don't have to get too far off on the left to find thugs. and i think you found them. and i think you did it in a very clever way. >> has your writing changed over the years? >> well, i suspect, you know -- i've changed some views. but maybe i've changed them from -- because of the occasion. originally i was a supply-side economics -- i would have opposed but supply-side economics convinced me that balanced budgets weren't necessarily good. ..i was in favor of capital punishment, and i thought about it over 40 years, and i've come

to oppose capital punishment. i suspect, as i said, of franklin roosevelt i've come to see him as i don't know who else would have taken up the cause against -- [inaudible] as well as he did -- the nazis as well as he did, and i think he's to be respected for that. so my views have changed a bit, and my way of writing has changed a bit. i remember in "public nuisances" i was extremely remember in "public nuisances" i was extremely critical of theodore white became a little teddy white. i wrote the denunciations of him. i have come to find teddy white in later years was a force for good in the world. i apologize for the things i said.

>> host: you list arthur schlesinger as one of your favorite authors. >> guest: if you want the standard liberal view of america you can do no better than reading arthur schlesinger. he was a wonderful writer. i miss his passing and the passing of that whole generation that made up very thoughtful liberals. i am not sure that their heirs are living up to the great tradition they established. >> host: you have lived in washington long time. we have 30 seconds left. who would we be surprised to find out is a friend of yours. >> guest: i don't know. i've put in a good word for

chris hichens. he is struggling with cancer now. i hope he wins. i have said i am a man of faith and he is not a man of faith. a wouldn't want to embarrass him but i pray for him every sunday and hope that he will live on and i will never embarrass him by bringing up god in his presence. >> host: our guest the past few hours has been r. emmett tyrrell. the author of nine books. "public nuisances," the liberal crackup, the conservative crackup, "boy clinton: the political biography," the impeachment, "madame hillary: the dark road to the white house," "the clinton crackup," the continuing crisis in 2009 and his most recent, "after the hangover: the conservatives' road to recovery". thank you for spending the last

three hours with us and our viewers on booktv. >> you are watching booktv. in our prime time lineup tonight starting at 7:00 eastern eric alderman's book, the system versus barack obama. then the life of american general walter smith. dwight eisenhower's chief of staff from 1942 to 1945. at 8:30 secretary of defense donald rumsfeld talks about his new memoir known and unknown. this event aired live on booktv.org last wednesday. we conclude our prime-time programming at 10:00 with afterwards. george friedman, author of the next decade is interviewed by foreign policy magazine. >> next, ron reagan, son of president ronald reagan recaps his father's personal life and political career. ronald reagan who died on june 5th, 2004, at the age of 93 would have been 100 on feb. sixth, 2011.

ron reagan remembers his father at politics and prose bookstore in washington d. c. . it is just under an hour. >> is this on? can you hear me ok? thank you again. please to be here at this very unlikely event. not that they don't do readings and things as they called all the time that politics and prose. i'm the unlikely part of this because i never really intended to do anything like this. i am 52 years old. i got through half a century without ever considering that i would do something like this. little less than a year ago, february 6th last year of a stalking to my mother on the occasion of my father at 99 first day when the 100 birthday came up. can you believe daddy is going to be 100, she said, and i say

yes, isn't that something. is just incredible. in time thinking please not another aircraft carrier. please don't make me go to the dedication of a bridge or something like that. but then i got to thinking about that a hundred years. 100 years is a long time. that hundred years is a particularly long time. it was a different world that he came from, my father which may explain some of his peculiarities. that we in his family noticed often. nothing gramm. nothing strange as in creepy. not all creepy but he was an odd duck, my father. almost too good sometimes. he never gossips' about anybody. never heard any gossip.

