had given his last speech and a memorial to freedom and the president introduces me and a full rainbow appears a startling moment. i step back to take an this rainbow then said it is smiling on us. the reason i did because the rainbow was exactly behind the balcony were the tyrant had given his last speech. thank you for coming. [applause] [applause]

>> thank you michael barone then president bush would a great way to kick off the miami book fair. we hope to see you throughout the week ended your pre-purchased a book they will be available outside there is a line to get into. if you did not repurchase one, there are some for sale write outside as well. thank you. we will see you this week.

continues. james billington is just introducing laura bush. >> hi am referring to laura bush who brought the concept of the national book festival to washington from her home state of texas where she has conducted it if great success. [applause] she comes to the national book festival throughout her years on pennsylvania avenue. she is a former librarian. [applause] she is a teacher, an

offer of multiple books including her latest, "spoken from the heart". former first lady, you speak to the heart of all of us. she will do a reading and take questions. microphones are on either side. keep your questions brief and on point. she honors us by taking time out from an extraordinary schedule involving the united nations, oral -- her championship with many other good causes. please join me in welcoming the woman i have been able to call with full genuine conviction leader in chief of the united states of america.

[applause] >> thank you very much for all of your good work, thank you for being such a great partner for the national book festival and thank you for continuing to build this national book festival. this is the tenth national book festival which is so terrific and icy looking around, is hugely popular with people all over the country. so thank you for coming and thank you for the warm welcome. i want to thank david reubenstein for your generous gift to the library of congress which will ensure that the book festival will continue. thank you very much. [applause] i love the national book festival and i am happy to be here this year as an offer.

, have spent most of my life surrounded by books. i was an avid reader as the child. my mother and i were regular fixtures at the midland county public library which was a magical place not only with thousands of books but because it was in a basement which was a very exotic place for west texas. going to the library was the only time i ever got to go underground. i continued my love of books through college, elementary school teaching, dallas and houston, graduate school, science and as a public library and in houston and school library in austin. i have made a career out of my love of books and helps spread that love i helped found the texas book festival and the national book festival. but while i love reading and never thought i would write a

book. certainly not one about myself but in george's eight years in office to a close publishers began calling asking when i was going to write a memoir and realized there was a lot i wanted to say. our years in washington, first decade of the new century were as consequential as any other time in our history. we lived through the most vicious attack on our homeland in the history of our nation. i was on capitol hill on the morning of september 11th and i will read you something about that. george and i cried with the grieving families and grieve with the nation and never forgot that day for the rest of his time in office and will never forget it for the rest of our law is. i met so many of the brave to and women who volunteered to defend our country to give their lives so that the rest of us may never know terror again. i have met the voices for

freedom like the former czech president, the great intellectual and play right who for years was imprisoned by the communists but never gave up hope for freedom. when the iron curtain fell he stepped up to lead his country and is still speaking out on behalf of the oppressed. i met the dolly llama from tibet, female candidates for parliament in kuwait who ran for office in 2006, the first year that women there were granted the right to vote and i met women in afghanistan who under the taliban could not leave their houses alone, who could not get an education. who would have their fingernails pulled off as they so much war a code of fingernail polish. now there lives a changing. in my book i wanted to give voice to all of these remarkable people and to share these

experiences with others. i wanted to remember the many wonderful people i met at home. volunteers from the red cross and the baptist men who drove all night to storm ravaged gulf coast after katrina to cook meals for those in need and who stayed for months helping the people there rebuild. the brave coastguard volunteers who rescued some 30,000 people stranded after the hurricane struck. i wanted to tell of the days i spent with the young men in our cities and towns, many of whom were ex gang members who were trying to turn their lives around. why was never more proud than was part of helping america's youth high was able to welcome kits group of ex gained members from l a to whitehouse. the same house where we hosted the queen of england and the

pope on his birthday. the more i thought about it, the more i realized i had some great stories to tell, even about the great easter egg caper at the 2006 easter egg roll where if you want to know what happened in that story i think i will let you wait and read it in my book. i had so many wonderful memories to share. memories about the white house. stories about our lives and our families and of course, many of my happiest and most enduring memories are of the national book festival. i remember something from each of the eight festivals i attended during time at the white house. remember talking with my favorite authors. hosting vladimir putin at the second festival with the national basketball association players who were our partners. the beautiful gala dinners,

