farrell. [applause] >> that was a wonderful introduction to authors love great introduction and great reviews. for those of you out there go onto amazon and click four or five, don't think that we don't read every single one of them. and if you get a 4.5 you said the agency want to come you could have gone the extra half and given me a five? but the more and more i thought about that, i've of this is a

great american thing that it was hard to get a five. a lot of people would do a review and and say this is a good book but it has a lot of legal fans, i'm not sure it's everybody's cup of tea and a show sort of a -- a tolerance that americans have. in one of my reviews was along that line. it came from the town library and in auburn maine. when they get a new book into the library she reads it and then she sent a little note around to everybody because the winters in maine are long. there's nothing like sitting in front of the fire as the snow comes down in june reading a good book. and this is what she wrote. she said, this is the definitive book of a great attorney, filled with courtroom drama and celebrity gossip, if you like that kind of thing. [laughter] so i hope you like this kind of thing. 100 years ago last fall clarence

darrow, the famous defense attorney, stood on a downtown los angeles sidewalk and he watched his chief investigator seized by the police caught in the act of bribing a juror. a few weeks later, darrow was indicted on two counts of bribery, and burt franklin, the investigator, agreed to testify against them. he swore that darrow had ordered him to pay $4000 to jurors who agreed to vote not guilty. and darrow was at that time at the height of the same one of america's foremost trial lawyers, political leaders and populist champions, and his careened staggered off track there in southern california. caught up by shame he left his wife one reunite for the apartment of his mistress. with a revolver in one pocket and a whiskey barrel -- whiskey bottle in the other, he sat down and vowed to kill them so. she brought out two glasses. they sat at a wooden table underneath one of those swinging bare lightbulbs. and fortunately for us she talked him out of it.

he went on to create an american architect, lawyer for the little guy, advocate for the common folk. poking his thumbs, regarding the jury from beneath that cascading shock of hair, speaking with plain but emotional conviction of the nobility of man, the frailty of mankind and the threat to liberty posed by narrowminded men of wealth and their legal guns for hire, and his words, i believe, resonate especially today. ..

politicians, newspaper men in the hallways outside jammed with spectators trying to get in. at times in his career, thousands of people what's around the courthouse on the outside listening, hoping to catch a glimpse of the words coming through the windows as the closed for the defense. now, in his lectures and public speaking, which he did a lot of, he affected a humble awkwardness a court is simplicity to endear him to his audience. you get stuck with his arms folded tapping his gold spectacles on his shoulder, his brow contracted in thought. of did he would lean on the rail and take the jurors into his confidence, talking so softly that those in the back row had to lean forward so that they

could hear what he said. all of a sudden is to me there would changed voice turned harsh, john muscles tighten soaring toward a chris endo, swinging his arms, and then the storm will pass. [applause] the sun would return. the jurors would relax. congeal engaging. he never addressed juries, he said carries but to them. it was all about contact. very important to american legal proceeding and history. judges and prosecutors do their duty. they were there to exact vengeance and to safeguard property. but darrow believed that juror's commit given the opportunity and a skillful enough invitation could be persuaded to look past the legal particular, judge defendant in the context of his time, situational factors that prompt behavior. he sought to make even the most serious of crimes comprehensible he talked about human beings and

the difficulties of life and the futility of human planning, the misfortunes of the accused, the strange workings of fate and chance that had landed this porcelain trouble. he would try to make the jury understands not so much the case as the defendant, and it was not unusual in the late 19th and early 20th century for some of those arguments to go on to an hours a day for three days at a time, to give a closing argument in a significant case he would do so without notes in marvelous displays of intellect and concentration. and it was more than a tactic. it was what he believed. he was a determinant. he did not believe in free will, nor good, nor evil. there were no more of salutes, truth, justice, of the mercy. as he put it, we are all poor, maligned creatures bound hand and foot by the chains of heredity and environment doing what we have to do in a barbarous and cruel world. that's about all there is.

