my name is david. i would like to welcome you to books and company. which easily and pokes its greatest potential as a genre by offering the current of one person's rights -- of life as a bridge to a living history. you will find it difficult to manage and more dependent of success than the parallel of the evolution of an individual and his country. a portrait of american everyman is the result. note and out of hand alone would begin to build that trooped and takes its contents will be high on the baseline. we are, in fact,, to witness the deceptively simple qualities of one man's developing seoul, qualities which imports may do not read as mythical due to their steady grounding and small-town soil.

honestly, humility, decisiveness and a determination, contemplation, fearlessness in addition, each element is easily displayed in a station on the road to the moon. and two greatness and the way each living american rhine recognize. what more can we possibly ask whether its service of this out a clarity or unexpected discovery. please join me in welcoming james hansen. [applause] >> thank you very much, david, after that introduction i think i perhaps to go right to the question and answers. [laughter] first of all, let me say to everyone thank you for coming out tonight. as someone who has dedicated his professional career to the study of the history of flight it is always a delight to come to dayton, ohio which very rightly considers itself the first birthplace of aviation and

wilbur and orville how, hoffman perry, the right company, a cook field, right field, wright patterson, the air force museum, the aviation hall of fame. it is a place of the incredible heritage and i'm always -- i don't spend enough time in dayton. seems like when i come it's an event that gets me in and out quickly and i'd really like to spend a lot of time and see all the sites. i thought i would say something first about neil armstrong's connections to dayton. there are some interesting ones. of course, living in this area and i assume most of you do i think most of the now that's neil was born on a farm west 60 miles north of here, that was just outside of what panetta. his parents honeymoon in dayton in october 1929 and i guess if i was living there coming to dayton is really quite exciting. they stayed at the biltmore hotel for their honeymoon.

neil for his senior prom in 1947 by his dad's new oldsmobile and took his state and a couple in the back seat and after the dance was over they had it even though the last words that his father said to neil was don't go to dayton, i guess it was sort of sin city for this part of ohio, neil and the other couple ended neil's date did, in fact, had for dayton after the dance and they drove about halfway here until neil got cold feet and turned around. maybe would have been better if actually had come to date and because later that evening trying to stay out all night, teenagers back in 1947 were not much different by gas, neil and eventually fell asleep behind the wheel and drove into a ditch not far which was a story told in the book. i did not only the one that he took for the date, but the young

man who was in the back seat at the time so it is quite an interesting story. so maybe neil should have gone to date in perrin also neil told me that the first professional engineer that he knew or had a conversation with, this was when he was still in high school, was a man from dayton. he couldn't remember the name of the man, someone that his father, stephen, new and it was an important conversation for neil because he was planning to exploit engineering school to become an engineer and this man actually was an mit graduate. he told neil that really wouldn't be necessary for him to go as far away as mit to get a good engineering education, that purdue university would be a good place as well so i remember neil telling me about this man from dayton. and, of course, over the years neil would have visited here many times. in april 1963 just six months or

so after he became an astronaut he spent four days here at the zero gravity indoctrination program as it was known at wright-patterson, experiencing the pleasures of the kc-135 bonnet, it, learning windows like to have a a few moments of the weightlessness. and, of course, he had become a member of the aviation hall of fame. during the 2003 centennial anniversary of the wright brothers' flight, neil was very much part of that program. of course, there right brother scott himself so he found a place of or write to john glenn wilbur wright in a taped tv program on history of the invention of the airplane so neal has some important connections to this community and, of course, he does live down the road a little bit to the south and a suburb of cincinnati. you are right in the middle of

all of this history that involves armstrong. looking around at the crowd it seems that perhaps with a few exceptions, all of you were alive in july 1969 when the moon landing occurred. [laughter] eid marissa has an audience when i didn't have some folks, some member people that did not get to enjoy that unbelievable decision extraordinary time in our history. it is a time for us to think and i recently did some calculations about this that roughly two-thirds of the earth's population today was not alive in 1969, the median age apparently of the globe's population is like 28 or 27 which is depressing among other things. but to think that two-thirds of the globe and this is only history -- just in the history books -- they have no firsthand experience and, of course, our

firsthand experience was through the medium of television for the most part. unless you attended the al-awja which some of you may have done. only 12 human beings have ever walked on the surface of another heavenly body. and of those 12, only nine, the size of a baseball wind up are still living today. only six commanders have piloted a spacecraft down to enter the landing and of the six commanders only for the size of a golf group of still alive today. they range in age from 75 a and neil is in that group, he turned 75 on august 5th of this past year, from 75 to 71. in the year 2019 which will be the year that we will celebrate the 50th anniversary of apollo, these gentleman, their

ages will be from the mid 80's to late '80s. now and hopefully they will also be with us to tell us and share still their histories, but realistically it is quite possible that we won't have them all and it is a sad thought to think even nasa has plans to perhaps get back to the moon with a landing by 2018, a year before the 50th anniversary of apollo 11. and hopefully that will happen. that is my point of view any way and i hope some of yours. but i can imagine a time, we can imagine a time when all of our moon walkers will be gone and we will not have been back. i think it is in the realm of possibility that they will part our company, all of them before we do return and i think it's

also possible that the next voice is that we hear from the service of the moon will be speaking chinese. the chinese have a very aggressive program and is very possible that they might be the next ones there. my interest in writing armstrongs biography goes back now about seven or eight years. i had been working in aerospace history ever since i graduated from ohio state bank in 1981 and i knew that all the astronauts armstrong was really the only one who had not written his memoirs or work with an author to prepare an autobiography or a biography and that concerned me a lot. here we have the most famous of the astronauts. the name that is going to stay in the history books forever, but neil really had not participated, had not really told his complete story and i thought it was really a shame.