wonderful authors at the white house on saturday morning. and so many more happy memories. but i especially recall that first national book festival. september 8th, 2001. it was a magnificent day, sunny with a beautiful blue sky. just the kind of weather we hope for. friends came from around the country to stay with george and me at the white house. 40 came from boston all away who had worked with me on the texas book festival. i remember how patiently the festivalgoers waited in line to meet their favorite authors. that festival was everything we hope for and more. three days later, our world changed. since we are here in the history cab i thought i would read from my book a little bit about the day that changed our world.

tuesday morning, september 11th, was sunny and warm, the sky and brilliant cerulean blue. my friend at the national book festival have all thrown home and even george was gone in florida for a school visit. george h. w. bush spent the night but they already left on a 7:00 plane to catch an early flight and i had what i considered a big day planned. i was set to arrive at the capitol at 9:15 to briefed the senate education committee chaired by edward kennedy on the findings of early childhood development conference that i held in july. in the afternoon we were hosting the entire congress and their family for the annual congressional picnic. the self lawn of the white house was covered with picnic tables are awaiting their fluttering cloth.

come per rainy from buffalo, texas, was setting up his chuckwagon. entertainment would be old fashioned square dancing and texas swing music by ravens and and his classic band asleep at the wheel. in silence going over my statement in my mind, i was very nervous about appearing before a senate committee and having news cameras trained on me. had the tv been turned on i might have heard the first fleeting report of a plane heading the north tower of the world trade center. and said it was the head of my secret service detail, ron sprinkle, who leaned over and whispered the news in my ear as i entered the car a few minutes after 9:00. my chief of staff at the white house, domestic policy advisor margaret stallings and i speculated on what had happened. a small plane may be. a cessna running into one of those massive towers on this

beautiful september morning. we were driving up pennsylvania avenue when word came that the south tower had been hit. the car fell silent. we sat in you disbelieve. one plane might be a strange accident. two planes were clearly an attack. arafat about george and wondered if the secret service had already begun to raise to air force one to return home. two minutes later at 9:16 we pull up to the entrance of the russell building. in the time it had taken to drive less than two minutes in the two miles between the white house and the capital world as i knew it had changed. senator kennedy was waiting to greet me. we both knew when we met that the towers had been hit and without a word being spoken we knew there would be no briefings that morning. together we walked a short distance to the office. he began by presenting me with a

limited edition print. it was a face of daffodils, a copy of a painting he had created for his wife victoria and given to her on their wedding day. the print was inscribed to me and dated september 11, 2001. an old television was on in a quarter of the room and i glanced over to see the plume of smoke billowing from the twin towers. senator kennedy kept his eyes averted from the screen. he led me on a tour of his office pointing out various pictures and pieces of memorabilia. even a framed note that his brother sent to their mother when he was a child in which he wrote teddy is getting fat. the senator who would outlive all his brothers by 40 years laughed at the note as he showed it to me finding it amusing.

i kept glancing at the glowing television screen. my skin was starting to crawl. i wanted to leave to find out what was going on. to process what i was seeing but i felt trapped in an endless cycle of pleasantries. it not occurred to me to say senator kennedy, what about the powers? i simply followed his lead. he may have feared that if we actually began to contemplate what had happened in new york i might dissolve into tears. senator judd gregg of new hampshire, the ranking republican on the committee and one of our good friends, in mock debates at the ranch, arrived as i was -- senator kennedy invited us to sit on the couch as he continued chatting about anything other than the horrific images unfolded on the tiny screen across the room. i looked around his shoulder but could see very little and i was still trying to pay attention to

him and his conversation. it seem completely unreal, sitting in this elegant sunlit office as an immense tragedy unfolded. we sat as human beings driven by smoke, flame and searing heat jumped from the top of the twin towers to end their lives and as firemen in full gear began to climb up the tower stairs. i often wondered if it was ted kennedy's defense mechanism. after so much tragedy, the death of his oldest brother in world war ii, the assassination of his brothers jack and robert and the death of nephew's including john jr. whose body identified when it was pulled from the cold dark waters off martha's vineyard, if after all those things simply could not look upon another

