consulting firm. . .

>> my name is ab walter im editor in chief of the top line i have dreams for what i would like to read this summer although i don't know how many will actually get red bed top of my last is the new book american ally and about andrew jackson browne i like to get at least why not a political thriller that first summer. and a bully better not sitting on the beach one-year with truman was lovely. i have started but not yet made as much of a dent in it

and then you book a breakthrough from gwen ifill and that is another goal of mine as well going into the fiction category although it is a combination, it is quirky some people do not appreciate his sense of humor i find him hysterical. when you are engulfed in flames is a book that came out a couple years ago and has been sitting on my nightstand that will get red brick especially it is a plane book or a pick me up for those days i cannot go through much else. also something else because i have a two 1/2 year-old a some i do not a have any choice i will read them every single light and for those of the with a young kids then a little nabors on sunnyside

street. it does not make much sense of that is most books for kids but allow pitchers to look at which distracts them for a long time and by the end maybe i only have to do wind. richard scary is high on the list as well as where the wild things are. is a classic and soon-to-be a movie. those are my summer books i just hope i can get through them all. >> richard brookhiser wrote his first article for the new republic at the age of 14 and hired as a senior editor at the age of 23 broker-dealer

accounts his relationship with the conservative magazine founder t-72 deemed mr. brookhiser his successor only later to change his mind. the manhattan institute sponsored this event and a harvard club in new york city posted. it is 50 minutes. >> this is the first and i have given a book talk braff of the people in the room are in the index. [laughter] you all looked at the index. [laughter] yes you did. you really did. let me begin at the beginning. i met and bill buckley by writing for him. i grew up around new york in suburb of rochester and

midsize upstate city with my parents and my older brother bob. in the fall of 1969 i was a freshman at the local public high school. i did not know anybody who went to a private one. my brother was a junior at yale. every weekend of the school year since he went away at college i rode him on a small black middle typewriter babylon to mom and better rehearsing the events of the week. basketball games, school plays, little tryouts, disasters and items apologized and dramatize. one week the news barged into the home theater the opponents to the war called for a nationwide moratorium or a day of protest on october 15. the moratorium was a big thing on college campuses where boycott subclasses were

planned. some kids in my school decided to join in. i thought they were wrong. i also thought there was something phony about the exercise simultaneously preening and copycats of. the moratorium supporters presented themselves as dissidents but they were tagging along with the national movement mimicking their elders. a decided to put counter posters anti-protest protest on the school wall. i imagine myself as a latter-day martin luther taping a rather than at enamoring up orthodoxy for all to see. i generated my poster by typing the about over and over on the black typewriter using carbon paper to produce four copies at a time. i had only 12 species, not luther's a 95 per after one night's work i gave my posters

to the world on the 15th. that activity for the week went into my brothers letter it made for eight longer storey than usual and the next letter home he said he enjoyed it but my father said why don't you send it to "national review"? nobody in my family knew anything about journalism. we knew william f. buckley, jr. from television and had been subscribing to his magazine for half a year. perhaps that would be no. i took dear bob off of the beginning of my letter, added a conclusion and sent it away. months passed without a word from "national review". i assumed they had not like the submission and thrown away and this was standard procedure in journalism. and then after the new year i got a letter from the

assistant managing editor. dear mr. burr kaiser -- mr. brookhiser please steel with their slowness in dealing with our manuscript it was buried on my desk. this i've learned is standard procedure in journalism. [laughter] bills older sister and managing editor, we have read it and are eager to publish it. he added, we do receive manuscripts from people your age but i am sure this will be the first we have never published. anyone who ever submit something for the approval of the world expects in some corner of his mind he will be approved. but when approval actually came i was startled. the world of public events which included the media that reported was out there now someone from out there had a signal back. more surprises followed when my article appeared in the

