iron ore bauxite in all this other things because russia engages a novel so internal development other than being able to generate income. so again, much more even than japan so tabasco's china sobers russia. in fact -esque as china, russia is eventually so on a pathway toward complete. an association i will make an adjective out of venezuela. the money kind of disappears into some pitch of who knows where it goes. so russia is going to be big because as well, big, but i don't see it as having much vitality in the future. let's do one quick more question. as opposed to one more quick question. ..

what's interesting about india is to have a more favorable demographic curve that it has a lot of young people now who will become wealthy and support an aging population. but india is still a much more internal economic story. china is a more integrated economic story with the world. i imagine we could be sitting here talking about india has an integrated economic story. but that flies -- and again has taken the path we would develop internally before opening up to the world commercially. china is taking the path of we will but will commercially in order internally. those are two different pathways both of which seem to be viable right now and not competitive. so, i'd think there's a lot to be set of both the demographic paths here and i don't think that either is going to imperil this development, certainly not in the next decade or so. i do want to end with one exportation which is that you buy a book which is in case of

this exhortation because and author wants to be able to sell books. it's because books are one of the only things that are still made in the united states. [laughter] and so if you want to support the future fertility of this economy in the system pleased by ebook, two, three, not for me but for your country. [laughter] [applause] >> how can i talk that? thank you tebeau we really enjoyed having you. thank you for coming. >> zachary karabell, president of river twice research is the author of the last campaign house. truman won the 1948 election and a parting the desert, the creation of the suez canal. these are regular commentator on cnbc and other media outlets. for more, visit rivertwice.com.

up next, a retired army lieutenant colonel and military historian, carlo d'este, receipts andrew jay goodpaster prize for contributions to military scholarship and presents the prizes annual white church. the army navy club in washington, d.c. hosts this hour-long event. >> good evening. it is an honor to be here tonight. to follow to such distinguished award recipients as dr. lewis and the general david palmer is really a great honor and privilege. in addition to writing, one of my other duties for the past 15

years is to co-host and now direct the william colby military writers' symposium at norwich university. it's a program that's designed to expose students to great authors and scholars. and so it should serve as no surprise to you that two of the participants have been the first to recipients of the andrew goodpaster award. [laughter] it is fitting that i had a chance to meet general goodpaster in two different settings. in 1994i was honored to be a member of a group of historians that were invited to the white house to brief president clinton before his trip to europe to commemorate the 50th anniversary of d-day. and at his side that evening, at both the briefings that were

given to the president and later at a dinner was general goodpaster. although the audience included key white house staffers, the secretary of state, the secretary of the treasury the one individual might that the president consistently turned to whenever he had a question was general goodpaster. it was perfectly fitting that a president of the united states would turn to general goodpaster for advice. by my reckoning, president clinton was the seventh president that he either served in some capacity or was an advisor or has been recognized by a sitting president. he has been awarded the medal of freedom, he has listed the accomplishments as a truly awesome for a soldier scholar to have achieved during his

lifetime. when lbj became president he used general goodpaster as a liaison to the white eisenhower and he once described general goodpaster as one of the ablest officers that he knew. nor should it serve as any surprise all that during the darkest days of the west point cheating scandal in 1977 general goodpaster was called out of retirement asked to take a demotion to the lieutenant general in order to become the 51st superintendent of west point. both the cheating scandal and an admission of women to west point were huge challenges for in the superintendent to have to overcome. and during the next four years overcome them he did. the admission of women was a divisive issue that general

goodpaster addressed by informing the staff and faculty at the military academy that he would escort them to the door with a handshake if they failed to make them welcome at west point. when the eisenhower memorial commission was formed in 2003, general goodpaster was called upon once again to play a role in formulating dwight eisenhower's legacy. i had the honor to serve under him on a subcommittee that formulated like's legacy in the military and security affairs and was during those occasions that i had a chance to see general goodpaster first hand. and i can tell you that it was an unforgettable experience. then came the day that my telephone rang.

