>> probably the largest construction firm in the world right now. and the other companies, stone and webster, became involved in wartime construction. all of these understand the process of large-scale enterprise which they not just to construct docks to repair pearl harbor but also to build

ships. kaisers liberty ships in the classic example of that. at time at which to build consular shrink of fewer and fewer days until finally by 1942 they could launch a liberty ship every five days if they had to. there's a great story about a lady who comes up to christen one of the liberty ships at the portland yarder, kaisers yard up in portland, oregon, and she comes out with a champagne bottle. the ship was already gone. it's already been launched and already sailing merrily down in the south. one of the work and comes back to her and says wait a minute, there will be another one along in a few minutes. not just shipbuilding, airplane magnesium which was essential for aircraft manufacturing, experimental metal which i should became heavily involved in the process. steel manufacturing.

kaiser supplied steel for its liberty ships built the most modern steel plant in the world out in california. at fontana, california, as part of this. they become involved in the process, they become part of that. again, do anything, build anything. and not only meet deadlines but bring it under deadline in the process. and then also the chemical companies. the big companies in particular, particularly bow and dupont but also many of the other rivals and other chemical companies become to get involved in a whole variety of production effort in order to make the arsenal what make this wartime production possible. and in the case of of dow, one of the most important contributions they make as i explain in the book is with again magnesium. it was herbert dow, founder of

dow chemical to discover this chemical in office a byproduct of some of the chemical processes involved in the plant. nice, light metal gear, very flammable, but also very hard at the same time. and he said to himself, this is before world war i he said someday someone would figure it had to make something out of this. it's going to be the construction material of the future. i don't know how they will figure it out but he began stockpiling it, and those stockpiles, dow forma became the basis for american magnesium industry and able to supply lightweight parts for american airplane. plastics. world war ii was the making of the plastics industry in this country. and, in fact, i found a wonderful article in american machines magazine of 1942 saying to the readers and so on, are

you finding with regard to a lot of the work you're doing with the machine and all that, you can't get the kind of copper and steel components used to need to make dies, for production kind of things. and it's and try plastics, give it a shot. these things are very an expensive -- inexpensive. >> the problem of shipping all this wartime material across the atlantic and then eventually crossed the pacific the same time. this stuff has got to be secured. it's got to be wrapped so it is sealed so it's not going to corrode in these big leaking liberty ship's. so dow comes up with a substance on your to do this. i talked to a guy who worked for shipping company and midwest with more supplies coming in all over the place into ohio, and then being prepared for shipment

overseas. he remembers when the dow salesman showed up with sheets of this stuff, which was totally transparent, very strong, clings to everything that you can use to wrap up and make it watertight but you can also see what it is you're wrapping a. they said we call it saran. he said give it a try and they did and, of course, it was a wonder coming you could wrap everything like machine guns in the stuff. you could wrap rifles, tanks, a sherman tank, you could wrap it with saran wrap and then, of course, after the war it becomes one of the staples of new consumer industries spring up after this wartime production boom that has taken place. and then dupont, we can't leave out dupont as well because when the manhattan project organizers realized that they were going to be involved in taking what are basically laboratories experiment in terms of splitting the atom, and have to turn these now from basically

a set of theoretical calculations and experience into real industrial production, one company that returned to automatically in order to bring this about, dupont. dupont they realize the engineers there are used to have -- handling hazardous substances. they are used to construction under very tight schedules. the army used them to build gunpowder plants, for example, and so dupont takes on the job of creating in a sense and adjust a process that never existed before. they do an enormous first at oak ridge tennessee but also enormous facilities out in hanford washington were plutonium will be processed by the topham -- for the atomic bomb that would be dropped on nagasaki. this is the process that bill knutson sets in motion.

through the top prime contractors down through the subcontractors on through the rest of the american economy and industry that gets underway. by the time of pearl harbor it is a wartime which is gone production which government basically a standing start to a approaching that of nazi germany. by the end of 1942 when the of it really gets rolling, by the end of 1942 when the effort really gets started with full conversion of the automobile industry, for example, the united states is not producing all of the axis powers combined, and by the end of 1943, american economy is producing more war matériel and germany, the soviet union and great britain combined. ford motor company alone produces more than mussolini's economy as a whole.