he never blustered be there. most men can be counted on occasionally to come home and i am going to kick that saw then. not my father ever. not once. never raised his voice. he once almost knocked mike deaver over with a set of keys by firing at his chest but i'm not sure what he was upset about. he never yelled during a thing like that. he was a soft-spoken sort of guy. if he wanted to make you feel bad if you had done something wrong his tone would just requires this kind of gravitas. he was start speaking slower and softer until finally you are wining vigorous little sound like gerbils squeaking after a while. but i was conscious of the fact when i started, my father has this sort of scarcely reachable court to him. the 90% that all of us saw in

the president of the united states, governor of california and actor, what you see is what you get. same guy at the dinner table as delivering state of the union address. that 90% was absolutely consistent, absolutely trustworthy. you could count on all day long. but there was this 10% metaphorically speaking that he held very close. everybody and his family, those of us who knew him very well were aware of this 10%. we were aware there was a part of him. even my mother, that you couldn't always reach. a very private part of him. that was the part of him that i determined to go looking for. that was the part of him that was the most inaccessible. that was the mysterious part of him. not the 90%. we all know that. that is right out there. that 10%, where did that come from. was that all about?

a determined that that the people still married to the 100 years was telling me something. had to be forming itself in his early years, way back from dixon and gailsburg and all these other towns that he lived in and so that is where i went searching. i have to say that if you are going to write a story about your own father, it certainly helps if you had a pulitzer prize-winning biographer trailing in for 13 years taking notes because a lot of your research is already done. i relied on many of the books that have already been written for fact and dates and figures and things like that. but those people as accomplished as they maybe, didn't grow up with him. they were looking at him from the outside. looking at him from the inside,

many people know much more about his policies and politics than i do. i didn't make a study of it. i didn't cover him at the white house. but i grew up with him. since i was this big. people remember him as president, as the challenger disaster or state of the union address or the assassination attempt and things like that. i remember him going way back when he would pick me up over his head and fly me to bed at night making a little propeller sound, down under the doorway and into the bed and finally would sing me to sleep. that is my memory. but still, he was mysterious. he was something of an in a glove. off i go looking. i didn't stop at just his childhood either. i was interested in the family history as well so i went all

the way back to ireland, to old thomas the came out of the mountains, they list both when they talk about him and married a girl named margaret murphy and lived in a little hole outside a town in ireland, there is no such place any more because it was just a collection of huts like mud and sticks. these just melt into the turf after a while. these were poor irish people. these were peasants. they don't nothing. they were landless laborers. they worked other people's fields. one of the great calamities of the nineteenth century, the irish potato famine. the irish population has not recovered fully from the potato famine of the 1840s. there are not as many people

living in ireland today as there were in 1845. right in the middle of this, dirt-poor, the reagan family. michael is the only child in the family. my great grandfather learned to read some how. he was the only one that wasn't illiterate and he became a soakedmaker and moved the family to england and here's one of the only pieces of original research i can claim and be proud of. i got a little e-mail from ancestry. com, genealogical web site that i signed up for years ago. now available, the 1851 british census. eighteen 51? they moved in 1849 to britain, south london.

maybe they are in this census. maybe michael a reagan and his bride -- irish peasants living in a slum, nobody counts those people. they were very efficient in britain in 1851. they did come to those people. there he is, michael reagan when he crossed the r. c. to britain. he is still a soap andmake a living with a bunch of other poor irish youths from the southwest of ireland on bentley street in south london. he married catherine mulcahy. i wonder if she was in the census. i go looking for her and sure enough there she is in this little corner across the street from michael reagan. they must have met right there. she was a gardener, pour young irish people from the southwest

of all ireland including a young woman who was identified as a feather thicker. you don't see too many have their pictures these days. so this is the sort of family that he came from. michael comes to america. he has some children one of which is john michael reagan, dubee gets jack redden, john edwards reagan, my father's father. what did i find one i started looking at my father? getting past of a family history? we think of him as a sort of big strapping confident kind of guy, not afraid of anything. what could scare him? but when he was a little boy it turns out he was a little boy. he was undersized. his family moved around a lot. he was the new kid in school perennially, he was picked on by belize, chosen last 3 games on