and on the other hand was general goodpaster. now, he was calling to discuss some of the issues that we were working through. the first thing he said to me was please call me in andy. [laughter] but old habits die hard, and i think it was the only time that i have never disobeyed a four-star general and i replied yes, sir. [laughter] bless him he tried again and once again i could not bring myself to call him and andy. at that point i think he gave up and i and he breathed a sigh of relief. i appreciated the gesture i should call the officer who during world war ii commanded an engineer battalion, led his unit

across the german mine field under enemy fire, received the distinguished service cross and call him andy was quite simply to me incomprehensible. serving on this committee gave me a unique opportunity to honor one great american while learning from another and it was an experience that i will always treasure which brings me to the heart of my talk this evening. when i began to think about what subject i should talk about all i ask myself a very simple question what would general goodpaster have suggested. and of course the answer was obvious. of the many people that he served during his many years of public service, the person that he was closest to was of course dwight eisenhower. in 1954, president eisenhower summoned him to serve as a staff

officer in the white house. the relationship dated to likes the five nato supreme commander where general goodpaster served as the assistant to ip's chief of staff alford gunther. and in that capacity, general goodpaster played a key role in organizing nato and formulating policy in the political and military and of the alliance. ike had long since come to trust the soldier scholar who had graduated second in his class at west point in his class of 1939. and so important that he had become to the president as an adviser and as a policy maker that he was soon known as ike's alter ego. general goodpaster was successful precisely because he never let his ego get in the way

of his duty. and when he preferred to stay in the background to entering the limelight he was not afraid to challenge his boss when he believed was the right thing to do. and during discussions over troop reductions in europe, which eisenhower adamantly wanted, general goodpaster made the point that it was not possible until the europeans possessed the ability to fill the gap that we ourselves had created. and at that point, ike's legendary temper got the better of him prompting general goodpaster to seek out secretary of state john foster dulles who attested to the accuracy of his judgment. their disagreement though lead eisenhower to be known foster who, i have lost my last friend. [laughter]

not so. but it did lead to this observation by general goodpaster that we both knew that it was our duty and the president knew it perfectly well. he was just sounding off and that was part of our role to that can relieve some of the pressure but to make sure that he didn't make that kind of mistakes. one of the great advantages that i have as a writer is the freedom to choose my subject and during feith writing and research of five previous books eisenhower had been a key player in each of them and i believe strongly that the time had come to take on the challenge of writing a new biography of his military life. and so in 2002 a journey into exploring his military life ended with the publication of my

book, "eisenhower a soldier's life." in the years that followed by had moved on to tackle winston churchill's extraordinary military life. that book includes a great delight owls am -- eisenhower bt from churchill's and the british perspective. last year, the eisenhower presidential library to the lengthy retrospective of ike's youth in abilene and a kindly asked me to deliver a speech that sort of sum up his first 20 years in abilene. and that led me to take a retrospective look at eisenhower from the point of view of seven years since i published that book. and what i came away with was a fresh appreciation for the man and his accomplishments. i felt really a great affinity

for what he did and for what he accomplished during his extraordinary life. time magazine said of him in 1952 they saw ike and they liked what they saw. they liked him in a way they could scarcely explain. they liked ike because when they saw him and heard him talk she made them proud of themselves and all of the half forgotten best that was in them and in the nation. i often asked to describe eisenhower, and here is what i replied. he was ambitious, calculating, a brilliant organizer, who could take virtually any problem and a figure of a logical solution. a man possessed of a volatile and a terrible temper that meet george patton look like a boy

scout. [laughter] a powerful and retentive mind. a man who loved and studied history of voraciously throughout his entire life and his high school yearbook proclaimed that he would one day teach history instead of making it. young ike was something of an enigma desperately poor and passionate about achieving a higher education in order to escape the poverty of his youth. his appointment to west point in 1911 ought to have resulted in a very serious young cadet who would do everything in his power to achieve success. and as many of you probably know, he did no such thing. while at west point he was a happy go lucky irresponsible who never attended to exile at studies, volubly did a great

many academy regulations, some of them the expulsion of fences, accumulated more than 100 demerits in his senior year alone, and he was a frequent guest of the commandants punishment georgia squad. pouring buckets of water on the unsuspecting cadets in the barracks and a leading the academy of ground without permission were hardly prescriptions for a successful cadet experience. his most famous exploit, and i think some of you probably know this, was probably on the occasion during his plead your when he was ordered to report to an upperclassman's room and full dress code. eisenhower, dewey reported, gladly under his coat which he

was stark naked. [laughter] he did however take football very seriously and a severe injury to his knee cost him his commission. and in that regard, ike and i share a common experience. eisenhower's commission was saved by the intervention of the academy's surgeon who persuaded washington to grant him his commission. my own commission was saved at the fort knox rotc summer camp in 1956 by our deputy professor of military science who had a quiet word with a young thomas after i flunked the eye exam. and both of those actions changed the course of our respective lives i can tell you. ike entered the army with few career aspirations and happy go lucky attitude that changed into one of professional seriousness very quickly.

