political stage. the author discusses his book at the georgia center for the book in decatur georgia. the program was just over an hour. i've been coming back-and-forth to the kedar atlanta for about 20 years now, and much of that time i spent in the carter library and some of my early years of research on this project my wife used to say that when i use the word helm i wasn't talking about the house we lived in mississippi, i was talking about the jimmycarterlibrary.org it is finally, we see the day when the first part of this work is finished i've done a lot of research on it as well. the book is jimmy and rosalynn carter 1944 to 1974. 1924 of course is the year of his birth.

1970 was december 12th, 1974, is when he made his formal announcement that he was running for president of the united states. so it is a nice little block of time. i fell into this project almost by accident. i had just completed a book and i was casting around for another topic and i saw what jimmy carter had attended a book fair in national tennessee, and so i looked into that because i was curious what he had written, and this was about 1987, 88. he's written a lot more since then and i was amazed how much he had written at that time and so i thought i would do a short article on jimmy carter as a writer and in anticipation of doing that, even charlie showed up in 1990 after jimmy carter

presidential library looking for those materials and i was amazed college material was there and how much of it was not touched, so i thought i would just be brazen and take on the challenge of a biography. i also met the fine people who work there. many of them are still there and one reason i continued this research for all of these years is i couldn't tear myself away from those folks who became like family to me and so i would go to the library and do a little research but really just see the people and i was giving a simple talk to this in my home town in mississippi recently and somebody asked me what was your favorite part of your research in the carter library? and i said it was lunch with a staff. [laughter] they have all of these great restaurants all over this area. so i'm sure you know.

i started out on jimmy carter and then of course i didn't get very far before i realized there's no way to tell jimmy carter's story without telling rosalynn stories, too. the story of one is the story of the other, so at that point i decided that i would try to turn this into a dual biography by both of them because there's is an unusual professional relationship, long term to be. they have a long-term relationship and it just seems like there is no way to tell the story foley without making it the story of both of them so that is what i set out to do and got as far as 1974. actually i have done a good bit before 1974. i decided i would attempt to publish this section as a single

volume of a two volume set for several reasons. one, had that much of it already finished, and second, it comprises a unit within itself. it is also a major part of their lives that hasn't been studied as much as the presidency has been studied. the presidency has been studied many times and hopefully we study much more and hopefully part of their lives will be studied much more, but i also felt that if you really want to understand jimmy carter as a president and rosalynn carter, his first we become and the things they had done in the post presidency you need to know where they came from. i discovered, and like nixon, i don't know how many nixon's we have, but there is only one jimmy carter. he is a very stable personality. jimmy carter, the pri's presidential jimmy carter, the

post presidential jimmy carter, the presidential jimmy carter is the same person. he had the same goal, the same personality, did the same kind of things. we hear a lot today about what a wonderful expert he is but really hasn't done more as ex-president than when he became president. it's just circumstances in which he was able to work and of course we are vastly different once he was freed from the restraints of the office and had the boost that position gave him. but he's still good and that's the same person. there's probably some who disagree with that. but anyway, they are entitled to their opinion. okay viewed the book begins with the ancestry with first introduction is entitled and i

had a huge battle with my editor to keep as much ancestry a nasa is still in income and one half of the battle. about half of it got lost. but the interesting parts were kept in. the carter family, of course the carter ancestor, the original in america showed up at a colonial eve and as an endangered servant. the gradually moved down into and female ancestors right before jimmy's father, they murdered somebody or they got murdered, so on the georgia frontier you have all this violence and the family was known for its wood chipper and i guess it is safe for me to tell you if you don't already know what that jimmy carter also has a very strong temper. he has occasionally said that is

part of the reason he follows the religion that he does because it helps him control his temper, and we've seen a little bit of it even recently with some of his recent public comments about ted kennedy. the -- anyway, jimmy's father, mr. earl, was a young child when he saw his father when his father was murdered and his mother brought him up to what planes and raised him with the help of some other relatives. that's probably very significant because jimmy's felker, mr. earle, grew up with no father of his own, and he was determined that his children would not grow up fatherless. and the rest of the story gets even more complicated because everybody knows ms. olivier. after all when he was president ms. lillian was the first mother

and frequently interviewed. she was interesting sort of a darling of the public though some people took issue with it i think so everybody felt ms. lillian was the nurturing of her older son, jimmy. turns out that's not true. actually the father would was nurturing. here in the family business and was frequently, and he also pre-much managed the education, the work training, especially his older son, jimmy, the nicknamed hot shot. ms. killian of course was a nurse who, she was frequently away from home tending her duties and the lead to duties as a nurse.