it's almost imaginable that you could lose neil armstrong's story. again, here he is so famous and almost everyone and the world knows his name at least in those immortal words he said when he stepped down off of the eagle, but it's possible that we could lose his story? well, i thought that it was possible in just to share something with you personally about lost stories and why i feel so deeply about them and care about them. my father died when i was a years old and he had fought in the second world war in the army signal corps and had been oliver north africa and was part of the d-day invasion. but he died when i was aid and i didn't have a single conversation with him about his life, what it was like to live to the depression, what his wartime experiences like i had done things to try to piece it together but still the stories of my father is very incomplete. after my father died mother had

to go to work. that often has to happen and in the summertime when i wasn't in school she would drop me off at a local municipal golf course. this was in fort wayne, indiana and i would say there from the time i was dropped off, sack lunch in hand until she picked me up sometimes at desk. what i ended up doing, i didn't realize, i didn't really think about it until many years later, but i played golf with a lot of retired gentleman. a lot of senior citizens and as we pulled our golf carts, carried their backs from hole to hole, i would be interviewing these men and asking them about their lives and many of them turned out were also soldiers in the second world war. and, of course, i didn't realize i was preparing to become historian, but looking back on it does exactly what i was doing. no doubt trying to find my father story in their stories

and ever since i started doing that around age nine or 10 for the next 47 years i have spent a lot of my time just interviewing people. so i have a loss story in my own history that bothers me still and as someone who had done aerospace history for 20 years as a professional, i mean, the idea that somehow we could lose neil's store was something i didn't think any of us wanted to live with for a long time. so i approached neil and i would be happy to answer questions about how that all worked out. there has been some publicity that deals with that issue, but what i would like to do is to read a little bit from the book in just a second but i want to set up by saying how can you really having lost story of a neil armstrong? have there been lots of books and feature articles and magazine stories? lots of kids books, written

about armstrong's life. how can you possibly have a loss sorry? my concern was that i think my research and the book proves that my view on this was correct, that a lot that we knew or thought we knew about armstrong and was inaccurate, was exaggerated, was over dramatized, that missed the point really of some of the major events and the arc of his life. in some stories were apocryphal. some stories, in fact, have turned out to be fabricated, things that are not even true that have been perpetuated in the literature in and started really in the summer of 1969. there are many layers of this then need to be picked apart, but just to begin as i can tell you that imagine in ohio, a town in the summer of 1969, neil armstrong has been named commander of of apollo 11 and has been with the success of

apollo 10, is now clear that apollo 11 is fine to be the first lunar landing. and also it has been announced and that armstrong, not his lunar module pilot, buzz aldrin, but armstrong will be the one step off on to the moon service first. well, and ohio press from all over the world descends from all over the u.s., from foreign countries and they start, they are interested in interviewing anyone and everyone that has ever had any kind of contact with neil armstrong. it was such a scenario. human beings being what we are, some stores will be very accurate in some stores will be stretched a bit. but my contact with armstrong, my mom david neil, neil gets his gas solder fill station -- and those sorts of things just explode. and unfortunately some of the stories that get reported in the local media, in the state media

come in the national and international media, some of the stories told by some of these residents aren't the whole truth, that there are again stretched and exaggerated and sometimes, in fact, made up. and so the stories have stayed around ever since 1969. neil is not the sort of man to go around and try to correct what other people have said about him. he would have had an entire profession and doing that it was so interested in so a lot of these stories that made it into the press have stayed there and the, the basis for the biography is, the juvenile by areas, the kids' books and for what ever adults stories have been told. the only way to get these things strain out was two go to the horse's mouth and to go with the story is one by one, asking it

neil to tell you if it is true separating fact from fiction, separating the man from the math. one reviewer of the book has suggested that neil had an agenda to this book, that neil wanted to have all of these details rainout. nothing could be farther from the truth. neil had no agenda for the book of the then once he agreed to have a scholarly independent biography written that was his agenda. he gave me pretty much carte blanche to do what i thought was the right thing. neil in terms of the stores are correcting fax, if i did not ask neil armstrong a question about something, i would never have heard about it because neil never told me let's talk about this or let's not talk about that. make sure you ask me this question. nothing like that ever took place. neil only as of the questions that i asked him some of the

agenda in the book is entirely my own and i thought it was important to separate out, to get to the genuine article because i felt strongly and i hope you do as well that no matter how much we might use heroes or need heroes in our society and that cultural icons have their place and have other functions, to me the remarkable thing about the human story is a three-dimensional human being with his and her creative mind surviving, challenges, heading into the future. i thought that neil's own story unvarnished was more important to tell then elaborating on the and continuing the mythology. the book uses as opening epigram a phrase from joseph campbell

and it reads, the privilege of a lifetime is being who you are, and i think that is a profound statement or i wouldn't have used it and i think it relates to neil armstrong in the lamborn way. so what i was trying to do in the book, one of the main goals was to explore the iconography of a neil armstrong. that is to understand what projection had been put on neil by society. from 1969 right up to the present and understanding why we have projected these things on to neil, what we need him to be for us, this man who was the first to step on a another heavenly body. what do we want from him? i that was an important thing to explore and to get to the real man i felt i had to unravel, i had to take off all of this in garb that wrapped him, disguised him from office in terms of who he was as a genuine

three-dimensional human being. so that was my mission and as i said there were various levels of doing this because, on the one hand, you have these stories that friends and neighbors and even family members, neil's mother is remarkable woman in the papers that i had access to from a buy hola armstrong, her writing about her family in the upbringing of her children and her faith in god and how the family lived to the apollo experience. of that material was essential two how i developed this line in the book and his mother's book is throughout the book. even she projected her own belief system onto neil and help to the skies for us what he was and who he is. what i want to read from the

book is another type of projection that the society puts on to armstrong. haps immediately in the summer of 1969. the last press conference that the apollo 11 crew a day prior to the launch of the apollo 11 on the 16th of july came on july 5th. then they went into a time of quarantine the prescott a hold of them virtually for the whole day on july 5th and i want to read, this is from a chapter entitled by elected so the moon mission, but it is a description of the press is attempt to understand who neil armstrong was and to interpret for the public, he was. reporters tried hard and mostly in vain to get armstrong to philosophize about the historical significance for the moon landing. one particular game to see in going to the moon for yourself

