the perimeter to limit contact with americans but sometimes events intervene and one thing i learned was he had a criminal record in the united states. he liked to drive that high-speed with an expired driver's license and he would roar through the streets in greensboro and other parts of north carolina that he saw too much of the dukes of hazzard. ..

>> he dodges the sheriff, avoids the law, but i talked to a christian women's attorney, and he remembers ksm bursting into his office with a translator with a posse of arab students to lecture about the iran-iraq war and why america is wrong about israel. israel is a very important point in his radicalization, more so than i would have thought. >> you can watch this and other programs op line at booktv.org . >> next, roger di silvestro describes thee dore roosevelt's experiences as a rancher in the badlands of the dakota territory before becoming president. his time on the ranch shaped his thinking on the american west and wildlife conservation. this is about an hour.

>> our author today has previously confessed he was acquainted with our 26th president through the classics illustrated publication called "thee dore roosevelt, the rough rider." in his early moments in his youth, he was influenced by the character and philosophy of that hearty individual. like thee dore roosevelt, roger di silvestro is both a natural list and a writer. also, there's exists another common dmon nateer between them. roosevelt understood the american west of having worked and lived it. also roger di silvestro's knowledge of all america is a product of a career that has taken him all over the country, living in the bronx, in san fransisco, and many places in

between. if it can be said that the later workings of theodore roosevelt can only be understood by understanding his time out west and his hiatus from politics, then it can also be said one might well understand this critical and understudied period of roosevelt's life through the lens of mr. roger di silvestro. here to discuss his work, theodore roosevelt and the badlands, a young politician's recovery in the american west is roger di silvestro. thank you. >> thank you, sir. [applause] well, thank you for that wonderful introduction. made me even somewhat interested in my own life. thank you, too, for showing up on such a hot and humid day. it's really tropical out there, and i'm doubly happy you weathered that and came out today. my book about theodore roosevelt

tells a story about tragedy and recovery and we don't usually associate tragedy with roosevelt, especially as president, but i'm not writing about the iconic roosevelt who made it to mt. rushmore, but a younger man who went west to run a cattle ranch in the badlands of the dakota territory, what is now north dakota close to montana. he just didn't go west as one urged as a young man. he was compelled to go west. events forced him in that direction, and we will get to that, but before we head off into the badlands, i want to give you a brief background on the roosevelt. the aficionados are probably familiar with this, but points 20 -- to touch on. he was a city kid in new york city, member of a social elite,

the nickerbockers who traced ancestors back to the does back in the 1560s. it was an old new york family. his grandfather was one of the five richest man in manhattan. they made money on glass, producing a lot of window glass that new york city needed as it grew. they were also into banking and a lot of wise invest. s in new york real estate. young roosevelt was an avid outdoorsman and hunter. he was sickly as a child. he suffered from as ma and from the stomach ailment related to stress. it was something that left him sickened for days at a time, and this would pop up, you know, as i said during times of stress, but even during happy times. if he had too good a time, he

got sick to his stomach and went to bed sometimes for days. in his autobiography which i quote in my book, he wrote, i was a sickly delicate boy suffering from asthma and taken away on trips to find a place to breathe. one of my memories is my father walking up and down the room with me at night when i was a small person and i was gasping with my father and mother trying to help me. i'm sure all the years of sickness as a child shaped his attitudes later in life. when he was 12, he started a strenuous physical fitness regimen to build up his chest and help with breathing and asthma, and it didn't relieve him of asthma, but he did become much sturdier and heartier so that in his teens, he won a boxing championship at the gym where he worked out and took -- when he went to harvard, took

hunting trips to main and hiked around in deep snows and up mountain sides and so on and was very rugged, but he was still not a robust person. about five feet eight waying 140 pounds. in his senior year at harvard, a doctor said he had a weak heart and should avoid strenuous activity. roosevelt pledged to do the exact opposite of that. okay. back to mid-september 1883, he's in the badlands riding on horseback oftentimes in pours rain hunting for buffalo or american bison if you prefer that term. they were nearly extinct at that time and he wanted one before they were gone. they were in a race to kill the last of a species.

