washington wanted to punish her. could have been really horrible. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. back to booktv live coverage from the annual roosevelt reading festival hosted by the franklin d. roosevelt presidential library and museum. coverage continues with weekly standard editor philip terzian and a presentation of his book "architects of power: roosevelt, eisenhower, and the american century". ..

>> the library's research room is consistently one of the busiest of all the presidential libraries, and this year's group of authors reflects the wide variety of research done here. we're delighted to highlight these authors' works at book talks throughout the year, and especially at this, our annual reading festival. let me quickly go over the format for the festivities in these sessions today. um, at the top of each hour a session begins with a 30-minute author talk followed by a ten-minute question and answer period. then the authors will move to the tables in the lobby located next to the new deal store where you can purchase books and have the authors sign them. at the top of the next hour, the process repeats itself. and now it's my pleasure to introduce philip terzian. philip terzian has been the literary editor of "the weekly standard" since 2005, and he will be speaking about his new

book, "architects of power: roosevelt, eisenhower and the american century." a political and cultural journalist for nearly 40 yearses and a pulitzer finalist in commentary, he has written and edited for the new republic, the los angeles times, the "wall street journal," the new criterion and the times literary supplement. during 1979-1980, he was a speech writer for secretary of state cyrus vance. he lives in northern virginia with his wife and two children. please join me in welcoming mr. terzian to the roosevelt reading festival. [applause] >> thank you, herman. and good morning, and i'm honored and delighted to be here. i -- at the roosevelt reading festival. i don't live around here, so i

don't get to visit the roosevelt library very often, but every time i do and every time i visit the house i'm always reminded of henry morgan thaw who was fdr's neighbor here in duchess county and probably knew him as much as anyone and said that roosevelt had a thickly-forested interior which meant that roosevelt was a very rather enigmatic, um, distant, almost secretive man in many ways. but i've always felt that when you visit the house, especially, and walk around and look at it, you get as close as you'll ever get to appreciating franklin roosevelt as a human being and where he came from and what he was and how he became what he did become. and i'm delighted to be here, too, at the roosevelt library which is the first of the great president -- we often forget that franklin roosevelt invented the whole concept of

presidential libraries. it was his idea to preserve his papers and memorabilia here on the grounds of his, of his old family estate in 1940. and, um, i'm a great fan of presidential libraries around the country and have made it my lifelong task to visit each one. and so i'm patiently awaiting the george w. bush one in dallas which is supposed to open sometime in the next year or two. i'm angling for an -- a friend of mine is an official down there, so i keep hinting at there must be some panel discussion or something that i can come down to see it. [laughter] um, i have a sort of, if you'll excuse a digression for a minute, i have a sort of crackpot theory about presidential libraries and museums which is tangentially connected to my book, and that is that i think that they

reflect in some ways what i call the civic protestantism of america. and by that i mean we don't as a culture, we don't revere religious relics so much anymore. we don't, we don't bow before the fragment of the true cross and that sort of thing. but because america is a nation founded on an idea, we've sort of substituted that human instinct and transferred it to our political founders. so you go to the archives in washington where i live, and there's the declaration of independence and the constitution, and they're housed in the these brass and glass helium-filled rell squares which are completely reminiscent of the sort of medieval ones that you see where one of christ's thorns or one of the fragments of the true cross is located. and you go to presidential

establishments -- mount vernon, monticello, recently montpelier, james madison's home in virginia has become a sort of museum and center -- and here they're wonderful institutions because they have brought together every conceivable object, paper. i know, i've been writing a little bit about the madison house, and they have surveyed all the general region, they've found furniture that madison had owned and touched, articles of clothing, toothpicks, spectacles, everything you can think of. [laughter] and they're all lovingly collected and under glass which i think is wonderful. but if you look at it from a sightly skew as i do, it's kind of interesting, too, the way we retrieve these things. and i think it also, it also belies the idea that americans are not interested in our history. i think we're deeply interested in our history.