issue dated february 24, 1970, one day after my 15th birthday, it was the cover story, moratorium day at the high school by richard brookhiser the next surprise a few weeks later was a check for $180. [laughter] the question of money had given me some anxiety. it must cost something i thought to print magazines and distribute them. perhaps i would be asked to contribute to defray expenses. [laughter] the idea that i may be paid in addition to being published was icing on the cake. about the time the check arrived i began to get letters from readers. there were 20 and all which would be a response from the days of e-mail and facts machines but in 1969 when each communication had to be sealed, stamped, and a drop in a mailbox it seemed impressive all the more to someone who had never gotten a letter from know when he staged any when

he did not know. i know by the assistant managing editor published it. was a dog walking on its hind legs. 15 year-old speaks. i was also dog bites man. there were plenty of young people even in the late sixties who were conservative were simply not liberal but they were not the young people you saw on television or in most magazines or newspapers. the archetypal young people from major media whether admired or feared were idealistic liberals, harry radicals, or populating druggies. he rose or freaks. here says the editors of "national review" was a kid, a high school freshman who speaks for the unseen. there was one more reaction to the piece. the most important of all, a blue three by five cared with "the national review" name and address and bold with the

italicized identifier, william f. buckley, jr. editor below that in red ink message, something like richard, nice going. congratulations. or very nice. thinks. in time i would learn that every contributor to every issue of "national review" got such a card from william f. buckley, jr. which did not diminish its value but rather the reverse. there were a courtesy in a profession that often skipped it. over the years i save many such cards, a fraction of all of the ones but since they are undated i cannot tell will now which came first. no matter they were a beam of attention from the top. then i go on to give the back story of meat and taking a

sensor 1970 and the introduction, at 44, bills age when he accepted my article, he was conscious of the passage of time. in the early sixties a younger colleagues at and on one of his interviews. bill was in fine form like a jet with a switchblade. the reporter save his toughest question for walking out could store and bill smartly enough to decide. when the door closed he turned to rickenbacher and grant, i could keep this shit up until i and 40. [laughter] he kept it of much longer the even sensing when he is no longer an infant had of the blue here came a kid pulling the same stunts he had pulled in college only he was doing and high school. the old man thought maybe i found another me.

now the rest of the book and the next 40 years of my life have three movements. which are already there the first of the movement's is a portrait, a portrait of a remarkable and consequential man. one of the reasons for doing this book is we're losing bill a. his tv show went off the air in 1999 and john people who started becoming media conscious after the moment note longer know who he is. my wife and i go out to dinner a lot summary hobnob with waiters and waitresses who are all kids and they don't know in the way they will certainly have known in 1980, 1975, of

course, it would have known who he was if they ever saw firing line just because he was out there, imitating him, etc., etc.. so as happens to every figure of the media, part of him has passed. people will endure and remain but there needs to be acts of recovery. that is one of the motives that helps me to write this book. among the many things that i tried to recover what is his that affect as a public figure. he was stylish and 20 and those who remember him both conservatives and liberals now universally acknowledged that. the conservatives because it was so important to us there

is a conservative who was stylish and funny but the liberals because it please them. they were entertained by the spectacle and not pretend so much buy the style of the humor. but we also have to remember that the bill was very aggressive, especially the further back to look. of you put on some of the youtube segments, he could be a killer if he thought you are arguing for authority conferred only by fashion or if you were threatening the country or its well-being or its piece, he would cut you a new one. and he did it over and over again. my favorite instance of combining both, i tell this story in the book is also in one of his posthumous books cancel your own by dm

subscription. him and arthur schlesinger was arguing by mail and in one of his feet male passenger refused -- referred to a national review or national require order you call your magazine. bill let him have it and said how would you like it if i said dear arthur or deere barfer or whatever you call yourself? [laughter] if you ever need to slap down a pulitzer prize-winning story that is the way to do with. [laughter] you are a five and this is what it is like and cut it out. just a beautiful arabesque in one sentence. another thing to recover is his passion for talent. he looked for it everywhere, literally everywhere. he would go to the big names he offered $5,000 per year to

be a columnist for "national review" it started out and said unless i get you get much richer or i get much poor then i can take you up on this offer. but he also grabbed it when he saw it in the i know. he hired kerry wells added the jesuit seminary. he had left the cemetery, and never written anything for anyone. he had four articles bill was the first one to write him back and that was the beginning of his career. he hired john leonard a harvard dropout then sent him to cuba to do a story on one of castro's early prisons. he was 19 years old. he also grabbed me at the age of 14.