and, in fact, we produce enough steel, aluminum and other raw materials to enable the british and -- with another one of wartime manufacture of warplane. we produce enough rom address to enable the british and also the soviets to be number two and number three aircraft servicers in the process. the numbers are staggering. in textbooks and so on, 280,000 warplanes. 8800 warships. we are producing five aircraft carriers a month during world war ii. we are talking 86,000 tanks. three and a half million trucks. studebaker, remember studebaker? studebaker alone supplies 200,000 to the red army.

studebaker trucks are the backbone of the soviet logistic system during the second world war. that's what enables us down, his army, enables them to go all across eastern europe to the gates of berlin, studebaker trucks. two and a half million machine guns, the process, many of them produced by companies that have never seen a machine gun before. companies like remington typewriter, national postage meter, rock ola, the gift box company based out of chicago which produced in one carbine under contract using design created by winchester. and then over 41 billion rounds of ammunition. outpouring just as knudsen promise and just like the one you could depend upon to bring the final victory in a war based on mass production.

so, if we look at this overall accomplishment, amazing accomplishment, we have to ask ourselves, how did they do it? and visit the kind of thing the american economy can do again? i happen to think the question to the latter question is yes, but i also happen to think that if you look at the reasons why this took place in what happened, it begins to become clear why it is a reproducible effect comment by economic boom that came after the war as those productions muscles that are then used for wartime production now shift, now she's back to civilian production, why that kind of boost, why that kind of productive boost is possible. first draft realize again, he orders her, the money that is spent, $300 billion in world war ii wartim wartime production, tn today's dollars about $3 trillion. that's a big stimulus check, but that's if you think about in terms of stimulus. if you're mesmerized by the

numbers alone, it seems like just simply a matter of spending a lot of money. but remember that's not just money that is simply poured into the economy are given out in large portions in certain kind of favored corporations. this is money that is being used to buy things that the government needs desperately, and going to again the most productive and innovative centers of the economy in the process. and those with a compass that will be mobilize and put to work. automobile industry and the others. the second thing to keep in mind here as well is that this involves the creation of a whole new labor force in order to fill and take care of, fill the jobs that are necessary. not just of course the women who become involved in it, something close to about 5 million go to work in wartime factories. and not just african-americans, something like 1 million move from the south up to

international centers to work out the chrysler tank, pressure tank arsenal, who go to work in all the other kind of wartime industries in the process. but also as well workforce which is incredibly mobile. in other words, people are free to go where they needed to go in order to make this kind of war worker to chase after the wages. something like 20 million people leave their homes to go find work in wartime factories, drawn by the conditions, drawn by the better pay, drawn by the opportunity that these kinds of, this kind of work and this kind of industrial surge was able to create. mobility of labor, key aspect of this. people can do with the jobs are, where the productivity basis at the. in other words, unlike, for example, even likened britain no one tells american workers were to go. no one tells them come even to the end of the war although washington was worried about

this, they don't do this. the same is true also for business, too. it is a voluntary system that washington created. nobody told anybody want to thank. you are offered a chance of contract but people were drawn to in order to get a government contract, to ship your plan over to production and to make a contribution to the war effort, make some money while you're doing it. that was a wonderful book that came up to 9042 called your business goes to war, put together by the outfit called the research institute of america. i reproduce an index of the books and pages of the book which suggest to you if your business makes these kind of things, these are the kinds of wartime production you can ship to an offer to make. if you make razor blades, for example, you could probably shift over to making little place to go into the rotary engine on aircraft engines, if you make lawnmowers, if you make lawnmowers you could go over and

shift, for example, manufactured machine shrapnel to use for high explosive shell. if you make vacuum cleaners, vacuum cleaners? make the transition to making helmet liners. if you go to the page it's quite fascinating to start to see what was being put out there as i does. these were things the industry had done, changes it made and carried out which is saying you can do this, too. you can get a government contract as well by making this kind of shift in this kind of direction. so the wartime production america turns out to be a production miracle that springs not out of wartime necessity, that springs not out of washington decision that a warhead to be one and that it would make, it would go, it would take on any means necessary in order to achieve its end direction from but that the real industrial america was the american free enterprise system turned loose on a major

project, which they could address the challenges and overcome. and i guess in the end, that's really the conclusion that i have to draw working on this book and i hope he will draw as they read it, is that "freedom's forge," but the real "freedom's forge" is not the arsenal of democracy that bill knutson built and the term he coined that roosevelt stole for his december 1940 fire side chat. the real freedoms forged is the american economy. we'll freedoms forged is the american economy, but when you turn it loose and take away the restrictions and constraints upon it, it can account which anything. they can accomplish any kind of coal that it sets before it. and i have to say in working on this book that one of the things that i found so fascinating about it was not just the role of the people at bill knutson and others played in setting up the process, but also all of the