in 1883 one of the few places they roamed was in the badlands of the north dakota territory. he hired a guy, spent three weeks riding around hunting for bison. he developed an infatuation for the badlands, the weird formations there, the remoteness of the area appealed to him. it was a rich grassland so you could raise cattle in the area, and also there's the hunting. dakotas were one of the last places to find most of america's big game animals and shoot them. before returning home, roosevelt wrote a check for $14,000 and turned it over to two men he met up there and told them to buy cattle for them and put them loose on the land they claimed on their own and would manage the cattle for him and take a share of his profits. he was trusting in this.

he told the man, if i didn't trust you, i would not give you the money. they asked, how do you know you can trust us? he said, i just do. at that time, a lot of wealthy easterners were investing in cattle. roosevelt thought he found a way to make money quickly without any risks, so now his uncle james roosevelt, his financial adviser said cattle were a shaky deal to avoid. he forge the ahead anyway. returning home to new york city in 1883, he was a rancher or cattlemen. he was at a good point in life. in late 1883, his career was realm, elected to the new york study assembly at the age of 23, youngest person to hold office there, became one of the leading political lights of his time, he was a reform politician.

he was part of a group of young, mostly young politicians trying to root out corruption that plagued people, you know, both the national -- i'm sorry -- both the state and local levels. an anti-corruption candidate, and because he was wealthy, there was the sense he couldn't be corrupted. we hailed him as the dawn as a new era, he was our ideal. the political success was not the only thing going for him. in december 1882, barely 24, the first book was published, history of the naval war of 1812, first of 40 books he'd write. it became a college textbook in several schools and found in effervesce sell in the navy because it was required to be there by regulation. there's alice, his wife. this is really the heart of the story here.

she was a cowsen of one of his harvard classmates and met outside a home in boston in 1878 as a junior in college. she was a member of a wealthy banking family in the boston area. she was quite a beauty. a relative described her with golden hair and dove gray eyes standing five foot seven, an inch shorter. she was bright that her family called her sunshine. she was athletic and ran cross country and was lit rat. they had matching taste in literature, liked the same poets, especially longsfellow, and poems about the warrier king. he met alice, and he pursued her well over a year. she kept encouraging him and discouraging him and encouraging him, and he got so overrought in

awe autumn, he just wandered around the woods all night thinking about her. one of his fellow students was alarmed he called up, contacted the family and said you better talk to him. he's slipping. roosevelt, himself, said he was nearly crazy during the year he was pursuing her. in january, 1880, much pleading on his part, she agreed to marry him. i focus on this period in my book and quote from his letters to him and hers to him. they are quite emotional. he wrote in his diary if loving alice with my whole heart and soul makes her happy, she shall be happy. there's roosevelt in 1883, a rancher, political power, author, and married to a woman he deeply loves, and she's pregnant with their first child. everything is good for theodore

roosevelt at this time, but as people said for thousands of years, fortunate is fickle. in 1884, he was in albany at the state assembly and received a message he was the father of a little girl. later that afternoon, he received another message saying his wife was not well, and he should come home, got on the train, headed back to new york city and got home at midnight, went to his mother's house where the wife was staying in the final weeks of her preeing pregnancy. he knocked on the door and his brother answered and said there's a curse on the house. his mother was now also gravely ill. within the next 14 hours his mother and wife died. his wife in his arms. his mother died at the age of 48

and his wife of kidney failure at the age of 22. he was in a daze. he wrote in his diary, for life or sorrow, my life is lived out. he thought it was over, never going to love again or be happy again. he concluded the only way to escape from this grief was activity, a lot of hard work. he went back to albany and through himself into political work. he produced documents that was a million pages long, and he just kept a horrendous pace up and got involved in national politics. he was head of the new york delegation to the public convention that year leading the fight to keep a former u.s. senator from maine, keep him from winning the nomination because he symbolized corruption to the reformed republicans. my book details that campaign a little. i tried not to go into day tails on things covered in other