a second movement and "right time, right place" is the time and place. 40 years is a long time ago as for the vietnam war to the surge in iraq. we mr. obama election but all that history, 9/11, it is all there. one of the lessons for conservatives at this moment was pretty glum. things are pretty grim. and if they really are. but you have to remember it has been worse. the mid through late '70s were awful. they were just awful. there was watergate, the fall of vietnam, stagflation, energy crisis, gerald ford good but bumbling intentions, jimmy

carter cumene is comic cubans were patrolling africa. africa? soviets occupying afghanistan, it was an awful awful time. it ended with ronald reagan. i am not saying every disaster ends with ronald reagan and. [laughter] and they don't. sometimes they just keep getting worse and worse but it is important for conservatives to remember that we have fen through very bad patches before. i hope that is another thing that this book can remind people of. the third movement of the book is a portrait of a relationship. the relationship between an older man and a younger man. i was a boy. i was a youth if that word still exist anymore but i would have been called the youth. then a younger man.

and a lot of ways it was love at first sight on both of our parts but then as often happens with love at first sight, mistakes are made. as i realized as i was reading this book that bill was looking for a heir and i was looking for a idol and either of those quests could really work. and it would inevitably produce frustration and misunderstanding. and in our case, some bumps along the road of romance. one year after i went to work for "national review", and this is in 1978, bill took me to lunch and city will succeed me when i step down at age 65, 1980. and you own the magazine, you

will be the second editor, here is the plan here is the timetable. a lot, i was flabbergasted. i was thrilled but i was stunned. the plan seemed to be going according to plan but then nine years later, 1987 i come back to my desk one day there is a letter on my desk addressed to me confidential, a bill was out of town, a key part of his elmo in certain situations and i opened the letter and it said you will not succeed me. and ' did and the book but it says you have no executive ability. i have not documented this but it is the case and it is time to make new plans. that was that so at age 32 or went from being very

precocious to being retarded now in the sense that i had to get another career. at the age of 32. there were many other bombs and twists and turns along the way. it took time and effort on both our parts to reestablish a relationship. robert frost said mayor love the things we love for what they are. but to do that you have to know what they are. and that can take a lot of work to figure out. when you work with someone periodically, when you see them regularly, there is a lot you tend not to say because you are part of that person's lives and they are a part of yours. and a routine is established.

but i did get to say once to build, something like a final judgment of what he meant to be part of this was after he sat -- stepped down as editor and henry kissinger offered to give him a big dinner party at kissinger's apartment and bill picked a the guest list and said invite all of my younger colleagues. terry, i was the second oldest person on the guest list so it was a young crowd. after kissinger spoke and the bill said a few words, then there was a time for toast. and i gatos. -- i gave a toast. i had to modify a little in the book but i quoted a lot from a palm by gates and my editor said a few quote so much of this poll you have to

will pay for permissions. [laughter] so i have to do a lot of paraphrasing but here is what i said on that night. the poem is one of his last call the beautiful lofty thing. the things are people that were important to him in his life. one is a drunk, stand to show great supporting himself between the tables speaking to a drunken audience high nonsensical words. one is his lover, a house station waiting a train, palace a see that industry back and arrogant head. and one was yates father and his father was involved of the controversy of the play the

playboy of the western world when it was premier the irish nationalist or a rage because they thought it was disrespectful to the peasantry who were the soul of the nation. there were riots in the theaters and uproar and gates father thought it was cretinous behavior city took on the nationalists. my father on the abbey stage before him a raging crowd this land of saints as the applause dies out the beautiful mr. this head thrown back and i said to bill it is not my place to comment on your head, but no one i know has been more respect fall of real since and more mischievous and plaster ones and that has been beautiful. thank you very much