grievous tragedy. 9:45 after george made a brief statement to the nation which we watched clustered around a small television that was perched on the desk, ted kennedy, judd gregg and i walked out to the reporters my briefing had been postponed. i said you heard from the president this morning and senator kennedy and senator gregg and i joined his statement in saying that our hearts and prayers go out to the victims of this act of terrorism and our support goes to the rescue workers and all of our prayers are with everyone there right now. as i turned to exit, lawrence mclaughlin asked a question. you know children are struck by all this. is there a message you could tell to the nation? i didn't wait for him to finish but began. parents need to reassure their children everywhere in our

country that they are safe. as we walked out of the briefing room the cellphone of my advance man john myers rain, cnn was reporting an airplane had crashed into the pentagon. within minutes the order given to evacuate the white house and the capital. the secret service decided to take me temporarily to their headquarters located in the federal office building a few blocks from the white house. following the oklahoma city bombing their office was reinforced to survive a large scale blast. outside apps go, the city streets were clogged with people evacuate in their work places. in the time my reach my medicaid flight 93 had crashed into the west side of the pentagon which had begun to collapse. in the intervening years senator judd gregg and i and many others

were left to contemplate what if flight 93 had not been forced down by its passengers into an empty field? what if shortly after 10:00 a.m. it had reached the capital dome? walking through the hallway in the circuits service building i saw a sign with the emergency number 911. had the terrorists thought about our iconic number when they picked this date and planned an emergency so overwhelming. for awhile i said in a small office area off of the conference room silently watching the images on television. i watch a replay of the self tender of the world trade center roaring with sound and collapsing into a silent plume offering my personal prayer to god to received the victims with open arms. the north tower had given way in front of my eyes sending some

1500's holes and 110 stories of concrete buckling to the ground. inside secret service had courted i asked my staff to call their family and i called my girls who were whisked away by secret service agents to secure locations. in austin jenna was awakened by an agent pounding on her door. in her room at yale barbara heard another student sobbing uncontrollably. a few doors down. then i called my mother because i wanted her to know that i was safe and i wanted so much to hear the sound of her voice. late in the afternoon we got word the president was returning to washington. at 6:30 we got in a secret service caravaned to drive to the white house. i gazed out the window. the city had taken on the cast of an abandoned movie set. the sun was shining but the streets were deserted.

we couldn't see a person on the sidewalk or any vehicles on the street. there was no sound at all except the wheels of the ground. by 7:30 we were up to the residents. i have no memory of having eaten dinner. george may have the non the plane. he tried to call the girls as soon as he was upstairs but couldn't reach them. barbara called back at 8:00 and george left to make remarks to the nation. we finally climbed into our own bed that night exhausted and emotionally drained. outside the doors of the residents the secret service detail's sat at a very usual post. i fell asleep but it was a fit for rest and i could feel george staring into the darkness beside me. then i heard a man screaming as he ran. mr. president, you have got to get up. the white house is under attack.

we jumped up and i grab the rope and stuck my feet in my slippers but didn't stop to put on my contacts. we grab kitty with spot trailing behind. we started walking. george wanted to take the elevator but the agents didn't think it was safe. we had to descend flight after flight of stairs to the state floor, then the ground floor and below while i held george's hand because i couldn't see anything. my heart was pounding and all i could do was count stairwell landing is, trying to count off how many more floors we had to go. when we reached the kiosk i saw the outline of the military aid unfolding the ancient bed and putting on some sheets. another agent ran up to us and said mr. president, it is one of our own. the plane was one of ours. for months afterward we would hear the military jets

thundering overhead travelling so fast that the ground below quivered and shook. they would make one pass and five minute later make another low-flying loop. i fell asleep to the roar of the fighters in the sky hearing in my mind those words, one of our own. there was a quiet security in that, in knowing we slept the tween the watchful eyes of one of our own and just a little closing sentence, from the second book festival in 2002, moments from that day stay with day. but of particular note proposing remarks by david mccullough in which he described john adams's quest for knowledge. the greatest gift of all he was certain was the gift of an inquiring mind. he said, quote, have the liberty