books, but i do talk about it a little bit if you want more details on it. blaine won the nomination, and roosevelt was a little disdain, but it brings us to a turning point in roosevelt's life, a period where he emerged as the roosevelt we know today. the moment the gop convention ended, he headed back to the badlands hoping to settle in the west, become a writer, forget the sorrows, and mend his health. now, why he chose the badlands is another question. it's in the area of the last frontier which would be closed only six years later. the badlands gave him a chance to live on the frontier and be a pioneer like his heros lake david boone and davey crocket. he could hunt big game, a

wonderful distractions from the depression haunting him at this time. he had a rug the life of -- rug l -- rug l life of fresh air. before we go on with roosevelt, let's look at the badlands' environment at that time. it was june 8, 1884. he got off a train in dakota territory, a brand new town with 100 buildings, the town was established for about four or five months. there was 300 residents in the town. this included miners and lumber jacks and former buffalo hunters, ranchers, and cowboys. it's unlike any operation today. it's open-range ranches. ranchers bought cattle and turned them lose along the

little missouri river in this case and the cattle roamed around like wild animals and there's no fences. the rancher built a house by the river, and that's the ranch. they did not own the land. the land belonged to the federal government or the american people and to the railroads, and, in fact, a rancher who applied for title to his land was seen as a suspect. why would he do that? putting up a fence was to boot. this was the wide open west, and twice a year, of course, the ranchers had to round up the cattle and brand them to tell who was -- it's the only way of knowing whose cattle was where and sent off the cattle to market. it was almost a festival, one of the few times the folks got together in any numbers because they were scattered across the ranches. the men who worked the range were divided into two classes, cattlemen and rarchgers who

owned it and then the cowboys who works for the ranchers. thigh were employees. the 1880s took a dim view of cowboys. they called them foul mouthed drunken and utterly corrupted. it's hard to be more negative than that. roosevelt thought they were just terrific and thought they were hearty and self-reliant as any man who ever abbreviated. they looked world straight in the face without flenching. he said he thought they were better fellows than small farmers and better than mechanics of the great cities and should not be mentioned in the same breath. this is a quick aside. there was a british fellow who came out to colorado in the 1860s, and he claimed he was

from one of the sleepiest towns in england, and they saw a cowboy shooting off his gun at night, and then there was a young woman alongside him on a horse. he said this is life with a capital "l". some people like this whole thing. with the exception of the bosses and ranchers, the cattle owners, the average age of the cowboys was 23 or 24. there was little in the way of local law enforcement there, and they carried guns and knives and looked for entertainment in saloons. weapons, booze, and entertainment with young men. if you lived in a cow town, you were 10 to 40 times more likely to be murdered if you lived in new york city or boston at that time. it was part of the process was, you know, the people had an exaggerated sense of honor, and if you insulted somebody

slightly, he'd blow you away or try to. roosevelt, himself, again, this is a little aside -- i don't want to run over, but it's a cool story. roosevelt was discouraged from carrying a gun. he was told don't bring your guns to town because there were people around who were really good with guns. the newspaper editor told him 23 you bring a gun, they'll push the luck with you and probably kill you. the editor had a local gunman come out, through two cans out and the gunman drew two guns and put five holes in the cans before they reached the ground. you have this pretty violent region going on here, a life was pretty raw, but it was not raw enough for theodore roosevelt.

the ranch he set up was seven miles south of town on one of the main trails. he got sick of people stopping in. he established another ranch 30 miles north in the middle of nowhere. the ranch is gone now, but the site is still remote, all dirt roads out to it, an hour to get to it and seems like three days. it's a long drive out there, and so that ranch he called the elk horn ranch, and he put cattle out there, and then both ranches there were managers who took care of the cattle for him. he was a rancher and worked on the round up and did work around the ranch, but mostly he was interested in writing and hunting. he interpreted hunting as ranch work because he provided meat for his man. they ate mostly wild game. roosevelt spent time hunting,