he had no faith in god or churches and won notoriety in the jazz age as the country's most prominent atheist. he built a moral code upon the lives of very pointlessness, and the comfort and tolerance that we can beings can give to our fellow doomed creatures here on this planet. the practicing defense attorney, trial lawyer, and it is time he represented the mad bomber who felt that if he destroyed the chicago opera house it would bring an end to world war one. little tommy crosby, a 13-year-old charged with murder after shooting a sheriff who had come to you victim's family three days before christmas. need this to say there'll got him off. and then there was a suspect in the chicago gambling from who went to women came to bail amount of notes each other and both claiming to be his wife decided he would rather spend the night in jail. [laughter] there were gangsters and psychopaths and rumrunners and

journalists ended bunco and many a scorned woman. a socialite who smuggled a handgun into court shot her husband in the middle of their divorce proceeding. just kill them. i hope so. but could not resist the case or the wisecracks. she was no doubt guilty of contempt of court. but leading the classic definition of huntsman he convince that jury to have mercy of the poor widow. [laughter] they could not arrest the woman for shooting and killing. it's nothing like chicago. and like billy fled, a notorious rick, a professed acidulous who took great pleasure. and he used sex as well as a narcotic. he relied on physical near this, his mistress said, to escape the emptiness and spiritual

isolation. sex, he told her, was the only feeling in the world that can make you forget for a little while. and work as well. i've had a consciousness that i was doing it to keep myself occupied so that i might forgive myself. every man had his dope, whether it was religion, philosophy, creed, was the chemical faint -- cocaine, morphine, anything to take the weight of reality. and so we have a hero, intelligent, captivated, a renegade with little regard for right or privilege. to him the world was equally a moral above as well as the los of the progressive area reformer frederick hero. some might be squeamish about it in the criminal cases? in the course of that 60-year career he would tailor testimony, pay off witnesses and tracy tried for a jury bribing and both times barely escaped. do not the rich and powerful bribe jurors, you would as? did not intimidate and coerce judges? to the shrink from any weapons?

get in -- compassion for those the faced loss or despair or persecution. a strong emotional nature doted by his upbringing. his father was a book living freethinking of their and owner of a royal furniture shop, abolitionist with steep values of liberty and equality. compassion plays a role of a unifying theory in his chaotic universe. the bids in his other office was built by overalls. poor women from the slums hold in threadbare clothes. as one less charitable paul describe it, the types one would expect in a fortune teller parlor including half wits whom even got could not teach anything. he would emerge at the end of the day, see the long line, side, and offer an understanding in smile. sunday dinners would grow cold as he sat with a client for an hour or more patiently hearing the facts of the case, offering

advice to the poor man's troubled. depending upon how he was fixed at the time of 30 more of his cases are to nothing. he spent much of his money on wine, women, and song and the rest to wasted. up seven he was the foremost champion of personal liberty in this time. when he was a boy he liked to say the hired man and dignity, dining with a family of his employers, shared their peewit church on mondays. court the boss's daughter. there were no big banks, stores, very little money in the body and a monopoly and other riches or poverty. the nation's founding principles were stretched beyond recognition in the roar of the industrial age. a shrewd and lucky few made huge fortunes and they found in the writings of charles darwin and herbert spencer the comforting assurance that the port deserves their love.

they ordered managers to lower cost and when workers organized deals or unions private armies and local militia were summoned to a breakup strikes and demonstrations often with volleys of rifle fire. as one explain the social order of the time, the perplexing question why one man should be strong, happy, and prosperous and another week, afflicted, and distressed may be entered by the suggestion that the purpose was to teach the power of human endurance and the ability of a life of struggle. well, according to the courts a workers only right was to negotiate man-to-man and take himself elsewhere when terms are not to his liking and then marry the boss's daughter. atop the social order the robber barons flaunted their aristocratic aspirations by dressing up like 18th-century european royalty, spectacular parties, a chorus girls jump of cakes and hang diamond colors on their stocks. the greatest, they were

uninhibitedly from 08 in their misconduct. drooling, eating and drinking incredible amounts. they sometimes seemed to avoid a shame, manners, and morals and in the ethics of let me. well, the barron's also control legal establishment right up to the supreme court or the justices were to work diligently and redefining the bill of rights is a guarantee of property of all else. the jurists who resisted aggrandized and would be honored by history and the mediocrities of the court at the time would be forgotten. that was no consolation for the working men and women at the time. by his 40th birthday in 1897, the great economic release valve, the frontier, had been gone. at the time he was america's top labor lawyer. in los angeles to defend james and john mcnamara, to union terrorists who planted a bomb in the los angeles times 1910 killing 20 innocent printers a newspaperman in the explosion.

