kingdom." doug brinkley, you've written about t.r., you've written about james forestall, you've written about katrina, jimmy carter, why alaska? >> i'm, right now i'm writing the whole history of the u.s. conservation movement, and my first volume was called the wilderness warrior. this is the second installment, and can it's the whole campaign. it begins in 1879 with john mover, co-founder of the sierra club, going up and seeing those incredible glaciers up the 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 brian really liked the idea of getting out -- we had a similar vision of getting out. there's a lot of historic sites to see as you're doing covering these book festivals. and the idea at c-span came, let's get some buses and have public policy from are across america instead of it being ghettoized just in a couple of east coast cities. i think it's been be a great success because it's given c-span the ability to cover events like this. >> doug brinkley, you're nowlying since katrina in austin, since you left new orleans. what's your day job? >> i'm a professor of history at rice university. i'm teaching three classes right now -- >> which is in houston. >> and i teach just fall, and then i have nine months off to work, and i've been working on a biography of walter cronkite who went to school here in austin at

ut, and all his papers are at the briscoe center here, so i've been meticulously going through those. i'm coming out in may of '12, simply could "cronkite." >> we've been talking about "the quiet world: saving alaska's wilderness kingdom,