other kind of people that were drawn into it, the businessman, kaiser and kt keller and charlie sorenson who built a well-run plant, building the 24th, but also the people sat in the factories and to work in the factories, who made new lives for themselves. the stories are incredible. you would meet people who've worked in the factories have done this kind of work and so on. we didn't realize the degree to which they were a part of what we call the greatest generation. always thought as the christian ration of those guys went out and risk their lives on the battlefield. they were part of the greatest generation as well but it's important to realize, and shocking that in 1942 the number of americans killed and injured in war related industry outnumbered the number of americans killed and injured in uniform. we're talking 9042, the year of guadalcanal and baton and midway and the battle of the atlantic. numbers of civilians killed and

injured in wartime industries outnumber the uniform by a factor of 20 to one. dangerous work, working in the shipyards. dangerous work doing the kind of work that was required here. and shocking to realize that general motors, bill knutson's own company, 189 senior executives for gm died on the job during world war ii. they pay the price for the war effort that they had made. they pay the price for mobilizing their skills, their talents, their abilities for this great effort, the great war effort here. and the people that i think you meet in this book, the people that i met as a result of writing it and so, i've got to kill, i fell in love with him. and have been reading the book you will, too. thank you very much. [applause]

>> [inaudible]'s picture, why not? we're all friends here. >> as someone who just to try to teach principles of economics, economists are trained to look at the inefficiency of ways to fight. during her talk, you can imagine all these different markets with a big increase in demand, paper, raw material. how much did the attempt to control prices and wages slowed down this massive effort? >> that's a really good question them and i like the way you put that. because what you're really doing is standing on head.

the one aspect of policy that washington did try to follow through on by imposing its own will on economic transactions are and that issue about rogers and wage and price control. and in the end i think what too many seemed like a very good idea. they are remember during world war i that the sudden onrush of demand for raw materials for war production had sent prices skyrocketing. a huge inflation in world war i. they were determined, a lot of the men who lived through that experience were determined to restrain it in the process. and also the two alligators as well. what it didn't occur to them, but was actually happening under their noses, if you paid any attention to it, was that what made the new materials available, critical materials, steel, copper, aluminum, magnesium and others wasn't the allocation of resources and rationing out of them, but increased production.

in fact, that was the way in which you sought material about material shortages is just produce more. aluminum was a classic example. huge shortfalls even before the war began. by making 42, it's waging critical factors and they're wondering why, all these great restraints on what it is being used, civilian manufacturing. but the fact was when she got reynolds, once you got alcoa and the other companies coming online and producing speed of the process, as one war production board official put it, in 1944, with the aluminum coming out of our ears. likewise, with steel. critical, critical toward industry. let's ration the supplies that we've got it and, of course, the real solution was a technological breakthroughs that were, like electric furnaces which are going to send production skyrocketing and be able to display not just us but all of the allies. rubber is another classic example.

how are we going to go to war without rubber? you need rubber for trucks, for tires. let's scrap rubber drive. harold ickes, roosevelt secretary of interior was placed in that effort. we're going to build to convert all of our tires and so. don't make anymore new tires but, of course, for cars and the like that, we will just convert it all. and, of course, the stockpiles were nowhere near what the needed. they got to the point where dickies was in people around to pick up the rubber mats around the white house to go into the stockpile for war. what was the solution? synthetic rubber. and coming together at the chemical companies and also oil companies, including standard, in order to produce synthetic rubber is that going to be necessary here for production. they create an entire new industry out of wartime necessity just by getting companies involved in the process.

yeah, i mean, if they had had sophisticated understanding not just of economics but also of how american business works here, all of those wartime rationing controls were probably completely unnecessary. and yet for most people's lives that's the thing they remember most, rationing of sugar, the rationing of coffee, shoes. >> what kind of changes were there in government policy? you allude to them a little at the beginning entrance of the new deal had taken a very antagonistic views towards business for a while. there was the understated profits tax, which took a ferry hard toll on business. what kinds of concessions did knudsen and others i suppose bring out at the government to make changes to make production

more effective? >> amortization was one, and at least one economic historian i know has said that the changes, and those changes in amortization schedule which seem like a very minor kind of thing, actually did more than anything else to spur wartime production in the prewar period, the crucial 18 months that knudsen headset would be crucial to it. one of the other big changes was that the called up the antitru antitrust. attorney general thurman arnold wasn't antitrust crusader had over 300 people on this justice department staff. seems like a drop now but in those days it was quite sizable commitment to justice department resources, investigating antitrust violations. key industries like, for example, the oil industry, like the aluminum industry were under investigation. at the very time roosevelt, knudsen are trying to get this process gets started and up and running. they say you can't do this.