the playground clippers little spent a lot of his time alone. he spent a lot of time in places like the attic of a rental house where they lived, where the previous owner had left strange artifacts in the attic so he would spend his time in the dusty sun beams in the attic going for stuff birds and things and strange plants many of which seemed to come from the west. i think there he began to form this impression of the west as a wide open landscape. and instead of roaming that landscape as the score undersized kid he saw himself as a growing into a hero in that landscape. he could do heroic scenes he sought and his mother -- when he was born she called a perfectly wonderful and never changed her opinion of him. he was always her perfectly wonderful ronald.

to his father when he saw him being born said he makes a lot of noise for a fat little bit of a dutchman. that is how he became dutch to everybody but his mother. everybody called him dutch when he would young. so this little kid dreaming these dreams of this life ahead where he would be a hero and he will rome this wide open landscape being the guy who rides in the third real and saves the day. the compassionate yet removed hero because he is satisfied to a certain extent alone, being solitary. by the time he is 15 he has found perhaps the perfect job for him and he called it the best job he ever had. he was a lifeguard abel park just north of the dixon, a little where the family had moved by that time.

he had taken a lifeguard classes and distinguished himself as a phenomenally talented swimmer and studied artificial respiration and all these things. he went down to the park to talk to the person who ran the concession stand and the park. they took a look at this skinny kid, 15 years old. just completed his sophomore year and he wants to be the lifeguard at this big beach where lots of people come, hundreds of people in the summer would be there. they looked at him and said i don't know. he may have taken a class at the y but he will have to dive in and save people. jack said give the boy chance. he can do it and indeed he did. seven years, 77 people pull out of that river. if i did the math correctly that would come to even in the summer which would work out to 1 life

saved every ten days or so on that river. imagine being a 15-year-old 417-year-old or 20-year-old. what do you do for your summer job? every ten days or so i save somebody's life. some people say you in a, sure he goes into the river and pools some person not. that can't be too impressive. the rock river in illinois flows into the mississippi. it is a major river. it is a powerful river. you get caught in the middle of that current, you don't know how to swim, you are in trouble. you are heading downstream in a hurry. someone has to get you out of that trouble. guesses that was for seven years? he let him -- it was a perfect job for him because he was at one and the same time the focus of attention, man of the hour.

when things went wrong he was the one everyone turned to but at the same time he could remain solitary. you have to be removed as a lifeguard. you can't be off at the concession stand or hanging out with your buddies. you have to be paying attention. and being here cited he really has to be paying attention. he is staring through thick glasses the whole time and trying to figure out who's going to get in trouble and where the old time. he was keeping the planet's aligned. keeping the universe in order by pooling those people out of the river. drowning people were chaos and my father couldn't stand chaos. he liked his world orderly. he liked his world orderly so he would be free to dream his dreams in peaceful tranquillity. so he would dive into these rivers and pull people out.

almost nobody ever thanked him for doing this. he learned a lot about human nature. no men would thank him for being rescued. he used to do a little imitation. after he would do a rescue his father told him -- -- jack said that a log or something, carve a notch for every person you rescue. so he would. 77 notches on a driftwood log initially. he is to imitate people coming up to him, men the rescued and pulled out of the river, i wasn't really in trouble all, really. keep carving that knocked on his law the. okay. one man did thank him. the only man who ever sanctioned. this was a giant of a man who

arrived at the river one day with somebody leading him because he was totally blind. he was 6 ft. 5, huge to hear my father tell it and my father thought how am i going to get him out of the river if he gets in trouble. he told me when i was little that there were some techniques they didn't teach you at the ymca for rescuing people some of which involved hitting them with a right cross to the jaw in order to subdue them so he could safely get them to the shore. a drowning anybody will kill their rescuer. you are frantic out there. a 15-year-old boy. he has to rescue full grown men who were bigger and stronger and now desperately terrified clawing at anything to stay on top of the water and now he is dealing with a guy who is five times his size.