and he also -- he took long trips out to montana and wyoming to hunt bears and elk and so on, mountain goats, and then he would write books about it and made money at it. he made trips home to visit his family. he never stayed in the badlands more than four months at a time. during the three years or so that he was ranching, he spent a total of 360 days out there because of coming and going, coming and going. he was cowboy material and his new york sct was grading to new yorkers and considered a snob accent, and also it was, you know, that set impart among the cowboys, but as i said, he was not a man of much stature being under 140 pounds, and he had exsin triesties that the cowboys could not understand. he shaved every day, brushed teeth every day, and this was

beyond their kin. he slept with an inflatable pillow, not what my image of roosevelt is, this tough guy, but, in fact, he had a pillow to take with him while hunting and a rubber bathtub shipped out to him to take baths. that was not the end of it. he had special soap he liked and asked his sister to send special soap that he wanted because he didn't want to have to use the other stuff, you know. he wore glasses to top it off. cowboys did not wear glasses. that was considered a real sign of weakness. if all that were not enough, he bought himself a fringed suede suit, and that was, of course, for him a major symbol. that's what daniel boone wore. he was on the frontier with this fringe the outfit and had a fife

made for him at tiffanies and ivory handles on his guns. imagine daniel boone going to tiffanies to order a knife, you know, but this is roosevelt. one cowboy said roosevelt was a slim fellow dressed in the exaggerated story in which newcomers effected. needless to say when you roam with guys with guns and knives, you don't want to be a tenderfoot. he established himself as a man among men. these were lawless armed men. chances to priewfs himself popped up again and again, and he did it well. arguably the most important incident, i talk about several interactions with people, but the most famous is the one is in montana. he road around looking for lost horses, and checked into a

hotel, went into the saloon, and he was confronted by a man with a gun in each hand who was drunk shooting holes into the saloon clock and intimidating people in the bar and forcing them to buy drinking. he called him four eyes and told him to buy a round of drinks. he tried to avoid the guy, took a table behind a stove not to be seen, but the fellow followed him and said, hey, buy a round of drinks. he stood up and said, well, if i've got to, i got to. he was a trained boxer. he felt he needed to punch the lights out of the guy, the guns went off, and the fellow hit his head on the bar and knocked himselfcepsless. roosevelt took the guns and the patrons who were probably happier now took the fellow and dumped him in a shed behind the saloon, and the next day, the

fellow jumped a freight and fled town. this story filled the area and oh, maybe he's a cool guy even though he has glasses and a weird suit. that started to help his reputation a lot. i found interviews with folks who knew him back then who were out west and said that was the stepping off point for him in the westings but he proves himself in other ways working side by side with the cowboys and ranchers working hard. this was an area where you don't build a reputation on your family name or social connections or wealth. it was based on how you performed as an individual, and roosevelt performed very well. on his first roundup, the cowboys began to have a good impression of him. on that first roundup, they went two weeks riding up and down the missouri river value key scoop

1ing up all the cattle they could. they were driving along several hundred hourses because, you know, if you had 60 riders, you needed six to ten horses per person to do this work, and so there was a lot work involved 234 just herding -- in just herding the animals along. they noticed he was extremely tough and could ride all night long and then the next day ride another 100 miles. he road for 40 straight hours and wore out five horses before he, himself, took a nap. they really admired his willingness to pitch in. he was not a good roper, for example, because that takes a lifetime of practice, and his eyesight was not very good, but they recognized that the did what he could, and one of the tougher ranch foreman said that four-eyed maverick has sand in his craw of plenty, a high praise of the time.

the effort paid off quickly and by 1884, transformed physically. one newspaper told his readers, what a chance. he was a pail slim man with and now is brown as a berry and increased 30 pounds in weight with a hearty voice. another said he was losing the eastern accent. the badlands was not a complete success because he suffered over alice's death. he told one of the ranch managers that he was beyond healing, and the ranch manager who also lost his wife recently started to consul him, and he said don't talk to me about time will make a difference, time will never change me in that respect. it's not good idea to say never and always. roosevelt had no intentions to remarry and he felt to remarry