as human beings, for your country and for mankind as a whole? well, first let me repeat something you've all heard before and probably addresses itself to your question, armstrong answered, that is the objective is precisely to take men to the moon, make a landing there and return. that is the objective. there are a number of peripheral secondary objectives including some of those you mentioned early in question that we hope very highly to achieve in great depth, but the primary objective is and the ability to demonstrate that man in the back into this kind of job. how we use an intermission in the centrist, only history can tell. i hope that we are wise enough to use the information that we get on these early flights to the maximum advantage possible and how did that in light of our experience over the past decade that we can, indeed, help for that kind of results. nor did the journalists have much provoking him into giving

anything other than on emotional engineering answers about them great risks inherent to the flight. while we hear plans be in extremely unlikely event that the lunar module does not come off the lunar service. well, that is an unpleasant thing to think about. [laughter] and we've chosen not to think about that up to the present time. we don't think that is at all unlike the situation. in is simply a popular one if it were left without recourse to that occurred. it was seemingly passionless answer to questions about the human historical and existential meaning of going to the moon that peak norman mailer research i've act amends for disdainful insight like other reporters the pulitzer prize-winning author of the naked in the dead and armies of the night wanted more from armstrong a lot more. he wrote that armstrong

surrendered words about his appellee as i town allows me to be pulled out of his teeth. [laughter] that armstrong is with his characteristic mixture of monte and technical arrogance of apology and tight-lipped superiority that he had the slightest privacy of a man whose bonds may never be read. that armstrong like a trapped animal seem to be looking for a way to drift clear of any room like this where he was trapped with psyche and the duty of responding to questions heard from hundreds of times. an injury to mailer that armstrong ensues such an extraordinarily remote, almost mystical quality that made him appear different from other men. he was eight presence in the room he noted. as much spirits is a man. one hardly knew if he was at the

high thermal current or that neutrality which rises to the top and bureaucratic situations or both. nba contradictions lie solely upon him and was not unlike looking at a bewildering nest, some are on of filings, some of the green of early spring. of all the astronauts armstrong this seemed the man nearest to being saintly. as a speaker he was all but lempa. certainly in the knowledge still the overall impression he made it was not remarkable. certainly the knowledge she was an ashen not restored his stature he realized it even if he had been a junior executive accepting an award he would have presented a quality which was arresting. you would have been more concerned are, in fact, if he had been just a salesman making a modest the little speech before then would have been forced to wonder how he had ever gone his job and sell even one

item and have, in fact, he got out of the bed in the morning. something particularly innocent or suddenly sinister was in the of the gentle remote air. if you have been a young boy selling subscriptions at the door one grandmother might have won her granddaughter never to let him in the house. another would have commented that boy will go very far. he continued his dogged pursuit of the puzzle that was armstrong in to the press conference, organized exclusively for the magazine writers and beyond that into the studio where nbc build its interview of the astronauts. as the journalists kept pushing hard for the crew of apollo love and to disclose personal feelings and emotions he watched and listened as armstrong and transience of ever deeper in his engineers protective cloth. the armor of a shining knight of technology and replied in a mild and honest voice to a question

about the role of intuition and is flying by remarking that intuition had never been my strong suit and by asserting like a logical positive list he noted that the best approach to any problem was to interpret it properly that attack. armstrong was no common here appear in if they would insist on making him a hero he noted he would be a hero on terms he alone would make clear. from: alt and the reporters are able to get a few remarks about family and personal background nothing of the sword came from armstrong. we take personal mementos to the moon? if i had a choice i would take more fuel. [laughter] bollea keep a piece of the moon for yourself? at this time no plans have been made. [laughter] will you lose your private life after this achievement? i think a private life as possible within the context of such an achievement.

neil left them with very few opportunities for follow-ups. when the rare chance came in member of the media rush to the hole like a full punching off the boat goal line. following the comment about the economic benefit to the nation of the space program a writer jumped in to ask are going to the moon only for economic reasons, only to get out of expensive whole of a sluggish economy? don't see any philosophical reason why we might be going? it was exactly the sort of open-ended question that armstrong had tried hard all day, in fact, all of his life not to answer. and it was a question that neil could not avoid without looking like a spiritual kneuer to use his phrase. i think we are going to the moon armstrong offered tentatively because it is in the nature of the human being to face challenges. it's by the nature of his deep

innersole. we are required to do these things just as salmon swim upstream. what precisely was in armstrong's own a bit innersole about the moon landing or about anything else that happened in his life? his true feelings about his father, his religious beliefs, the amex of his daughter's death who died at age two in january 1962 just a few months before he decided to throw his name into astronaut collection. nothing else that happened in his life was hardly made there by the remarks or by any other verbal statement he ever made. it was just on his way. perhaps is extraordinarily justice restraint of expression was a deeply inculcated outcome of an avoidance strategy he had developed in childhood or perhaps derived as a first life janet today hesitantly suggests from a feeling of social inferiority base of his humble

family background in rural ohio. what armstrong on the eve of becoming the first man did not and would not define or explain about himself, others know sought almost desperately in the days before the launch to explain in the fine for him all the humanistic and cosmic meaning is that he would not fill and. other self compelled filled in for him. on the eve of the adventure on another heavenly body on sean has become like an oracle of ancient times, a medium and why prophetic, mysterious by which misfortunes were told. did these consulted, prayers answered. not until he constructed his own method of arms on to the parade of mine of norman mailer be satisfied. it did not matter that mailer would never made neil face-to-face, never once offer

him directly and never ask a single question of his own. mailer has sat before the oracle, the most saintly of the astronauts. someone who was simply not like other men in. who was apparently in communion with some strength in the universe, others did nothing to apply. it was up to mailer to decode armstrong. like mailer we were to be the author of our own moon landing. he tauscher the making of his own a neil ball hitting on correspondent frank mcgee interview knew the end of the day on july 5th. in the interview he referred to his story in like a magazine like building hamlin in which armstrong told that a recurring boyhood dream in which he hovered above the ground. he had read the story when it was there but dismissed as important until he heard armstrong after a day filled