carter wasn't made in heaven, whether i guess i both could hinted that but it wasn't one of the happiest marriages in the world. she was frequently away from home and would leave a note desk or something in the house and she would leave a note on the desk telling jimmy he had two younger sisters and essentially a much younger brother and he became famous in his own life for different reasons. she would leave a note telling him what to do so later jimmy and his sisters joked the thought the desk was their mother because that is worthy of the instructions from their mother. but if you know much about how jimmy governed, and if you read this book you know a lot about it through the government matching is like he leaked to the collective governor s. memo, so if you look through the carter peepers, the resilience

of memos and at one level it is wonderful to have all of that information that he lived for and as another level it drives you crazy because there is no way any one person could possibly read all that stuff. so he gathered and in other words ran the state, the country of the world the same way his father become mother ran him and his sisters when they were children. he did, of course, have a female mother figure. her name was rachel clarke. she was an african-american woman who lived away from him and he was very, very close to her when he was growing up and close to her for the rest of her life even though he was president and went back home to planes he would always go to see her and as he put, they would talk about what was happening in washington, where he worked then. and he liked to refer to her as

a queen. he of course groove in the tiny community which had a black majority. most of his people he associated with four african-americans, and of course rachel clarke and others worry very important influence. only his -- on his family. rosalynn grew up three years later and 3 miles away, as he put it, in planes. she was a citigroup -- city citl and grew up in planes under different circumstances. her ancestors tended to be kind of gentler type people.

there was a noticeable number of ministers a lot of her ancestors. actually the religious influence in the background of rosalynn is probably much greater than it was on the background of jimmy. she was a methodist, he grew up a deficit in the southern hometown there's a source of conflict right there. she was a very, very bright, very pretty, and i want to read you from the book a little bit a few lines once in awhile. rosalynn's childhood was vastly different from jimmy. their appearance of a little uncommon. rosalynn was usually introverted always at home, always together and not particularly ambitious of peculiarity. black people have no role in their circle. the extra parker's drink liquor

and smoked cigarettes and tried to travel to other states. they were rarely together and also often absent from home. of rampantly ambitious to determine to make money and keep it and eager to push their children out into the world, they depended on the african-american women to rear their children and laborers to work their land. so, from the beginning, these two people growing up in the same society have some fairly major -- have some fairly major differences. rosalynn, because her father died when she was young, and her mother remained in prison, she had no influential to push her into the world. what she had was a robust spirit of the issue will wheel and implicit intellect and an

energetic mind and unspoken ambition of private faith and tough ability to succeed at whatever she undertook. so she had it within herself to do the things that she would later do in her long and distinguished public career. okay. the court should ginny was off to the naval academy, he came home for a visit. the sister was a friend who set up a chance meeting on the steps of the methodist church. jimmie was smitten with her almost immediately. his mother disapproved, of course, and the discourse he would not be a detour, and in july of 1946, when he graduated from the naval academy, they were married. they were very young at the time. she was still about a month short of her 19th birthday and

he was a few more short of his 22nd at the time they were married, so to almost a teenager but almost a teenage marriage. the shared the career together and ginnie liked to tease her and the only reason she married him was for nav. she's of a navy uniform and fought this is how we will get out of planes. [laughter] she loved to read, she loved to study maps. she was in high school course during world war ii. she won the felch auditorium of her class. jimmy of course got into mischief slightly, but she still likes to pre-mind him laugh once in awhile. and so she was anxious to see the world. she denies, of course, that is the main reason she married him, but for whatever the reason, she did. and the next, until 1953, their lives were spent as a couple together in the needy.

so he had three babies very quickly, three sons, so rosalynn found herself as a very young mother a long way from home taking care of family, managing the family budget, whatever it was, often while jimmy was off to see. rosalynn loved that life and she became very, very independent. she enjoyed traveling. she especially enjoyed living in hawaii. she enjoyed meeting other people from other parts of the country and even the world. and to her, it was a very exciting life. jimmy, of course, exceeded in the navy. he was probably one of the few people who would get along the with the general because after all he wasn't that much different than his father. jimmy's copper was the type who demanded protection and if you delivered it, there was no reward, no thank hugh, no nothing. but of course if you didn't

think you would be chastised for not doing what you should do, and one of his close staff members told me a few years ago the apple didn't fall far from the tree, that jimmy operated pretty much the same way. in the week, ms. leigh and called jimmy in 1953 and their botts, and told him that his father was dying he must come home. his father was had pancreatic cancer and ultimately took every member of the family, most of them young. jimmy is now 86i think, the only one so far has not had it. and so, he went to visit his father and was amazed at the kind of things his father had been doing and he also realized, as his mother explained, that there was a very large family

business that nobody else could possibly manage. the liberals had gotten married. billy was too young, still sober at that time but still much too young and of course this lillians hadn't been involved in the operation of the business, so they wanted to continue the family business ginny was the one to do it, he was eager to do it, anxious to go back home so he said okay and he went through everything he had to to get out of the navy which scores was getting congressional approval because he was one of the few people working at the times of the had to find a replacement and release him from that responsibility. he didn't ask rosalynn if she wanted to go back. he probably knew what she would say. she did not want to go back. in fact she was outraged by the idea of going back but she had