to think to myself and david mccullough added we face a phone today who believes in and forced ignorance. we don't. [applause] thank you. >> we have time for questions. we have a few minutes for questions. i like that charlotte's web tee shirt. >> i am the grandniece of e.b. white who wrote charlotte's web. [applause] >> two years ago when you were signing your books we talked and you both signed my book and i knew e.b. white's presentation, i always bring your book can't talk on your page where you reference charlotte's webb and i thank you for that children's

book. it is wonderful but it is also a wonderful book and thank you for writing it. >> thank you so much. i really appreciate it. >> what was your feeling when you found out you were attacked by one of your own? >> we were covered by one of our own. they were protecting us. what we were talking about revelatory caps. debris united states military. we were protected by then. that gave me a great feeling of security. >> what was your favorite part about being host of the national book festival? >> i left seeing so many happy people who love to read. something that book lovers all share, no matter what our political views or differences might be, we all love reading.

there are so many tremendous american authors. for our own writers around the world. but especially children. we have a wonderful body of children's literature in the united states and children's library and i am really proud of that. one more i think? >> what are you reading now? >> cutting for stone, with one of his books, and the national book festival, a great book about twins but also ethiopia. one of the books given to me by

booksellers, a book about the civil war, by robin beara. george is reading a biography about bond hopper. i am usually reading the newest books by respectable lawyers. i will be at the texas book festival in late october. i hope any of you who have a chance can come to the festival. thank you all very much. i appreciate it very much. thank you all. [applause]

>> i see what you mean by readers in chief. wonderful to see you again in person. we thank mrs. bush for being here. signed copies are being offered. one more vote of thanks for the inventor. [applause]

here's stacy schiff just being introduced talking about her book cleopatra. [applause] >> thank you for turning out. i suspect you are all melts out there. because i'm melting up here. if you referred from the remarks that i have no life of my own, you are correct. but i have been through this

biography business a few times. and i have the follow observation to offer. no matter how wisely, how carefully you choose your subjects, you wind up with one of two problems. you either have the needle in the hay stack problem as i did when i started out on the life of mrs. lobocof, the wife of the writer, the woman that was private, stoic, selfless, formal, all qualities that make for a lousy book. nothing can be worse. so i went on to write a book about benjamin franklin's documented years in france. therefore curing the hay stack in the hay stack problem. nothing can be worse. for those eight years that he spends in france, the eight years of the american revolution and the peace that follows. the documentation here in america is two and a half times as great as it is for the rest of his life combined.

that's not counting the french materials. he was surrounded by a net of french spies who were surrounded by british spies. each of these men was paid by the word. nothing was too trivia for them to report on, including the state of franklin's laundry, which was always white. and his dinner menu. there was a lot of apple pie consumed by the household, by the way. everyone owned a pen and those that appeared to own newspapers. there were official and unofficial newspaper. their reports contradicted each other. john adams was also in paris at the time. he missed his wife. he wrote a lot about benjamin franklin. that's another story. i thought of richard daly because i spent year and a half

in paris doing the research. most the materials did not get true. the best place to read them is the ministry of foreign affairs in paris. the problem with doing research in paris, if your editor calls you and you're not home, they assume you are having a good time. i wasn't having a good time. i was in the archives every day. which was great if you don't mind working under low light and turning over your passport and arriving at the time and filling out a pass to go to the ladies room and not complaining when the archivist go out on strike. what do benjamin franklin and c cleopatra or why would i attempt a biography of a first century

queen? let me say i wasn't entirely sure it was possible. i'd had cleopatra in my mind as a subject for a long time. i didn't see a way to write a traditional chronicle of her life. she fascinated for every reason. he was the rare delilah meets katherine the great and kathy o. this was really mouth everest. the idea struck me more than paleontology. she lived in the prefactual age. i was probably most fascinated because i was startled by my own ignorance. here was a women whom we think as egyptian, but she's greek. she was more intelligence and more charming than she was beautiful. here was the women who we had

con flatted who lived 1300 years before her and to whom she was not related. here was a woman that ruled a rich and fraction country for two decades. she's the only women in anticity who has ruled by herself. she lived in the most cultured city, and she was enlightened. she knew things the value of pie, linear perspective, existence of the equateor. in her egypt, women operated mills, they owned lands, they leased vineyards, divorced