what does he do? into the water goes my father thinking this may be the last time i do this. this guy is a going to take me to the bottom and we will be rolling around river bottom all the way to sterling down screen but he said as soon as he reached the man and put his hand on him the man instantly relax and let him do whatever he wanted because he was blind and he had been led a round all his life and as soon as he felt a human touch he thought i am safe and he simply relaxed. that was the only man who ever thank him. he did get some notoriety for doing this. first time he got his name in the paper was a rescue.

he closed the park at 9:30. he used to do this on hot summer nights, people lingering forever in the water and he had been there since:00 in the morning and wanted to go home but people wanted to stay. started taking pebbles and flicking them into the water and sure enough, what was that? just the old river. they come out this time of night. usually empty the beach. so this night the river rats have done their job using at the concession stand, helping close up and all of a sudden three people, two young women and in the man screenings of the darkness, help, their friend who wasn't as strong as he fought went under. now it is 9:30 or 10:00 at night.

flip-flops there's a man in the river who is drownings off my father goes towards the river listening because he can't see the man. he is nearsighted and has to get rid of his glasses to go into the water. so he is listening for the sound of the man struggling out there. where do i need to go to find him? plunges into the darkness. that is the headline in the dixon evening telegraph, james rader snatched from the jaws of death. ronald dutch reagan got him before he was able to subdue him and bring him to shore pull in one arm against the current with him, drag him under the law, perform artificial respiration for a couple minutes to revive him after which it was determined he was the hand they sent him home.

he had his name in the paper. other than that, the lateness of the hour of the rescue would have seemed rather routine. just another day on the river. my father was a storyteller. is great opus was himself. he created a narrative, a template for his life. wasn't that he was making up a story about himself but he would pretend to live out, he was creating a template in his mind and trying to live up to it. he wanted to be a hero but didn't just want to be seen as a hero. he wanted to really be a hero. when you are a storyteller you sometimes at and that discovered in some of my father's stories there was an editing to focus the narrative of little more. usually -- the iconic story from

his youth is one winter night 1922 he comes home from of the y or the library, he spent a lot of time reading, coming up towards his home in dixon and he notices the approach of the front door that there is a dark shape on the doorstep which when he looks closer discovers is his own father passed out cruciform, dead drunk, belching up corn whiskey. he has been dimly aware that his father was given to some drinking. that has been exaggerated but he did drink and his parents would have rows about this. his mother was quite high as and it approve of that. so he had heard the fights before but always pulled the covers over his head to ignore the whole thing but now in this iconic moment he is having his

coming of aid experience and so he is tempted to step over his father and go inside and go to bed, he knew he couldn't leave him out there in the snow so in his telling he grabs his father's collar and drags him over the threshold and some of muscles him up this steep, a gold stairway to his bedroom and put him in bed and go downstairs and breeze not a word to his mother when she gets home. i went back and looked at the staircase and i thought about little dutch who couldn't have weighed 100 lbs. yet, probably went about 180 or so and thought he didn't dragon anywhere. he probably found him passed out on the doorstep and probably grabbed his coat and gave him a

shake. but what happened i suspect is jack woke up, staggered to his feet and being jack probably had a few things to say at that point, profane probably. that gets edited out of the story because it would be distraction. the focus of the story is a young man coming of age, giving jack too many lines would not work so jack hit the cutting room floor. he would do things like this. he had a tendency sort of skipping through a lot of stuff, to engage in a certain amount of denial. he was very talented at denial when he needed to be to rather humorous effect. my wife and i in washington when he was president were accompanying him to some event. can trigger what was.