you can't have these companies spend all of the time and energy dealing with antitrust suits when we neither energy, cooperation. the dogs get called off on antitrust. that's another crucial change that takes place. now there were a lot of safeguards that were built in to protect against the evils of capitalism to there was an excess profits tax, for example, that was imposed. there was income tax raises across the board, and it was also renegotiation law that congress passed in 1943 about the government to rid ago she, allow the navy and war departments to renegotiate contracts with the failed the charges in terms of costs were exorbitant. and i really did happen, and one of the reasons was the contract would dictate certain costs or raw material for example, within a production takes off, the costs go down. and so one way for companies, aircraft countries in particular

to get around an excess profit tax, that surcharge, was you just voluntarily renegotiate your contract, reduce the numbers of costs in the process. your profit goes down, you're probably go down but it's not going to be taxed at that excess profit kind of a little. and small business, there was a big battle over small businesses which you can read about in the book. there was a lot of congress that felt they contractors will control everything. gm and ford and general electric and westinghouse. and the little guys will get nothing. so there was a small business defense contracts committed innocent. it was a big crusade in washington to do that. knudsen knew the truth, and that is that once you engage the big corporations as prime contractors, there will be plenty for everybody down the subcontracting network to get everybody, not only gain employment but also to spawn half a million new jobs in the

process. and that, of course, is exactly what happened. >> thank you. i'm economic historian at gw university. i'm fascinated by your story, especially about the prewar buildup of production. what i'm wondering is these contracts that the firms were competing for, where did they come from? would be building up the stockpile of material in anticipation of wartime contracts? or were contract being let out early? and if so, by whom? >> contracts were of course produce certain specific materials, but these were like warplanes, for example, airplane engines. they didn't exist yet. most companies did not to make them. so the initial contract in would

come with an advance because was also very different from the way in which defense contracts have been awarded before the war with an advance to allow you to expand your plan, to retool, to take on the kinds of expenses that would go with conversion to roll -- wartime process. but most of the money was not coming from congress until pearl harbor. they were not at all interested in doing this. very suspicious of the process. a lot of it had to be done through loans, loans the reconstruction finance corporation's, still left over from the depression years, loans which were converted into the defense plant corporation. and a lot of it was through letters of intent, which was another important thing. we intend to give you an order for 1200 fighters here. you took that letter to the bank and the bank then, even though we had a contract drawn up. but very often it was done with a handshake. builders would say this is what i need, can you do a?

absolutely. they will shake hands, go out into the. start of the plant, getting it set up to go. and the arm at first so very suspicious about this process can begin to sort of realize that what they were setting in motion the something really truly unstoppable. and, in fact, army procurement officials in getting with the aircraft industry begin to take on what they called the rule of three. have you ever heard about the rule of three? the rule of three was if you place an initial order with somebody, let's say for 1000 bombers, at the end of the first year they deliver 3000. once the conversion was all done. at the end of the psychic of that number would grow by a factor of seven, so we're talking 21,000 bombers at that point. and at the end of the third year, at the end of the third year, the only limits to production and expansion of it was raw material's and labor. and labor was always a problem. labor was always attract not

just in terms of sort of resistance to wartime conversion they might lose their power over the shop floor, and also because everybody is working somewhere else. so this became a constant problem, where to put factories, where do you expand to new places where you're not going to siphon away labor from really vital wartime work, it's already underway, but we are also going to be able to draw a pool of labor which, you know, you need that can be trained to do the kind of work that can be done. and, of course, that's economic opportunity, the upward mobility. women, hispanics, people don't talk a lot about the number of hispanics that were employed in places like california shipyard. huge. for african-american, all this is made possible. workers, we don't care what you look like, and we will train you to do the job that you get to do.