with neil's engineer spake corroborates that, indeed, is a boy he had had such dreams. mailer was taken with the beauty of the dream. it was beautiful because it might soon prove to be prophetic. beautiful because it was profound and mysterious. a beautiful because it was appropriate to a man who would land on the moon. for mailer it was the type of epiphany. won by which he could construct the psychology of astronauts and interpret the entire space-age. the idea that such a non whimsical man as armstrong as a young boy dreamed of flight intoxicated mailer. it dramatizes how much at odds might beat the extreme of armstrong's personality. on the one hand, consciously armstrong archetypal abstinent engineer was grounded into the conventional, the practical, the

technical and hard-working. he resided at the very center of the suburban middle-class miller noted, on the other hand, what armstrong and the others were doing in space was enterprising beyond the limits of the imagination. their drive and ambition simply had to have a subconscious element he felt. it was in this union of opposition, the impenetrable fusion of the conscious and unconscious that mailer found in a modern technological age a new psychological constitution to man without his phrase. more than any of the other astronauts neil's personality stems from the core of that magnetic him and force called americanism, protestantism or loss but to appear in a u.s. the senate majority, the wasp emerging from him in history. in order to take us to the stars. never mind that mailer new almost nothing about armstrong's

family background, his personal history, his married life, his religious beliefs, his friends or his genuine psychological feelings. mailer's object was not to understand armstrong but to understand the comings and wrong goings of humankind in the 20th century. there was no denying the brilliance of mailer's expos away and he really did not care about armstrong the man. on a personal level. only as a vessel into which the author could afford his own mental energy and profundity. what made the wrote in his chapter the psychology of astronauts in a book that came out cold of a fire on the moon was highly provocative and insightful and social criticisms, but as history, biography or real psychology that should considerably more heat than light. the mythologizing and iconography and only just begun.

fifteen days after the press conference armstrong would step on to the moon. he would no longer be just a man, not for any of us. in he would be the first man. i am going to move right into questions. that is my rear part to appear in but i wanted to say just one more thing to add even more complexity and i think interest to the iconography aspects of this topic. and that is after neil became the first man all kinds of stories that also came to be associated with him. it wasn't just about what was being invented during the summer of 1969 to try to explain who he was two ourselves, but this was such an event, this first lunar landing that people all over the

world rarely were projecting them on to that mission and some very interesting cultural way is. i will just give one example which occurred in the book. not long after apollo 11 returned, stories began to circulate that in the islamic world that neil while he was on the service of the moon had heard some strange and chanting, singing, he cannot make out what it was and that when he got back to earth you heard of again. he discovered what was, it was the muslim call to prayer. he converted to islam and he moved to lebanon. [laughter] the country in the middle east, not down here the interest a few miles. we laugh at this, but when you go back on your computer into a google search or use one of the search engines anti been neil

armstrong is on and you'll see how many hits, it is in the tens of thousands. this is a store that circulated that proliferated in the islamic world to such a point that in the early 1980's neil asked the u.s. state department to get involved. was getting so many requests to give lectures, to visit mosques, explain his reasons for conversion that he asked the state department said it tried to do something in islamic countries to clarify that he had not converted to islam and politely and cordially let it be known that he will not be visiting the country's to talk about a conversion. and the state department, in fact, distributed a circular that went to embassies in the islamic world, but not even that could do at. and two years after that he had a telephone press conference with journalists in cairo, egypt for he answered their questions. even after that neil told the

story he was back at perdue for an event and he was in his fraternity house. a young man who was part of it neil's frattini came up to him, he was a muslim student, and the studentcam of to him and asked neil to talk to him and explained about his conversion to islam. the student told neil that his father was a professor at stanford university and that he had pulled his son about it. though the student was asking if he would please explain the conversion. neil told him it wasn't true and tried to explain how the story had gone started and what he'd done to try to stop it and the student would not believe him. his father had told him that neil would deny it and so it is really parts of the conspiracy theories involved in more than one of them as the moon hoax being the number one conspiracy theory. but the suggestion is there is no way the u.s. government could

have let it be known that in his most famous fashion not first man on the moon had converted to islam. so is a big part of the government conspiracy and the reason neil is so quiet over the years is the government put a lid on hand, they are not letting him talks somehow, kind of like have them under house arrest. but no matter what happens and i am not thinking that even though this is explained in some detail in the book i have hopes and aspirations that maybe this will settle things down, but popular culture being what it is an urban legends continue despite what we know to be true. and spent time with this in the book and to me is not a surprise that one of the world's great religions we want to see in its own story, in his own belief system, with what the moon landing to be part of it. christianity certainly did that. if you go back and look in 1969

and all the feature stories written about the moon landing, they're all kind of a christian projections on to the men landing. and in a christian society that may seem appropriate and fine, and so when people laugh at is islam has done this. to me it is not a surprise to any of the great world religions. i have went and looked for evidence of this in hinduism or buddhism you probably have associations with the moon landing to because everybody wants to be part of it, everybody wants to project their story into that story to make it founder of their existence. but the problem is in terms of biography, in terms of history, in terms of the genuine article that all of this puts a veil and funds of who neil armstrong really is and what i have tried to do in the book is to deconstructs the iconography, explain where it comes from and then be able to show you neil

for who he really is. in my view and i believe in your view once we know him for who he really is and the kind of talent he really has you'll find him more extraordinary man then you have before. some people seem and i see this in some of the reviews of the book though the reviews overall have been quite good, but some reviewers want neil to be somebody is not. they want him to be a poet and philosopher. well, the person that needed to command apollo 11, he did one thing more than anything else, he needed to be able to land the vehicle. can a public land vehicle better than an engineering test pilot? was it wrong for neil to be thinking about the means, the systems that were required to get the landing may? he could have been the greatest

philosopher esther not in history but if he couldn't land at the vehicle was the point? it would not have been successful but society wants more from him. reviewers wanted to be something that he's not, they don't want him to be the engineer. the palace society find some engineers to be too boring to even read about. but they're not. and they just apply their creative minds to solving technical problems and very well thought out ways. and exploring that mind set to me as part of the history of our world, history of technology and science. so i am always surprised when i see this. i've seen enough engine and surprise me that society continues to want to see neil to be something he's not. how many of you saw him the other night on 60 minutes? that is neil. i would have liked to have had more time with neil and less