years after the wife's death would be a sign of ethical and moral collapse and lack of fidelity. this idea was a product of his times and social class as it was of himself, but he was still had a serious temptation to deal with, and this was a slim rounded woman with a peace complex and wide blue eyes. he had known her since they were both little kids, grew up together, and when he was in his teens, he proposed to her more than wops, and she turned him down. that's what she said later, and it's probably true. she was a friend of roosevelt's sister, anna. now, anna was the sister with whom roosevelt left his daughter, his baby girl. when roosevelt came to new york, she stayeded with his sister because he didn't have a house at that time. she would sometimes stay overnight at anna's house and said, well, warn me if she's

showing up because i will be sure not to be there. one day, no warning, arrived at anna's house and stepped inside, and there's edith walking down the staircase. this is in october 1885, barely a year and a half after alice died. six weeks later he proposed to her and he -- she accepted. after that, you know, he felt very guilty. you know, this whole betrayal ate at him, paced around at night saying i have no constant constantcy. they kept the wedding secret and planned to get married in december in england to avoid the press, but the press was not avoided because the "new york times" in august 1886 when

roosevelt was in the badlands saying he was engaged, and there's a little side story it this because anna immediately wrote a letter to the "new york times" editor and said apologize and retract it. that's not true at all because she didn't know he was getting married. the "new york times" did retract the story. when she acceptability the news of this -- sent the news of this development to roosevelt, you can imagine him, he's like, uh-oh. he had to contact anna and say, i am engaged. he said no one will reproach me for much as i will. it's my fault, not hers. don't blame her. the republican party ran him for the canna -- candidate, and no one expected him to win or the republican party to win, and there's machinations which are in the book, but i won't go into that

right now, but roosevelt did lose the election, and shortly after that they got married. edith was not the type to live in a cabin, but nature took over. the -- i've been given a five minute warning, so i'll breeze through it. the price for cattle collapsed, and he knew economically it was not possible anymore and then the winter of 86-87 when the drifts were 100 feet deep along the missouri river and temperatures were my nows 40 degrees. roosevelt lost about 65% of his cattle and others lost 95%. he knew it was pretty much over, but his political career was reviving, and he was going to probably give up the ranching thing thinkway.

the -- his experiences in the badlands stayed with him for the rest of his life and inspired his conservation expert. he founded the boone and crocket club to protect wildlife. he knew habitat was being punished in those days, grasslands destroyed by cattle and wildlife killed off. this club set off to protect habitat and wildlife, and they did so with a lot of success and they still exist today, that organization. as president, he had a lot to do with the creation of the wildlife refuge system in the national parks. the national park system already existed, but he added five more parks to it. now, in his later years, roosevelt asked a friend to

guess what part of his life incoming roles as new york city police commissioner, state legislator, federal civil service commissioner, navy war hero, new york governor, and u.s. president, what role in his life, that active life of his would he want to remember if, for some reason, he were compelled to have one of all memories erased, interesting to think of that. he said i would take my memory of my life on the ranch and the nature of those who live nearest to her. i just had to touch high points, and with the time i had was a half hour, but if you have questions, i'll be glad to answer them. >> back to his young daughter? >> yes, i skimmed passed that because of the time cop straints. he went back and forth to see his daughter.

first he wrote letters and not mention her like he didn't want to think about her. gradually he appears in the letters, some phrase with how is she doing? her name was alice also, and it was like he reluck at that particular time to call -- reluctant to call her alice. he never mentioned the first wife again. when he wrote his biography, she was not in it. he obliterated her from memory. one of the biography said it's a pathology to be so extreme in dealing with the loss. he did not tell his daughter about her. she heard about her from anna, roosevelt's sister, but she never heard anything about her mother, and she felt that was probably not good for her, herself either, but he did, he turned her over to anna, and she

told anna she can keep alice, and edith said, no, we'll take alice. and she was raised with the other children, but she knew she wasn't one of that set of kids, you know? i felt alice got shafted, and i think the memory of his wife was treated kind of shabbily, but that's the way he did it. anything else? >> [inaudible] he lost almost all forchip in the badlands and had to right in order to -- write in order to survive. >> can't say he lost it all, but he was financially stressed. he put in about $80,000, lost about $20,000, and -- at least, plus interest. he built a big house in oyster bay new york. it's open to the public, and you can see the head of the buffalo he shot in 1883 on a wall there,