[applause] again, half of the people in this room can dispute every detail that i said because they were there. [laughter] do we have a microphone? >> my question and is a bit disrespect fall but i will ask any way. i read about your book in the "wall street journal" review of your book and christopher buckley's book. one of the things that i did not know from reading the review was that william f. buckley, jr. had a heavy heavy dependency on at ritalin and used it frequently to focus. this raises the issue on whether you ought to have

disclosed this. i have a teacher that said relive and the age we like to see the athletes of clay from our idles. what concerns me about that aspect of your book not to say the rest is fantastic which i am sure it is, but those revelations at this point* in some way i worry, creates the undermining of what it is that bill buckley was trying to advance. god knows he had enough people who did not believe as he did and would take any opportunity to attack can. i am curious what is your take and 70 i think it was a minor item in the book but i am still curious. >> please read the book and the discussion of that. it was not to run him down. one of the points i was making is his insistence in doing this.

the only reason i knew about it is not because i was spying on him in his office, i was coming down with the flu or had a bad cold or something and he said would you like summit ritalin? i told my wife who is the anesthesiologists daughter she has a merck manual and apb our on her desk and she said what? no. you do not want to do that. there is no hypocrisy issue. the bill was very bold and urging our drug laws which i think have many manifold perverse aspects be changed and reform to whether a law against marijuana against medications that are given to the interactive believe ill he also campaigned about that for

many years. this is not something he would have been ashamed of on a policy level. but with the old man is a small matter. but it is an aspect of him. as it was an aspect that i am living my life and i have 1 million things to do and how do i do it? one way i do it is with the help of priscilla, my co-workers, with the help of a francis, am i disciplined, another way is by writing columns in my car driven by gary garvey comment many, many ways. and this seemed to him to be another way. i guess part of the point* is when a man is by teeing off so much and to link office so

much and getting so much right, it is not strange that there may be some things that he does not get right. that has to be part of the picture as well. . .

there is a poison pills. no, i don't have to use on what christopher has done. he wrote about bills stuff writing about his life. next question. the very back, back in the corner. >> i was wondering if you could comment on buckley's relationship to his arm on mobster, yale, and gone in man at yale, critical of aspects of the education in the 1940's and that you received there. did his feelings involved in any way over the years into the best of my knowledge for all his prominence i don't know that he was ever honored by yale, but perhaps it could set me straight on that. >> well, there was -- yale was founded in 171 so they had a tricentennial and there was a

big thing, and there was a celebration of famous alumni and things that are produced by alumni and bill told us that their words, i share the stage with big bird. [laughter] bed that tells you that he went to this and was part of this. certainly there were yale institutions primarily the yale daily news. so there is that two but the yale daily news is certainly something he loved and cared about and cap touch with breyer's. he would also go back to the yale political union which he had been a member of in a form for debates and this was useful to him because he would use them for firing line but that was a form that he cared about. he taught at least one writing course at yale. so look, he did not burn every bridge, but he didn't see and i think he saw quite correctly in

the late '40's and early '50s he always running a con and yale who was conveying an impression to its alumni saying that while you are all christian capitalists and we are the school that stands for that. and they did not any more. they had changed. they probably changed as recently as the 40's so they were sailing under false colors and there was a very male white thing -- it is related to dear arthur saying this is what you are doing. use they were doing something else, this is what you are doing and i'm going to tell everybody that this is it. may be the final point is that you can do that but it doesn't mean you have to burn the place down and never crossed the stores again and obviously i think he still had a connection to skull and bones, a senior

society usn, the research may friends he made at yale who were dear friends of his life so is a complex picture but he would also never have forsworn the truth that he told about yale beckham 51 -- back in 51. >> michael meyers. i wonder since you were his protege and he was your mentor in the time he told you you're not going to succeed him, how many sleepless nights to do have after that and having to deal with it in terms of not lashing out at tormentor? but my real question is, i remember bill buckley as a conservative and in terms of movements during his life he was really reticent if not maybe not even a johnny come lately to the use of federal power in terms of the civil rights movement and

