>> this is the view of the u.s. capitol from robert novak's patio. did this give you inspiration when you were writing about the book? >> it always gives me inspiration of the capitol and the city where i have been over 50 years now. >> you looked on pennsylvania avenue, how has it changed since you came here 50 years ago? >> it's changed tremendously. just where we are now, there was a department store and we had a lot of crummy little stores and shops and two-story buildings and the great visionary who changed pennsylvania avenue was pat moynihan who lives in this building just up there in the next apartment under the pennsylvania avenue project, so it is much more like pierre l'enfant, the designer of washington wanted to be diprete

avenue of the republic instead of something that looked like a fair rate provincial town. .. and see the great independence

and the constitution prevents these so easily across the street from all those major documents? >> that is the justice department. she and her body guards used to walk over, it used to walk to the justice department every morning. for little guys in big atoll deperino. >> why did you decide to buy an apartment here? >> we lived in the suburbs in montgomery county for almost 25 years. the children finished college and i've really, the commute was just horrible and i want to live in the city somewhere. we looked around at a few places but my dear friend, senator pat moynihan, told me i had to move in here and he was the first person to live in this building, and so we got this place. >> we came here to look at how

you write, where you right, what you read and how you read so will you show that to us? >> certainly. tell us about this room. >> this is originally supposed to be a bedroom, but again, we turned it into an office for me and it is one of three places i right. i have an office downtown and down about ten blocks on pennsylvania avenue. this is, this is ava one pennsylvania avenue and my office is at 1750 pennsylvania avenue, on the other side of the white house and i also have an office in, another home in fenwick island, delaware so i write in all three of them.

the fascinating thing, i use a laptop and you can carry it from place to place. you don't have to have big computers in each place. >> when did you start using a computer? >> i started using a computer about, i think the early '90s. no, i think it was the 80s. it was the early '80s we started using a computer. we had the very primitive, we called them radioshack's or trash eighties and very primitive computers but i have been using-- i like computers. i never could use, never had time for a typewriter. it was too complicated but i love these computers. it makes writing so much easier. >> how does your thought process work in terms of relationship with their laptop? >> very well, because with a laptop you can experiment, you

can transpose, you can change. it isn't a hard thing to take paragraphs and throw them, 1,000 words ahead or behind or transpose all kinds of material, so it is, i could begin-- sometimes i have a break down and i have to write something in longhand, which is very rare. it hasn't happened in years, thank goodness. i almost have a hard time thinking when i am doing that. >> how do you transmit than that writing to the publishers as you were writing this book? >> e-mail at. >> total e-mail? >> yes. >> did you ever have to sit down with your editors? >> oh yes, jed donohue what is the editor at crown forum and i have known jed for a very long time. we had-- he was the third editor

i had at crown forum. not because he couldn't get along with me but because they left the company for other jobs and other companies, as you i am sure are aware there is enormous amount of turbulence in the book industry. i am just delighted that jed has been there for several years and he has been very patient with me. the problem with this book was that, unlike the five previous books that i have done, where i really broke on the order and just on specification, i decided i would just come in it which is a-- just write everything, so what i wrote, the manuscript was unpublishable because it was too long so the problem was how to get it down to size. it took about, short of three years to read the manuscript and a year to cut it. >> a year to cut it? >> yes.

>> and what was that process like? >> it was a very painful process. it was in several steps. my son-in-law is christopher caldwell, who was a very fine writer and journalist, a great editor and he was kind enough to start off by editing the early chapters, which she felt were much too long because people wanted to get me to washington. they didn't want to hear what i was doing in the early part. he cut that down, but he could not devote the time beyond that but i think he gave me a pattern of what we should do and i went to the whole manuscript laboriously, and i cut it. it was still much too long. then we hired bill schultz who was a close personal friend of mine and also he was the washington editor of the reader's digest for many years when evans and novak articles, when weaver what they called roving it deters of the reader's

digest. we did about four articles a year and he was the principal rediker-- editor. the regimen is correct, before the first cut would have run about 1400 pages in a book, which is ridiculous of course, unless you were vincent bugliosi, which i am not. it is a very book-- vic book, over 600 pages. lot of people told bill shoals that this would be the end of our friendship but, on the contrary i knew it had to be cut. i knew i couldn't make the cuts. just like saying you have too many children and you were going to have to throw a certain number into the pond, but i knew it had to be cut and i was sorry it had to be cut, but i think i disagreed with him on three or four small points and he exceeded my which is on that. but, on the holding made the cuts. it was a great experience.