three little children, no career of her own. she really didn't have much choice so they went back to planes in 1953, to go for the family business. essentially, rosalynn and came out of hershel and her depression caused by going back. jimmy got her involved in the business. it turned out that she was an excellent business woman, and so whatever the business achieved, much of it is attributable to rosalynn's skill. she especially didn't like having to live with ms. lillian a few days when they first went back. ms. lillian, of course, everybody loves miss lillian but as a mother-in-law some of them thought she was a different story within a short amount of time. okay. eventually, they built the

business into a very lucrative business. they get involved in all sorts of community activities and social life. they join the country club in america and tend to associate with the wealthiest people in the area. eventually, when people in the country club found out what their attitude towards race relations was, they got kicked out of the country club but nevertheless they were in it for a while. they joined a dance group called the class and one of the rules of course is you had to agree not to use garlic and onion on the night of the defenses. [laughter] so the generally went by the -- they went by the rules. despite all of that, his mother said he did a lot of poetry, theology, but he got bored. his mother said he was bored

talking about peanuts and such and so he decided that he would go into politics. and somebody had asked me the political influence on his life was. his father was serving the state legislature the time he died so he had influence, and his grandfather, ms. lillian's father was a political animal, jimmy grew up with a father and grandfather who were constantly talking politics around him. and his father even took him to hear talmadge give a few speeches. nobody i don't think realized, what with the impact would have been and would be better if they don't know because it certainly turned out to be something different from talmadge. okay so he decides to the politics. 1962 he runs for the state

senate and it was a contested election and ultimately with the aid of the newspaper journalist from alana, various attorneys, one of whom was charles who became essential to an adviser all the way through the white house years to a younger man in the firm, david gambrel, who carter eventually appointed to the u.s. senate, and various others whose names would eventually become household words. but at that time, of course, nobody had any idea who they were. nobody knew how the election was going to turn out until the very day that he was sworn in as a member of the senate and he was up there pretty to be sworn in not knowing whether he was going to be the winner or not and waited for the name to be called and surely enough, it was called, and he became a state senator.

rosalynn was weeping but after she goes back to plaines and runs the business and apparently in that very well. on weekends jimmy would go home. she wanted to talk about the business and wanted to talk about politics with him because she discovered she had a major interest in politics. he decided that he wanted a more advanced political position by and after considering the various options, he decided that he would run for governor and 1966. at first he was going to run for congress because there was a republican congress named donald callow. the calloways were bitter rivals. they were a wealthy textile family and were very well known, much scope than the carter's come and carter had a great

ambition to defeat both calloway calloway had been in the surface, too. he was a west point man i believe and have seen the service during world war ii. so calloway announces for congress, jimmy announce as for congress, calloway changes his mind and runs for governor so jimmy changes his mind and decides to run for governor. another part of the story you have to wait for in 1976, when carter who ran for the presidency against the republican incumbent named cheryl cord, the first campaign manager, for's campaign manager was no other than bill calloway, said he got in another contest which fired him up and helped him to win. so after that story, 1966 of course carter lost and there are

some things about this you have to read in the book because i can't tell you, the audience, because my wife and the two retired female professors told me not to see it so you have to read the book if you want to know that part of the story. he was very embittered by that loss. he has a famous so-called born-again experience as a result, whatever that means actually i think part of mauney research that i would not do in the carter library was research on the conversion experience, what kind of conversion experience is with the mean and all of that. and i did come up with one that pretty much fits his situation with your it is true or not i will be including those but nevertheless eventually become a label that go out on him, he's a

born-again christian, whatever that meant. he told his sister who became an evangelist that he could to give up almost everything except politics and he did in to give it up, and as far as i can tell, he still hasn't given it up. so he made his plan to run again and 1970, and this time he was determined that he would win. it's one of the most interesting races come southern governors' races partly because jimmy carter was involved in it and partly because the huge conflict between what he believed and what he has to say if he wanted to win. so he finally figured it out, how to do it. he had to win of georgia and alabama because there were lots of those around and he had to get their support in order to

win. but he didn't believe especially in terms of race relations as they believed. jody powell who got kicked out of the academy for cheating on a history exam was working on a ph.d. in the university, and his feet would have the topic that jody was working on was george wallace. jodi follows up to follow carter around and immediately liked him. jodi is one of the first people ever get close to carter as a matter of fact, and so carter really liked him and onetime josi supply will tell you what you have to do, you have to marginalize, you cannot say ugly things about wallace because then it will cause you to lose a lot of votes so what you have to do is stand for everything one