historical footage. unafraid the must've been two hours of a paid in that was cut out and would have liked to have him talking for 30 minutes or 60 minutes, but that is the genuine article. that is the real man and i will be disappointed in that come in if we are we ought to look ourselves. there's something missing in our own lives that we aren't satisfied with to the real neil armstrong is. i will get off my soap box and stop and be very happy to answer any questions you might have. >> a couple years ago tricentennial flies celebration i was in the kitty hawk, north carolina and had the opportunity to hear buzz aldrin. buzz aldrin was talking about the landing and seem to suggest very much so that it was the physical continuation -- configuration of the landing of the eagle that determined that neil armstrong was the first off

in the unspoken but clearly suggest conclusion was that but for the way it was configured that he would have been the first off. did neil speak to that issue? >> he did and it wasn't dealt with at some length in the book. there is a chapter entitled first out which is an analysis of the very issue. i will try to put an end to a summary. nasa certainly at the time explaining to the public and even to agency personnel including the esther not explain why armstrong was going to go out before buzz aldrin refer to it interior layout of the model. there were no seats in the lunar module. they took the seats out, didn't need the seeds and elinor and ferment and it neil was standing to the left, buzz was standing to the right and had his right middle. the hatch opens up this way, kind of opened up against buzz aldrin. for buzz to have gone out he would have had to do a two-step

around and, of course, the walls of a dilemma are virtually papered them. you could stick a pencil to them and their switches and fuses and things with a big backpack you could move around, you could actually damage a spacecraft. they worked this out to the ground simulations, they have mockups of the astronauts and technicians that export all the possible movements inside. they concluded that it was just much easier for the commander to go out and that is how it was explained to the public. even to a bus. the problem was in the mind of buzz aldrin and the press also believed for a long time that he would go on first because in the genocide program which was a two-man spacecraft were the first space walks were done, the extravehicular activity, the commander always stayed with the spacecraft and it was the second guy that went out and did the

spacewalk. given that was the procedure in jam and i and they moved into the apollo program before the had worked out all the ground simulations of these movements it was just bought the commander again will probably be one that stays with the spacecraft and will be the number two guy that will allow first. a lot of of the early planning in the paul actually had laid out that when. they weren't sure. whenever first asked about who was going to go out first dekes late in the chief of the office and we're going to have to wait until we see how this all works out but that was when to be done for technical reasons. well, the truth of the matter is all history seems to be is a little more complicated. in the book there are interviews especially with chris-craft who was one of the the top officials of the johnson space center in houston in the man-to-man spacecraft center at the time,

there was a meeting between the the chief of the era spot offense, the director of the center, and george loa who was the head of the office command space flight. there was a meeting in which these men discussed the first out issue and their conclusion was that the person who stepped on first was going to be another historical figure, very important role model and that neil was the perfect type of person. he was very likable. buzz was not. there was a decision behind the scenes that for political reasons armstrong should go out first. the technical reasons and i have a couple of a different interviews with people including kraft in including alan greene

who was the apollo 12 lunar powell -- loader module pilot. statements that suggested that the technical argument and then was kind of a smokescreen for the real reason which was they wanted neil to go out first. he played the role of holdrun and apollo 12 and so when i asked al bement what about moving around? is in that a legitimate issue. and that possibly damage the spacecraft and he said what you do is you change questions before you put your backpack on, before you get dressed to go outside and and if i move over here that i could have had pete conrad who was his commander, could and handed me my backpack and put it on and i would have handed his his backpack. the one of the lunar module to go at first it would have been absolutely no problem to do it so long holding of the technical issue interior layout of the

lamb was used and is still in use as a description. neil himself and i finally get to answer you're direct question, neil beliefs that if the commander going aphorist did not make the best sense technically then why did they use it every time they landed and the commander like alan shepard that wasn't the right way to do it. a shepherd would have made sure it got done in a different way. i am a stand his point of view about that and there is a logic to a but at the same time i think after the president was said that the commander was going out first with apollo love and. then to me that president was going to be followed throughout the entire program so it is a tricky bit of his history there. and to know also and have a document from 1972, three years

after the moon landing until a document from george lowe, one of the men at that meeting of four in that buzz aldrin had come into his office just before he wrote this memo. 1972. wanting again to know exactly why the decision was made for neil to go out first. sell in the buzz was totally satisfied with what he had been told in 1969 and one had been reported to the press, why would he still ask that question in 1972? you can judge that for yourselves. yes, ma'am. >> over the years and has been thought of that neil armstrong was reclusive, did not give any interviews , however, you able to get him to be able to give you these interviews for you to do a book? >> it is the one question i never asked emma. after he agreed to do it i thought it was kind of crazy. neil, why are you going to let me do this?

i was just so happy that he had given me his consent. i think it was a combination -- it took me about three years really. i rode him first back in 99 and he wrote me back very polite, cordial letter and in the only kind of letter he would write but basically it was a polite brushoff that he was too busy at the time to do it, they get very much, the luck in your work. for several months after that i thought that is that, that's not going to work out but i have some graduate students at the university taking aerospace history with me and i said don't let this go. so the next thing i did was send him a box of books that i had written thinking he saw the kind of serious scholarship that i did and that i attention. meal was not going to have a book written about his life if the author was not going to be paying attention to the chemical and engineering issues involved.

that makes total sense. if you're writing a biography of neil armstrong who considers himself first and foremost an engineer and then you're going to say i am going to -- engineering kits to technical and readers to want to follow that kind of detail so let's just put the stuff and a black box and put it over to the side and deal with everything else. well, you're not talking about neil armstrong's life if you do that because what i want to know is what is in his head, one of the problems he's trying to solve the acid test pilot and astronaut, later in life as a member of corporate boards. as a vice commissioner of the challenger investigation. you have to get inside his head and see what problems he's working with, how does a solemn. you have to do with his life as it was. and so when i tried to do and i teach history of technology is i take a black box and show what is in there and tried to explain to people when it is and what is important and how it works.