what i would like to do to spend the rest of the evening talking with you a little bit about some of the examples of eisenhower's character and leadership that i think will illustrate why i regard his legacy so highly. i will do this by examples of leadership, hugh melody, responsibility and his remarkable insight. in 1967, a former army chief of staff visited eisenhower and his gettysburg farm. during the course of their conversation, the general said herodotus wrote about the peloponnesus and war that one cannot be an armchair general 20 miles from the front. afterwards, one of the white house speechwriters who had been present during this conversation asked eisenhower if he knew the precise wording of a quote.

eisenhower replied first it was and herodotus but amelia's promise. second, it was the poll venetian war, but the pnac war with carthage and third, he misquoted. [laughter] but then he asked why he hadn't corrected the general. eisenhower replied i got where i did by knowing how to hide my ego and hide my intelligence. i knew the actual quote, but why should i embarrass him? a classic example of leadership is one that you're all familiar with. one that i think cemented ike's place in history above all the rest and that was his great deed a decision. i'm sure you're familiar with the fact that bad weather was the one criteria that the allies could not control in june of 1944.

and bad weather came as it tends to do. and ike was forced to postpone the day by at least 24 hours. the weather was a huge factor and 24 hours later it appeared that there was a narrow window of possibility. for d-day on june 6, 1944. but there were no guarantees. the weather was marginal and ike was called upon to make one of the great decisions of military history. whether or not to launch dea. the lives of 156,000 men were at stake along with really the outcome of the war as things turn out. and ike unhesitatingly made a decision. he made the best decision he could based on what information he had. it was a decision that took as

much guts by a military commander as anything that i have ever read. and what made the decision so remarkable was also the most, the famous note that was found weeks later in his shirt pocket by his naval lead harry butcher. in that note, eisenhower took sold responsibility if the day failed. and i find that rather more remarkable particularly in the climate we live today where no one really wants to seem to take responsible leedy for anything these days, that eisenhower would step forward and accept total responsibility for anything and everything that could have or might have gone wrong with d-day. another area that was close to

ike's heart was the cause of peace and the death of soldiers in combat. he was a professional soldier who hated war. but if you hated war with greater passion than it did eisenhower. he regarded his adversaries with nothing short of loafing. man who started the war earned his other contempt. an example of eisenhower had his best occurred at 2:41 a.m., may 7, 1945 when germany surrendered unconditionally. at the headquarters in northern france colonel congenital alfred yodel signed the documents of surrender for germany. the only sound in the densely crowded room came from a ward of photographers jockeyed for position. but conspicuously missing from

this incredible location was the man who had orchestrated the events leading up to this historic moment. eisenhower at that moment at his disdain for his enemy by declining to even the present at the surrender ceremony. he designated his chief of staff, walter smith, the task of signing the surrender documents for the allied expeditionary force. under its terms, the german surrender was to take effect at one minute before midnight may 8th, 1945 the strange thing, wrote to general smith, was the lack of emotion that was shown when the surrender was signed. the germans were militarily correct in their storm ike expressions but i do not remember that any of the allied officers around the table

displayed any emotion or relation. it was a moment simply of solomon gratitude. while the serenity was taking place, eisenhower was pacing back and forth in his office like a caged lion. his driver and confidante described the atmosphere as electric with inpatients. afterwards the german delegation was summoned to the supreme commanders office where his chief intelligence officer general kenneth strong acting as his escort and interpreter for eisenhower who stood rigidly behind his desk looking more military than i think anyone had ever seen him before. and this was a different eisenhower. he was cold and a brittle. he said every kurt to the two germans do you understand the