i spent every spare moment writing, writing this and i just, i just loved writing it. a lot of people, a lot of writers have to be set up and have the right time and the right circumstances and soft music playing. i can write anywhere, because i'm an old service guy and writing a column on deadline, so this book was written, was written here, was written in my other two offices, was written on trains, was written on planes. most of the time i wrote the book i was on cnn and i would have to spend-- i was the executive producer of capital, and spend all day at cnn and an office. if there was dead time, i could write about 1,000 words, 500 words, 200 words in the office

at cnn. so, it was, it was a book written on the fly. >> did you write it chronologically? >> yes, i did and sometimes i would, i would say there is an item about something, oh my goodness, i thought that happened ten years later. i would slice it back into the previous chapter. >> i noticed you had a pad of thomas moore. >> yes, i have-- i am a convert, and a large chapter in the book on that. and, in the three places like rights i have a picture a thomas moore mac. he was my patron st. when i was converted, because only, only nine years ago. >> what does them mean, a patron st.? >> well, you pick a saint that your standard when you become a

catholic convert or you become a catholic, if you were a cradle catholic. and, it was a singly person, the laboring in peas, which i am. he distrusted the government tremendously, and he eventually went to the execution, which i hope i don't do, because he would not succumb to the chief politics of his time. so, he is my idol, my patron, my hero and i try to think, i am sure that he wouldn't approve of a lot of the journalism that we have today, but i try to think of something that would not embarrass him when i write something. >> of your previous books, which was your favorite? >> the political biography of lyndon johnson, lyndon b.

johnson, the exercise of power which was printed in 1967, was the best thing i ever did. it was a joint project with deroy evans and is a kind of a book that i was then 36 years old and it is kind of a book i couldn't right now. it is really an excellent book. >> why couldn't you write now? >> i had over 200 interviews. roy and i had 200 interviews and there's so much detail and so much work that went into it. beyond the interviews for the book we were reporting in those days so meticulously on everything, and the book i would right now if i were writing a biography, i don't think i would want to write in more biography spotify did it would be much more impressionistic book. this was the till.

i wrote in the book, i got a robert kairo was the way wrote with lyndon johnson and his biography of johnson, the senate majority leader sightseer book repeatedly in foot notes and in the text, and he wrote a very nice autograph for me come appraising our book, which i quote-- i was very proud of that, so it is, it is something i think every writer does that he is most proud of and that book. >> in writing with roy evans, this has a lot of-- in it. what was that like? we talked to riders today who have collaborated, and all of them have different stories on how the cooperation process worked. how did it work for you? >> we were just not collaborating on a book, we were

collaborating on television, so we had a, we were with each other every day. our office, we did not have separate offices. we were in the same office and we had a fight every day. it every single day we would fight over something and usually they were not quiet, there was yelling and our secretaries in the outer office would sometimes think we were coming in with clubs. but, i have said that we thought about everything except money. once are twice we argue about money, but very rarely. it was usually about issues or, but not so much agreeing on whether this was a good position or a bad decision but what we were going to right, what who was going to go on the trip, that kind of thing. >> did it make your writing

better? >> yes, it really did. there is a great discipline in writing a book. we assign each other chapters and the way we do it, we write a chapter and hand it to the other person and he would edit it, rewriting it, break it down, deconstructing its if you want to say it, and it kept you on time because you wouldn't want to say really, gee, i don't have the text ready. that was too embarrassing. but it also, it was a, an editor , as we have for the column, and we were critical of each other, knoy zoley critical of each other, so it was a very interesting experience. the editor on two of our books was a man named robert, who is a

well-known person and publisher at the time, and he was almost like a third collaborator. we very often ended up finishing at chapter off in our office late at night and yelling at each other and shouting and, he would mediate the differences. so it was an interesting experience. >> what about writing about his general? was that difficult for you to write about? >> yes, it was. extremely difficult. to tell you the truth, i had not planned to write a column about it. i thought it was too tough and then i got a call from fred hiatt, the editorial page editor at-- i don't know if he was the editorial page editor then are not, i am not sure he had taken

over but it-- the post called me and said that for my next column did i want to rights-- they would write an editorial. i said, i had better write an editorial. not that they wouldn't do a good job but i had some special things to say. i also, i also gave the funeral eulogy. >> you write about that. >> yes, and i was not, i was not his best friend. i wasn't even really his friend at all. we came from different social backgrounds, but i said in the book, we were more like brothers. we didn't always get along, and i was touched if you wanted only to eulogists other then the pastor of his church giving this arman. that was me and his wife,

catherine. catherine did not want to do it because she didn't do it so i was the only eulogist. and i, she told me not to make it a tearjerker, but i tried to put it on the light side but he was a great reporter and a great patron. he really come he was a marine combat veteran who in-- and he was one of the upper class from the protestant ascendancy who felt, who wanted to make something of himself, not just because he is born with a silver spoon in his mouth but he also loved the country and he started as a, his family, his father was a new deal liberal and his family had always been democratic. he started as a liberal but i think he grew more, people

think, some people say i seduced him into becoming a conservative. other people say that it was his friends of the state department, but it wasn't. it was his view of what was best for the country and he really, in many, many ways it ended up more conservative than i was. >> who taught you how to write? >> i started writing as early as i can remember. we have a neighborhood newspaper, which my mother typed up and i tell in the book that i was, it would be and failed athlete in ended up as a manager of the track team in high school as a duty the coach gave me to submit stories for the newspaper. i knew i want to be a newspaperman even then, so this was just, a lot of things that happened in my life, and that was, that was serendipitous