not every american is as interested in others, but i think our presidential libraries and museums definitely, definitely reflect a national interest in our, in our past. um, now, if you'll forgive a die depression, the reason i mentioned all that is that in this, in my little monograph i address myself to two, two themes. one is i wanted to make some biographical observations about these two individuals who are usually not united historically. we don't think of fdr and eisenhower together. but my thesis is that they did come together at a very strategic moment in american history, and, um, it's to our long-term benefit that they did. um, but secondly, i'm very interested in historical memory, how we look at the past, how our

views of the past change and evolve. the speaker just before me, professor moy, has written this wonderful book about the tuskegee airmen, and he quoted a 1925 army air corps study of african-americans in the military. and it's full of these terrible condescending, one might say racist views of black people which we are, which we, of course, recoil from, obviously, from today. but we always have the sense in history that right now we've come to a consensus and that our attitudes at this moment are the correct ones and that all the wisdom of, you know, the past was complicated and people had kind of strange ideas about things. but now we've got all the research in the, and everything -- we've come to our senses. and so now the current thinking

among historians is the right thinking. um, and i was struck by that, um, a dozen years ago when i covered the dedication of the franklin roosevelt, um, memorial in washington. i don't know how many of you have visited it. it's on the mall near the world war ii memorial. um, which is another wonderful story that i sort of tangentially covered over the years. um, the roosevelt memorial, actually, was, um, it was dedicated in 1997 which was, um, what, 52 years after fdr had died. and there was this -- and they had been contemplating a memorial to fdr almost from the time he did die. um, and there was this general sense that they could never come to a conclusion, that there would be a, there would be a design submitted and congress

would approve, and then there'd be some obstacle, the archives -- i mean, this just went on and on for decades. when are we ever going to get a memorial to franklin roosevelt? and it was finally dedicated in 1997, a half century after he died. and my reaction to that was, well, it was actually more or less on schedule because not too far from the, from the roosevelt memorial is the lincoln memorial which you all know, and that was dedicated in 1922 which was even longer after lincoln's death than the fdr memorial was dedicated after his death. so these things always have a kind of gestation period. and also things are not, things are not always as they seem. we now regard the lincoln memorial as a national treasure, and whenever we want to have any kind of unifying event in washington, people are always careful to stage it in front of the lincoln memorial with abraham lincoln sort of benignly looking down on them and the

reflecting pool in the front. well, i grew up in the washington, d.c., and i'm now old enough to remember when i was a little boy there were still elderly women in washington, friends of my mother's, who still were not really very happy that the mall had been gummed up with a memorial to abraham lincoln. so we don't always, we don't always arrive at these consensuses instantly. but what interested me about the roosevelt memorial is that as with many monuments to historical figures, it really tells us almost as much about the times in which the memorial was made as about the subject of the memorial. and i think that's particularly true in fdr's case. my own opinion is that i don't know that -- i mean, i'm, as a great admirer of franklin roosevelt, i'm delighted that there is a memorial to him, and better the one there is than

none, but i'm not a huge fan of the fdr memorial, and i don't know that it's really a memorial that he would particularly like. we have a, we have a notion of what he considered a good presidential memorial because fdr was the, was the, really, the energy behind the building of the jefferson memorial in washington. it's a kind of funny side light on franklin roosevelt personally. he as a good democrat, of course, always paid o bee sense to thomas jefferson, and i always thought fdr slightly overdid it a bit because all of his forebearers -- isaac roosevelt, old james roosevelt -- were all hamiltonians to the core. the roosevelts, in the time of jefferson, none of the roosevelts thought very much of jefferson. so fdr kind of overdid this.

and, once again, i think there should be a monument to thomas jefferson in washington, but that nice neoclass call structure that you see along the tidallal basin, and i've always thought was fdr's taste, the memorial, i think, is very much a 1990s view of franklin roosevelt. and, um, i say this partly out of, from design conviction. and i don't think the structure is what he would have particularly liked. but, also, it's franklin roosevelt that we now think about historically, and that is the franklin roosevelt of the new deal. the fdr memorial in washington heavily concentrates on the depression, it concentrates on his domestic policies, on his conservation, his stewardship of, of national parks and so on, all of which is true.

but to the total exclusion of certain other aspects of him. you would never know that the great conservationist was also one of the great dam builders of the 20th century which is somewhat anathema in our time, but fdr thought that was a very logical thing to do, to generate energy and to put people to work. also you would never know that this was a monument to the man who prosecuted the greatest war in american history and very vigorously prosecuted it. and i don't think reluctantly prosecuted it. so one of the -- and i think that's, i mean, obviously, any student of roosevelt will know that, but when you go to the roosevelt memorial in washington, you're only seeing the -- you're, essentially, seeing the 1997 sort of congressionally-approved view of franklin roosevelt. and this happens with historical figures all the time. i mean, in the journalism particularly we always when we

refer to fdr, it's always the fdr of the new deal. and similarly, my other subject -- the somewhat unlikely partner of fdr, dwight d. eisenhower -- the only time he ever gets quoted nowadays in the press is that one sentence in his farewell address where he warns against the power of the military industrial complex which he believed and which is true and which is valid. but it's just a speck in the great ocean of what eisenhower really represented and is a little bit, i think, misleading. and similarly, with fdr i think that while he is the, obviously in be my view, the dominant president, the greatest president of the 20th century and, obviously, the man who invented really our modern politics in many ways, he was also a global theorist. he was also a man ambitious for