conservatives point of view being that federal government should not be used again states' rights and did he use of the federal power to create and enforce equal opportunity and equal access? >> well, in terms of my reaction i do go into this in great detail and obviously i think is in my press reaction was how, and it was my first, second, third, fourth and death and one as an adult and has to get to a day, the weekend a. that process that helps you also deal with the negativity in the emotions. and soren as bill wrote things about the early civil-rights struggle that are embarrassing to read now, deeply embarrassing

and he a knowledge that and he admitted that he had been wrong and i think there are many factors in play and one of the ones that occurs was henry java. if anyone has dealt with them you know that it is a job. [laughter] but he is also a brilliant man and a brilliant historian and the point of his life is that the declaration of independence is an essential document of the american revolution and therefore of american history and i have to say the more i have read about that time can firms when harry argues and i tell a story of a lunch that bill invited me to. he was going to need kerry at and we got there first and harry

comes in a little late, but bill had said in passing in a column that if george iii had captured george washington he would have been justified in having him as a rebellious subjects and harry started before he even sat down. bill and the is rebelling injustice how can it be just to hang him and before this sale had came he had a bill saying you are right i was wrong. and that is here's relentlessness of but i think it was also his grasp of a very important point about american history which was traumatized in the civil war where, of course, lincoln embraces jefferson and the confederacy explicitly repudiates them. and so the issue and this is the vice president of the confederacy giving a speech where he says the fires were wrong because there cornerstone was given the quality but we

know they are on equal. some men are fit to be slaves and our cornerstone will be given inequality. it does not get any clearer than that and they'll always loved the good argument well made and harry certainly did that and i think that was part of the process of the bill at changing his views on that issue. yes sur. >> and was one of the 20 people who wrote to you, you were in high school in rochester in 1970 and i thought out and ask a youth oriented question. all i could picture bill buckley graduating from yale this month of writing an updated version of god and man at yale but i'm not sure if you would have gone on to found the national review, when he have used in your view one of the other media or when he had founded the national review? >> well, that is an excellent

question and it is a very deep question about people's talents and peoples opportunities. bill had a brilliant skills as a journalist. and 750 words and the top of his game this did not get better and that was the form that existed and the years that he lived and worked. on television he was made for the television era and that he transformed -- firing line starts in 1966 in is to walter cronkite and johnny carson to insert a the end this thing is and firing line is like another galaxy in stars with the concerto and is not only bills mannerism and accent and what not but also the content of what he is saying and one of the very

interesting anecdotes came my way years ago. alice on some sort of panel and afterwards an old man came up to me and said the you see mr. buckley and he said it will you thank him for me? i am a man of the left but firing line was the only place in the late '60s were leftwingers could get to say their views at length. there is some truth to that. bill love to say that so he could to get out with them. but he let them say that in the media has changed, the media has moved on. it is just like it is all a trailer, it is all a teaser, this ms. if jesus. >> now he would not get an hour of television. he simply wouldn't. so bill was suited for his time. what are bills today going to do? and there are going to have to be suited to their time and also

people are unique. a lot of conservatives are saying where is the next ring in? there isn't going to be a next reagan -- in will be somebody else. where is the next buckley? not going to be one but there will be some a else doing some thing, doing it differently somehow. so i mean, that is a very fruitful line of inquiry and i hope it is one -- i pursued in this book and i hope i did justice to it but the way that his talents bit with his message in with the opportunities from the resources that are out there was an extraordinary thing and, of course, he had to see that and make it happen and he did. >> bill buckley edited the magazine, had a television book,

had written and played the harpsichord, was a cia agent and sell the world -- was there anything you now he wanted to but, in fact, never did? [laughter] >> priscilla. he did say there was a questionnaire called the priest questionnaire and i guess he wrote these questions at some point. it is like a parlor game. if you could come back with you want to be in your next life and so on and one of the questions i remember because the answer this and one of the questions was is there any talent you wish that you had a. he said he wished he had an excellent and comprehensive memory. i thought his memory was pretty damn good, but that is interesting that he would say that and, of course, monday think about that both in terms of his social quest and the impact he made an oppression he followed him and everybody so

there is an awful lot of good stuff to remember, and he told it to us, entertainingly and allied relief. so he seems to have felt he could have done a little better. he had a full life of for what he wanted to do. one of the things he said in his letter to me when he said i wasn't going to succeed at, he said you don't want to be in a job which is not suited to you because certain responsibilities and his friends was the become this fixative and -- mary buckley life in construction. even at the time when i was going through my wailing and weeping, and even then i noticed this as much as a letter addressed to me. this is bill also writing to himself by himself.