notable victories defending laborers and woodworkers. he had faced down the robber barons and gunman. he had no illusions in the fall of 1911 that the forces of industry of los angeles would place where. bribing a jury to save a man's life is misters wrote, he would not hesitate. but he survived it came out a better man and of more fine lawyer and had been on the ropes he knew what it was to suffer. the great muckrakers said the senate is humbled. the man at last season is frightened. faces accusers squarely in los angeles making elegant please in his own defense that he won a not guilty verdict in the first trial and a hung jury in the next. from the ashes of his ordeal darrow force the grandest of american legal careers at a champion of personal liberty in defender of the underdog. he became the attorneys for the damned.

broken disgraced returned to chicago took the cases of others . there was isaac bottom of black men accused of the upper rape and murder. comnenus to anarchist's snared in the reactionary fervor of world war one and the red scare. frank lloyd wright, sexual freedom when the architect was pursued by federal prosecutors for violation of the man act which made it a crime for unmarried couples to cross state lines. today we recall his plea against the death penalty and for the lives of nathan leopold and richard low, killers who murdered a chicago boy to devastate their intellectual superiority by committing the perfect crime. it was an especially despicable killing. the call for mercy in a closing argument that lasted three days in the stifling summer of 1924 save their necks. of course, we remember darrow for the trial where he fought for academic and scientific freedom and battled those who

would inject religion and ban the teaching of evolution in the public-school. stymied by a hostile judge he called the lead prosecutor three-time presidential candidate william jennings bryan to the stand. demoralized by spencer tracy. when the trial was over he was the most famous lawyer in the world. '68 democratic the short of money and for retirement. he could have demanded huge fees on wall street representing rich divorce is a chicago. instead he took the case. an african-american physicians and move into a white neighborhood in detroit. it was the summer that the klan had marched down pennsylvania avenue. you might remember the photos from our history books and high-school, all of those folks in white robes walking with the capitol behind them. in detroit a mob gathered pricking the windows of the house threatening its inhabitants. he and his family and friends fired that crowd killing one man and injuring another, there were charged with murder.

defending into a grueling trial that spanned seven months for a token fee raised by the naacp. he won the case but was staggered by a heart attack in the summer of 1926 and was never the same. the great theme block -- the long war that he fought in is much to the courtrooms and cases was the defense of individual liberty from the relentless crushing and personal forces of modernity. no era of the world has witnessed such a rapid concentration of wealth and power as this one. history furnishes about the lessons of the inevitable result . liberty produced prosperity and this prosperity books with doubting i upon the mother liberty you give it breath and threatens to strangle her step. americans need a new, sustaining in his embrace, in defense of life's underdogs, darrow created one giving the narrative voice, tested supplies was sympathetic characters and forces on place in american folklore.

the underdog got on top and would probably be just as rotten as the underdog. but in the meantime i am for him. he needs his friends a damn sight more. americans of his era through it strength. they can again today. there is something grand and epic in his fierce resistance to those oppressive forces which in varying sizes had inspired the rebels in his ancestry, the abolitionists in his boyhood, and it imperils freedom in his lifetime and still pose a threat to our liberty today. the marks of battle are all over his face after watching the road trial. he has been through more wars than a regiment of pershings, and most have been startled to the death without quarter quarter. has he always one? actually, no. his cause seems lost among us. facilities live on. they do, but they are not as

safe as they used to beat. thanks. [applause] >> when darrell argued his cases , was he always putting the interests of his clients first, or did his desire to promote a particular political point of view or his desire to expand his own persona on the national stage sometimes take precedence over the interests of his clients. >> that is a great question, and this is probably the great issue

about the darrows character. when he took these cases he would take them with the idea of staging a public trauma that would teach and instruct and advance his political agenda and, of course, making money and give him fame as well. the fame of the money has been pretty much affable to any good defense attorney, but there were a lot of people who said the fm, you are misusing your clients, using them as pawns in your reader political game. the chief criticism at the time, particularly in that big bill hayward trial that was in idaho, the western federation of miners had been charged with blowing up a former governor of idaho with a bomb in his garden gate. darrow was accused of giving this great compassion closing argument that was all about socialism. it was all about equality. it was all about redistribution.