lit stevan this for race relations, so support wallace, support everything he stands for which is basically helping the blue-collar type workers but not race relations, and carter did that and ultimately he won the race in 1970. how it was is a matter of debate. he had a fight with carl sanders, former governor for the nomination, and some other episodes were not very -- were not very attractive. i don't know what they're carl sanders has forgiven him or not but last i saw he hasn't but maybe he has by now after this much time has passed. one georgia politician said they called him for governor with madison under one arm and a wall listen to the other and as soon as he was elected he dropped them both, and a drop than he did. in his inaugural address, he announced that the day for the

racial discrimination in georgia is over. people in the audience guest because they thought that they had voted for the opposite and they were even a few empty chairs on the stage where former governors were supposed to be seated and didn't show up because they felt he was coming to do something, which he was, that he had not promised. so in 1971, he is inaugurated governor. it was the grandest inauguration of a governor ever seen up to that time in the state of georgia. the good folks where they grew a lot decided they would make this huge portrait of him, which they did and it was hanging over the place where he would stand. the family gets dressed up of course to go to the inauguration and ms. lillian is riding with

her sister in a limousine and they get close to wherever they are supposed to be and ms. lillian turns to her sister and says sissy, what are we doing here? we are not limousine people. but they suddenly became a limousine people, with an elected -- whether they liked it or not. okay. all the stuff he did as governor. carter is very polite, very energetic and he is always busy and there is no limit to what he is willing to attempt. and he's still pretty much operates that way. it's the source of some of the criticisms i fink which are probably a little bit unfair, but that is simply the way he was coming and so he wanted to completely reform the government, the economy, and georgia society while he was in office, and he set about doing it and he did a good bit of it as a matter of fact. he reformed the legal system,

did various things. most people in higher education didn't particularly like him. i was in higher education in south georgia at a time, but indifferent to him i think at that time. but i was a beginning assistant professor, and i actually left salvatrucha and went into mississippi to take a job at a much bigger salary and i used to like to tell my students in mississippi somebody voluntarily moves into mississippi to teach, you know where they came from. [laughter] ..

>> that was the only constituency he had at the end of governorship and at the end of the presidency in 1980. as governor, it didn't matter. under the georgia constitution, he cannot run for re-election anyway. a governor cannot succeed himself. okay there are -- let's see how much of this i can tell you. i'd love to tell you a little bit about what he did with race relations in georgia as governor, because it's really quite an exciting story. also i spent a lot of time

figuring it out. i don't want to waste it. it was his first great experiment in conflict resolution. something he has since become very famous for. and the little town of sparta in hancock county, the mayor had decided that the african-american population was getting out of hand. so he had ordered six machine guns to arm the local police force. when he did that, this person who was working under the ford foundation grant, living there, trying to help black businesses and things like that, he ordered 30 machine guns and created an organization called the hancock rangers or something like that. and when that happened, the chief of police decided he felt very ill. so he had to take 30 days leave of absence, which, of course,

tossed the crisis to the governor in atlanta. carter looked it all over. he chose a team of three. he always -- he seems to favor teams of three. he chose a team of three. sent them to try to first they taught the mayor. the mayor decided that he would backtrack, but he said he had all of the money invested in the six machine guns. carter said, that's no problem. we'll guy the weapons, no questions asked. the state just bought the weapons. when the six machines guns are no longer in the hands of the policeman, the guy who had ordered the 30 machine guns to counter them backed down. the issue was more or less resolved. but it's an interesting story. because when it was resolved, both sides, of course, hated the governor. it's the nature of peacemakers.

each side wants the whole loaf, not the half. both sides hated him, but nevertheless, it worked. what he's doing, of course, he also hung the portrait of martin luther king jr. in the capitol, plus a couple of other famous black georgians. what he's doing, he's building a national reputation. "the new york times" is beginning to describe him as a southern kennedy, which is truly ironic, considering the later battles with ted kennedy. and one of his advisers told him when he dressed and got ready for photograph, he should try to make himself look as much like john kennedy as he could, that would be worth a good many votes. he tried it as well. okay. in october of 1972, he and rosalynn and a few other of their closest advisors decided

he would run for presidency. his governorship breaks in half. this is part of the carter story that's so relevant to the rest of his life that many people don't know much about. he used to make speeches where he referred to the southern people. after making the decision to run for the presidency, you never say our southern people in a speech again. he said you need to read "the wall street journal," "new york times." he probably one the few governors that had a full set of state department documents that he collects while he was governor. he started traveling, europe, israel, south america. rosalynn always going with him. rosalynn always going with him, playing a major role in the preparation and whatever happened while they were -- while they were there.