american power in the world. um, and, um, as with all such things you often wonder where did this come from? why did roosevelt think this way? what, what made him a kind of liberal imperialist, to use a scholarly term, as he was? why did he actively pursue a kind of american, what i call an american empire without colonies which is to say american power around the globe, um, but without necessarily acquiring real estate the way the europeans tended to do? and i think the answer comes from biography. franklin roosevelt was born in 1882, the united states in the immediate post-civil war, i mean, the united states has never been a deliberately imperial nation. we never have set out to create

a map of the world that's colored red, white and blue in various places like the british, the spanish or others did. but we have a kind of, we've kind of become imperial is a bad word these days, but i can't think of an alternative. we have become a global power to some degree through inadvertence, but also -- and when i say inadvertence, partly because of the vacuums of power we have filled especially after world war ii, but also deliberately. in the period after the civil war when franklin roosevelt was born, the united states became very much an economic superpower, competitive with the british. we didn't have the strategic power that the british empire did at that age, but we certainly had comparable economic power. um, and another point is that we often tend to forget that because the oyster bay

roosevelt, that is to say the theodore roosevelt branch of the family was somewhat hostile to the hyde park/franklin roosevelt branch of the roosevelt family, we forget that, n., they -- i mean, alice longworth used to make fun of eleanor roosevelt and this, that and the other, but they were closer than we think. and, in fact, not only did franklin roosevelt marry theodore roosevelt's favorite niece, but he also regarded theodore roosevelt, as he said, as the greatest man he ever knew. and i think theodore roosevelt's influence on his distant cousin, franklin, was a reality in his life up until his death even though we tend to ignore it. remember, too, that theodore roosevelt became prominent at strategic moments in fdr's life. franklin roosevelt was a schoolboy when theodore

roosevelt became mckinley's assistant secretary of the navy. he was at school when theodore roosevelt charged up san juan hill. he had just become, just entered his sophomore year at harvard when theodore roosevelt became president. so roosevelt's vision of an american sentry, of a globally-assertive united states was something that was bred into franklin roosevelt really in his youth. and i don't think ever left him. and all through his public career you hear kind of theodore rooseveltian rhetoric. i was just reading and listening the other day to his third inaugural speech where he talks about, um, in lincoln's day the great challenge facing the presidency was danger from within.

now we are dealing with danger from without, namely fascist nazi germany and fascist italy. but ea also ends -- but he also ends about the mission of the united states is not only to be vigilant about this, but also to defend and promote democracy around the world. um, so it's a consistent theme in his, in his public life that is, um, i think, striking and striking to some degree because it's not, it's not really recognized as such. there's this, i think the historical consensus about fdr is still, as about any historical figure, it's still in flux. but that, um, he was fundamentally a domestic politician who dealt with the

depression in the first two terms of his presidency and then as the war in europe came, he suddenly had to pay attention to world affairs and became what he did. and i think that's not quite true. i think roosevelt was thinking globally from the very beginning. um, certainly if you go back to his tenure as assistant secretary of the navy under woodrow wilson, um, he was a constant promoter of -- which is an interesting innocent incidens life because the president, wilson, was a kind of diffident person as far as foreign relations were concerned. he felt that the united states should refrain from interfering in foreign affairs. he department think that we thought that -- he didn't think that we thought that we should be very restrained in our use of american power. roosevelt -- wilson's secretary of state, william jennings

bryan, was a pacifist who really was a pose today the exercise of american power, resigned because he thought the wilson administration was getting too belligerent by 1915. fdr's immediate boss was a will sewn yang and a disciple of bryan's who looked upon the uniform navy with kind of bemused suspicion. he was always reluctant to use the navy in any way. and, of course; this was all anathema to franklin roosevelt who spent his entire eight years as assistant secretary very, in that wonderful way of his, very charmingly but effectively undermining his boss on a day-to-day basis. the extent to which franklin roosevelt was insubordinate in the wilson navy department toward his boss, i mean, when daniels would leave town, franklin would have fun and do

all sorts of things which daniels would have to undo when he returned. and yet the amazing thing is that daniels retained his affection for fdr. he loved franklin roosevelt. he actually survived franklin roosevelt. i think he, i think he thought of franklin roosevelt as his kind of like a naughty nephew that he indulged. but it's a kind of interesting thing. and, of course, in the 1920 roosevelt was the vice presidential nominee. on the democratic ticket, he was a strong supporter of wilson's, of course, by then wilson had become an internationalist as we now think of him, promoting democracy abroad, the 14-point program for the reinvention of europe as a kind of american-style democratic community. um, fdr was a strong supporter of that after the war, after, i mean, after the election which the democrats lost.