husbands, in short, they enjoyed rights that they wouldn't enjoy for 2,000 years. she's a conception. she's a cigarette, mascara, video game. she's the most popular of the halloween costumes. someone asked me when i realized it could be written. this seems glib. i realized it would be written when i was finished writing it. there was one other moment. we had an actual 2,000 year-old quotes and we could hear the tiniest murmur of her voice. for the most part, thanks. on the other hand, it pays to

remember that plutark wasing a century after her death. on the other, as a modern biography said, there were no tape recorders in the 19th century either. it goes without saying that quoted material is generally approximate. and as i learned from ben franklin, even the most comprehensive material can refuse to give up answers. probably i couldn't see my way through writing cleopatra until those years buried in the archives. five years in the miles and miles of papers, i still can't tell you the mother of his son. i doubt anyone ever will. i knew there were questions that could never be answers. that also had nothing to do with the millennia that separated us. what was the problem with emily dickinson? none of these questions have

answered either. in some cases they don't have answers because we have an overload of information. too many accounts can spoil the truth. how then was it possible to write about her? i should probably mention at that juncture i'm here on false pretenses. it's not on sale for another two weeks. it's beautiful, i might want to buy one for your living room table and the other to read. the one i want to buy is the one with my name, stacy schiff. not the other one. publication date is november 1. let me go back to the line of dialogue and plutark. it comes to the marvelous account of cleopatra and marc anthony out fishing. he uses it to call anthony's

boyish pranks. the most accomplished military commander of his day, he's unable to lure a single fish from the fertile waters of egypt. humiliated, it's worse when have your girlfriend, and even more when she's the queen, she arranged to have several precaught fish. he begins to reel in one after the other. the scam is not lost. she's competitive by nature. she has a very good sense of humor. she arranges for all of their friends to come watch her highly skilled roman friend the next day when she also arranged for one of her servants to attach an imperted salted hearing to their hook. this he adds to the water. on the spot, she adviced him to forget about fishing and attend to his real responsibility. he's meant to be hunting, not for fish, but for cities,

kingdoms, and continent. of she's sly and saucy. there's also something familiar in her tone. it's one known to every women who's husband owns a set of golf clubs. of course, it also made me wonder art plutark's wife. yes, there are some constrains. i was used to knowing what any subject had for dinner and what they worried about before sleep. the record was as skewed as spotty. all records are off. the nile is not where it was used to be. some of it is in the heart of alexandria. i don't scuba dive. don't ask me about the prices. you have to get used to counting backward. she was born in 69 and died in 30b.c.. this drive the copy editor crazy.

you check all of your preconceptions at the door. it's difficult to write about ma maturity when children poison their parents. this was new to me. great literature is about ambiguity. biography could occasionally afford to be as well. you can't demand order, even answers of the classical world. and arguably, you rarely can at all when it comes to the human heart. but you can do a lot with it. especially given the last 50 years of fine scholarship on the helenistic world. virginia wolf said on the novel, the string didn't unite the pearls, but the pearls were there. i was very inform my mind as i worked, as julia's great definition of a net. a series of holes tied together by a string.

there were huge unknowns. several subjects no one had approached before. for starters there was cleopatra wealth, relationship with harrod, and how they dealt with the rulers of rome, and it deals a lot with how she thought and spoke. i had one advantage, human nature is constant. it has changed not one iota. you could read how not to spoil a child, countless text on how women are hopeless in their demand and lose in their ways. essentially every problem that cleopatra had with rome is the same in today, but arguably better birth control. she was swalized, and

unnatural. when she sleeps with two of the most powerful men, even if both of them men are known for their sexual appetites. it helps to remember the commentators are human too. we write in the time in which we live. let me give you one example. at the end of one the best biographies of hers, we see her preparing to meet octavian. it's says before she will kill herself. here's how the biographer introduces. she was a women, now in her physical weakness, she acted as any member of her sex might have behaved under the circumstances. how we constitute and reconstitute history was on my mind all the way through as i worked. this is a central problem always in writing history.