the presidential motorcade or big armored limo coming back from whatever it was with people lining the streets to get a glimpse of him. at this point in his life he decided what america needed was a revival of the thumbs-up gesture so he had been traveling around the country sums uping people. no justice souter demand so well. as we were driving back he was froms uping people. we reach a certain point and some young man may be in his 30s got under the sawhorses of the police tape or broke through the secret service line. i don't know how he got so close but there he was maybe a body length or two from the presidential limousine on my father's side of a car promoting a different hand gesture and had an entirely different digits in my father's direction. you couldn't hear him through the bullet proof glass but i believe a word beginning mother

and ending in another word was being deployed as well at the same time. my father took this in and without missing a beat turns to us and says i think it is catching on. that was my dad. i suppose i should say because you have probably heard about this a. i should say at least a word about the present controversy which has erupted with the publication of this book. my brother took it upon himself to help me saw copies of the book and i owe him a thank-you note. he did it without even reading the book too. that is the kind of brother he is. this is around the question of alzheimer's. my father died of alzheimer's of course. he was diagnosed several years after he left office. i say two things in the books

that relate to this in any way. i admit midway through his term as president in '83 or '84 i would occasionally notice things that seemed just a hitch is how are characterized it. nothing you could really characterize in any specific way and not anything that somebody who didn't grow up in a house with him would have noticed. when you are that a tuned to somebody any little change in their rhythm or body language, way they tell a story is going to tip you off that they are under the weather or having a bad day or something. so i mentioned i had concerns. i don't put a name to them or diagnosed him with alzheimer's. simply mention these concerns. he was in his mid 70s, oldest president, losing his hearing. he hated to wear a hearing aid.

and he had been shot and nearly killed which will take a little window of your sales. i had things to worry about and this was background. i to say later in the only chapter we deal with this there is one sentence that specifically links presidency and alzheimer's and it is a deduction based on when he was diagnosed and what we now know about alzheimer's disease which is that it is a process that extends far for years, even decades before identifiable observable symptoms are present. if i am going to get alzheimer's in my 70s you could look at my brain right now and tell. there would be changes going on right now. the question is whether the disease was present in him during his presidency seems to be academic to me.

it would almost have to be. that is not to say however that he suffered from dementia when he was in office. alzheimer's is a disease, dementia is a symptom of the disease which only shows up in its latter stages. i i saw no signs of dementia in him when he was president of the united states and i allude to that in the book. all sorts of things i am alleged to have written and answered questions last week and half. people say that you say -- no i didn't. show me where i say. they can't because they didn't read the book and are making stuff up. by prima explain exactly what my side of that controversy is. i don't know if he had alzheimer's for sure when he was in office. i think it is a likelihood that the disease was present the judge did not see signs of dementia nor do i say that i did. that is about it as far as that goes.

at heart this is not a political book. i had no interest in doing it political history. it is a book primarily about his early life, his formative years, an attempt by a son to find his father. to go looking in the distant past as it were for his father's rather elusive character. in the last chapter and bring you up to date into the white house and into the industry. i determined that was the way to end the book. to jump ahead. that is what i did. you can't do that without mentioning alzheimer's. since i mentioned that i knew i would have to deal with it forthrightly and as honestly as i could. so i did. that is what i had to say about it. i will take any questions. i would be happy to entertain questions.

or you could just shot out from where you are. [applause] >> one of the things you mentioned is his incredible which which i had occasion to witness and is being so photogenic. there was an occasion in the white house where i had to go through stacks of photographs with vips to identify them and there wasn't a single shot in which he wasn't on camera. and looking good. >> i bet his driver's license photo was a keeper. >> he was amazing but that is not my question. it has to do with religion. i haven't read the whole book. i read a few of the first chapter is. you mentioned his catholic/protestant mother/father. >> an on-again off-again catholic and a disciple of