america lapsed into a kind of isolationism, but franklin roosevelt was very active in the founding of the council on foreign relations in new york which was a gathering of kind of -- actually, it was a kind of republican organization. it was very much dominated by henry stimson and william howard taft and some of the other republican elder statesmen. probably would have had theodore roosevelt in it if he hadn't been president. but fdr was part of that. and i've always thought it was interesting, and, actually, there's some fdr -- fdr did some writing in the 1920s both for small newspapers and for magazines, and almost invariably -- not almost invariably, but frequently on foreign topics. and a strong proponent of america in the wilsonian sense as a beacon of democratic enlightenment.

we have this power, we have this great example of our people and our system, and we should be promoting this to the extent that we can around the world, that we're challenged by alien ideologies in russia and in germany and italy and elsewhere and that america is a beacon of hope. there's an interesting incident in 1932 right after, um, the election. you may know the story. fdr is president -- of course, in those days there was a four or five-month gap between the election and inauguration which was in march, not january. and fdr famously paid a courtesy call on president hoover, and somewhat to his surprise and annoyance, hoover had with him another duchess county neighbor of fdr's, ogden mills, who was the secretary of the treasury in the hoover administration. and the reason hoover had mills there was that hoover had wanted

some sort of bipartisan confidence-enhancing measures during this ambiguous transition period. and he wanted to get roosevelt onboard. of course, nowadays we would think of this as wonderful bipartisan cooperation, isn't it nice, republicans and democrats getting along and uniting for the good of the country. well, fdr was deeply annoyed by this. he didn't want to get anywhere near uniting with the hoover administration on anything, um, and declined to issue the statement that hoover wanted him to. nevertheless, the one person that roosevelt did meet with during the transition from the hoover administration was henry stimson who was hoover's secretary of state. who was another new yorker, henry stimson lived on the north shore of long island, but he, like fdr, came from an old new

york family, so they probably had a lot of concentric circles in the roosevelt/stimson orbit. but roosevelt actually asked stimson who was secretary of state to come here to his house in hyde park where they had a long meeting, with they discussed -- where they discussed, of course, by that time the japanese were on the march in manchuria, and also there was a pending meeting on, um, the world economic conference in london which stimson would have, would have attended if hoover had been reelected. but roosevelt wanted his views on things. so the one aspect of bipartisanship and cooperation and all that during transition as we now call it that fdr welcomed was on, in foreign affakr&9ñ um, i make the point in my book that one of the most important

points of the roosevelt presidency, um, came a few years later, um, when he, in 1937 when he gave is so-called quarantine speech in chicago which, i think, a very important event, i think, in the roosevelt presidency. but it's also a very important event in american history because it kind of lays the groundwork for american foreign policy really ever since. and it's interesting because by 1937, of course, hitler had come to power five, six weeks before franklin roosevelt was inaugurated as president. mussolini had been in power in italy for a decade. the japanese, by then, the rather fascist japanese were on the march in asia. the world was getting dangerous. by 1937, of course, hitler had

remilitarized the rhine land, mussolini had invaded ethiopia. it was clear that the fascist parties in europe were, were aggressive and ambitious and college rent. belligerent. but roosevelt, of course, was stymied by several factors, one of which being public opinion. um, most americans in 1937 felt that we had been sold a pig in a poke in world war i, that we had fought and hadn't really -- we'd lost 100-plus-thousand troops, but we hadn't really gained much of anything. europe had gone back to being its usual argue meantive stuff. here they were again, the germans and the french and the poles and the british all at each other's throats. who knows how it will turn out. you know, this is nothing to do with us and, you know, if we get involved, it will have the same unhappy end although x number of americans will die in the

process. so isolationism was a widespread and bipartisan viewpoint. we often forget that some of roosevelt's most vigorous isolationist opponents in congress -- it wasn't all partisan. a lot of them were new dealç democrats. one of the most prominent isolationists were senator burton wheeler of montana who was otherwise one of fdr's closer supporters on -- and most southern democrats tended to be less interventionist and so on. so it wasn't, it was hardly a republican even though the republican party at that time was predominantly isolationist, it was a bipartisan sentiment and reflected in the neutrality acts which were a consequence of legislation in the mid 1930s that came out of, utterly, democratic-dominated senate