and he was accused by one of his defense lawyers of doing exactly what you said. i forgive him for it because i don't think he did cross the line in that particular case. the hayward case was a very small court room, and he was sitting here. the jury was right where those lights are. that is up close he was. the jury was not over on the side. he was in front of the judge. so for three months he was this far away, and he would make wisecracks with them and cultivate them and talk to them. he had a very, very good idea when he made that first closing argument when it was a wanted to year. of course he was vindicated by the verdict which was not guilty. >> clarence darrow was a brilliant lawyer. you mentioned the leopold case.

and in that case the argument that he made about the elimination of the death penalty , his exact words, your honor, society may that be in need of protection from these two despicable individuals forever. and it turns out that richard lowe who was a means of a gun died in a prison fight. it nathan leopold basically will his body to science. biological tests, subjected his body to biological tests and it pulled the point. the thing that is ironic about it. the judge, the man who was the judge in that trial did not accept clarence darrow's argument. he sentenced them to life imprisonment because he was convinced in his memoirs he was convinced it would be the more cruel thing, the more cruel

punishment. so clarence darrow never knew that this judge did not accept his argument. he actually made a wonderful argument against the death penalty, but the judge did not accept it. anyway. >> it is a famous argument, and it is a classic darrow argument in that it does not start at a endo disease. it starts as a end then it backtracks and wonders of them bring up in and no and be. if you talk for three days you can't go from aided be. the total impression will be lost. he had to sort of read back like of be looking for a flower. and one of the things that he consistently did in the trial, illinois had never executed teenager's in a case where they pled guilty, and so he pled the two of them guilty and was constantly trying to give the judge a reason why he could save the boys' lives when all of

chicago wanted to see them hung for this despicable crime. and so he always kept coming back to this. there is no precedent for this. there is no precedent. the state has never done this. he would "poetry and tucker of the death penalty in that come back and say by the way, a 19th and 18th. these will be the first boys, he actually called the boys, you know, the poor boys. you're not going to execute them. that was the hook that he gave the judges. finally he could ride an opinion saying, well, not about to break precedent. president constrains me. at the judge, and that's why i'm not going to execute the when of chicago won the to be done. he gave the judge appeared with his other arguments for three days he prepared public opinion for this verdict that would save the boys' lives that the judge himself would not have been pilloried for making this decision. that was what was so masterful about him.

>> yes. clarence darrow is famous for his speeches. how was he at the nuts and bolts of law, the procedures and corporate procedures. >> she was very good at picking juries. he was a great judge of human nature. he was very good at cross-examination, but he was awful at the technical part of the law, and he would pick up in his famous case, arthur garfield hayes was the attorney for the american civil liberties union. the judge would say, all right. we're going to have an argument on that point of law. parents to you want to come back into my office. leyritz was sick, no, let arthur and of that. i don't do that. earlier in his career, i don't know how many of you had to read but the author was an attorney. he became the legal partner. most of the legal brief writing, when they had to go into the

appeals court was done by masters. there is a whole chapter about their very famous falling got and the incredible spite they had for each other for the rest of their lives. they were both very greedy, womanizers, and both convinced that they were literary men thrown into the wrong profession and what they really needed was peace and quiet that the other one make all the money so i can retreat to my office or write poetry and novels. it is a great untold story of american legal history. >> did daryl ever get involved in politics and endorsed any candidates, though i expect a candid it might not want his endorsement. >> one of the exciting things i found when i was doing the story was, we all know about william jennings bryan cross of gold speech and the populist movements studied in school that took place in the 1890's. and brian represented the farmers that were the core of the populist party, but also an

urban populist party. clarence darrow was the chief of the urban populist movement in chicago where it was first tested to see if he could couple the interest of the dirt farmers with the immigrants and the factory workers in the city. and so he ran for congress once and was defeated. he was offered the nomination for mayor of chicago and turned it down and was offered the nomination for governor of illinois entered the town. in 1904 when william randolph hearst ran for president, darrow tried to do what william jennings bryan had done, which is seize the presidential nomination with a single speech. he was supposed to nominate first for the presidency. he wrote this amazing speech. he gave it as -- at midnight one night at the democratic national convention. all the reporters just loved it. it did move the gallery bill wait -- it did not move the gallery the way that bryant had,

the magic just was not there. the goal democrats, the wall street democrats to come back and seize the party and controlled the floor. so it was a trick that darrow tried. he could not pull it off. it was one of the reasons why he hated bryan ellis life. he thought that he was a smarter and better populace that brian that brian got all this unjustified recognition. and when that day came into the sea that he could put brian on the stand and tear him apart and put this awful ending tell his political reputation and indeed he died several days later, a dislike of the movie. darrow's sleep -- sees it with relish. probably no time of his life that he was happier than in those hours when he was making a fool in front of the whole country. >> do you have any thoughts on