and i don't know how far those thoughts went. clearly they were there. he loved that tempo, he loved that routine and all the stuff, but to me clearly there was also in him at least in doubt, well, maybe if some of this clutter -- but was he going to change it? now, because he put his chips on it and he was good at some much of it than he continued on with it. >> my earliest memory of bill buckley was when he ran for mayor of new york in 1965 on conservative and i was wondering why he never again ran as i can invent for public office? >> he thought about it. i remember one of our directors and dinners and a van galbraith was visiting from paris in it

was late in the evening. much wine had been consumed in that man who was the most brilliant person i ever met. he made a bill look like john kalin. [laughter] but you know, so man was a man and have a few in this was sort of like late in reagan's first term. it was not clear that reagan was going to run again. there was real doubt out there in a lot of it fueled, was not sure that he can win reelection. there was a very bad recession and she did not want her husband to risk defeat in that to a lot of uncertainty and speculation silverman said the bill, you should run and was kind of serious about this. bill was listening to a kind of seriously, not seriously but

kind of seriously. and then i did one of the things that kind of astonished me when i thought about it because i remembered what happened. i got to go and have a few myself. bill should my hand as i was leaving in said the station has taken an unserious turn. what a rude thing to say. and should he have run for president? no, i don't think so. i don't think he was cut out for it. not my place to say that. time in history and circumstance would say that. it is not my place to say. so love is rauf, there is a lot that goes on and a lot of mistaken things that happen the golan, but i think he did think of it. my final judgment in the book is bill would have been a better president than franklin pierce but that is not an easy task.

[laughter] anyone else? henry stern. >> you said that there might be buckley but it would not be buckley, it would be 70 else, so what i wanted to ask was who were the bill buckley's of the past, going back 10 or 20 or 30 years? who were the conservative intellectuals who had diversified interests and made such an impression? >> well, let me broaden your question and take it beyond the universe of just conservative intellectuals. he had some resemblances to alexander hamilton. now, hamilton held government positions. he was treasury secretary, most

eminently then other things as well, but there were both journalists. they both wrote very fast, they wrote wild and bill was a better writer. if they were incredibly disciplined and and they also had this go to hell streak, this there are first-rate, and bill set up his life to encourage that to bed got hommel -- got hamilton in trouble. it was a big mistake to tell thomas jefferson the man he most admired was julius caesar which hamilton did want as a light pole. i am convinced joanne freeman argued he was pulling jefferson's life and i think she was right. a big mistake because, of course, thomas jefferson had no humor and he thought the plot is revealed. [laughter] federalism has tipped its hand. and this is something i just got

an e-mail from a friend of mine, in historian named al and his -- he is considering a political biography of the bell and the parallel he came up with this fascinating. it is frederick douglass and frederick douglass was also a private man, he never held office but he was a journalist, he was an eloquent orator, he was an organizer, in that worker, a wire puller. he was obviously an outsider for the obvious reasons, a black man in america, but i am eager to see al work this out because the minute i read that i thought -- so there are such people that you can find some resemblances to and we just have to, you

know, we can't produce the next one, we just have to be sure that the opportunities are there and that when they knock the doors will open. >> at the moment that we speak we have two books on hand, very much on hand. christopher buckley's book in your book here and christopher of buckley's book has now been on the best-seller list for 84 weeks or whenever in has been out. >> i haven't looked. [laughter] >> but seriously in each case we have to brilliant writers writing about the great man, the current great man, and journalistically speaking many of the interviews that have been on television and other media for chris is book have in my