which reflected that, that point of view, but also was once again reflected, i think, the predominant views of most americans on the subject, um, effectively tied fdr's hands from, in any sense, intervening and showing favortism in helping people that we liked in the hostile act against people of whom we disapproved. by 1937 i think franklin roosevelt was one of the few political leaders in the democratic world, small d democratic world, global democratic world who perceived the genuine threat that came from the fascists in europe. and in 1937 he went to chicago to the dedication of a bridge. and as with many presidential

speeches, the occasion was neither here nor there, but the location, i think, was significant. chicago was, of course, chicago is more or less the capital of the midwestern united states. the midwest is the, at that time, was the citadel of isolationism in the united states, and chicago was the home of roosevelt's old classmate, colonel robert mccormack, who was the publisher of "the chicago tribune" and by far america's most prominent and vociferous isolationist. so he came to chicago, he came into the lion's den to say, in effect, that america, that to lay out what he felt -- and this was all done in kind of slightly ambiguous language, but clearly he's saying that we face a threat from the rising tide of authoritarianism in europe and that the united states, uniquely

situated as we are, uniquely conceived as we have been as the great democratic republic, we must be the great arsenal of democracy. that's where that phrase, that term comes from. and that we of all nations must prepare ourselves for the coming challenge, um, and this will not only be a political challenge, but a literal military challenge that we must, we may, we may have to do this, we may have to do that, we may have to fight. so, um, i think that that is kind of -- that has kind of been, i mean, if you look at the incremental development of american foreign policy since, since the war -- the truman doctrine and so on -- that is kind of the overall design of american foreign policy. we don't, we don't want to, you know, we don't want new zealand as a colony or anything like that, but wherever democracy is under threat in our, in the

world america stands there and says, not so fast. i mean, i think, certainly, president kennedy's inaugural speech in 1961 is very much an expression of the, of the rooseveltian quarantine speech thesis. so i, my, my mission in my little study was not, you know, in history we always are going over the same facts and interpreting them in light of either current wisdom of current thinking or how thinking evolves on things, but my, my intention was to try to look at franklin roosevelt in a slightly different way, as a global thinker and not just because global responsibility was thrust upon him as it was in world war ii, but because this was

something he had devoted really much of his life to and thought through very profoundly and had very strong and deeply-committed feelings about. now, where does eisenhower come into this? since we're at the roosevelt library, i've -- i'll just mention parenthetically, i want today concentrate on fdr. and, in fact, my book is, to some degree, almost a little bit more about eisenhower because eisenhower, the historical consensus on eisenhower is, i think, in much more flux than as about fdr. you have to make the case a little bit more for eisenhower. but once again with eisenhower youok have someone who in the,n the what i call the journalistic memory is, was this general who was elected to two terms as president. then just as he was leaving the white house, he had this epiphany that, oh, my goodness, the military industrial complex is very dangerous, so i should

mention that and warn before i ride off into the sunset. and i think that's a terrible simplification of eisenhower's thinking. um, not only because, um, it's misleading, but eisenhower, too, had, um, had spent his whole life pondering these questions as roosevelt did. but in the guise of an officer in the army. um, harry truman famously said ike's going to be miserable as president, he's used to being in the army where they, you know, do this, do that, and he expects everyone to jump. that was really not true. truman was one of the most -- eisenhower was one of the most politically experienced people to enter the presidency. he had, he had been, worked for the chief of staff in the 1920s, he'd been in paris in the 1920s working for general pershing at the battle monument's commission, he was the war office -- war department, rather, in the early

1930s. he spent the late 1930s as macarthur's deputy in the philippines, building up the philippine army as, prior to independence. general marshall brought him back prior to pearl harbor because he had recognized in eisenhower a gifted junior officer. he brought him into the war plans division. he actually tasked eisenhower who was barely at that point a brigadier general with the plans for the defense of the philippines. he did the same thing with, when it was decided after pearl harbor to, um, mount an invasion of north africa from the west. the british were pushing rommel from the east, and we were going to land in morocco, and marshall tasked eisenhower with the, with the design of those plans. so eisenhower came to the presidency not only a great diplomat-general, but someone with, who knew a lot about the

way washington worked and who'd been dealing with global issues for a dozen years by then. he not only was the great diplomat-general of world war ii, he had held together the grand coalition of the second world war, the allied coalition. after the war he was the army chief of staff, he presided over the desegregation of the army that professor moy talked about a few minute ago. he, and he took leave of absence as president of columbia university to be the first military commander of nato in paris because at the time it was recognized if there was one american we can send to europe who personifies the american commitment to nato, to the freedom of western europe, to america's continued responsibility in the world, it would be dwight d. eisenhower.