christ as he called it. >> my curiosity is a round that. as his son did he emulate was his parents did in terms of letting him decide later in life and how did religion -- he did not have religion and his sleeve but wasn't george washington talking about it in public. i want to get your view on that. >> his general feeling about his bid and was it was a private kind of thing. he was quite open and would court the religious right when he needed to win an election but he did not go around the house like some holy ruler with bible readings or anything like that. he was a regular churchgoer when he was governor of california and before that when he got to they see, he felt awkward going to church because it could disrupt things or even be a

threat to other people. we see that bad things happen to politicians. he did follow after his parents. in particular as a disciple of christ their doctrine is you do not try to indoctrinate young people, children into your religion because they are not old enough. they can't make the decision for themselves and you need to let them do that. he took that attitude with me although i don't think he was entirely happy about it. my announcement when i was 12 years old there are was not going to church any more, i have the same ring, and by the way. he came in to get me to go to church and i said i am not going. i don't believe this anymore and i'm not going to pretend anymore and he was pretty upset about it, but heard more. he was very worried but he wasn't going to wrestle me into a church.

that wasn't going to work. take me to the altar or anything for some sign of exorcisms but i knew he wasn't going to give up. he wasn't going to roll over from that. i found the pastor of the church in our living room waiting to have a talk with me. he later became not a pastor of the church when it turned out he was tending to his flock with his pants around his ankles. but he was a big guy who had played football for ucla. he was a big imposing guy and was going to convince me to come back to church but i realize in a few minutes i could have this argument with him. i was worried because he was a professional but i can hold my own here and after a few minutes each gave up and ended talking about football. my father was disappointed that

i was still an atheist when he left. >> he didn't feel the need to commune with godlike some recent presidents did before making decisions. >> certainly not in any exhibition kind of way. he would pray quietly at times for guidance. after he was shot he believed his god had spared him. you really meant well and always thought he was doing his best for the country. >> if your mother has read your book has she reacted? >> she has read the book and when all this careful came up i thought i had better ask her

what she wants me to say about this so i called her up and said they are going to ask me. people have been ascribing sentiments to you and i don't want to do that. she said of of our read it and loved it and it made me cry, and i am very proud of you. [applause] >> i particularly love hearing the voice of reason in the last few years. [talking over each other] >> is anything brewing, any chance we could hear you nationally on radio? >> it is possible although there has been talk about doing another book which i think i would very much like to do. i like that process and the whole rhythm of it and instead

of the daily grind of a three our show. temperamentally i am not as well suited to radio as i would be to something like this. i am not a yeller. there's a lot of that going around. we got to tampa, florida. you might want to avoid that show. or at least ted. ted -- i will use some language that might offend someone. within one minute of getting me on the air, she had called me and have told, threatened to kick my ass and he hadn't bought my book and wasn't going to unless he needed something extra to wipe his ass with.

can i speak to jack? this was all he said to me the whole time. you are a small little pathetic man. it turned out -- he is just what you would expect i discovered later. >> that is why we need you. >> i appreciate that. >> i work for a democrat from illinois's fourth congressional district. you can imagine for a democrat it was -- we had a picture of your dad assigned to me. nothing he didn't like your dad but if we had to pay homage that was the proper form to do it but my question is when the republican party in votes your dad as they constantly do to emulate his success more than

that, his personality more than anything else but when they can vote your dad for specific policy positions or things -- you know him and think he wouldn't say that or do that, does it make you mad? do you dismiss? how do you react? >> it can be annoying at times. but it comes with the territory. i understand why they do it. who else do they have? they won't go to nixon or warren harding. they are pretty much stuck with ronald reagan which is not so bad. i do know that many of those people not only didn't know him but never met him and yet they are speaking for him. i am very reluctant to speak for my father on any specific political sense. i don't know what he would feel about today's issues. he left the scene a long time ago. presumably his thinking would