where they are today, some of his issues still being fought in texas where there is a bryan, texas. the school systems are still turning some of the same issues. >> only one statue outside the courthouse in the tennessee, and it is not darrow. it is william jennings bryan. convictions about revolution. the first part of the question is important. it is an interesting question because i get asked a lot. and that -- is an easy one for me to answer. in doing the research for this book came upon this amazing class of public defenders. the death penalty bar. and they work in texas, georgia, illinois, places where executions are carried on routinely. most of their clients are guilty . they list the horrible things they say they have done.

they know they're not going to get them off, and yet they throw themselves into the defense of these on the principle that everybody needs an offense and if the death penalty is wrong. and makes collectively over the past and 15 years i think that they have, you know, helps change american attitude about the death penalty. we are switching back again away from executions. about ten years ago it was the thing to do and people were dying almost daily around the country. so this very unselfish, known, unrewarded group of defense attorneys that nobody knows their names are the heroes of today. >> two quick questions. did he did a pretty good reading or was that pro bono? the other was, did he did scopes of? i thought that he was convicted? >> an amazing trial. it was not like harris.

dayton, tennessee was a small sleepy southern town. could not even drink. it was a dry town. the town fathers one summer day were sitting around in the drug store drinking coca-cola said. one guy said, a paper that the american civil liberties union is looking for a test case on this evolution thing. the druggist happens to be the school board president. let me go get the text. i think we teach evolution in the schools. well, why don't we stays a trial here. you know, who is going to be defended? go get john scopes, young fellow. up playing tennis. they brought him in and said, this is what we want to do. you're apt to be convicted. is that okay with you? the tickets to the supreme court >> okay. i'll do that. they sent a telegram to the american civil arizona st. we have your defendant. he will be convicted and you can take the cases appear court.

it was set as a publicity stunt from the beginning of three lawyers being lawyers, as soon as they get into the courtroom, they knew somebody was going to go down as the loser and of a sudden started to mysteriously inserted arguing back and forth. and the state of tennessee, the district attorney who was supposed to be an on the were going to convict this guy pont decided that he was going to bar all experts testimony. so he did that. so he said, i have no ready to call. to my going to call. he sat and thought. they sat and did rehearsals. where did cain give his life? howdy john get out of the fish. so they were all planned and ready. on monday, came around. i want to call. you let me call any scientific experts, i want to call a physical expert, and that's the way and jennings bryan got on the stand in dayton, tennessee. he was convicted.

the judge made the very unfortunate for history mistake of giving too high a fine for what a judge was allowed to do. anything over $80 the jury had to do. instead the judge fined and $100. there was a technicality. and when the case was argued in the supreme court, on that technicality the state of tennessee, which at this time was so angry they have been exposed to the entire world is a bunch of southern backwoods ignoramuses, seized on a technicality to reverse the case but in reversing the case they issued a strict order back to the trial judge saying, you are not to retry this case. and so in the in the aclu lost because they did not get their testimony to go and it did not happen for many years later. dan whether that was pro bono.

>> scathingly criticized for representing because their parents were very wealthy families in chicago which is part of the reason why such a famous case was that these boys had been given everything this country has to give answers to wasted by this stupid thread killing. so darryl had to accused -- issued a statement because the papers were talking about the million dollar defense. so i agree that we will go by as special board of the local bar association and establish a suitable fee thinking all the while that mildred ever hold it to him and he would still make seven other thousand dollars or ever was because the two families were wealthy and it began to take the case. he went to the families and they said, well, you said that the bar association. he said, what?

kellogg. this is what you said you came to my house the middle of the nine biggest of the lives. it would before the bar association and the of the muslim nuys deity had to sweat with his co attorney. any other lawyer would have been happy with the fee. anybody else to back. >> yes. i would like to follow up on the leopold, a more personal question. i was born in chicago on the south side in hyde park. my father went to a height part high-school born in 1921. what did the people in hyde park think about clarence darrow's representation and how did he in list?

