t-tango provides personal commentary and historical context for his grandparents correspondence with each other in his latest book, and here hairy, love best. the book presents for the 20 years of determined, and highly through a former first lady played in shaping and supporting her husband's career. mr. genotoxic parker over the great-granddaughter president herbert hoover. ..

of the fact that the american people should be able to learn from the mind of their president, so she sayville lot of stuff and he didn't mind people would read these things and know what he was thinking and what he had said. my grandmother on the ever hand had not been president that her business was her own business and nobody else. he came home and 1955 around christmas and found her in front of the fire tossing in stacks of letters she had written to him and stopped her and said what are you doing? think of history. she sat on the half and kept checking. >> host: toss another step in the fire.

>> guest: she burned -- if she learned as often which is likely she burned more than 1200 letters, even hundred oracle hundred letters and the ones she messed she missed with the library called an act of poor housekeeping. they were stuffed in the backs of jurors. >> so there are 184 that she has on her own, and when did you kind of find them? >> guest: they were found -- am i mother in the early 1980's a year before my grandmother died my mother asked for an inventory of everything in the house and archivists found the letters in twos and threes and talk to them into a box and took them back to the library. >> host: in the letters can you tell us about the time frame from the letters what part of their life to the letter-writing span? >> guest: it's odd that it's

actually -- there is one from 1919, the end of world war i. the rest of them, 1923 to 1943 which was essentially ten years as a county judge administrator in jackson county misery and the ten years that he was united states senator, so sort of his political apprenticeship for the presidencies of the 20 years leading up to come and they actually hold together pretty well and they are pretty linear considering she stuffs them in drawers. >> host: it's true she probably did burn about 1100 letters because in the time that you have the letters that she's written it is almost every day. or within a couple or three days that they are writing back and forth. so they really did have at least it seemed to me to be pretty committed relationship, and i wonder if you can speak to what you have learned or if you can

characterize the relationship that you learned about by reading the letter. >> guest: i always knew that they were close but i didn't realize how close. when they were a part -- there's no way to know the letters of my grandmother that we have from a certain year let's say the two week period from 23 to 33 they were written very often when grandpa went off to the national guard training camp for two weeks every summer. so you've got to be period in july or august. but we have no way of knowing whether we have all of the letters from the to the period in 1923 or 1925. so there may be some missing from that. there's quite a few, 14, 15, 17 week letters from that period said they read each other, twice a day during often come and grandpa's's back again. and we have i think we have all of his. he saved everything, but again there is that so you have from

the one or the two week period you have 35 letters going back and forth. >> host: one of the things i love about these letters is first for anybody that has nostalgia about the lost art of letter writing and how this is the primary way that people kept in touch in the early 20th century so you really get a sense of the day-to-day life especially if they are writing twice a day to each other. there was one example of a letter, and maybe you can tell the viewers about it where she decided she'd really missed harry because i want to give it to you she saw something better. >> guest: that was actually the first one that i read because i was used to the truman no-nonsense, don't mess with your grandmother, the of yourself my sleeve very sweet unless you crossed her or climbed up the walls or put marbles down the grave but that was an 18-year-old woman i know

who was very sure of herself, very sure of how she ran her household. first letter that i read when i got them out was she was complaining that there was a big black bug in the bed that night and she had to kill it herself. like you run off and play soldier and i have to kill the bug. so i thought the was interesting in my 39 year old grandmother didn't like bugs. host to you talk about how you and your grandmother is eastern woman because she was your grandmother and you were 6-years-old or so when you first got acquainted with her and realized that you were a descendant of the u.s. president and you got to know her as a woman and as an adult when you read her letters, and i wondered if you can share in the other stories or letters that you read along those lines. >> guest: she was -- it really is a wonderful thing for a family member for a grandchild to meet to go back and talking

and get a chance to meet your grandmother when she is essentially younger than i am now. some meeting her at 39 and 42, 44, and just getting a window on her life, finding out what she was like i always knew my grandmother had a sense of humor, but through the letter she is teasing my grandfather. i think one of the second letters was she had asked him wouldn't you like slippers that the army camp? and i went back and found his letter and said why is she offering -- she had to walk down to the shower every morning. get out on the road whenever they had played down the boardwalk and go down to the communal shower and she is teasing him wouldn't you like your slippers. so she asked him questions like that. she also was -- she worried about him. they treated these army encampments were the national guard encampments as a vacation, as a break.