but there were times he had to think about selling the house and selling his favorite horse and so on because he was so financially strapped. he would occasionally in letters say i have to make money and do writing, and he did a lot of writing. he got $1200 in 1880's dollars for a magazine story, and i'm -- i would say about $50 for the dollar by today's standards, but, yeah, he was hurting after the debacle in the badlands. anything else? sure. >> his attitudes towards the american indians at that time, did you unpack anything there? yes, i did. in the badlands, he came across three or four indians and he thought he was going to be attacked and all of this. i use this as a launching point to discuss roosevelt and race and talk about him with the

indians that talk about his whole attitude towards race and african-americans and so on. with the indians, you know, his first response was to, you know, grab the rifle, and when they road towards him, he aimed at them, and they backed off. when the ranch hand saw them, they just talked to them. at some point, the ranch hands walked into a village of indians just to buy things. a lot it just roosevelt in his head with adventure and hostility going on was more fun than just knowing they were peaceful. indians at that time in that area were treated by coyotes and extensively the wars were over for a number of years, but occasionally an indian shot back, and one fellow was wounded

by an indian. you could argue, well, you know, maybe he was right and would have been roughed up and stolen his horse, but he said something about as far as i'm concerned, nine out of ten indians are, you know, i won't say that an indian is better off dead than allye, but nine out of ten cases that's true, and i don't up quire too deeply into the 10th case, and yet at the same time, he once told an indian woman at the white house that one of his regrets he didn't have indian blood. you think, well, that's neat. but he had the idea that white people should marry with indians just to wipe them out genetically. you don't know what to make about it. fans might get anowed with me -- annoyed with me for bringing that up, but his attitude was complex. he invited george washington

carver -- booker t. washington to the white house, that's who it was, and he was just trownsed for that. he was just reviled for doing that, and yet, at the same time, when he ran on the blue moose party, he tried to keep blacks -- he tried to limit their vote because it wouldn't have been well for him, you know, so it's a very mixed bag. i don't think with roosevelt you can say, well, he was this or that. he seemed to be whatever he was at the moment. anything else? >> one more. >> uh-huh. >> if i could -- >> sure. >> did he ever in when he ran for presidency on his own or later, did he ever go back -- [inaudible] >> yes, yes, he did. in fact, i close the book up to the prologe with this -- prologue with this. he went back and running as vice president, he went out there, and then again in 05 and went back, visited the folks he knew

there, picked people out of the crowd to come up on the stage with him, and at one point in the journey, he was crossing the dakotas and went on the back of the train, and there was just this place, and he wanted to be seated alone, and he closed the door and just sat there alone with his memories. such a great image, but even up to six months before he died, he was out in montana and saw one of the old people, the folks he knew from the ranch and this would have been in 19 -- i think it was about november of 1918, and he died in january of 1919, and he saw one of his old pals and shared a hotel room with him and so on, and we went through the letters of the library of congress, way after the period i'm dealing with, but i did that because he kept in touch with the people he knew on the ranch for years, so until he died, he was writing letters back and forth and promised to visit in

1919 for the roundup that summer, but he died before he got there. anything else? okay. >> we know so many presidents have shaped their image and been conscious about it, and even the cover image of your book presents such a dashing program fear -- frontiersman image. how confident was he of shaping his image in the early years? he was intensely ambitious, but contemplateing a return to politics? >> yeah. politically, he gave up his career and felt it was over because he opposed blaine and later on he backed him. the reform politicians were angry at him for backing blaine, but he felt you have to have party loyalty. no point in a convention and picking someone if you don't

support him if it's not the guy you want. he supported him after all and thought that killed his career. at the same time, you know, there were people getting him to run for congress and so on, so i'm not sure how much of that was just his own drama, oh, my career's dead. you look at the life, and you don't see evidence of that. at this time that this picture was taken at about 24 or 25, that he was still planning to come back to a political career, and when he was out in the dakotas, a newspaper reporter said to him, you know, you could be president some day, and president just said, yeah, i could. he didn't treat if as a surprise or anything, and so the editor had an impression that he was already thinking about this at that time, and he continued to be active and campaigned for other candidates and so on, and in terms of image, he was an image conscious person and said don't let people take pictures of you playing golf or tennis.