it's not engineering textbook but it is an attempt to try to show how an engineer, when engineers live is like and what kind of impact that has on the rest of us. i think partly he was getting to retirement age and i think he just saw an opportunity perhaps that a book could be written that he would appreciate and be worthwhile for society. that is neil. he does not not to do -- that is why he doesn't do speeches. a reporter wants to do a feature story on him he doesn't see how bad is worthwhile at this point in time. it is a new -- newsworthy items after the columbia accident or something that happens then he will grant an interview but he doesn't see it worthwhile to be learning more about, have him comment thing and then have something to a story written up in the local newspaper. another question?

yes are connected to speak for a moment on armstrong's feelings of the abrupt ending to the apollo program in 72? or the missions completed or was he disappointed, what were his feelings? it nike did comment on that in the system and its show the other night and i think what he said was serving as most of the astronauts did they were surprised it ended as abruptly as it did. nasa has plans quite specific plans for other missions, but the way that budget was working out for nasa in the second nixon administration, actually funding for nasa in the space program started to go down in the mid-60s. even though the moon landing did occur until 19691 could almost see the writing on the wall and, of course, it is almost an ultimate irony that the president was able to make a telephone call to buzz aldrin and neil armstrong on the phone and richard nixon who was defeated in the 1960 presidential election by john kennedy he made the letter

commitment so that is really an irony that was not lost on us at the time. yes, sir. >> as protective sp1 is of his privacy now, and the fact he is granted in your access with his book, does he have any thoughts on what the possibility will mean to him if this turns into something of a cinematic major? >> well, he could care less whether the book it's made into a movie if that is what you're asking. warner bros. and clint eastwood have shown interest in it and have option a book. i am still waiting to hear whether it will happen. osher it's a great idea myself. because of the goal of my book was to separate fact from fiction. well, if you go to hollywood --. [laughter] how are you going to do that? on the other hand, i guess this is my rationalization is in that

looking at this audience, how many people under 20 come under 30 are here? one person. they don't know the story, they don't know this man. and movies to reach the level of popular culture and open and perhaps more young people would go to the book, which use the movie as a means to go to the book. i want them to know that there's another armstrong worth knowing besides lance armstrong, very much worth knowing too, but armstrong himself really couldn't care whether a movie is made. he is in going to stop it from happening if that occurs. he would hope it would try to follow this story of the book as closely as it can and from what eastwood has sent to us i think he would do very good job of trying to make it an authentic story because his last few movies have been quite good.

>> [inaudible] >> and imax production? that would be possible to one thing that james cameron, the director of titanic, when word of the book first got out cameron was apparently expressing some interest in the bill possibilities, but he was saying that he would want to wait until he could actually do the shooting on the moon. [laughter] which i thought we might have to wait a little too long if that were the case. maybe this is the last question. they are giving me a sign. >> understanding how important this is and the impact this would have on the human being and i understand that he was an engineer, but first he has to be human. and the impact of such an event on a person's life, did he ever share with you what that significant change was after the landing?

>> yes, banaa. as a human being we expect neil to have been chained in some very basic way as a result of this experience or assuming we would be. and it is amazing to us that he really did not appear if he did not have any cosmic epiphanies, he didn't have any spiritual change. some of the astronauts did and have written and testified about it, but neil didn't. for him i think what we talk about most of what did affect salmon was people that had treated him, that knew him as just a friend before, now started to treat him differently. people that had related to the family now were treating them like they were not the same people. that surprised and hurt neil and, of course, you have to really hear some of the stories about the pounding, the stalking even of armstrong, to experience

that degree of celebrity is something that very few people have to undergo. neil has shared a lot of the more than people think if you look at the papers in talks he has given around the country in the world, he has been out there a lot more than people might think, but it has always been his choice. it is his choice and his type of event. he chooses mostly to go to academic kinds of things, which is not surprising because enough that after he left nasa, he went to the university of cincinnati to tejon -- aeronautical engineering. how many did something like that afterwards? neil has handled himself in an amazingly sane way over the last 36 years. how many of us could have done any better than him? >> did neil as a boy dream of

being first man on the moon? can i know, that is one of the myths. neil was a boy all about airplanes, he wanted to be an aircraft designer and he figured to be an air craft designed you need to know about the operational characteristics of aircraft and thus be a pilot. his evolution into and astronauts, all as a result of his years as a test pilot, moving into atmospheric flight with the f-16 in the opportunity and reality of the moon landing program becoming a real after kennedy's commitment. but the idea that this was a little boy that looked up at the moon and dream of going to the moon, those are stores that you find the armstrong legend but there are not the real neil armstrong. okay, i've got to end it, i'm getting the cut side. thank you so much for coming out and i hope to see you and talk to in the line. thank you. [applause] >> james hansen is a professor of history at auburn university in alabama.

in a former historian for nasa. july 20th, 2009 marks the 40th anniversary of the apollo 11 mission to the moon. first man is published by simon and schuster, on the web at simon says.com. ..

>> richard nixon in the 1960's. >>host: how did he evolves and was partially responsible? >>guest: he did not create the wave but he started the way. in the sixties it social movement he became all the more passionate with largest loss of white middle-class america became a very frightened that the normal expectations of law and order were being up and did. richard nixon harvested that rage and he took advantage of that and not only did he harvested buddy also exacerbated it as a political strategy.

for example, he argued privately that they wanted to achieve a strategy of positive polarization it is good two of a political discourse because of there believe that the republicans and what harm is a bigger side of the divide. even though much of the public rhetoric we want our presidents to speak all the time but barely beneath the surface he encouraged the idea that one group of americans over one group one was not quite american of all blood was the majority in the other one was the kids that wanted to tear down everything a hard-working americans had built. >>host: was some of that train in your view justified? >>guest: absolutely.