terms of the document of surrender that you have just signed? and they replied yeah they did. and ike declared that they would be personally held responsible for any violation of those terms. and then he said quite simply that is all signalling that the interview was at an end. and the german made a slight bowel, saluted and turned to go. and then i think the real supreme moment occurred. and as you yodeled turned to leave the room and a date with the hang man convicted of military crimes at nor numbered. from his nearby place under eisenhower's desk, his scottish dog growled his displeasure at the back of the retreating german. and it was only after the

germans to pirated that eisenhower finally on bended and began to relax. as a horde of photographers were had added to his office and scrambled to record the scene, ike gathered his staff around him although exhausted, his famous grin and read it here in a historic moment. he signaled v for victory by holding aloft the to pence used to sign the surrender documents. he proclaimed that it was a special location of champagne and everybody decant to his quarters where for the next two hours there really wasn't much of a party. in fact quite the opposite. there was surprisingly little joking or even really sense of pride. instead, there was a rather somber realization of the significance of this historic day. a few words were said.

everyone seemed incredibly weary. there was a dole bitterness about it. everyone was a very, very tired. no surprise really after four years of the war, but before he fell into bed exhausted at 5 a.m. that morning, eisenhower performed one final duty as the supreme commander. during the than many nights together, ike and butcher joked about what language the supreme commander would use to inform the combined chiefs of staff that the germans had finally surrendered. such phrases as we have met the enemy and they as ours. as a soldier though, eisenhower understood that it was not his place to announce the end of the war in europe but a function of the heads of state who would make the formal announcement following day.

smith recounts the in the afterglow of victory and the afterglow of that ceremony the staff had prepared various drafts of a victory passage that were suitable for historic event of that nature. i tried one myself, smith said and like all of my associates grouped for resounding freezes as fitting accolades to the great crusade. general eisenhower rejected all of them with tanks and without comment and wrote his own. now, ike was known very often for writing longwinded but on this occasion he dispatched the briefest kibble of his tenure as the supreme commander. it was typical of dwight eisenhower that he would not take credit for the allied victory. instead his message to his bosses, the combined chiefs of

staff was utterly devoid of self congratulations, and as unpretentious as the man himself. it was only a single sentence long and it read: this force was fulfilled at 02:41 hours 1945 sign eisenhower. i would submit that only dwight eisenhower would have taken such a humble approach to one of the history's greatest moments. and indeed, world war ii took its toll on eisenhower, a soldier who was as hard boiled in his own way as george patton. for all of his military experience, ike detested war and everything that is before. he once said i hate war is only

a soldier who has lived it can. only one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity that ike understood that sometimes war is inevitable is beyond question. yet so profound was his experience that as the president of the united states he was moved to state in 1953 the following. every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final cents theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not closed. whether in the war war peace eisenhower always insisted there was no such thing as an

indispensable man. 20 years after world war ii he was aboard the liner queen elizabeth on a nostalgic return to the scene of his greatest triumph. and one night over dinner he said he read a poem that summed up his attitude about indispensability and he reached into his wallet for the clipping and he read it out loud and it ended this way: the moral of this great example is to do just the best that you can. be proud of yourself but remember there is no indispensable man. i take issue with that last remark. if there was ever an indispensable man it was dwight eisenhower. and so tonight it has been my great privilege to pay tribute to the two great americans.

general ander goodpaster and dwight eisenhower. during the years of toil in the fields of military history and biography i've been sustained by the honor of not only writing about great man but also of ordinary soldiers, sailors and airmen. the men and women who step forward when their nation needed them and did their duty, the list the american veteran center so ably represents. my late father, likewise, understood the essence of what duty and leadership were all about. although he likes of any other italians who lived in the austrian controlled city of trieste wanted no part of world war i he was conscripted into the austrian army and given a commission. when the unit he commanded was left to fend for itself in

russia after russia capitulated in 1917 he brought them all home safely. and his leader decision to live in freedom in the united states rather of an under fascism is the reason that i am here tonight. thank you for inviting me here to receive this wonderful honor and enabling me to help celebrate the memory of two great americans. i close with this simple observation that america can ill afford to stop producing men like and for good pastor -- goodpaster and dwight eisenhower. thank you so much. [applause] >> questions? >> yes. [applause]