you look better on a horse. one of the famous focus of roosevelt is on a horse leaping over a fence. that was a great image. there's lots of images of roosevelt on a horse. the picture on the book, that was taken in a studio in new york, and he got suited up, no glasses you'll notice, and if you see the full picture, there's fake grass at his feet and so on. he had the pictures shot for his first book about life on the ranch which he did after having just six month experience out there, and so he was pushing this image of i'm a frontiersman and if you read the stories of what was going on, he gave the impression he was hunting buffalo by himself, and that, you know, he did this on his own, but there was a guide with him telling him to shoot the buffalo right there and you'll kill it. that's missing from his account of it.

when the book came out, he was widely ridiculed for the photos,ing of him in the suit. on the other hand, it was not uncommon for guys back then out west to have these studio pictures taken of themselves and put in books. it was a trend, and he was part of it, but still, people mocked him for it. >> [inaudible] >> yeah. >> for rich people -- >> yeah, yeah. i talk at some length about the political decision and about new york politics at that time because new york politics were terribly corrupt, and the feeling was that people were losing tons of money in tax dollars because the corruption, but nobody cared because they didn't bother to take the time or pay attention to what was going on. there was a sens -- i mean, there's this story he was getting into something unsaver ri, but he had relatives in congress and who had been a senator. these were other relatives, and

what he did was going at the state level, not the federal level, and i suspect that's where things were considered a little unsavory, and he knew that, you know, his family probably was not going to approve of this and i quote relatives saying we just thought it was terrible. his father would have never approved, they said, but he did it anyway, and he earned quite a reputation for himself quickly because he was uncompromising because as he said, i have money, nothing to lose, i'll do what i want, nobody's going to buy me. people respected that, and he truly became a household word within new york state in a year or so and nominated for a leadership position in the party, the speaker of the assembly, didn't get it, but he was a party leader within a year. he was not even 25 and was already a leading political

light, so -- yes? >> what led him to take on the -- [inaudible] >> what do you mean by that? the money controlling the country. >> oh, later on, yeah, you mean the railroads and all of that. i can't comment on that because that's later than my period. i'm dealing with the younger years in his ranch years up to about 1887, and you get into the trust busting presidential years and outside my area of expertise so i can't answer that. i know in my readings, you know, he felt that there were more important issues than business, that business was not the main consideration to think about what is right for poorer people and that sort of thing, and that there were more important matters than just protecting business, but i can't address that ring sorry. anything else?

okay. >> any questions? >> that's it. well, thank you again. [applause] >> that was roger di silvestro on president roosevelt's time in the badlands of the daks territory. for more information, visit the author's website, rogerswrites.com. >> when the deepwater horizon exploded on april 20th, 2010, i was in houston with a group of oil activists, or actually -- activists is the wrong word, a group of people living in oil impacted communities around the world, alaska, california, texas, mississippi, who all came together in houston for chevron's annual shareholder meeting and explained what it

means to live in a chevron impacted community, and during the course of our time there when the explosion happened, after the loss of life of 11 # men, after the oil flowed, when we realized that this not only was this enormous loss of life, not only a disaster, but a really crushing reality to people like myself who had spent a significant amount of time setting the oil industry, spent a significant amount of time being in places where oil operations take place. something dawned on us. the industry had absolutely no idea whatsoever what to do about a blowout, none at all. they knew what to do, said they planned to know what to do, the reality was that what they knew

had to do is somewhat deal with the blowout at 400 feet, and most of the time since the 1970s, most deepwater horizon drills met drilling at 400 feet below the surface. this well and what deep water drilling means now is drilling at 5,000 feet below the ocean surface, and that's the floors here 5,000 feet below. this well was another 13 # -- 13500 feet below that. a well is slightly further out, is another well that is at far down as mt. everest is up, we found out they garp teed to us they knew what they were doing, they were trying to apply technology developed in the 1970s for 400 foot wells to a 5,000 foot well, and they didn't know what they were doing and