those closest to events have the best information and the most at stake. the most informed source is also the most involved source. the later chronicles no less, but they can say more. which each book i've been into the work before i realized there was something rudimentary with the research. i needed to understand the men who had left us her story. i had gone to the desert, soaked up the color. all of it before i realized i needed to know my sources as well as i knew my subject. those that actually knew her and wrote about her, julius caesar, he was married to someone else and focused on rome and relucted to mention her. nicholas damascus, and sisero,

who rarely had a kind word for anyone. he could not stomach a educated women with a quick wit and better library than he had. i tried to always keep in mind who was a sensationalist, who was a skull. who had set eyes on egypt and who despised the place. from those endless french newspaper of the 1770s, i knew the difference between propaganda and hearsay. in cleopatra's case, we owe a debt to both. the romans who left us her story did us a favor. normally women are difficult to write about. they keep lousy records. and their lives tend slip through the cracks. she owes her inmortality to her enemies. had they hated her less, she would not be preserved for us. she's one the women in history

and one of the few loosers we remember. had she been a man, she would not be remembered today. had cleopatra been dealt a stronger hand, she would have faced the enemy. she would have disposed, poisoned, hacked to pieces by one of her four children, in which case, we wouldn't have heard of her at all. thank you. [applause] >> any questions? okay. >> thank you. could you say something about how well cleopatra understood the strategies that the difference roman factions were practicing against her and therefore kind of assessed her political acuity and deference?

>> good question. essentially she's left with a rome pulled apart by civil wars. especially after caesar's death, whom to side with. she's in rome at the time of his murder. which maybe a contributing factor to his murder. all chaos, as many of you know, breaks lose. which of the possible successors should she side with? it's very clear for the first year or so, she tried to sift things out. everyone comes calling. each person in turn comes to see if she will back them. she temple rising. there's a real temptation there. of course, in the end, she chooses marc anthony, caesar's protege. that's the unlikiest of choices, it could have worked out

differently. at the time, it seemed like he was the dark force. he made a great deal of sense. what's happening is the way she adapts herself to the factions and tries to do her best to supply everyone with what she asks. there's a real sense of political strategy with her. yes? >> i wondered what languages besides latin you had to work off of for your original sources. and did you have any issues with the translation that were made of these original sources? >> the only two languages that a smart person would have learned for latin and greek, neither of which i have. what i did do, and which helped tremendously was to compare translations. because needless to say, over the years there's been a few translations of plutark, and in comparing, a lot of nuance falls out. there was a great deal for me

going back over various passages with someone who was an expert in greek and trying to see what meanings i could get between the lines. it's a nightmare for me not to be able to speak the language, on the other hand, these sources are so much later. 150 years after her. i didn't feel as if the literal word. there were no letters, and no diary. i didn't feel as if my being unable to read her was going to be an issue. they did me a huge favor in their letter what's they wrote something intimate, they broke in russian and did french. it would break into the romantic paragraph of french. >> could you hear me? what do you think of cleopatra's

political background? >> i'm sorry? >> political background? >> her political background. good question. she was clearly schooled to rule. in those days what was great, interesting anyway, any one of the children was educated in the same way. and it's fairly clear to us today, and this is something that fascinated me. it seemed to me when i touched it before, it's pretty clear what she would have read and studied. and, in fact, her education, her sense of rhetoric, her training and rhetoric would have nearly identical to that of caesar. and the text that were known to her and memorized by her, much of it homer, escalis, were the same text of living anyone in the greek world or elite would have also have known. you very much spoke a common language. it was from those text that you really drew your political lessons.

did she know her egyptian history? i can't imagine she didn't. do we have any proof of that? no. >> would you say that there's any women today that's symbolizes cleopatra situation? >> i have a hard time thinking of anyone who would dismember her children. >> metaphorically. >> no, actually, i don't. i can think of someone. [laughter] >> no, i think the gutsiness of her. i think there's a huge amount of strategy. this is a women who was a champion strategist. and who would be ruthless and who would truly plot out a military campaign. is there an exact parallel to that us of someone today? no, but i think there are numerous women who we could have name who have shown the qualities. what's unusual, she comes from a line of female rulers.