>> i'm from george washington university. i'm interested in roosevelt. roosevelt such this process in motion and seize it is being very successful. so did influence his attitude towards the business community? >> that's a really good question. and i have to say that, this book, roosevelt's attitude about this is rather surprising to me i would've thought he would've endorsed a lot of his new deal friends, including his own wife which was you need a war production czar. you need to convert overnight to wartime production and the sacrifices are all involved should all fall on business. roosevelt didn't do it. he refused to appoint an all powerful war production czar. not even bill knudsen was entrusted with the kind of power and later on at the he had people who sort of unified position, they never really have any kind of real power.

by then the systems up and running anyway. they can't control. the real problem becomes how do you shut this down. this town had a production that has taken on a life of its own. and i think in many ways, historians give them all kinds of ignoble reasons for doing that. and one is that he didn't want to have any single one agency or person have power over the war production effort. he didn't want to give up his own power as commander-in-chief to a person who would become if they really have statutory authority, to close factories or open factories or tell people what they could make and what you cannot command it, that basically, i make him you would have a second president on your hands. i think maybe he was also, now, i also think to a degree he was kind of realizing there was nowhere else to go. the new deal had played out and they were run out of ideas of how to direct and control and

economy in peacetime let alone giving up her wartime. and he is going try this and see what happens. may be in many ways that he also instinctively realized that a war production effort national effort, any kind of the required command, issued from washington, profit was about to be much worth of an effort as all, had to come from bottom of the did change his attitude? not at all. in fact.in fact, in a state of n address by 1944, had he seen the transformation to free enterprise and business and what to do, the next step for him is now is her chance now to really get the new deal finished and done in the process. economic bill of rights, turn the wartime production machine into a civilian collective economy in the process. and, of course, truman carries out aspects of that as well until the republican congress in 1946 stops them cold.

-- stops him a cold. >> i want to pick up a couple of the questions that come intriguing questions that henry raced at the outset about parallels to the president. in the opening of your opening remarks you mentioned how the depression policies didn't get out and get us out of the depression, that the war production did. and then toward the end you said something that caught my attention. you said that government was buying things that government needed. one thing today about government buying things that government needs. i know you're at and historian, not an economist, but are you suggesting that paul krugman might be right stay? we know the sort of paul krugerrand column which

suggested facetiously, but maybe only half facetiously that we need to do a repeat of the world war ii production machine by declaring war on aliens on mars, or whatever, then we would suddenly mobilize and a new arsenal of democracy would appear out of nowhere. you know, subsidized and paid for by more and more washington deficit spending. now i'm not endorsing that. and the point that you made that you put i think we have to certainly correct, and that is that it's not, that the world war ii production got this country out of depression, didn't. in fact, i think you could, some argue that in many ways it prolonged the depression. certainly in terms of the deprivation of the consumer economy, which had, you know, fewer shoes, fewer consumer goods, washing machines, tractors and so on here. in fact, if you look at the

numbers, even from a production stand for, this is very interesting, look at a production standpoint. the rate of increases were talking about, industrial miracle of world war ii that gets under way, if you compare to the rat rate of increased international production by 20, it's about half. isn't that interesting? yeah, that's about half the the '20s was much more productive in that sense. over the course of the decade. and if you look at in terms of numbers come in terms of wealth, real wealth, they change not almost hourly from from 1940-1945. what you really see, however is what world war ii production didn't end the production -- depression but it brought business back. it cued up business for making things -- it cued up the business for expanding plant facility entering the workforce and reopening warehouses in

order to stock inventory here in tikrit all the sort of machinery which could then be turned loose after the war when private investment comes back. all that pent up demand, all the business savings that built up during the war because there was nothing to spend it on. nothing to spend it on. and so people now come back to consumer demand. and this is exactly what happens with these companies. ago for making washing machines to machine guns, frigidaire come refrigerators, frigidaire, then they go back to making refrigerators again. but they do it in a much leaner factory. it was a streamlined production line. they now know how to adjust and retool in the midst of this production to tremendous, tremendous boost unleashing the potential for business. then comes the private capital, and now you've got come you've got a base from which a real consumer economy can grow from

that point on. >> i'm working on a documentary which follows getting world war ii veterans to see the memorial at no cost to them. and my question is to you, you highlight the contributions that these factory workers made to the overall war effort, but this happened 70 years ago. as you're writing a book, what resources were available to you to identify these workers and capture their stories? >> well, i'll tell you, there's a number of websites. there's a -- it operates out of richmond, california, the richmond shipyards, i won't call it war memorial but historic memorial of the ships that were built up a lot of it is oral history especially of women. there's been a lot of fascination in women workers. their stories are incredible that come out from all the

process. and a lot of it is just material that you can find because all these companies, he got to remember, were proud of their war effort. they publish their stories. they can't wait to tell about the workers who came in and what we did and what we accomplished. of the resources are tremendous, and the stories are incredible as well educated people working -- my favorite one was a letter i found, i was on the website, and other from a woman who was working in richmond shipyards, teenager committed to a marine who was serving in the pacific. and she tells him in a letter, she's done working at the river, with these liberty ships, and she says, i'd like to think i'm building a ship that will bring you home. one more.