were not able to stop the gusher. not only that, but they guaranteed us were there to be a blowout, and everybody knows there can be a blowout because that's what you plan for, the gulf of mexico is one of the most difficult places to drill in the world. one of the reasons why is it's very gaseous. there's a lot of gas there, bubbles up, kicks in fact, this was the second rig to try and drill this well, a previous rig had been kicked so hard, that was kicked off the well and had to go home. the deepwater horizon was a replacement. it was $100 million over budget,

many, many days off schedule, and the people on the rig knew that they were in trouble, and they knew there could be a blowout. the industry promised that it could handle an oil spill were the worst to happen of 300,000 barrels of oil per day. what we found out is that likely at its worst, this spill was 80,000 barrels a day, and yet no capacity whatsoever to deal with it. they did not have ships ready to contain the oil, didn't have underwater vehicles ready to address the blowout, no booms to protect the shore or skimmers. thigh had not prepared. even though after the 1989vadez disaster, they were obligated to invest in research on what to do if they have an oil spill and how to prepare for it, but they

hasn't, none of them. we are using the same technology that utterly failed to clean up after the valdez where only 14% of oil was cleaned up, today, on this. because they didn't know what to do and spent three months walking around, well, that's not fair, they tried hard, sat around a table trying very, very hard, scientists hard at work wanting to stop it, but they couldn't for three long months, and what happened in the course of that three long months, and that's just the time in which the gusher was flowing; right? they finally did put a cap on it, thank goodness, but they didn't know or feel secure that that well was closed until five months later when something else hand, and that was the drilling of the relief well. what the industry knows how to do well is drill. that means what they know how to do is drill so if there's

another blowout, no reason to assume that a cap will be ail to be applied because the only thing we are sure that worked was the relief well. if there is another blowout, what we should anticipate is five more months of oil. what we know about deep water, and remember this is new, only 148 operations in the world going on for about 20 years at this depth, and they are pushing out this far because there's a lot of oil out there, so what we know about the deep water is that when you have an accident, it's a long way to go to get to it, and there's a lot of oil, and put the amount of oil into context, we've all been hampered from being able to explain and really grasp, put into words the significance the size of the spill, and that's because we can't say the words to make it that much more dramatic, the largest oil spill in world history. there's one reason we can't say

that and that's because hussein intentionally in the most blatant way possible used oil as a weapon in 1991, and intentionally opened up oil pipes and tankers to attack american and british troops with oil in kuwait, and that is the largest oil spill in history because he did it intentionally. had that not happened, this would be hands down the largest spill in world history. 210 million barrels of oil released. when i started -- when this happened and learned it was bigger than we thought and that the 11 men who died, the story would not end with them or their families. it was going to spread and spread to all of the people across the five states who live arched this 9th largest body of water and going to affect the sea life and everything that

lives in the ocean, but the thing to know about the gulf coast is everything that lives in the ocean is part and partial to everything on the land and all of the people and their livelihoods and being and understanding of their community, and the effect op the sea is the effect on the people and the lively hoods and communities of those people, and what i learned in going down in just the figure couple weeks and days i was there is one, this was a huge story, two, transparency was so difficult. getting information was so difficult from that first time i went down, private security guards, police officers, sheriffs kept us off the beaches. you couldn't look or take pictures or record the event. win of the things that happened was controlling the story was important to everyone involved, and one tool that bp utilized, it was powerful is green peace

took such important photographs of this event, not just the work green peace did, but the photographs that capture it, and they are used throughout my book to try and make tangible or imagery, the story of this event, but capturing the photographs was more and more difficult because if you remember in the valdez, it was those photographs of the oil soaked birds that captured people's souls, and people organized aggressively in the response to valdez shutting down stations, protested, demanded policy and got out of the bush senior administration a critical piece of legislation, the oil pollution act. similarly in 1969 off the coast of santa barbara when a well?q

>> what i was able to track in the book is in fact as the number of oiled birds increased, the photographs decreased because we started being threat ped to be thrown in jail if we went within 40 miles and feet of boom. ..