>> we have a slide show for you but unfortunately we are powerless in the hands of technology these days so we are going to be unable to bring that to you. do i have any questions i can answer? yes, sir. >> please speak loudly. >> it's a little bit off topic but if you could address the fact of eisenhower that was his remarkable brothers. it must've been something about that family. >> it may save remarkable family. they were all successful in their own professions and milton eisenhower is as i'm sure you are all aware had an incredible career, not only president johns hopkins but in various fields

and government another brother was a simple form is this and he was successful at what he did. so each of them in their own way rose from poverty and if you ever have a chance if you have read about eisenhower you are probably familiar with the fact that the family grew up in abject poverty wearing shoes was a luxury. and everything they have was a hand me down. one of the first things for example eisenhower learned as a young boy was how to sew because nothing was wasted. nothing was ever thrown away. so this was a remarkable family that there was no money to educate them, there was no money to send them to college. that is why ike was desperate to get a higher education to find his way out of abilene the

poverty he grew up in. and you read about the lives of these young men and there's a lot to be said. they had a great time. but it was hard scrabble. from the wrong side of the railroad tracks and if you have ever been in abilene there are two sets of railroad tracks actually and i think their must have been two in ike's de deduce to resolve of the tracks recently came from the wrong side and generally grew up, you were poor. it's hard for me to explain but there was something in with those young men were taught that allowed them to grow up and to be successfully human beings. and that is all any parent can never do and if you have your children grow up to be successful in the way the eisenhower boys were, that says i think everything that needs to be said about the parents of dwight eisenhower.

>> from reading your magnificent biography i am struck by the tension between the men described and also the perception of one of the most supremely self confident men that i think i began to learn something about. how would you explain this to polar opposites? >> we are talking about between ike and general goodpaster? >> between the sense of modesty and at the same time this enormous confidence. i don't know what the verb is in that. >> that is probably the hardest thing for any biographer or historian to try to get to the bottom of the real all i could do when i wrote about him was to try to give you a sense of what made this man take.

but there was something about him, and one of the reasons that he was so remarkable and why i wanted to talk about his legacy tonight was that you had a man who became so successful with became supreme commander who became president of the united states and the most powerful position of the world yet could still retain the humility and i don't know that anybody can actually explain that but it goes to the heart of what made ike what he was. that he had those qualities because so often what we see in the man who achieved powerful positions is they forget where they came from. and i suspect it is probably fairly easy to do. all of a sudden you're powerful and have a lot of people doing your bidding and everything and

ike never seemed to lose that human touch. he always had a. i don't know if this really pleasing to your question, but there were such things as the day when he was president that the superintendent of west point was in the oval office and i don't remember who it was, but they had a reading about somebody and as the meeting broke up and the superintendent was ready to leave the oval office ike called him back and whispered in his ear he said general you need to do something about that than a football team [laughter] >> west marland. >> okay, there you go. he had that quality that he never seemed to lose and that's what i think attracted me to him and while last year after seven

years and sort of away from ike he was never out of the picture i had moved on to other things, and going back and looking at what he did make it all the more remarkable. why i felt he was so special. there is something else i would like to share with you that i think it goes to the heart of why men like ike fight and why they do what they do. i spent today, a good part of today of the holocaust museum working on something and i came across a story that i think it goes a little bit towards explaining why people like ike do what they do. and it has to do with the story that takes place in budapest in

1944 and budapest is being bombed and this is the more the viet cong memoir of a young woman who helped save many of the jews of budapest and let me just read you what he wrote and see if we make the connection here. she talks about how the streetcars were still running but in the bombing started and we had nowhere to go. there were no shelters and was hard to run to houses where the basements were already overcrowded so briefly the went on hoping that we wouldn't be hit. in the midst of the malaise is i heard a bird singing. for a moment i thought i was already in heaven. then i looked up and saw a cage with the canary next to the conductor. at my glance the conductor explant i love her and if i have to dalia we will do it together. the train went on, the bird kept

singing, the bombing stopped. we had survived. and i thought to myself when i read that that when you get right down to it that is one of the reasons why men like ike did what they did to save people like that. >> could you talk about the way eisenhower treated his commanders differently, general montgomery,? >> he had his hands full. i think he had a very difficult task of balancing a number of rather large egos. and one of the challenges that he faced as supreme commander plus balancing and at the same time trying to stick to a strategy he thought was the