they kept it more or less secret, but he began to run for the presidency in 1972. he got his big break in 1974. when robert strauss who was the chairman of the national democratic party was busy with him and asked him if he would chair the national committee to re-elect democrats. the truth of the matter is that position had already gone to terry stanford. carter made it known he wanted that position very badly. strauss said okay, you can do it with stanford. what happened, pretty soon stanford disappeared, and it became carter's job. he brought out rosalynn, he brought out ms. powell, lilian, his family, charles turbo, who was one of his major political and legal advisers and they

scourered the country. it was a dog of a job. nobody wanted it. they did it very successfully. one of the people that was elected is ted kennedy, kennedy thanking him for helping him get elected. carter did another interesting thing in 1974. he already knew he was going to run for president, but nobody else knew he was going to do that expect his inner circle. when people like walter mondale, as a primary example during the '74 campaign every once in a while national democrats would make some announcement about '76. they would make references to '76. carter would already correct them. he said concentrate on '74. don't confuse the voters by

saying '76. what he was doing, he was planning to run himself for '76, and he didn't want them to get too much of a jump on him. and they didn't. charles, once it was all over, just left and said by the time that people like robert strauss and walter mondale knew what carter was doing, it was too late. he had the nomination for '76 sewed up. so he did. quickly, the other break he got at the end of his governorship was to be invited to serve on the trilateral commission. it was david rockefeller's brain child, the trilateral commission which was in japan, europe, the u.s., some of the best minds, political and academic in the country served on it. david rockefeller liked him. the whole story of carter's

first relationship and visit with david rockefeller is in the book, by the way. david rockefeller later was embarrassed by it after the iran hostage crisis and wrote a memoir to prove it was not his fault. but i don't believe david rockefeller's memoir all that much. but anyway, carter served on the trilateral commission. he was a governor of a large state interested in international affairs, he becomes friends with people like brusinsky, who was his campaign advisors, harold vance, if you look down, they are going to show up in carter's cabinet once he becomes president. that gave him considerable access and exposure to international affairs and communication with some of the best people in the country and

in the world at that time. okay. he serves out the rest of his governorship and on december 12th, 1974 was when he officially announced he would be a candidate for president. he'd already been running for two years by then. they announced it in washington and came home to atlanta and made his famous statement. my name is jimmy carter, i'm running for president. i believe it was in the civic center. that's where his volume ends. and that's lots of stuff in there i couldn't tell you, of course, and don't want to tell you. the conclusion. i got enough time, i think, to give you a conclusion, which i've worked on a good bit and i like if i can remember it. which would also give you a preview of coming attractions. people always ask me what i like about carter, and then they want to know what i dislike about carter. both of which are tough

questions, because carter is such a hard person to categorize. okay. a few months ago, there was a writer for "the wall street journal" who wrote the article on carter. her name is peggy noonan. despite her politics, she has a gift with words. she described carter as the cootie man among expresidents. that peeked my interest. i put together the speech for student groups, jimmy carter, profit or cootie man. which was a lot of fun. i hope in the future they will have a section entitled that. carter, of course, was not a priest, he was more of a prophet than a priest. americans want instant answers,

they like to be anointed with oil, told everything was all right. carter didn't do that. he said you have to learn to live in an age of limitations. you got to straighten up and make sacrifices. it takes time to solve problems. you can't get the hostages out in 24 hours, it takes 24 days. which isn't what most of the voting public wanted to hear. he's sort of a chrome man, i would describe him. who's easy to respect, hard to love. and so i would propose in conclusion that a thousand years from now, maybe a lot less than a thousand years from now, when people historians of those forget about the political rhetoric, forget about the political battles, forget about

the funny accent, forget about all of the things that he attempted that he did not achieve. and step back and look, take a hard look at his life, his public career in politics and with the carter center, and look to see what he actually did instead of criticizing petty things and thinged he attempted and didn't achieve. that they might discover that carter, the carters, because rosalynn is always there, co-chair of the carter center, they actually did promote world peace, advance human rights, keep their country strong and free. that's another whole story that nobody knows was carter. it was carter who rebuild the military last year in the office. it wasn't ronald reagan. carter had it well under way before he lost and reagan took

over. promoted world peace, advocated human rights, kept the country strong and free without bullying others, and as rosalynn once said, created a kind of gentler world. and we might even discover some day that jimmy and rosalynn carter did give us a better world. thank you. [applause] [applause] >> thank you, thank you, thank you. [applause] >> questions. we have a few minutes for questions. >> thank you for a very eloquent presentation which was reflected by the length of applause. which is unusual here. thank you. >> thank you. >> i'm interested in the carter center library, how is it organized, how do you do

research? i assume it's information that carter provided. so is there other information, is it sort of bias in terms of what's there and not there? just a general description and maybe something that's interesting about it. >> okay. i will try to answer that question. i see a half a dozen people in this room that could answer it better than i can. when the president leaves office, it up to him to raise the money to build the library. and once he does that and builds it, then he gives it to the national archives. it becomes the profit and administered by the national archive. the documents consistent of the presidents papers while he was in office, his assistants papers, whoever worked with him. and so the content of the library is partly what the president chooses to give it. which in jimmy carter's case was almost everything.