the grandfather was working in a very corrupt, very difficult county government. he was the only honest guy that was hard for him to get things done and gave him headaches and heart palpitations if he'd lost sleep. so going off into the woods at the camp replete or fort leavenworth and riding horses around was a very nice break and as a break for politics, so she was always asking what deutsch the camps say? to the look at your tonsils? how was your heart, are you getting enough food, are you sleeping? so she was always worried about health and teasing him and admonishing him at the same time. >> host: when the report came back he had a clean bill of health. i that they didn't look at your tonsils. [laughter] couldn't believe it. didn't even look at it like that. >> one of the things i loved about the book is how we really painted picture of how what a

pillar that was for harry throughout the relationship and i wonder can you pull from any letters or characterize how they rely on each other and what kind of support she provided him. >> he said in a letter there and i think it was in the late 20s or the early thirties he had come back from the national guard encampment early because there was some problem with the court he had to deal with. the letters from that year are sketchy we only have one or two and so that actual chapter has one of her letters and three of his, so you kind of figure out what happened by going around what she had said and done and apparently the grandpa can home and she was really expecting to see him. they miss each other and she was

really expecting him to take time with her and my mother and took time and went to the court house and stayed and stayed and when they finally got home she apparently let him have a and the letter that he wrote afterwards it's the only time we ever saw friction between the two of them, she was very angry and pingree backed saying i can't do in this job unless i have you been really can't deal with these people or through the stress. i can't do it unless you are okay and happy and holding down the fort and she had apparently not done that so that was just the last straw for me and the patches afterwards and i think she felt badly about that but that is the only other time. any amount of serious friction. they got into it over her cut

and 1925. when she was six and he was five and sunday school the little girl of the golden curls and a big blue eyes and he fell in love right then and there. there was absolutely no evidence he looked at anybody else. he fell in love right then and there and pined for her for the next 20 years while she ignored him completely. >> because they got married. they are both in their mid-30s when they got married. but the courtship he was born in 1884 and she was 1885 the court should didn't start until 1910 although they went all the way to school together, grade school and high school, graduated together. she hadn't really looked at him in that capacity. >> host: but one of these letters admonish her for wanting

a haircut. >> guest: this was 1925 all of the women are getting their hair cut short and she complained. they must have because the letter just starts right in. i'm the only woman under 60 who still has long hair. they look great. why won't you let me do it? his next letter, nothing sending, not a word. >> host: not worried she cut her hair? >> guest: he decided he was going to. maybe they crossed in the mail but he's kind of liked going to keep my mouth shut and see what happens. she says come on, be us support. if it looks bad it will go back out.

let me do it. finally he comes back and said let me do it if you want to. i want you to do when you want to do and then he says usually do anyway. [laughter] all want to be sure you are not pulling my leg on this one but go ahead and do it and that's wonderful. but apparently doesn't believe him because the letter started again by talk to me about the -- he thought he finished it but apparently not. >> host: you said that in the 1930's period that is where your mother was born as you noticed in the letters first it's between them and it's very clear that a solid marriage but then margaret emerges, and she starts writing in the letters and

appears as a character, and they had a very close relationship, the three of them. >> guest: they were the trio, they were a very tight family groups. i think that is just the way they were also my grandmother had had two miscarriages before my mother was born so she was very precious to them and they were not going to have any more kids, so that's it. the only one they were going to have. the relationship is a little different. she could do no wrong. my grandmother kind of felt she ought to take the other and not let her get to the for her purchase. mom was born in february, 1924, and her first contributions to the letters connecticut venture with in the book but they were squiggles. she wrote over the page but she said that along. will the eventual the she started post scripps and i think

one when she was six or seven years and said hope you are having fun shooting the cannon's commonwealth margaret. so she does become a character and my grandmother's reporting always includes my mother through piano lessons, dresses, whatever she was doing, dates, movies, things she was interested in and grandfather was having to write to my grandmother saying get her to write me. it's nice that you are telling me the stuff but why isn't she picking up the pen, too. my grandmother used to tell me it took me nuts he always made me write. and typical child what am i going to say or sit down and do this but he was very serious. they both were about keeping in touch. >> host: one of the things i think the american public the of this image of the 1944 convention, and it was. and margaret smiling at the camera, weaving and that was a bit more removed, and so i think she often had the impression

with the american people that she was not as engaged in the political life of her husband. but that is a very different story than the letters tell, especially throughout the course of his political career. so, did she like politics? >> guest: she loved it. she -- and in that particular -- those series of photographs she is going. my mother and grandfather are waiving the diversity and my grandmother is over like this because she knows she is afraid of what is happening. he is about to be nominated for vice president and if he gets to the office and roosevelt is very ill, she's just sitting there thinking got where is this going it sri enough she was right. but she was engaged and if i say she left to live vicariously she had her own family, she had our own friends and her own love, the things that she wanted to do. she didn't want to be in