all lots of what went on on the new left with the black power movement was juvenile and narcissistic. i tally story of the book about abbie hoffman who was one of the most prominent anti-war activist here come into the use it national party i talk about how john lindsay had made him an ambassador between the city and but at the committee with the lower east side and part of that is he could not be arrested. abbie hoffman would take a vantage and ife the cops. he so they did a cop into arresting him he literally smashed in the display case and the preissing house -- preissing towson just because the good when you talk

about that level of joblessness it makes it easy for us to come together as the commonwealth it is when the day -- rage was differentiated when it was directed at senators to oppose the war like muskie who nixon tried to tie to the radical movement that things got very irresponsible. >>host: as a politician to you respect richard nixon? >>guest: he was the best. he was not quite good enough to bluff his way through two full terms but as far as his ability to find a subterranean move beneath the surface of american life and speaking to those hopes and dreams he was brilliant. he was brilliant at thinking about what constituents have

built for his politics and one of the ways he was such a brilliant politician and one of the evidence of it is he was three it -- not a very charming man. it was a paradox. people found him hard to catalog with a yet your the legions of millions americans. >>host: this is your second book. your first was on barry goldwater and now looking on a third and? >>guest: i am an unapologetic liberal of all very proud some people on the right have found my work equal and fair but i am fascinated that we americans share a nation that even though we see the world in such a different way and we speak the same language, english and inhabit the same spaces but we have a mutual comprehension that we

can be voyeuristic into one another's world and i find that endlessly fascinating. what do i have in common? why are some people liberal? why are some conservative? i can sit in a library and close my eyes and think about that for hours and call it a good day. >>host: is america unique in that respect? >>guest: i think that america is unique in that with the ideological direction seems more up for grabs than in a lot of places but america is the place where we never had the aristocracy what binds us together is not blood or geography but a set of ideas. what does liberty mean?

social democrat someone from the left would say liberty means having enough food in your stomach to take care of your family a conservative would say liberty means government staying out of the private -- life no matter what. we're still having the same argument 250 years into the experiment. >>host: has ever been a tie you're understanding of history that america has been united? >>guest: we're always divided and always united. those two realities are the ideological tensions it with each other. as we could not be fascism of world war ii if we did not have a great degree of operational unity but by the same token a lot of that involved burying certain ways we are diss united

ground-based -- around raise from world war ii in the 1950's as african-americans came back from world war ii we fought for our freedom and we fought for our way of life and suddenly we are at etfs again. the american condition. >>host: what is the book you're working on and what is the trilogy? >>guest: it is called the backlash trilogy the first 1958 through 64 the second is 65 through 72 just begun on a book that is called the invisible bridge which is the '70s covering the rise of reagan from 1973 through 1980. >>host: we are at the organization of american historians meeting you just participated on a piano on the state of conservatism in america why are you so fast native with conservative as a

liberal? >> of what are riveted by conservativeism because they have had such a dominant role in determining the country especially since 2001 we had through 2006 we had a conservative president and congress with two terms of ronald reagan and that is where the action is. that is the exciting story. why eight with a country that seems to be headed to a permanent liberal consensus around the new deal ideas begin to lurched so aggressively to the rights? it is something as a panel we were trying to, it is hard to figure it is fascinating. >>host: is a political activist is it important for you to understand the right? >>guest: sure. my way to understand the right is based with empathy.

any political movement to help capture a coalition that can achieve as a majority with a 60% these days because of the filibuster you have to understand those in the middle who do not share any political allegiance that conservative ideas are attractive and what is attractive about those ideas? why do they answer people's normal aspirations? without understanding that you cannot understand how people have a way of thinking politically that you find a greater good for the greater number? which in my case, the idea that a strong central government can deliver the most prosperity for the most people consummate with

individual autonomy. >>host: have you ever imagined interviewing richard nixon? >>guest: yes. he was a chess master, a poker master four or five steps ahead of everyone else and the movie "frost/nixon" that just cannot that was quite excellent basically was a rare movie to see him a lead down his guard a and it seems to have been bested by this petty lowbrow television host. of the best way to defeat the enemy is misdirected by making him think you're not as strong as you really are. i think he is a better man on that 27 rick perlstein author of it "nixonland".

>>host: and donald critchlow the author of the "the conservative ascendency" are conservative still in the ascendancy? >>guest: you have probably heard about this. i think this is the worst time for conservatives at least since watergate and i think maybe compared to the republican of the new deal with so there are very tough stakes right now. >>host: as a conservative, what is your prescription to get out of that rut? >> one thing that i discuss in "the conservative ascendency" is the fortunes of conservatives in the republican party. what we learn is every time the left is primarily within the democratic party has counted out the conservatives they come roaring back often

through the misfortune of democrats. i don't think conservatives should be given up hope. they may still have the opportunity. >>host: when you hear the term modern conservative movement what do you think and who do think of? >>guest: it is a movement that is really quite diverse within its own grouping and i think there are a number of groups within the conservative movement and within social conservatives and free-market conservatives. and i also think there is tensions when the purist among the conservatives and people who are active within the republican party. who want to understand that

conservatives in order to win elections need to be pragmatic and compromise on certain issues that and principal ways. >> who do think is the voice of the conservative movement today? >> i think i was suggesting that right now there is not a voice and i think it shows some of the problems within the republican party that rush limbaugh now has become the voice. of course, that was a strategy by the obama and ministration to focus on rush limbaugh who has and many fans and many people who don't like rush limbaugh. so right now there is a fight within the republican party to find its leadership.

i think 2010 will be very decisive and an important election for republicans practice point* i don't think they can regain control of congress, but if they lose badly in 2010 we will see a push within the republican party to turn more moderate. >>host: "the conservative ascendency" can now and 2007. now you have a new book out that is co-written by nancy mclean the american conservative movement 1945 through the present. why did you start in 1945? >>guest: i think modern conservatism be emergent day she merges them. there were conservatives before the war but it is primarily a modern movement. that is why we began in 1945. >>host: what happened in 1945? >>guest: i think primarily the emergence of the communist issue and the cold war i think

really gave the conservative movement and it says it. and there was a coming together of the intellectual forces emigrate intellectuals as will us -- as well ask william buckley gave us the intellectual coherence that was combined with the large anti-communist movement and those two forces came together and revitalize the conservative movement and eventually would gain power within the republican party. >>host: your first book, when did this come out? is she still a force in the conservative movement? >> . >>guest: yes that came out i think in 2005.

she is still a force with in the republican party and conservative movement. she reflects social conservative voice within the conservative movement around issues such as abortion and gay rights and those issues that appeal primarily to traditional catholics and evangelical christians and mormons as well as traditional and use. >>host: there is a couple of books on the market regarding the reagan legacy and perhaps a every interpretation of the what legacy is ronald reagan's legacy on the decline? >> not among conservatives i think he is writing as high as franklin roosevelt did in 1948 or after his death. i think reagan's presidency is

one among historians. the picture of ronald reagan is a man not very smart, a sleepwalking through history and was challenged by his story and it is a very good one. and we learned that ronald reagan was very well read and also had principles, a strong 80 logical principles and he was in control of the administration, not a detail man but was able to articulate basic conservative of the rights of low taxes thomas stimulating the economy and confronting the soviet union which had undergone a massive buildup. >>host: in your view did george w. bush to contribute to the decline of the american conservative movement?