he's been very open with it. and beyond that, it's a matter of how the library gets administered. some directors of the library actively seek the papers of people who served in the cabinet, people that knew him when he was three years old, that kind of thing. the carter library himself has a rich collection of papers from almost every stage of the life. his governors papers are still in the state archives. a lot of the research that you heard tonight comes from the state archives. and then there are various -- they have to be processed. which takes a long time with millions of papers. and then there are various rules as to what can be opened and whatnot opened. things that might jeopardize national security, say, can be in the library, but they are not open to research. and any theory of research, you can use it, it works different

from other libraries. i'm on the dense side, i had a hard time learning how to use it, but finally mastered it, i hope, the help of the people who work there. the museum is separate. it's a part of the library, but still it's separate. but still it's separate from it. presidential libraries are really virtually national treasures. because they are gold mines of information that might be lost otherwise. they will be tourist attractions as well. it's a fun place to do research. that's a long answer that i intended to give. somebody want to add? okay. another question right here. >> you mentioned him about -- [inaudible question]

>> his father, mother, and brother died from pancreatic cancer in 1986, didn't smoke and is still kicking. >> i actually did a lot of research on that in the medical library at duke university one time. and they are a few studies that related to smoking but not many. carter was the only member of his family who did not smoke. carter himself says he thinks that's the reason he did not get it. the drinking, i haven't seen that. i think that where we stand with pancreatic cancer still today as we know very little about it. there's probably a genetic factor involved in it. i think we know very little about it. but you are right. there has been that, you know, people have said that smoking causes every other kind of

cancer. it ought to cause that one too. i don't really think we know enough about it. carter allowed himself to be kind of a guinea pig. he wants to study and figure out what happened. next, other questions over here. in the middle. >> since carter has been one of the more prolific writers, and you are a writer, what is your opinion of him and the things he has written? >> okay. that's an inevitable question. i hate it. i don't know how to answer it. i think carter is a good writer. if you look back at when he was in the academy, he kept a journal. they wrote a little play they

put on at the academy. he's always been interested in writing. so it's not surprising that later in his life, he turned out to be a more -- a very prolific writer. i think he's a good writer. his prose is almost always accurate. it tends to be a little bit on the spare side, which is good. and he's written enough books now that it's kind of a mixed bag. my favorite of his books is "turns point." the one about the 1962 race for the senate. since i'm an historian and not an english teacher, i love his body of reckoning. i have yet to meet an english teacher that likes it. he has a lot of feel, he gets to the point, about life on a killer submarine when he talked about how you are on the killer submarine and, you know, this submarine is capable of wreaking

all sorts of damage. when you are in there, you hear the whales and all of the other sea life. it's repetition, he has written so much he tells the same stories over and over. and the only one i haven't read is "the virtues of aging." i'm not ready to take that one on yet. i haven't read that one. he's a good writer. okay. yes, sir? >> yes, i would like to hear more about carter's role in the hostage crisis. i don't think he gets the credit that he deserves for their release. it was obvious they were held to a short time after his inauguration to embarrass him, i guess. all of the ground work has been done before. he should be given more credit.

just wondering your opinion about that? >> okay. you got to wait on volume two for that one. i'll give you my response as far as i know it now. and i absolutely agree with you. i think carter, he's beginning to get more credit. even reagan gave him credit, you know, for getting the hostages out. it is such a complicated question. you know, as americans, we like to think our president and our politicians got him out. but you also have to remember, there was another side that let him go. and they had all of their complicated reasons for holding them and letting them go too. i do think carter deserved a lot more credit. he did freeze iranian assets right away in banks. i think that was very helpful. he planned the rescue effort long before it was executed, and it didn't fail. he examined all kinds of options, including various kinds of military invasions and statistics of how many people

would get killed. he studied it very, very carefully. it was unusual. no american president had to deal with that. diplomats had been taken hostage before, normally they would be released. so it was different. you also have to remember the cold war is going on. we are right on the border of the soviet union. and carter, of course, did not want to get us into a war with the soviet union. he did serve notice to the iranians, they were not to harm the hostages and put them on public trial. and they didn't. i think eventually, and lots and lots more details, some we already know and some i think we will eventually learn. but i think eventually -- i hate counterfactual history. and it'll be interesting to know what would have happened had

carter been re-elected. because we'll never know that. that would be interesting to know. but actually, i think eventually we will look at the hostage crisis and decide that carter did exactly the right thing. he got them all out. they all came out alive. they did not get us into a war. he sort of finessed the soviet union. he encouraged the insurgents in afghanistan to keep them occupied. once they invaded afghanistan, we've seen some of those papers now. but as i said earlier, it took 444 days. carter was the kind of person that he really had an engineers mind in some ways. he worked for the long term solution for problems. he did this with other problems as well. sometimes the long-term solutions worked, but in the world of politics and the next election, you know, the voters sometimes don't want to wait for