politics that she learned hearing about it from him and she was very opinionated about it. earlier on when he was a judge all of the roads were dirt. i think all of them were dirt and you had to leal them and spread oil to keep the dust on otherwise would palila into people's living rooms and bury the furniture. apparently the roads had been wheeled an ally of and one after another some ladies in the area were calling my grandmother saying rhode allele, and finally she reports each of these to grandfather and says they must have a leak out here, people who need their roads wield so she was the go-between. there was also a little bit later on in 1927, 1929 someone called and asked if he would throw a fund-raising dinner for an attorney, kansas city attorney running for the senate. and wanted judge truman's backing. and my grandmother thought i don't know about that.

so she called tom tender grass who ran the democratic machine in jackson county and said should he be doing this? and tender breast came back and said no, tell him to stay out of all of the sites for right now. don't get embroiled in this. so my grandmother then goes back and reports this to grandpa, goes back to the guy that asked about the dinner and a white to him and said i'm sorry, judge truman won't be back for another week. he couldn't possibly do it. so she's playing the game a little bit along with it and in the letters in the 19 -- the late 30's and 40's very opinionated about president roosevelt and the people around him. grandpa would report something had happened in congress and she would say of course they do that kind of thing. she was very involved and you can tell that in the letters. >> host: she also had newspaper clippings. >> guest: she always had any story about him or anything for would interest him by being away as the national guard camp in

the 20's and on the senate investigative committees in the 30's. >> host: deter attitude about politics change from the time he did local politics and misery to when he went to the senate and was then involved in washington? >> guest: no, she becomes -- you can see it in the letters she becomes more astute. she understands politics on the national stage. she's very good at it. again, very opinionated. and just -- she was his sounding board. he could come home at the end of a hard day or he reports how he is doing and how difficult it is. he can come home at the end of a hard day and say you wouldn't believe, like anybody would. >> host: she would sometimes criticize publicly for being an independent and not being in washington with her husband, and so in a sense early in her life, which we have informed how she embraced the public and i wonder

if you can talk about that. >> guest: she does get -- it goes back to the 44 convention that she looked like she was blowing in the move and she didn't like the whole thing. when she was 18-years-old her father, david wallace committed suicide in the family home. david wallace had been one of the nicest men. everybody loved him. he was a sweet man who would give you the shirt off their back. he was great with his kids and my grandmother loved him. and he had aspired to a political career and it hadn't gone well ever. he had a minor posts, but he was not -- he didn't have the career he wanted. he wasn't making the money that he wanted or needed. he thought that he needed to keep wallace, his wife in the style she had become accustomed. her father was one of the richest man in town. at the george porter field.

david was constantly borrowing money especially from his father-in-law because his father-in-law said up front he didn't think david had much of a future. all of this -- david was never a temperate man but he began to drink more heavily and finally it got to him and he killed himself. my grandmother i think was crushed and she was furious that he abandoned her, abandoned the family. one of her friends reported she went over to the house to see what she could do and she found my grandmother walking back and forth in the backyard with her fist balled up at her side just walking with her head down not talking. mary didn't say anything she just walked and kept her company for a while. after that, my great-grandmother, david's widow retreated. the family even went to denver. the stigma of suicide in 1904 being a lot different than it is

today. and they were treated to, not of and came home went to live in the gates mansion with my grandmother's grandfather with george porter fieldgate and she called home for the rest of her life. she became the head of the family. she retreated, didn't go out much and my grandmother ran the household. two things. she was weary of public life because she didn't want this coming back. she didn't want the stigma again of her father's suicide coming in and she also left grandfather in the white house because there was a lot from her own mother to come home and help run the family said she was pulled into different directions. she had my grandfather on the white house by himself saying this place is lonely there are ghosts and here come back and keep me company and her mother is like when are you coming home i need your help. so she really got caught in the tough war bigot >> host: and you think that

also probably contributed to her reservations about increasing the public. there's one thing that you wrote that said her family that form of the interview was a written q&a. >> guest: ha yes when she got into office her grandfather got into office mrs. roosevelt weekly press conferences my grandmother canceled those and then shortly after stopped taking the spoken questions she requested the questions to be in writing and her comment 19 set of ten was no comment so she would get these written questions like no comment, none of your business. she said early on in his career that the role of the political life was to sit next to her husband, be quiet and make sure her hat was on straight. a little regressive. >> host: with that we are going to go to break and be back in just a moment. >> guest:

>> host: we're back with truman daniels talking about his book letters to harry truman 1919 to 1943. and you were just about to tell me another set of things you learned about your grandmother that you didn't know. before you read these letters and got to know her as an adult. >> guest: took another various references through the nightgown and that is another thing about getting to know your grandparents when they were younger. they don't talk about that sort of thing to their children. there is nothing -- >> host: there's a whole might down section of the letters. maybe you can tell us -- >> guest: they keep cropping up. >> host: i did read something

about a racy negligee. >> guest: she reported that blankly it was just a sentence and one of the letters that went shopping today, bought mark a new hat and a nightgown for me. i thought okay, great, nice report. but better though with the nightgown story, almost every one of those letters, his and hers, and we hear the letters with as we said with his so you have them talking back-and-forth to each other. on either side almost every letter starts with i am really happy i got your letter or letters today, or i'm not so happy i didn't get a letter. what are you doing. and they would make up sometimes it would be these elaborate excuses if the letter hadn't shown up and my grandmother, there were two kinds i love, my grandmother when she gives it is like a run on sentence. i couldn't get him to go to the

post office and the post office wasn't done any way and they couldn't go in the afternoon and the car broke down and then he or another car and that broke down. she goes on and on and on how she couldn't get to the post office and so they are either really complicate the door really interesting and the interesting one to me as she said i'm sorry i didn't get a letter off to you but it was so hot last night i couldn't keep on the enough clothing to have made light to read by. [laughter] the sort of thing that grandchildren don't want to know. don't want to know that, thank you very much. but that kind of stuff has come up before. in this country we don't talk much about presidential relations. david mccaul in his book, his 93 book truman told a great story about my grandparents. for the whole almost to the entirety of the second term they live in the blair house because the white house was absolutely falling apart. grandpa would be in the state

dining room downstairs hosting a dinner and he knew it was just my grandmother upstairs and she walks back and forth and finally the piano flake punched through the floor of my mother's sitting room and they cleared everybody else and gutted the white house and rebuilt it from the inside up with high beams to. early on in one of those mandates ran to stabilize it with steel rods they ran from the ceiling down to the floor so my grandparents and mother could stay there for a few days and get all the furniture out and get things set and grandpa who loved the history of the white house and left to share it took a group of reporters on a tour of the upstairs to show them there's a hole in the floor this is what's happening. here's how bad this is. he stopped outside of the bathroom upstairs and one of the rods had been run down next to the toilet and he said you know the thing that scares me i'm going to be sitting in here one

night and i'm going to flush and wind up in a state dining room. [laughter] >> and you know that the band will play as i come through. so he -- so they are at the blair house and they like it was smaller and more intimate. my grandmother neglected because you couldn't show the big state dinners it was more family like and it is a beautiful home in the houses together so they are over there and they had been on one of these abrasions months apart my grandmother had to go back to the independence to take care of her family and do whatever and the had been a part and it was hard for them to be a part as we can see from all these letters. when she arrived the atmosphere was electric and david wrote about this. he said the staff, everybody was in a good mood because they were so happy to see each other it was just there was so much love in the air. my grandmother came downstairs and approached the head usher

and said we have a little problem the second floor. in our room one of the flats on the bed is broken. [laughter] so there's this wonderful little hints -- >> host: that the heady strong and healthy marriage. and that's one of the things that really draws you into the book is that it is a love story. >> guest: they have a great romance. like i said earlier, she ignored him. will she was in that mean to readers were early in her courtship he proposed to her in one of the letters. >> guest: he almost blew it. he proposed after about six months of writing and visiting he said what would you think about wearing a diamond and

nothing. no response. i think it went on for a week or ten days. nothing. he wrote again and again and said i'm sorry if i jumped the gun. finally, and i don't know whether she did it in writing or whether she spoke to him but she turned him down and apparently she did it so nicely that he said it was so gentle and nicely almost don't feel bad and went right back to being friends. i will come and see you but don't worry about any pressure. he lied over the next couple of years a little pressure begins to creep in then he backs off again and he just can't help himself and finally he thought he had no chance of all she actually tells him if i marry anybody in this life it will be you and left him speechless for both guys who poured his heart out on paper he apparently sat

there with his mouth hanging open and it finally pounded my grandmother to say harry truman, you are in an enigma. but the had a wonderful romance. the courtship lasted from 1910 to 1919 when he came back from world war i. >> host: i want to point out the coverage that that's on the book. the photograph here is a special photograph that resembles that courtship. >> guest: that is the one he took with him to world war i that he kept in his pocket all through the war and she agreed to marry him before the war and he had told her no. he said and i think his words were i will not have you tied to a cripple or a sentiment should he come back wounded, severely wounded or be killed so he wasn't going to make her a widow he said when i come back we will get married and he actually stopped here in new york and bought the wedding band and a diamond that he gave her he had months and months of back pay.