right one. we are still fighting the broad narrow front strategy of 1944. and i don't really expect that it's ever going to get resolved. i laid out the case for eisenhower and why i thought he did what he did. and i think again that goes a long way to explaining how he worked with allies and subordinates and if you want to sum up the broad front and narrow front strategy it comes down to something fairly simple. and that is this: there were a number of generals come bradley and patton who thought we can win the war by giving it our way. you had a british general montgomery who fought my way would probably win the war and eisenhower's view was we are allies and we are going to win the war as allies. we began as allies and we are

going to finish with allies. you can poke a lot of appeals in that argument if you wish, but what it came down to goes a long way i think to explaining eisenhower and the way that he dealt really with people and in this case how he dealt with a strategy for ending the war in europe. i don't want to get too far into the thing between ike and monte and some of the other problems that ike had with others. some of eisenhower's biggest problems were not with montgomery, they were with bradley. so he had his hands full. these were all generals with ideas of their own about how the war should be one. so one of his challenges as the supreme commander was to try to juggle those things and still follow what he believed was the strategy that he felt had to be legal to do this. and he made a lot of guts

decisions. i talked about one of them very briefly. another gutsy decision that i made was in december of 1944 when he realized how desperate the situation in the battle of the bulge was and he decided to split the front and give the northern half to montgomery and there was howling. my god, you can't do that, you can't give that to them, so on. edison, they're has been a lot of written about it. but if you go -- if you go to the generals that fought the battle in the northern half goebel -- of the bulge they will tell you it was the right decision and having montgomery there probably saved their lives. you talk to the people the defendant for example, the u.s. seventh armored division and they will tell you the reason

they survived the battle was because of the decision and this was one that ike made and it was a very unpopular decision. but he was willing to do that. he had a reputation of not doing that sort of think that that's not true. so myths grow about people and there certainly have been myths about ike, and i think one of the jobs of us in the historical profession is to try to tell you what we think really happened. and if it means dustin a myth, then so be it. but he was willing to take the unpopular, very on the popular choice because he felt militarily it was the right thing to do. do i have another question? usurp. >> our country's history has been a lot of war heroes and the generals who attempted to become president and try to do it and of course george washington and eisenhower being and the

despicable piece you've read today the bird still singing and got us through, do you think it was as much he got us through the war that he was able to be successful or so many other war generals were not able to become president or do you think had gotten him to be elected? >> certainly his war record, one of the pictures i was going to show you tonight is ike as the time a man of the year. but he was i think easily after world war ii certainly the most respected and indeed probably popular man in america. people trusted him. as the little piece i read about from time magazine they liked ike and they liked what they saw and you can't take that stuff. when you present a persona to the public, you know, trying to fool the public is something

that you cannot do. and if you are a fake or a phony you are going to show up. and there was -- those qualities, there was something about eisenhower i think that struck a chord with the american public. i don't recall the exact size of his majority when he won the presidency but it was huge. so he was enormously popular because people trusted him and maybe that is the operative word but i want to leave you with. he was someone people trusted and if you durham someone's trust you've got a long way toward being a successful human being whether it is politics are being a general or business person. that is pretty darn important. so i would rate the trust right up there as one of his great qualities. and i think that's something that i saw in general goodpaster as well. i wish i had known him better

but i feel fortunate that i had those few opportunities that i had working with the eisenhower memorial commission to see the same sort of thing that general goodpaster. but the presidency of the united states would not be consistently calling on him to be their advisor. it was amazing that night i spent at the white house before the fifth anniversary of d-day. every single occasion something would come up. there was a lot of big wheels in that room. you name it and if they were in the white house or in government they were at that dinner and there's only one person president clinton would consistently turn to, the man sitting on his right which was andrew goodpaster. and i was struck by that that evening about how much trust there was and i don't believe

those to knew each other before that night. if they did was very brief acquaintance. so it goes a lot to say in both of these men about how deeply they were trusted to earn the trust of the president is something special as well so i just thought i would mention that. yes, sir. >> you mentioned the quality general eisenhower had. then you mentioned the quality and submitted late in life and enormous temper. >> the timber he had as a young man he used to be up trees and of all of the eisenhower brothers, he was the toughest one for his mother to handle. so the temper, need to qualify that immediately the timber was