thing to happen, as a trec manager to be able to write the stories and submit them and get them published. one thing about the book that think may surprise some people, a lot of the scoops i have, and not because i listened to c-span. i hear these investigative reporters go through these tons of documents and everything, and i believe them, but a lot of the scoops in this book, somebody just gave them to me, somebody called me up. you have to be smart enough to know what is accurate, what is not accurate, what is interesting, what is not interesting, what is important, what is not important. most big ones are not done by fastidious investigation, but by

somebody with fincen. >> you mentioned your mother typed the newspaper, the neighborhood newspaper. what influence did she have been writing? >> my mother, i was an only child which a lot of people realize after they have spent ten minutes with me, but she was devoted to me. to the point, to the day she died. she died at over 90, and so she had come she was enormously supportive of me. my father was a chemical engineer and he really, couldn't imagine anybody making a living in journalism. on the other hand, i was not very good at science in school, so he did know how i was going to make out. but, my mother had great confidence in me and once i started writing, when i was working for the track team, manager of the track team in writing stories, i would write

them and she would tie them up for me. the newspaper thought i was such a good writer, the eft can you come in on saturday mornings and held with the sports news? and take scores from the small towns around the region on basketball, so i would get them and the first call comes and and i said, sit down at the typewriter and write a story. i had never typed in my life, so i learned and that is, so i devised a system that i still use. >> you don't use the regular system of typing that we learned in school? >> no, it is my own. >> what is it? >> it is weird. eide use for thinkers on my left hand and one thing you are on my left hand. why? i don't ask me why. but i can go very fast. and make a lot of mistakes but

with spell check, it doesn't matter anymore. >> back to this room. if somebody were looking in on this and thinking 50 years you have been writing the mite call this stars. do you consider it spars? >> yeah. my wife and says that it be, not be tumassey. my office downtown, my office manager keeps a pretty clean too and my wife keeps the other office clean, so i meant-- women, they don't like a lot of stuff all over. we have boxes and boxes of material in storage, which came out of storage when i was writing the book and they are back in storage now. and, if he would come in here when i was writing a book, it

would look a lot different. you would say it is messy because there would be all of these boxes of letters and material. then there was a whole nother series of boxes of my office downtown, and then another series of boxes that the beach, so i had all of this proliferation of material. >> to what degree did the books in this bookcase reflect your reading? >> some of them, some of them are in some of them aren't. i am always reading a lot of different books at one time. the book that is that the most impact on me, which i read for the first time in the army is witness by whitaker chambers. i have this copy. i have come by yeah, i have the

preface and so it was early 1953 inactive duty in the u.s. army. i read the newly published witness. this is had an enormous impact on me. the book that said the second most impact on me is the way the world works. >> how old were you when you read it, do you remember, in general? >> yes, i read that in 1978. had a huge impact on me. which i talked about in my memoir. that was, i think the three points in my, for points in my development as a human being were reading witness by whitaker chambers and then, in 1976 i voted for reagan over ford in

the maryland primary, which i always considered, a lot of people thought it was a liberal democrat and it turns out i was a registered republican. it turns out i was a liberal and that was really an amazing change. after that, the night before that, i became a supply-siders, and then become a catholic convert in 1996, 1995. >> did that come from reading? >> no, that came from the holy spirit. which, was a long process. i wrote about that in the book too. >> in this bookcase here, i wanted to ask you about a couple of things. first of all, you have the most comedy series of will and aerial durant. talk about their influence. >> i read all of them and i love them. i started reading them in the

army. >> who were a day? >> there were popular historians and they always not in good flavor with the established historians, and they are easy reading. and they just, they are very popular in their day, and they were also supply-siders. before there was a supply side, but they really believed that heavy taxation and heavy government was a curse and they were always interested in, from many, many hundreds of years ago of the great leaders who, clifton burgin-- so they were-- i don't know if i have any in

this room or at the beach but i also, i read again, i started in the army as i read the decline of the roman empire by given-- cuban. it is three huge volumes and i read the first to in the army and then i took a long time to read the third. i used to read it at the beach on the sand and he was a great, great historian and his style and the interest of it. he was a reporter and he-- i was fascinated by that, so those are some of the books. >> i noticed you have some fiction here. hemmingway. >> hemmingway, i thought i was going to be, i wanted to be a novelist, and hemingway was a

newspaperman as you know, and of course i loved reading, the sun also rises particularly. the thing that, and i majored in english literature and took a lot of courses and the writing and decided i could never be a good creative writer. one of my very good friends, a classmate who went to a lot of courses in literature, stanley elkin. we use to study together, one of the great novelists of the 20 a century. he was so much better than i was a fiction writing. i decided if i was going to make a living as a writer, if it better be a journalist. ..