host for your mother made your grandmother's letters public in the mid-1980s but she did not do the same with your grandmother's letters. why? >> guest: i remember asking her in the mid 80's when bob farrell did the book she used about half of my grandfather's letters and collected them in a book and i asked my mother -- she told me about the letters and i said well you are going to do something with those and she just well, i don't know. and i remember asking her even back then, and i was in my 20s, and even in the next decade when i was in my thirties and i had begun to write about my grandparents i asked again if you are not going to do anything, can i do something, and again, well, maybe. and it just -- she sort of put

me off. i think honestly she was respecting my grandmother's wish for privacy to beat she made ten or 15 of them public. they were on a limited display at the library in 1998 for a month. >> host: 1998 was the first that anybody in the united states ever had this kind of access. but it's only 15 letters and 184 here. how do you think that your grandmother would feel knowing that you, the grandson with a long hair had published her letters? >> guest: i don't know. she had a deal with my mother, she and my grandfather had a deal with my mother my mother wrote best-selling books on each of them in 1973 about my grandfather and in 1983 were 84 about my grandmother, and if the deal was you don't write about

us until after we are gone. so, i'm not making these letters public until well after she's gone, so why don't think -- and there again they are really nice portraits. she was a lot of fun. i really enjoyed bess truman as a mother repairing furniture, you know, shopping, hiring, getting involved in politics, taking shots at her friends, teasing my grandfather, she was a lot of fun to be around. >> host: are there some other people that were discussed in the letters? >> guest: it runs a gamut. roosevelt -- >> host: roosevelt for example, give a sense of -- >> guest: the main thing she was angry, both of them were angry at the president for

coming grandfather had won the senate seat in 1934 and he was ready to run again in 1940 and it turned out to be a very hard-fought race with a lot of the pre-lewd to the 1948 presidential race. he did the same thing. he didn't do it whistle stop but he got in his car and drove all over missouri giving speeches, so the same -- as a template for 1948. it worked in 1940 but he had some opposition from the governor of missouri, lloyd stark, and he had come to him early on and said don't worry. i won't run against you. this is after grandpa helped me can governor. don't worry, i'm not after your senate seat to be a well he lied. he did go after the senate seat and original the fdr seemed he was going to back him. he got to the white house and weaseled his way into his good graces flattering him and started, you know, pushing things in that direction and fdr looked like he was buying at. ultimately he did not.

after a few months of this come fdr figured out that he was not the guy that he wanted and he swung back, but the talk about that in the book. i think my grandmother said at one point roosevelt and his team they think they can get along without was in 1940 they have another thing coming >> host: she also talked about tom prendergast who was the democratic boss. what was her view? >> guest: like my grandfather she doesn't say much about him except that she pays him that respect that when grandpa was being asked to do certain things she would say do i need to do this? i think she held the same view my grandfather did that never mind prendergast politics or his way of doing things. he supported my grandfather he does a friend and friend paul

was loyal to him the rest of his life and went to his funeral as vice president when he had been disgraced and people were saying you're the vice president do not go to that funeral and grandpas and i never forget a friend i'm going to the funeral and he went. a grandmother held the same views. people were befriended and helping out in little ways making sure she talks a lot about their extended family and her brothers and the children and all of their friends and she's always reporting that to him and touching base with what's going on. so she really kept a friendship going back home when he was working. >> host: and of letters reports got back to him. >> guest: right. it falls into a pattern when he

said the national guard camp he's like this is what i'm doing at the national guard camp and she's like well this is what i'm doing at home, now i know what you're doing and you know what i'm doing. so they were all a bonnet. put the two together and you have the entire marriage. >> host: with the letters add to the historical record in terms of the truman presidency and understanding him? >> guest: i just want to save humanity. you don't -- you don't often get to hear the president and first leedy speak to each other like this. it's just the normal rhythm of their lives to understand. i understand a lot better who they were and what they were like and what they meant to each other and what they meant to their friends come and through that the larger picture of what their lives were like, who their friends were, what was important to them and you begin to get some idea of how that shaped him as president although he was pretty much in the shame to be