>> i'm with aei. you mentioned recruitment of blacks. and a million southern blacks moved north, more than then the 75 years. did the commission -- [inaudible] play any significant role and that? what role did business leaders in particular the auto company guys and steel company, concerted efforts to seek black workers in the south? >> that was a very interesting aspect to i wrote about in the book because i thought it was quite striking. knudsen is all in favor to of bringing income and compete at the their practice was totally the wrong way to go. he said you go factor by factory, convince them what these guys can do.

you to show them examples of the you do any step-by-step, contract by contract, not by some blatant changes in rules, who can be hired and who cannot be by and large the role of segregation of the workplace very from company to company. not even industry to industry. company to cover. the gm plant, for example, that i was talking about earlier was completely integrated. it was a shock to african-american workers coming in from south can sit down at lunch with white workers, white employees, et cetera. the glenn martin plan was segregated. kaisers plant, completely integrated kaisers play by the commission charged in richmond at the end of the war, 70% of the employees on his payroll were women. that's how crucial it will be played there. and in the south obvious a lot of work space places were segregated to do a lot of racial tensions as in the detroit case.

but it's very interesting the one part, the one segment of american population that were not protected under the fair practices act who received no federal support whatsoever in terms of the rights to work, et cetera, and implement workplace, but to benefit the most were the women. exactly, very interesting. >> thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you. >> all this week watch c-span for live gavel to gavel coverage of this year's republican national convention in tampa, florida. tonight session includes speeches by senator rand paul of kentucky, 2000 a republican president shall nominate senator john mccain, former secretary of state condoleezza rice, and vice presidential nominee paul run. watch every minute, every speech on c-span. here on c-span2 with booktv

all day every day throughout the conventions with highlights of nonfiction authors and books from this past year. and on c-span3 also throughout the conventions, 24 hours american history tv lectures, oral histories and a look at historical american sites and artifacts. >> tonight in prime time on booktv, "wall street journal" reporter talks about her book. detailing the collapse of washington mutual in 2008, the largest bank failure in u.s. history. >> so the crisis, they say it happens slowly and then quickly, right, and i was actually the case at wamu. it began to get very bad. all other issues internally, their internal controls had just fallen apart. at one point of remaking 12 different system. they grow so fast that there was just no control internally. they are mortgage division had

ballooned out of control. they had this massive trading desk. they had turned into not a mortgage lender as they were only 15 years earlier, but almost a mortgage middleman in which they were sucking up mortgages and spitting them out and making a lot of money in between. so all of this, they turned into this just as housing prices which have been going up astronomically every year, begin to crash, really begin to crash. so suddenly wamu is left with all these, holding all these risky mortgages, and all the homeowners i could've just refinanced out of his mortgage couldn't anymore because of the housing prices were not there to support it. so suddenly wamu which have been profitable for how many years at that point, they always delivered amazing returns, they literally were eating away at the capital cushion and they needed more money spent watch

the entire interview with reporter kirsten grind on the collapse of washington mutual bank tonight at 8 p.m. eastern here on c-span2. >> john kennedy once met with harold macmillan, the british prime minister, and you read the repertoires of the day in newspapers, a discuss arms control or whatever, issues between the two powers, which they sure did. but only long afterwards did we get the notes on what he said exactly to each other in private they could turn a kennedy spent a lot of time complaining about bad press coverage, the press was being tough on jackie and other things. and mcmillan was a generation older said jack, why do you care? brush it off but it doesn't matter if you have other things to worry about. and kennedy quite hilly said, that's easy for you to say, harold. how would you like it to say if your wife passionate if the press edge your wife said she is a drunk.

fun things that give you an idea what these people are like but you just can't learn in real time. >> historians and biographers use the vantage of hindsight to understand their subjects three prison of time. sunday, your questions, calls, e-mails and tweets for presidential historian michael beschloss on the lives of presidents, and wars hot and cold, in depth at noon eastern on c-span2's booktv. >> coming up today on c-span2's booktv, professor michael long on let us in civil rights leader bayard rustin. and a panel of librarians from around the country discuss their picks for this years best books from university publishers. faded from historian hugh howard recounts the war of 1812 from the viewpoint of presidential james madison and first lady dolly madison.