she has plenty of female role models. there were other women in egyptian history who had done what she did. whereas for us, this is now something of a novelty. she's coming at it interesting in a less traditional way than we are. oh. >> i think i have broken it. i'm just wondering why you have chosen biography as your particular form of historical writing. do you think biography helps us get at certain political or historical social quest or lands more compelling research and writing? >> you know, someone once described biography, i think, very accurately at gossip with footnotes. i'm really good at the footnotes. although i didn't know i wrote vertical footnotes until richard spoke just now. human nature intrigues me. i like the live intelligence

much someone else. it just makes it more accessible, somehow it makes it more exciting. but that's my readers answer. my writers answer is that i quick early on discovered that i have having the parallel existence and i loved living two lives. i've long wanted to write an essay about how the biography has two lives, the lives she writes about and the live she lives of which she is completely clueless. and there's a sense there always of just being able to see the world through two different objects. which i find hugely appeals. and the other -- and obviously reason, i suppose, when i began writing and i had no idea how to write a book, although i had been an editor, biography appealed because it had a natural beginning, middle, and end. it's a very easy kind of -- seemed to me a relatively easy thing to structure. there's also a very gratifying element to biography of course. no matter what happens, in the

end you get to kill your subject. [laughter] >> two quick questions. what are you reading now? and what are some ideas for future biographies? >> just a little loudingly what -- louder? >> what are you reading now? and what are future ideas for future biographies? individuals. >> what i'm reading now is fiction. i don't know if that's because i feel nonfiction is homework or because i'm such a sucker for literary style. i would almost always prefer to pick up a novel or biography which i can't always be guaranteed to find perfect satisfaction. we're all are reading the fransen. then i'm reading "the happy marriage." you know what it's going to sink

to the bottom. i can tell you now. as for my next subject, like richard, i don't have to answer that question. if any of you have an idea, please talk to me later. okay? >> can you say a little bit more about the tradition of female rulers that cleopatra came from? >> cleopatra as i said is the only ruler, the only women in antiquity to have ruled along. for reasons that are not entirely clear, at least to me, there's a huge sense of equalities among her dynasty. the women and men are equally gifted at making decisions. most of the other women rule temporarily or rule in tandem with a husband or brother or a brother with whom she's married. there doesn't seem to be a distinction between the genders in terms of ruling.

either one seems to have gone over perfectly well. so i just forget what i was going to say. where this comes from, where this is because the goddess icis has a beautiful extent, women and men have been ruling together, whether it was cruel but effective is unclear. but what becomes abundantly clear, there was no problem accepting a female pharaoh when cleopatra came to throne. she also got rid of her brothers and sisters. how do we know so much about her personalities because you said there was no letters or diaries? >> i'm still looking for the diary. how do we know about the personality? i'm looking about the glimpses.

like the line of plutark. you are squaring sources. it was interesting how much the sources tend to repeat or echo each other. the envisionist, her response to anthony on the fishing expedition, it's mirrored in which she is a reverent and sly and not docile and unassuming presence. i was taking my cues from the material which is 100 or 200 or 300 years after her birth. but time moved differently in those days. i don't need to tell you this. it was chauffeur those -- it was slower in those days. there was a sense of the stories being handed. >> in request for topic, john hainny would be a good one. i don't think there's been a one good volume good biography on him. as somebody who would like to

enter the historical writing field, i feel overwhelmed that so much have been written. you don't want to repeat what others have said. you want something new, different, that won't bore people. how do you find your own personal perspectives? >> that's a great question. i long ago interviewed joe ellis, and i asked him, whether you read the secondary sources. i think i was working on ben franklin at the time. do you read the other 376 franling biographies. that is essentially a bermuda triangle. don't go there. you will spend the next five years reading the secondary sources. what i have done, is to have decided it's my franklin or my cleopatra. what's different is not necessarily the answers or the materials. it's the questions we ask. so i'm bringing to the subject

questions or problems that the previous biography didn't bring or previous 100 biographers different bring. the secondary materials are going to have to lie there. it's easier when you don't have to read them. for this book, i felt there was some secondary sources i had to read. there little primary material. for ben franklin, it was easy to ignore secondary materials expect for minor characters. like the lee brothers or people who came into my story. >> how do you know somebody hasn't asked it if you haven't read them? >> that's a great question. i don't. i could be wrong. i'll just cross my fingers. we're done. thank you very much. [applause]