i was in all awesome -- adolescent i brought my autograph book for him. in those days women will remember we have these stupid autograph books where it was say i will love you until niagara falls or cherish you until rubber tires. if he signed a book you would look like one of my intimate friends. i got to the line and instead he started reading these things. i thought i would die. in keeping with the sentiment of the book he wrote keep your smile a long long while, jackie robinson. anywhere -- anyway years later i was able to get it on our roosevelt award to rachel robinson and his widow at hyde park and to tell her the story of my crush on her husband in the story about the autograph and it seemed like it had come full circle. i do think he is an extraordinary public figure and i think there have been some good biographies on him but i thinking possibly in my book on leadership in addition to dealing with what are the traits these people have in common how do they do what they did did how did they knowledge the era, how did they stay close to the country, how did they communicate, how did they build teams etc. i might have a chapter on not only eleanor roosevelt but on jackie robinson. they are everything i've looked in my whole life. >> do you still have that autograph? >> i can't even blame my mother because my mother died before these autographs and after my father died everything had been at his house. i was in college and i didn't come and get it all. not only that but all of my baseball cards are gone. i had all the brooklyn dodgers. you always say you blame your mother and i can't. i have to blame myself. >> it looks like will conclude with this young man over here. >> i would be glad to. >> the question would like to ask you is why do you think that fdr ran for a third term even as he was considering a return? >> absolutely interesting. i've just been thinking about why did fdr ran for his third term. i think by the end of his second term had there not been war in europe he would not have run again or even if he might have wanted to stay in office he too loved it just like teddy roosevelt did. somebody asked him once why would anyone want to be president but it's so hard and you have to make all these decisions. he said what do you mean? everybody should want to be president. it's the greatest job in the world but still he knew by the end of the 30s that the new deal was sputtering out and there was new opposition to him and people did want a third term or any president. once the war broke out i think he really did believe that he had the experience and therefore the capacity to lead the country. this was in 39 and before we to the world. .. and as long as he could tell himself, and that's why when he didn't go to his own convention in 1940 because he wanted to make it feel like he was being drafted,, they wanted him rather than he was looking for a third term, and in fact that is where the word no ordinary time comes from. the convention was kind of restive because they wanted him to want it but he meanwhile wants them to want him. finally they were getting kind of grumpy so he sent eleanor to the convention and she was able to come. everybody said he would love to be here by the cans with world affairs. this is no ordinary time so that is where i got the title for the book. finding titles for these books is a difficult and finally that one came. i think then the real question is then of course he runs for a fourth term even though by then he knows he's not well. i think he just figured i will stay in this presidency until the war is over and then maybe he could leave it and not even serve out that fourth term. but i think the third term decision absolutely have to do with the state of the world and his concerns about nazism and fascism. >> 30 seconds. >> if you could asked jfk about his affairs. >> that was kind of a stupid answer to the question to be honest. it's not a stupid answer, just a trivial answer to that question so i wish i had thought about that. the question came pretty good up to me but i didn't answer too well. >> i was just wondering what you think his answer would be. >> what you know i think what happens to our presidents to follow for one more thing is when they get into power i think they think they sometimes are not bound by ordinary rules and that if they need relaxation in certain ways that they should -- teddy roosevelt by manically running around in the park every afternoon are wrestling or boxing and i think he found his relaxation through women to some extent. that might be his answer that he needed a break from the pressures. they all find pressure. in fact there's a funny story that does relate to that. my husband started working for jfk he was a young speechwriter on the plane. jfk brought him into the oval office and he said, showed him all these pockmarks on the floor and he said what do you think they are? .. >> we will conclude with that. [laughter] [applause] >> that concludes booktv's coverage of the 14th annual national book festival. >> thank you. >> [inaudible conversations] >> every weekend booktv offers programming focus on nonfiction authors and books. keep watching for more here on c-span2 come and watch any of our past programs online at booktv.org. >> up next on booktv, "after words" with guest host niger innis, executive director of theteaparty.net. this week mike gonzalez and his first book, "a race for the future: how conservatives can break the liberal monopoly on hispanic americans," ended the cuban born former journalist explains that the hispanic american population can be persuaded vote republican but only if the party addresses the committee's core values. the program is about one hour. >> host: mike, fascinated your book, a particular in the title

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