have evolve with the times. i don't get into he would want taxes to be lower or repeal the health care plan or anything like that. i don't know what he would feel. i feel confident that he would be very distressed by the little of vitriol we shear these days. he was a very civil man and a gentle man. a lot of stuff directed at the white house and the bursar nonsense and of that stuff, he would find that beneath the dignity of our country. there are a couple things, he would be distressed by the recent effort to stalled the start treaty because that was the big thing for him. jon kyl and those people trying to hold it up, he would probably pinch somebody's head off over that. he would find that awful. the only other issue i was tempted to put in the book but my editor goes into you cannot have any politics in here at all

because that will be the entire focus of any discussion you have with anybody and that would be the torture issue. he called torture abhorrence. that kind of cowardice and moral turpitude wasn't part of his character. he would be nauseated by that. that is my personal opinion. >> can you explain his political evolution? he was a roosevelt democrat and then -- >> in the thirteenth district is a republican his family were real out liars. they were in a republican county and they were reared in all sorts of ways. not disturbing but different. they were very theatrical people in a rather stoic, tight-lipped farm country. they loved to put on plays. they were flamboyant and sort of bohemian in a way.

he was reluctant to admit this one i was a child but a town where black people were not allowed to spend the night. were not welcome to spend the night in any hotel in dixon in the 1920s and 30s but that was the case for the ronald reagan home. i related a story where a football team, on their way back, they pulled into a hotel and there were two black players on the team. the hotel manager says we have room for your team except the two black players and the coach, a tough little scotsman said we will go to another hotel. no hotel in town, said the manager, will take those trees to black players. i said we will sleep on the bus. my father at this point intervened and said i tell you what to. so everybody doesn't have to

sleep in the bus was not put me in a cab with my two friends and we will go to my folks's house? what are you going to think if you show up with two black players, nothing. jack didn't care. jack didn't let the family see birth of a nation when it opened. des cannon house office building will let anybody in my family see that because it is about the klan against the blacks and i am not going to -- we are not going to that. they were different. >> was it his time at ge that changed him? [talking over each other] >> 54 for gold water? >> before that. he became a conservative by the 50s. >> he voted for ike? >> he did. he voted for truman first but voted for ike later. it was really the meetings he

had with some writers when he was president of the screen actors guild and one of the writers, it might have been dalton trumbo or somebody else, given the choice between the american constitution and the soviet constitution that he would choose the soviet. this so shocked my father that he thought we have a real menace here and i've will fight against this. i don't really get into that part of his career as i go back earlier but that is my new standing. yes? >> thank you so much. obviously you have inherited your father's gift for humor. and speechifying if that is a word. you may not know the answer to this but after the region -- recent tragedy in tucson i have heard conversations about had

there been a movement of some kind after the attempt on your father's life to do something to change -- [talking over each other] >> there was conversation that had your dad been a bit more involved in doing something to correct the gun laws or had the administration, had there been any talk to keep the necessity or the importance of that, not -- >> i grew up with guns. when i was 6 years old my father presented me with a 22 caliber rifle which i kept in my room with bullets. at age 6. he explained this is not a toy. you never play with this. friends come conover, don't play with this like it is a toy.

leave it up there. you have toy guns, play with them and never ever point a real gun at anybody. forget if it is loaded or not. whatever. you never point a gun at somebody. assume it is loaded. they were a tool for him. he didn't fetishized guns the way many people do know. all people talk about when they talk about the constitution is i get to carry my gun. guarantees me the right to carry my gun. my gun the digital my gun. if you had a penis you wouldn't need the gun so badly. that is what it comes down to. come on, get a grip. whatever. so i don't know exactly what might have happened. he was sympathetic to the second amendment and things like that. he didn't seem to fetishize it

away so many people do know. i hope that answers. >> your father grew up at a time when the force was an issue. the first divorced president. can you talk about his marriages and how the divorce affected things? >> one to jane wyman and my mother which lasted 54 years. the period of time in the late 40s, this was not covered in the book but in the late 40s when he was divorced and his film career post world war ii was beginning to go down. this was a rough time for him. and playing in a charity softball game shatters his femur and he is laid up on crutches and a cast and hanging out at his mother's house. he recovers in time to go to the