and last but not least, eisenhower was over in, um -- the story of eisenhower's nomination is often forgotten. in 1948, for example, james roosevelt, franklin's son, had been one of many prominent democrats who tried to get general eisenhower to run for the presidency as a democrat. and eisenhower declined largely on the basis that he didn't think, he was a professional soldier, and he didn't think that it was appropriate for him to be involve inside politics. but by 1952 things had changed, and his great fear at that time was that the republican party, the likely nominee, was senator taft of ohio who was the most prominent isolationist in, in the republican party and, really, this country. and eisenhower felt that the only way that this republican party could be saved from isolationism and that the

post-war consensus that had grown between the two parties about america's role in the world would be, frankly, for him to run for president partly to, to prevent taft from being the nominee and probably becoming president. so that was really eisenhower's instinct. i won't bore you with details of the eisenhower presidency, but what intrigues me about roosevelt and eisenhower, too, is that you have these two vivid figures in american history who are utterly dissimilar personally. if you have the, if you have the pleasure of visiting the eisenhower library in homestead and abilene, kansas, and compare it to the roosevelt homestead here in hyde park, you'll see the social difference between the two. they're two exceedingly dissimilar places, not to mention western kansas being very different from the hudson valley. but nonetheless, you have these two very dissimilar individuals

who, nevertheless, thought alike on what, in my view, the most critical challenges facing the country at the most critical time in our modern history which was at the end of world war ii when europe was prostrate and exhausted, and the united states with its vast economic and by then military power found itself presented with the responsibility of superpowerdom. not something that the united states particularly wanted. i don't think americans are an imperial-minded people. but nevertheless, that what fdr talked about in the quarantine speech, that defense of democracy that to be the great arsenal, the both political and military arsenal of democracy was, came to the united states at that time. and you had these two, probably the two most famous americans of the time, dissimilar as they were -- one republican, one

democrat, one a kansas farm boy, one a new york aristocrat -- nevertheless, thought exactly the same on that critical issue. and their, their mutual interests coincided. fdr, after all, did deliberately choose eisenhower. he had wanted, initially, general marshall to be the supreme commander of the allied invasion of france but chose eisenhower knowing, i think, to some degree this was going to make eisenhower, if he succeeded, a historic figure and, perhaps, a political figure. but i think it's a kind of a nice story about america that these two very different people, um, did have, did have common views on a critical issue and that we were fortunate as a country to have the service of the two of them simultaneously. and that the world that they inherited and dealt with is the world that we know today.

so -- [applause] >> [inaudible] if you have a question, please, come up to the microphone. >> thank you, mr. terzian, for that wonderful lecture. um, i'm a huge fan of "the weekly standard" and have been for many year. one of the things i most appreciate about it is that the articles there frequently portray franklin d. roosevelt in an appreciative and admiring light. it's one of the few conservative periodicals that does this. i recently defended finishing dr to a -- fdr to a professor, and my question to you is if by some

miracle roosevelt had lived to finish his fourth term, what do you think his take on stalin would have been? what would their relationship have been like? >> well, let me just make a comment on your earlier. the weekly standard likes fdr. and we like the sort of roosevelt/truman/kennedy approach to foreign policy in the democratic party. when i took my present job, um, i was putting my various things in my office. and one of them, they have a few over here in the library, i have a clock which has -- it's franklin roosevelt, it's this little statue of fdr, and he's standing sort of holding the clock as if it's a, um, a ship's wheel. and it says at the wheel of the new deal. and i put it on this table behind my desk, and i remember

our editor, bill kristol, come anything and looking at that and saying it's truly a neoconservative office. we have a shrine to fdr here. [laughter] i think, you know, who knows? i mean, it's always difficult to tell what historic figures would think about anything after their death. i mean, democrats are always lecturing republicans confidently about what lincoln would think about things, you know, he'd be horrified by the republican party today. um, some -- [laughter] somebody asked, somebody asked me the other day on a panel what would, what would people like franklin roosevelt think of annie wiener. [laughter] -- anthony weiner. and i said, first of all, the first 20 minutes of my answer would be explaining to him about computers and the internet and twitter which many people alive today don't fully comprehend. so, i mean, it's an unanswerable question. however, to answer your question