view and my sons do come out rather negatively on bill. y? because the excerpts in journalism so often are just picking down to the negativity. there is a danger there and i'm saying to you, i've read only one review of your book coming out and it had some emphasis on the negatives. a accentuate the positives is a song from world war ii ended one must import me as one reviewer said, chris is book reads at least to the last half where he is acknowledges how much bill was in my word a thai man. not that we have to be in on but understanding let's not go with a journalism part, but i just want to remind and in that way if you don't mind to say

that the you and chris are a brilliant book ends in acknowledging phil's -- bills greatness. >> thank you, joe, for that complement. journalists do what they do. i am one of them and i know they do and the right side -- right circumstances i do it myself. i found this when i am writing about people of the past i think i found this most strongly with the addamses. and if i have a quarrel with some of the john adams revival which is a huge thing is that in sugar coats them, that doesn't do him any favors. john adams was a complex complicated man and to make him a kind of the plaster image, is sort of doing what i was doing at 15 and looking for and i know as a posthumous equivalent of

that. you shouldn't try to do that. now and, of course, and there will be many more books. when samuel johnson died it was a rash of books, we all remember boswell because he wrote the great book that lasted but there were this friend and that friend, everybody wanted to get out there and they want to get out there because they knew that a great man had left and they all had a take on it and want to get it down. so to books, there will be 10. do we have time -- how am i doing on questions? time for more? okay, i think i got the high sign. [laughter] so with that concerto, we are done. >> richard brookhiser is a senior editor of the national review. he is the author of several books including "what would the

founders do?" and "george washington on leadership". richard brookhiser was the recipient of the national humanities medal in 2,008. for more information visit the others website at richard brookhiser.com.

this summer booktv is asking, what are you reading? >> congressman from the 11th district of virginia, i'm here to talk about books. i myself am a very avid reader, i read on average a least a book a week and sometimes too. most of my consumption is history and biography. i have a stack of books on one side of the bed i have read in the last. i've got another stack on the other side of the bed that is to

be read in the coming years. and i am particularly fond of american history and have read in number of biographies in the last year, read a wonderful book by joseph whalen, the last crusade. john quincy adams career in the house of representatives and in many ways historians i think very few have ever written about that time exclusively in john quincy adams career. he spent 17 years here at the house after serving president and had a distinguished career, was an outspoken opponent of slavery, and in many ways with somebody who foresaw of the disunion and that was going to occur over that great subject and he was just a stalwart on the subject and was a fierce defender of the constitution and american rights and, of course,

defended the black slaves who had been the famous incidents on the amstad and john quincy adams actually took that to the supreme court and killed in an era when nobody thought he could -- in is a fascinating story of john quincy adams and his time post presidential and i think one of the few books ever written about that time. in his live. a book that i just finish when i got here to the house, of course, is the house historian's book called the house which is a short history of the house of representatives itself which is a great institution and has lots of interesting characters and, of course, a great history swelling around this place. in one of lorain propose of us who have come to congress this last year. i went to reading about ancient

rome so i read anthony everett to book cicero and i guess this -- one will buy a reason to incredible character is an ancient rome. a biography on julius caesar which was so good in theory and -- julius caesar which is also a great read. bob harris book called the imperial which is about cicero. the -- i could not get enough of ancient rome so i wrote every now love and never short-story stephen sailor has written. he created a fictional character but the history behind it is accurate. it is a mystery detective in ancient rome during that time especially during the time of julius caesar acosta's. so i've had a lot of fun reading about history and even going to

fiction to further information about that great time in terms of age in rome. i think in this time of the barack obama one must read for everybody is the book team of rivals which is the great story of how abraham lincoln on the best of his rivals but then had the intestinal fortitude to bring all those rivals into his cabinet, in each of whom thought he was smarter and he too thought he should be in that swivel chair not abraham lincoln in is a great story and really eliminate a lot about american history. another book i read in this last year so iran military histories. in a wonderful story published posthumously by a great writer on the korean war which not a lot of single volumes on that in