>>guest: there is a strong sentiment that he did within conservatives. i do think the war in iraq while george bush thought it was a principal action merely cause great consternation among great governments of the right to. and i also think the republicans having gained control of congress and 20 days 2004 helped to cause a reaction as well. it is easy to forget that bush won a pretty decisive of the victory in 2004 so the town's of the fortunes of the republican party were pretty quick and 2007 if you look at

the midterm elections of 2006 and then 2008 with the presidential election. >>host: we are speaking with you at organization of american historians annual gathering. as a conservative are you in the minority as a historian? >>guest: a very desired minority even in the minority is exaggerating the number of conservatives here at this meeting. should tell you that i start off on the left i got my union card and ph.d. at the university of california. was i am admitted into the union they cannot expel me. i am here. >>host: do you feel a reaction to you? >>guest: no. i think people respect me. i think a number of historians

wonder how a centric i am to be a conservative in this day and age. especially within the historical profession. >>host: and why did you start on the left and now you are on the right? >>guest: that change was a long change. in fact, i think it is difficult for historians to declare themselves republican or conservative per car your m&a general area with people that are usually on the left of the democratic party. i remember i was in poland for a teaching program at the election of 1988 was occurring i went to both debt the embassy and they gave us balance i was telling them out next to my wife who was a

strong democrats at that point*. i said i think i am going to vote for george w. bush. , george hw bush. thank you for correcting me. she said if you do i will go back and tell everybody at the university of notre dame or i was a professor that i voted republican in the so i will not tell you how i voted because i do not want to get in trouble with my wife. i think there were a number of things that were changing and how i view the world and i think being in poland in 1989 was a major turning point* for me having lived under a socialist system at that point*. >>host: you have written three books do have another one working right now? >>guest: it is a book about

hollywood how the right to change the republican party. >>host: we have been talking with professor donald critchlow from st. louis university and the author of three books, this is his most recent "the conservative ascendency" couldn't day's one of the publishers that is here is elisabeth malzahn is the publicity director tell us about some of the bugs you have coming up on the fall 2009 lest we have the author of cuba and its music as well as though world that made new orleans and dazzle he was working on that but he also began writing his memoir of writing it that was the before

the flood that sells about as he was living in the french quarter and the things that he discovered and the people he encountered especially the musical history which is his forte. it is a beautiful book coming out of august 29 which is the four year anniversary of hurricane katrina. we also have a narrative book written by the author of the cousin of a and it still and he was there and this is his story written for a young and adults so they understand the importance part of that will be coming out later this fall just-in-time for our black history month. boom town is a case study in which wal-mart came into arkansas of the sociological expiration as well as how

immigration and it changes within class society have gone through with and how it has broad diversity to the company to 71 more book "nixonland" this is our best seller. he writes and does a lot of do-it-yourself and he is known as macgyver of the founder of mciver 71 to know where he lives, he lives in minneapolis minnesota. it is how to live dangerously and it explains a wide variety of different projects that you can do that are very dangerous like making your own flame thrower but how to use a lasso or able web for and things of that nature. he wrote to backyard ballistics which is a famous do-it-yourself book how to build a catapult in your own backyard but also talks about the philosophical reasons why you should read live on the

edge and how it can bring joy and excitement. >>host: tell us about chicago review press. >>guest: founded in the early '70s and prides itself are the wonderful independent publishing program. we do of fiction as well as non-fiction growth fiction is classic we have a wide variety of books that have gone out of france that we bring back for the beloved stands and we do a wide variety of nonfiction, "popular science", we have an & that focuses on feminism, piece, justice come african-american interest and latino interest. we do kids' books a fantastic kids series that takes 25 projects and looks in particular at large historical figures benjamin franklin, mark twain and a kid's guide series that looks at historical pieces that are wonderful for educators and

home schoolers curriculum then redo serious nonfiction, a journalism piece is that we have anything from finance to pop culture and then we have a fun and the arts and entertainment titles so we embody the spirit of independent publishing. we're not associated with the university it is the parent company to independent publishers group which is a large distribution company that has a wide variety of publishers and chicago review process is the publishing and editorial harm. >>host: we're talking with elisabeth malzahn from chicago review presser. >> my name is michelle bodman i am from the fifth congressional district i have to ray brooks i am working on

write now. of the first book is from that a constitutional scholar called liberty and tierney had been on "the new york times" best-seller list nine out of the last 10 weeks and has sold over 1 million copies and it is essentially a treatise why conservatives believe what they believe it goes through a number of different issues it is a fabulous book i have read it once and highlighted its i have dog-eared the pages and have written notes in the margins and i am quoting his book on liberty and tierney everywhere i go and i urge people to read his book. i am now going through a second time to take more notes on it. i am also looking at another book by a greatly dan have heard several times speak it is called the forgotten man. it is so timely because she is right at the history of the hoover years of fdr and the

great depression. the forgotten man is the american taxpayer who is paying for all of the expense of building up of the welfare state. it is a fascinating story to see how the american economy is taking a real parallel today in 2009 with the same course of action that was taken back in the great depression. it is very instructive for members of congress and very pertinent to what we're doing because if we are going to have big government intervention greasy however played out in the 1930's and it actually prove to prolong the depression so the forgotten man is a great book. also we have been able to hear from her personally. dr. levin was here last summer but had not yet written liberty and tyranny but since this book there has been so much excitement