i think roosevelt gets an unfair rap about that. i think that, i mean, 25 words or less, i think at yalta he was, he and churchill were presented with a fait accompli. i mean, the red army was in west, was in germany and poland and czechoslovakia. it was not their fault. it was hitler's fault that they were there. i don't think, you know, the soviet union at that time was our ally. i don't think there was any -- i think they did what they could, but thanks to the germans the russians were where they were. and i think short of suddenly making war on our ally who had just defeated the germans, it makes no sense to me. and certainly, i mean, roosevelt famously thought that his charm could, perhaps, manipulate stalin to some degree. i think he underestimated the

degree to which stalin was psychopathic about things and impervious to the sort of charm that roosevelt could exert. um, but there's a lot of evidence if you look at roosevelt's correspondence, certainly, toward the end of the war that he was under no illusions about either stalin or soviet intentionings at the end of the war -- intentions at the end of the war. now, where that would have led, i mean, i tend to think the truman administration was the roosevelt administration as it would have proceeded. it certainly was many of the same people. um, so to answer your question, i think that roosevelt was, um, his thinking evolved a little bit in dealing with the soviet union. but i think on the whole he had no illusions about, about what the soviet, the nature of the soviet union, certainly stalin. >> thank you. >> sure.

>> this is a country of immigrants. roosevelt family came early. they were in trade, china trade, international. it's a mindset, it's right down to the roots of who he was. he was an international -- >> right. well, that was developed, that was the delano family. actually, it was in the china trade, but you're right, of course. >> when, when roosevelt hosted, hosted, um, winston churchill, his family said my family were, you know, among the first families here. churchill said, and my family greeted them because churchill -- [laughter] was from his american roots, an american india. >> right. >> these people were international, global figures in their roots. i think we have to remember that. now, if you're from kansas, you're in the middle of the country. eisenhower's in the middle of the country. if you're at all enterprising, you reach out.

eisenhower was an international figure. my father happened to know him as a cadet at west point, as commandant general of west point and as president. my father was an international-type person. that's a lower social order, but he knew these people. >> well -- >> you know, they're international people. we're immigrants. we're world people. >> no, that's an excellent point, and i would make one other point about eisenhower which is often ignored. he was, he was from kansas, but he was a german-american. and he was, he was very conscious of the fact that he was a german-american. and one of his, one of the reasons eisenhower was especially aggrieved at the end of world war ii when he saw what the germans had done when he visited, um, bellson and some of the other concentration camps, he felt a personal shame as a german-american. and he famously said at bellson, and it's an interesting

sentiments with modern resonance that he said he was viewing the atrocities and the carnage and the piles of bodies and what not, and he said that he wanted to make sure that this was publicized as much as possible because all through this war people have complained that they don't understand what we're fighting for. if they see this, they will at least comprehend what we're fighting against. so, um, eisenhower's germanness -- by the way, i drove up here, i have a smart car, so i took the sort of back route through pennsylvania, and i wanted to avoid 95 if possible. and went through gettysburg which is, which is, of course, where the great german wave of immigration moved west from philadelphia and down into virginia, and that's where eisenhower's forebearers were from. people often wondered why he

settled in gettysburg after world war ii, and it was actually an ancestral area for him. so -- >> unfortunately, we've run out of time. mr. terzian will be signing copies of his book right after the session. i invite you to go over there if you want to have a book signed and thank him again for -- >> thank you. thank you very much. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> philip terzian from the franklin d. roosevelt presidential library and museum. booktv will be back to hyde park, new york, for more from the 2011 roosevelt reading festival in about an hour. to get a look at our schedule of coverage from today's festival, visit the booktv web site. it's booktv.org. >> and here at bookexpo america,

the publishers' annual convention in new york city. regnery publishing inc. is here as well, and with booktv to preview some of their fall 2011 book titles. we are joined by the publisher of regnery, marji ross. marji ross, i want to start with a book that you don't have out yet because you just signed a deal today. what is that teal? >> you are right. thank you, peter. well, the big news for regnery today at bea is that we just signed a big book with donald trump, and we're going to be doing a political book with him this fall. and we're really interested in doing this book because we feel that he touched a nerve with our marketplace and with a lot of people out there in america who said, gosh, he's saying a lot of things that i agree with. i kind of agree with what he has to say about oil and china and trade and taxes and the economy, and isn't it refreshing to have