cassandra and shape early on. grandfather began hearing from an early on in his life and pretty much stayed true to themselves. her too. they were strong-willed and opinionated. >> host: do you think there is anything to the criticism that harry truman was more in love with bess than she was in love with harry truman? >> guest: no, no. again, she was a private leedy. grandpa would tell you if you ask him do you love bess dickerman? is i love her and i think if you ask my grandfather -- my grandmother she would say yes of course i love him. what business is it of yours or i don't want to talk about it. she just -- she kept her emotions in check. she was much more reserved than he was. for a variety of reasons naturally a thing because of her fatherless suicide and all of the responsibility that she had. she was much more guarded. although, you know, you catcher in the unguarded moments when she reports she got up at 5:00 in the morning so she could see

her neighbors leave on vacation so she could see them in their underwear. i wouldn't dismiss seeing mrs. smith and her knickers $400. >> host: what was the funniest letter that you read? >> guest: there are little bits and all of them. there isn't one after the other. >> host: and she has a sense of humor. >> guest: it is an almost every letter he is also investigating waste and fraud in the military. the robbery of the united states railroad off investigating these huge issues and people are losing millions and billions of dollars and the railroads are falling apart and he is also investigating this and comes back like while you were at it went to investigate the leak on the government envelopes because i can't get that to stick so taken nice big complex issue and trivialize it. but yes, there are little gems and most of the letters like

that. >> host: i like how she's going against the theme that she wasn't a political level. in 1942 she writes to him about a radio speech that he had given and she says your radio technique has improved immensely and then she said the continents are just as a speech teacher had told you so he had some sort of a speech coaching to speak more proper on the radio but then she says maybe it would be a good idea to take a few lessons also. but by then she comes and says that if you do it again like you did last night maybe you don't need the lessons. >> guest: right. she does contradict yourself into thinking that shouldn't chiefly tim too much he did well. >> host: this also goes to show she was involved in her political career throughout, even though the american public had this notion that she was off and wasn't really engaged. >> guest: they were very involved in each other's lives and it is a story from key west when he started going down there and you take the president down to key west and the economy

immediately improved. >> host: what was in key west? >> guest: it's a little white house where grandfather left for vacation. he couldn't shake it. the doctors it go someplace warm and he said where would that be? heaton said we have a submarine base in key west you can't get any further self and it's nice and warm right now. >> host: had roosevelt in their previously? >> guest: he had been to key west. he didn't stay there. grandpa moved in lockstep and their role and spent 170 days of the presidency cony 11 working vacations down in key west but one of the early ones my mother was making her concert debut he was going to leave because he wanted to be in washington and here her and in key west they owned a local radio station and john said if i get it piped in, here would you stay please? grandpa's said yes but he was going to hear the concert one way or the other. scared john have to death because grandpa had to help him change licenses because he had

the station broadcast for his rich licenses for a day and john sat there with grandpa and watched paul sing and listened to the holding and grandpa said are you enjoying yourself and he said no? why not? i'm a nervous wreck. something is going to go wrong. sitting here with the president of the united states i'm going to blow it be if he said relax it will be okay. >> host: one of the best endorsement's anyone could have for a book is one michael beschloss gave you on the book and he said more and more we are learning about how to bess truman was with her emotional support and the private counsel. was the world changing, was to the world changing history of the presidency even though now she remained somewhat of a mysterious first lady and how this important book she writes is a vivid portrait of their marriage and we gain a fresh understanding of how crucial the strong minded she was to him and that is ultimately to the

american people. she was strong minded. what are some other it symbols of her may be strong headed mess because it does appear to the team that appears in the letters. >> guest: she is very opinionated as strong minded about the politics, about their friends and who should be doing what. she was the opposite, too to read as we talked to earlier, you were talking earlier about my long hair. >> host: this is something she referred to when you were about 15. she was a bit -- is it fair to say that she was to what it? >> guest: she was very duplicative. >> host: >> guest: grandpa hated long hair. this was 1970 when he couldn't stand us with tear my brother and myself and could barely bring himself. two years after he died he was

visiting us in new york and i mean washington, d.c. and by that point my hair was down to my front pocket and i sat down to breakfast one morning and my mother was across the kitchen making bacon and eggs for my brother and my grandmother said in a long voice my goodness you have beautiful here and my mother dropped the spatula and swung around and said mother forgot six don't tell him something like that or he will never get it cut. sure enough the next time my mother said you would look a little better if he would just -- i said no, bess truman likes my hair. well years later they gave me a letter from my grandmother to a friend that said in part somewhere in the middle to that she's having all that trouble with those hippies. finally something was done about it. >> host: referring to her son with long hair? >> guest: no, squatting on the property, we don't know. sometimes it seems something was done about those cities. when i saw my to grandson's with long hair i nearly expired. thank god they were clean and they have all clean clothing.