the long term. i agree with you. i'm looking forward to knowing more about that myself. there's even some evidence, i shouldn't say it, it will not be any my book because i can't prove it, about the famous october surprise. which i've done a lot of book. there's a lot of smoke, but i can't find the gun. whether they deliberately, the reagan campaign, you know, i know all about how the reagan campaign was going to use the hostages against carter in the 1980 election. the details, and we probably will never know. but carter does deserve more credit for that, i believe. >> i want to thank you for what i -- what you said about the

military in 1980. i was military. i do remember raise, i was low rank and enlisted at the time. that's unheard of now. he did the right thing. the lower people got the higher raise. that kept us all in for 30 years. >> he did that all right. maybe you ag to thank the russians for invading afghanistan. after carter did the about phase and started really rebuilding the military at whatever the expense. of course, when he devoted the bomb line and got so much criticism for it, he was eventually deciding to be a stealth bomber. you can't go on national television during the cold war and say we are building the stealth bomber and giving the information away to the enemy. a lot of secretary of defense, harold brown. i don't know what your military experience was. a lot of military people i have

interviewed, they liked harold brown. was to true to your experience? you know, they really liked him. and a lot of that modern technological equipment we used, much of the development started in carter's last year in office. the recent book by mondale if you read it, it was interesting. he thought carter was hawkish, as he puts it. thank you for sharing your story. do we have a someone -- have a microphone? you got it. okay. >> thank you for an interesting presentation. i think it's pretty well known that rosalynn carter is an international leader in the promotion of mental health and the prevention of mental illness. but in your research, did you find any early indications of her interest in this field? >> oh yes. oh yes. and because that's what she's -- she's best known for. but both carters are willing to

take on very hard challenges. and, of course, mental illness is one the hardest challenges in the world. the first thing is how do you define it? and then possible treatments and stigma. she accelled, and did more as first lady of the united states, because she had so many resources at her fingertips. i need the best mental health experts in the country. yes, ma'am. they show up at the white house. and they help her. she did a lot of other things too. she was interested in all sorts of things related to woman and children's affairs. she read a lot of his speeches. if you look at the speech writers files, a lot of drafts that have her handwriting on it. she gave him political advise. sometimes he took it. sometimes he didn't. if he didn't, he usually heard about it. where they managed to get

through that crisis and they then married 64 years or something now. so she -- so she, you know, she really -- she did the mental health thing. but she actually did far more than that too. she was especially capable as a political strategist. she was in most of the strategy meetings. she went out on the 1980 campaign more than he did while he was in the rose forwarden waiting for the hostages to be released. okay. time for one more question. maybe we don't have time. okay. here's one. >> you heard a lot of evaluations in terms of which is the best president. what about modern governors of georgia, how do you think president carter, governor

carter ranks? >> well, i should have ended the discussion before i got to this question. [laughter] >> i feel certain you know more about the governors of georgia than i do. at the time he was governor, he was not popular. and he wasn't popular with me as a professor in the state. though i did vote for him. but he he -- his reputation, i think, has gone up when you look back and see what he attempted to do and the long-range impact. but he was constantly fighting his lieutenant governor, he was constantly fighting the race issue, which was still very much alive in georgia at the time, and interesting thing about rosalynn, i don't know if you run into this or not, but i, you know, i run into women who think she's wonderful and others who can't stand her. the ones who can't stand her are southern women who are going to

argue that she got out of her place. it's such a mixed bag. i think georgia has certainly been a lot more prosperous since he was governor in terms of education and everything. he helped with the ground work. but -- i haven't seen any rating of him as governor. i still think he would not be very high on that list. he probably deserves to be higher than he would be. okay. thank you very much. [applause] [applause] >> you are watching booktv on c-span2. 48 hours of nonfiction books

beginning every saturday at 8 a.m. eastern. here's the prime time line up for tonight. up next from the 2010 texas book festival in austin, the discussion with michele norris, and isabelle wilkerson. then at 9, afterwards with james zogby.

>> alex kershaw's latest book "the envoy." who was the envoy? >> greatest hero. some people say he saved $100,000 lives at the end of the second world war. she became one the two honorary americans, winston churchill, and raul willenberg, to recognize the fact that he saved over 100,000 live, which today some people say is a million. one guy who went up against the greatest evil and the result is that are million people alive who wouldn't be.