someone who's able to say these things and -- >> are you speaking of me? moi? ben franklin? >> that's ben franklin. >> everyone shows up at the bookstore. >> so we're very excited about the book, it's about how to put america back on top, how to make america rich again. frankly, there's no one better than donald trump to talk about how to be competitive, how to get what you want out of any deal and any negotiation. whether that's a real estate deal or, frankly, whether you're a country negotiating with another country. >> marji ross, it's may 2011, and you're saying this book is coming out in fall 2011. >> yes, that's right. we are probably the experts, for better or worse, at crashing books. because we do so many current events books, so many news-driven books, we do something that most of the rest of the industry doesn't do, and that is we put books on a very fast track. we know that when we capture the imagination of the audience, we want to get that book out as

fast as possible. so we are putting this on the fast track, and we will have it, um, out there before christmas, and we're very excited about that. >> well, you've got a couple other books we want to talk about, and let's start with newt gingrich's most recent book. >> all right. we're very excited, also, to be having our next book with newt gingrich. we've done several books with newt over the past six years. they've all been big bestsellers, and, of course; he's a real leading figure in the conservative marketplace on the republican stage and, in fact, has driven in a lot of ways the discussion about the important topics that are going to be coming up in this election cycle. but this book is a little bit different, actually, from the books we've done with him before because previously his books were very policy-heavy, and they talked about a lot of solutions for problems that we face. and what he's doing with this book which is called "a nation like no other" is taking a more historical viewpoint which, of

course, newt is perfectly poised to do because he is a historian, and talking about what makes this country exceptional. what makes this country great, and how are we many danger of -- how are we in danger of losing that? in polls across the country when you ask americans do you believe in american exceptionalism, they all say, oh, yes, we do. when you follow up and say what does that mean, most of them don't know or they can't answer it. and his argument is that's given the liberal media and elite an opportunity to denigrate it and to say, oh, american exceptionalism, that's just, you know, jingleistic, it's bragging about how wonderful we are, and we're no better than anyone else. newt gingrich makes the argument it's not about us being better or more, more, um, talented or smarter, it's actually about being luckier than everyone else for having the good fortune to be born in a country that really

is based on freedom of expression, freedom of speech, the freedom to work hard, reap the results of that and, um, live your life with great individual liberty. >> marji ross, for the first time in six years, mark stein has a new book coming out. >> he does, indeed, and we've waited a long time for this book. mark stein, one of the best writers writers and the most insightful writers on the scene, the political scene, wrote a book for us six years ago called "america alone." it was an instant bestseller. it was a wonderful, wonderful book, and we've now been waiting another six years to have the follow up. we've got it now, we're excited. it comes out in august, and it's called "after america." his previous argument that america was alone in sticking to the principles that made western civilization great. and, unfortunately, the follow on is not so sure that america's on the right path anymore.

and if we abandon those things which made us great, we are very much in jeopardy of losing it all. >> now, mr. stein is -- i use the word "rechoose," and maybe i'm wrong about that. >> no, i use that word too. >> okay. will he be going on tour? >> he will. and it's interesting, he's one of those rare authors who has said to us before, you know, why would i be on tv if i don't have a book to promote? which is wonderful to hear as a publisher. but he's very excited about promoting the book, and he's a terrific book person. he's just witty and funny and incisive, and, you know, because what he's saying is so frightening and devastating, you need to palatable. and he has that perfect combination of all those things. >> marji ross is the publisher of regnery. regnery is well known as a conservative political imprint, but they have a new project coming up, and it's called

regnery history. what is this about? is. >> we do. thank you very much for asking about that because we are very excited about launching a new line of books on history. military history and american history in the particular. um, we've published history books in the past, and they've done quite well. we've done the occasional history book. but we realize that, a, this is a category that our market is very interested in and likes a lot and, b, that, um, we were publishing our history books on the same sort of crash, breakneck schedule that we were publishing our current events books on, and that budget really serving them well. they were almost successful despite our best efforts. so this time around we said, you know, we're going to dedicate a team, and we're going to put these books on the kind of timeline that really makes sense so that we can give them all the support, the media will be able to let them have galleys and get them in the hands of reviewers long in advance and, frankly, already it's proving successful because our first book out which

is called "omar bradley," which is a biography, of course, of the great world war ii general, that book has been picked up by both the military book club and the history book club. so when we give ourselves enough time, we see that these books really will thrive. and we're excited about that. um, and a couple other books that we have coming as well. >> what's one of the history imprint books that is coming out in the future? >> another book that, we think, is going to do very well is a very interesting book called "bully," and it's, not surprisingly, about teddy roosevelt. one of the unique things about it is that it includes 200-plus original, vintage political cartoons. and so we feel there are a lot of people out there, of course, who are big t.r. fans, and there have been a lot of wonderful books about roosevelt, teddy roosevelt. but this book is unique, and these cartoons are unique because most of them have never been seen since they were