she hated it every bit as much as grandpa did what she was willing to overlook that just to annoy my mother. and worked for two years. >> host: any last morsels that you can give the viewers in terms of a letter or surprise, something they might not know about bess truman or harry truman? >> guest: if you i think you said it. it's a picture of who she was. i guess this a lot when i give speeches people will bring that up. they will say your mother just deserted your grandfather in the white house. she didn't really love him. he was kind of a one-sided thing. she says in an early letter please keep on loving me just as hard as ever. she -- you know, she really

needed him and they needed her. they were very close. we've known each other since they were five and 6-years-old all through school together long courtships. >> host: how many years with a married? >> guest: great i have to do math. 1919 to 1972. so 53 years. >> host: it is an incredible contribution. it's a wonderful book. anybody who wants to build more about bess truman, because really there wasn't a lot of bess before this and now we have her in her own hands and through the lens of her grandson who got to know her not just & boe also as an adult. >> guest: >> host: who may have some reckoning to do. [laughter] sunday. wonderful. thank you very much for sharing the letters from your grandmother. >> guest: thanks, margaret.

>> that was "after words" book tv's signature program in which authors of the latest nonfiction books are interviewed by journalists, public policy makers, legislators and others familiar with the material. s afterwards neckers every week in a booktv at 10 p.m. on saturday, 12 p.m. and 9 p.m. on sunday and 12 a.m. on monday. duquesne also watch "after words" on line. go to booktv.org and click on afterwards met in the book tv series and topics list on the upper right side of the page.en you've written about what trw for about james, you've for' written about the flood and c

katrina, jimmy carter.e whole why alaska >> right now i'm writing a history of the u.s. conservation movement and by first volume was called "the wilderness warrior," with roosevelt, john muir and n ca others.whole this is the second installmentes and it is the whole campaign wit that begins in 1879 with john, the co-founder of the sierra gop club going off and seeing those incredible glazier's glaciers ue inside passage of alaska and writing about it and how a whole group of what i call, really, wilderness lawyers have worked to safe wild alaska including theodore roosevelt and people like walt disney, william o. douglas, on and on. so i'm now working on "silent spring revolution." in the 1960s. this is not just a history book. i end it in 1960 when eisenhower saved the arctic refuge, anwr

that you hear about in the news all the time. >> well, this really is a story about personalities, and let's talk about some of them. let's begin with president teddy roosevelt. his involvement in alaska. >> well, t.r. saved the whole grid of modern alaska. today we have an alaska marry time national wildlife area, the aleutian change -- chain. he stopped the timbering and created on the gas national forest, these incredible resources and places like the yukon delta bird reserve. and t.r. created it with federal, um, federal orders, executive orders. roosevelt saw that democracy had topsy anonymous with wilderness. make no mistake about it, alaska is our incredible wilderness, and it's a wonderland. america without the alaskan wilderness would be -- [inaudible] extraction industries, oil,

gold, silver, they're always looking to despoil the state. >> now, did t.r. ever visit alaska? >> he never visited alaska. his opportunity to come with the herriman expedition in 1899, but he got back from the spanish-american war and then ran for be governor of new york. but what he did was receive these volumes of the herriman report which was john burrows and john muir and others that had went up to alaska and wrote these reports on what were our heirlooms, what needed to be saved, two areas that are just under pressure to develop, bristol bay. now the pebble mine company out of anglo american corporation up in if canada is trying to destroy the great fishery areas that roosevelt fought to save, and the same with the arctic refuge. dwight eisenhower created it in 1960, and now you're hearing drill, baby, drill up there.

oil was found in '68. that would be like mining the grand canyon or chopping own redwood trees in the national park. it's a bad idea because the public doesn't get up there to see the arctic. they think of it in terms of energy instead of a gift that we're going to passen to future generations. >> doug brinkly, what role did alaska play in the founding of the bull moose party? is. >> very seminal role. it's a long story, but roosevelt after he left the presidency, 48 hours after he left he saved mount olympus in washington state. went to africa for the smithsonian institute, and while he was gone he had left behind for william howard taft his chief forester. the taft administration started giving sweetheart deals to corporations, what they called the guggenheim syndicate. it would be today's exxonmobil or shell. and giving them these sweetheart