>> how did he do that? >> he was clever. bribed, controlled, he did whatever he could as a swedish diplomat in hungary to try to stop ikeman from killing the jews in europe. there was only one country with jews arrive, hungary. ikeman went into hungary on a mission to kill the last jews in europe. womennenberg was -- willenberg was there. he saved them. it's a story about how one person can make a difference. >> how did he life end? >> we don't know. it's a good questions. the russians won't say what happened to him. many believe he was killed by the russians, got by the nkb,

the russians won't reveal all what they know about his fate. the question is still open. the fate of the holocaust greatest hero has yet to be decided. >> why did the russians have it out for him? >> good question. he was taken into russian custody in january of 1945. as were many, many people caught up in the soviet expanse as they swept into eastern europe. he was one of many diplomats taken into custody. many people. and the russians basically wanted to use him. they said to him, look, you work for us as a spy. go back to sweden. work for us, and we'll -- you can live. and the theory is wallenberg said no. i'm not going to spy for you. we can't admit that we took you, we can't admit that you are live. best thing is we kill you. and that's what they did. >> alex kershaw "the enjoy" the

desperate closing months of world war ii. >> richard rhodes, winner of the pulitzer price in "the twilight of the bombs: recent challenges, new dangers, and prospects for the world without nuclear weapons." is there a prosfect for no nuclear weapons? >> i think so. they lost the utility since the cold war. president obama has announced it is official u.s. policy to move towards zero. it's a matter of working out some of the security relationships standing in the way. >> with regard towering -- to working out the relationship, they seem to be on the path to making their own. >> they do. because that's the only way they feel they can defend themselves against the major nuclear powers

like the united states. each of them has security needs. if we can find a way to satisfy those, north korea would like very much to be an ally of the united states. they've been saying that now for more than 40 years. in fact, they'd like us to build the nuclear power plants to replace the electricity that we destroyed with bombing during the korean war. >> you talk about the secret program under saddam hussein. how did the story of the bomb program grow? even if they didn't have any bombs or haven't found any so far. >> you know, we went into the first golf war, arguing they did have a bomb program. which we didn't know. afterwards when inspectors from united nations and international atomic energy agency went in, they found a huge effort to enrich uranium. they cleaned that out. so did the iraqis. they were tired of having us

walk around the country. but they didn't keep records. when the second bush came along in settling down the country and getting rid of saddam, there wasn't any proof. the fact is it was fully cleaned up by 1998. >> speaking of cleaning up, you talk also in the book about the scramble for what was left over of the soviet nuclear arsenal. talk to us about that. >> it wasn't so much the arsenal which los alamos director said to me, they have serial numbers just as our bombs do. they know where their bombs are. it was the material that you use. the uranium and plutonium scattered. because the whole country was a prison camp. there was no way to get the stuff out. when the walls came down, they were like us with poor race borders. we went in and spend a lot of money to help them begin to put all of the materials under lock

and key. sam nunn estimated that 60% of them are carefully regarded. the job remaining to be finished. >> earlier, you made a presentation, tell us about that. what was foremost on the minds of the people that were asking you questions there? >> i really went through "the twilight of the bombs" and talked about the serious issues and some of the amazing kind of cops and robbers stories that came out of inspecting iraq after the first gulf war. but ultimately what i talked about was this very serious question of can we get rid of nuclear weapons. i think the questions, there was the usual question today what about iran? as if a country that has yet not figured out how to build a bomb is as much a threat to the world as the major power like the united states which has at least

1200, 2,000, maybe 5,000 nuclear bombs. we tend to think we're the good guys, so that's okay. it's imbalance, we maintain, but others can't. that was the issue in what i discussioned in talking about how we get to zero. >> the book "the twilight of the bombs" it's author, richard rhodes. >> thom thom -- tom wolfe is beg given the medal for distinguished contribution to american letters. how would you describe is it? >> i wouldn't praise myself.

i spent doing nonfiction first 55 years of my life. i still think it's the most important genera to come out of the second half of the 20th century. and right now, you know, the writers to watch are both nonfiction writers, michael lewis, and mark poden. it would do well to read those two guys. they are totally nonfiction. >> why do you think you've become so much well then, for your fiction? >> well, i think it was just turned out to be dazzling. well, if -- if -- if it's like a doll, it's because i leave the building. i do just as much reporting for the novel as i do for nonfiction and it's -- i want my fiction to be intensely journalistic.

intensely journalistic. because unless you get out and look at what's going on these days, you are going to miss the things that are influencing yourself and everybody else. i mean like the -- a great example is the so-called sexual revolution. that's a very mild term for the carnival that's actually going on. and it's such a complete turn around from when i was growing up. that now the motto -- not the motto, but the sequence is eyes met, our lips met, our bodies met, then we were introduced. and i've -- when i was working on charlotte summers, i happened to be sits on the lounge in the dormitory. that were two sofas. one on one sofa, nobody was there. behind me was a couple. and the girl was pleading with

this guy saying, please you have to do this for me. you have to do this for me. he said, i can't. i've known you since i was six. it would be like incest. she said, no. i can't go around a virgin. i don't trust anybody else. no, it's just not right. talk about a conversation, that's the conversation of the 21st century. >> well, in -- [inaudible background noise] >> tom wolfe, winning the contribution to americans arts and letters award from the national book foundation here at national book awards. >> from the texas book festival mich