always there. that was something he had to learn to rein in procurer leon but there was more than one occasion he could actually bloody his hands trying to beef up the tree in the front door because he was so angry about something. so he did have one heck of a temper. he learned how to manage to control it and it's interesting. i don't think the american public really knew that because that was something that he was very good at concealing. certainly those around him, you know at least during world war ii and i sure in the white house probably got to feel that once in awhile but he never held a grudge. the was a very big difference. he got angry but it was over. >> did you ever make any connection between his temper and certainty? >> i'm not sure that he did. it's difficult to make the

linkage and it's possible. but i am not sure that i could answer that. >> last question. >> it's very clear that we finished boe war as allies but what did our allies think of eisenhower as a leader to work on churchill and given the diaries of ward allen broke brook and was there a real judge with eisenhower? >> there were differences of opinion and everybody thinks their way is the right way. there was a lot of stress and strength on these men during world war ii. when you stop to think about the responsibilities that they had and the pressures that were on them and guess they all kept

diaries and some of those things that they had the road came back to haunt them later on. and there were mixed opinions because they felt there was the right way but i don't think that necessarily changes histories judgment. the fact that one individual has an opinion doesn't change the overall judgment that history, the accumulative experience of a man is not mrs. ligon to be affected by the judgment of one other person. so, yes, there were great differences of opinion. and unfortunately, i have to say that some historians have made a little bit too much hay over some of these differences because it sells books. and i have rejected some of that as being either exploitive or

rather exaggerated. but in the case of eisenhower specifically to answer your question, yes, there were mixed opinions but by others close to the thing that felt their way was the right way. but don't think it affects histories judgment one way or the other definitely not. [applause] >> carlo d'este as the author of the military biographies of george patton and dwight eisenhower. he's a retired u.s. army lieutenant colonel. for more information, visit americanveteranscenter.org.

every year the national press club hosts in author tonight. tonight i am with the editor of "letters from black america." can you tell me a little about your book? >> as a complication to the completion of letters spanning from the 1700's to 2008 and what i try to do is present a multi dimensional portrait of black life through their own letters so it includes the leaders of extraordinary people who many have heard of like dr. martin luther king and benjamin banneker and i'd be wells, but also of some people, sleeves, just ordinary people throughout history. >> can you give me an example of one of these arms on the people? >> sure. there are several letters from slaves who are writing to each other to family members from whom they've been separated

letting them know how they are trying to find out how their loved ones a fair and not people we would have known of. >> kuhl due to come up on the project and how do you select the letters? >> that was pretty insane. i went through thousands of letters of the course of five years and some of the themes naturally emerge so i wanted to look at black family life through letters. so after a while there was a sort of organizing principal through these themes and then by a range them chronologically. but i try to kind of create a narrative to shoot a historical art. so the book begins with the letters of people in the 1700's. some were sleeves and some like benjamin banneker writing the powerful letters to thomas jefferson was free and one of the last letters in the book was written in 2008 by alice walker

who wrote barack obama to say what his election meant. so it has this amazing all work showing the history of african-americans and slaved over three centuries. >> you are a journalism professor at nyu. what surprised you in your study of these letters? >> i guess one of the things that surprised me is the extent to which inslee of african americans continue to communicate with their loved ones or even that sleeves wrote letters at all but the extent to which they maintain bonds across plantations across states and of course this was an illegal act, but they somehow managed to stay in contact to the best they could with their loved ones. >> regular booktv viewers may recognize you because we shot a program of your earlier in the year which you can watch on

booktv.org to watch the program. what are you working on right now? >> right now i still here with this book. this is probably my 40th event since february, and we've also been doing a number of dramatic readings around the country. we did a reading recently with ruby the incredible lack dressed and anthony chezem, as we have been working on a dramatic production as well, based on the book. i have not even gotten to my next writing project. >> between your teaching and promoting this book do you have time to read? >> i do have time to read and i usually read more than one book at a time. two books i recently read read gore vidal's flanagan because a new york there is an exhibit on lincoln in new york at this historical society said that was an incredible way to look at that exit, and i also read the