deals, clearcutting whole areas and leaving, really the beginning of the raping of the coal lands of alaska. pin cho blew a whistle and went to see roosevelt in italy, came back, and one of his first speeches he gave at the waldorf-astoria was between all the outdoor people, the america the beautiful movement. and roosevelt weighed in on it and ended up creating the most successful third party in american history, the bull moose party in 1912. and that bull moose conservation plank becomes what the ccc will become under fdr. roosevelt had all these ideas of how to inventory our biology in the country, but also save these treasured landscapes. >> you have a chapter in "the quiet world" called the new wilderness generation. who is that about? is. >> well, the new wilderness generation, what happens after fdr dies in 1919 and, believe me, he was a force of nature, a tornado, he was our naturalist

president who was a bird watcher, a great hunter. he saved 230 million acres of wild america, so after he died no -- there was not one figure who stepped into the fray, but leopold out of new jersey had wrote roosevelt a letter, and eventually leopold, i think, is one of the great writers in american history wrote a county almanac. he becomes a foot soldier of the movement. a couple up in alaska did all the wildlife guide books and things, set up a -- it all leads, eventually, to the wilderness society being created which is saying we need some parts of america that don't have roads, that in order to be here in hot downtown austin, you want to believe that you could take a day's drive and be in a place like big bend national park, go somewhere where you can get away from industrialization. and so these are the foot soldiers of the roosevelt revolution. >> who was william o. douglas, and what role did he play in

alaska? >> everybody who hears me right now needs to know about william 06789 douglas. he's our lodgest-serving supreme court justice. he came from yakima, washington, and i think he's the most powerful conservation spokesperson america had after theodore roosevelt. he wrote a credible book called "my wilderness," one about the west, one about the east. he wrote a children's biography of john muir, and here he is the supreme court justice. what douglas would do is do walks. not sit-ins like in the civil rights movements. he'd gather a gun. of people and say let's save the canal, let's save the beaches along the olympic and washington state. and douglas also was very close to the kennedy family and was a promoter of racial -- [inaudible] so by 1960 douglas is a big influence on why we have the arctic wilderness saved. in the '60s he's sort of

seminal with secretary stuart udall, bobby kennedy, john f. kennedy on making people understand that conservation and environmentalism was good for public health, that people needed this, that we needed clean air and clean water, and that species needed to be saved. we once had a billion passenger pigeons. there's not one alive today. but a species like the polar bear, for example, who are very stressed right now, the american public has to say, no, enough's enough. we need these species. you saw a minute ago i have three little kids running around here. all little kids love an halls and wildlife, and this book tells the story of how wildlife got saved not just in alaska, but in america. >> walt disney. >> disney's seminal in my book because he did some documentaries on alaska that were game changers. one was about -- he won the academy award, disney, and it had all these seals in it, and it was about stop slaughtering the northern seal out of existence.

he did one called white wilderness which rules up until disney was the big, bad wolf. they were something you would kill or shoot. they were predators, and they were almost treated like vermin. disney did a documentary with them as little cubs lick ago woman's face, but it suddenly made kids like wolves for the first time as an animal. and out of all that you see the reintroduction of wolves in places like jell-ostone -- yellowstone and other places in the united states. most americans want to think we have a country where we haven't driven the wolf completely out of north america. so the wolf survives in america because of this band of conservationists i write about in "the quiet world." >> now, there are a lot of good pictures in this book as well that we really can't show you, but if you do pick it up, there's a lot of beautiful color pictures as well. and finally, you end this book with the end of the eisenhower administration. >> yes.

because i did two incredible things at the end of this administration. he saved the arctic refuge. eisenhower -- all of those acres up there, and he demilitarized antarctica. we have eisenhower to thank for creating our largest wildlife refuge in the united states. it's the biggest thing, the arctic refuge, and this election cycle you're going to hear a lot about drill or sell into economic prosperity. the truth of the matter is, we don't want to start mortgaging and -- our great heirlooms, things that have been saved. the arctic refuge does not need to become a platform for shell oil to, um, drill for, get a little bit of gas for a few years and ruin a treasured landscape. >> so you take a point of view in this book? >> very much so. i feel myself part of the people i write about only because i love america so much, and i grew up going to the smoky mountains

and the everglades and yellowstone. and people that say there's nothing up there are lying to the american people. it is a wonderland of nature and wildlife. this is my son johnny. >> here's some young brinklies here too. [laughter] well, we've been talking with him, but what i wanted to tell the kids was behind us here is the c-span bus, and we've had a bus now for, golly, 20 years or so, a couple of buses, and it's currently our 2012 campaign bus. but doug brinkly is the inspiration behind c-span having a traveling bus. tell us about your book. >> i wrote a book called "the magic bus," but i used to take college students on the road. we'd read john steinbeck in california, we'd visit the reagan library and the truman library, all-purpose american studies class on wheels, and i did a book notes with brian lamb, and b