team with that hasty heart with patricia neal and richard todd and steals the movie from it. me while jane wyman is about to collect an academy award. he is feeling beat up like nothing is going right in 1949 or so. it was that period. i don't think he ever would have filed for divorce himself. however desperately unhappy he may have been in that marriage and i don't know how unhappy that was. he never would have asked for a divorce. she did. she was moving on with her career and saw him as a liability at that point. hollywood is like that. i don't want to be hanging out with somebody who is lower on the totem pole even if i have to be married to him and had children i don't want to do that. that is pretty much all i have.

anybody else? >> one or two. [inaudible] >> you are on now. >> your mother loves your dad year, she was portrayed always as being somewhat of a strong person. what influence did your mom have on your dad? she inspires decisions or your opinion on things. >> she was not a political person. pulling the strings behind the scenes and getting to sign this bill. she encouraged towards the soviet union and gorbachev. in the aids crisis when it with a pair of the administration was dragging its feet they weren't

doing this. we teamed up with them on fat. mostly she had a great antenna for what might conflict with them. she would make her feelings known more than politics or policy or anything like that. has gone reagan famously hung up on her twice, that was the end of gone. >> would this be private things discussed in family quarters? >> both. we talked about the aids crisis together but mostly it would people a talk. >> we will finish with the last question. >> so happy to be here and meet you finally.

i was very much against your father's presidency and not a fan at all. i was working in an army navy club at the time when he was president and in that time, slowly saw the park being turned basically into a homeless shelter. something with myself and others connected with his policies and there was one day that they cooked up ice-cream and i was on my lunch break and the only person on the street with no cars in a scarlet coat and the garage door slowly opened and the limo, the pope mobile size to and and your father and i were only four feet away and he turned on the street going the wrong way. he looked at me and i looked at him, such excitement and that wonderful charm. it was difficult not to like him.

[talking over each other] >> you couldn't spend five minute with a man not like him. many people tried to disagree with him, come to a meeting with him or a group. i won't like him. they would leave 15 minutes later. he is a great guy. still don't agree with him but he is a good guy. i felt the same way. we argued about the vietnam war and as i mentioned the environmental issues sometimes. but we would stay friends and sometimes wouldn't bother to argue with him. one story and go to a book signing. i am writing horses in camp david and a nineteenth century view of nature was love being out in nature and being outdoors but he thought that man had dominion over nature and it was a man's responsibility to manage the whole enterprise.

instead of riding on horseback going for 9 or two before. boundary these trees as we walked by, he turned to the saddle and said that maybe nature to some people but i think we can do better. what the hell. whatever. >> he was the package for they continue -- >> but again who else? >> we all admire your courage too. >> thank you all. [applause] >> this event was hosted by politics and prose bookstore in washington d.c..

visit politics-pros.com. >> the comanche and indians in cactus, just such a great story, won the we all grew up hearing. we read books about it. every book has an occasion. what was it for you to write this particular history of this particular time? >> good question. about 12 years ago i read a book by walter prescott webb called the great plains. inside this book it was really about taxes mostly. inside this book there was a chapter about the comanche and the premise that there was this enormous force in the middle of the continent that determine how everything happened. i am a yankee. wait a second. i might note a pequot or the odd eloquent but know comanches at

all. that is something from john wayne movies that this code for oh oh or we are in trouble now. that was what it was. what happened was that set off my interest. i did all the normal things you do if you are interested in comanches but it was really about a yankee's love affair with the state of texas. i traveled all over the state. when i was a writer in texas i traveled all over the state and heard comanches stories. we all looked forward to times when you go to amarillo or out there. it was true. [talking over each other] >> so it was a bit of understanding that what the planes were and what a plains indian was and to me -- a lot of