>> the atmosphere in chicago as a whole, one of the things it had to do was to slow things down as best he could. try to give the judge some way to not have said he had support within the small academic community a lot of people came to chicago and said this is going it's a new theory, being tested right here. that's part of the reason why remember to the state. in the end all that talk went for naught because the judge did make the decision on much

narrower grounds. so in his decision he said we all have to go any of that scientific stuff. you know they did it. the only question here is whether not were going to hang him. but hyde park at that time was a very liberal community, as it is now. taro was very much within the academic community. he had this thing called biology club where the different faculty members would come over to his house. twenty of them would gather in his library, and whoever was the smart one on the scientific said he would lecture for half an hour. then they would argue back and forth about the facts and somebody would come another we can talk about freud. he was very much a part of the academic community. overall he turned very slowly as public opinion to say the boys' lives. but he did not really have to go too far among that select group

at the university of chicago.iv. we're pleased to be joined by an old c-span fav, doug brink lee, whose most recent book is this, cronkite. one word. doug brinkley, if you had to describe walter cronkite's influence in america, how would you do it in 20 wards or less? >> the most trusted man in america -- there was great pressure to be called the most trusted man but he carried our can you go country through the things lick gemini and mercury and the voice threw the civil rights movement, vietnam war, watergate, nixon's resignation, the birth of earth day, the person who brought begin and sadat together which led to the

camp david peace accord. in broadcast journal jim, it'sed world're murrow, walteron tight, and local thomas. >> host: how did he get to be that guy? >> guest: he was a good wire service reporter, and the wire service for the united press you have to condense the stories. you're given about a thousand words and you can't but a lot of adverbs and adjectives in it. so he learned how to write unknowingly the wire service was the perfect for television where you only have 15 minutes within a half an hour news broadcast. the writing has to be tight and get to the point. so cronkite didn't throw lose lange around him was very precise. >> host: doug brinkley, was he political? >> guest: cronkite was a new deal democrat. he was -- >> host: was that known? >> guest: . no he became a fan of franklin roosevelt, cheered for him as a boy growing up in the 1930s.

in the 1950s some people thought cronkite he was republican because the founder of cbs work directly for dwight eisenhower, and ike, personally loved walter cronkite so when you have the 20th anniversary of d-day, dwight took cronkite there. so there is would feeling cronkite might be a republican but the vietnam war showed him to be a liberal, and he came out publicly saying, i'm a man of the left, in a speech with barbara jordan. >> host: did that hurt him? >> guest: no, because at that time he had stepped down as the anchor manin' 1981. he played mr. objective quite bell, and if you go to a doctor and are getting surgery you don't care if the doctor is a democrat or republican, but when

he came out and voiced some disseptember own the vietnam war, it was the beginning of him editorializing, and today we see people in television who are editorializing all the time, and that's a slippery slope we're on now. and also, you see, with cronkite the berth of celebrities and television. where cronkite would go to a rally with senators and people running for president, everybody bum rushed them. they wanted to meet cop cite, not a senator from wisconsin. >> host: how would you describe him as a private person? >> guest: a lot of fun. he could not stand pompous people. at parties he would trunk a lot, sing old time songs, sometimes take part in a strange kind of strip tease act just to get people to crack up. but that's why -- i interviewed so many different people, from his good friends on he left. likicy buffett, to on the right,

all the reaganites liked walter cronkite to know him is to like him. >> host: what is or was your connection to walter cop cronkite? came to a book party for my biography. he thought i was david brinkley's son, which i am not. and i had to correct him. then later we would have lunch with arthur schlessinger, jr. in new york, and i got to know him and he did a blush for the history of the united states. he knew i was doing my book before he passed. i was with him six months before his taught some some dementia was setting in, and he was -- >> host: this book came out five or six months ago. what's the next book for you? >> guest: well, i have been

working on what i'm calling the wilderness cycle. conservation history but i like the wilderness more than conservation, but i did the wilderness warrior on theodore roosevelt, and then the quiet world, on saving lack wilderness, and now i'm writing forester in chief, franklin roosevelt, the ccc, and wild america. i'm looking how fdr and gifford-pinchot got two billion trees planted through the youth car in the 1930s. so i'm waiting of the death bowl. everglades. >> we were indicating before this interview, you were telling me you spent seven hours with neil armstrong. >> guest: i did. i grew up in ohio, and i don't have time to get the detail but i go to be do the official history for nasa right after

9/11, and he doesn't like talking, mr. armstrong, so i was able to burn some tapes with him, which i'm very proud of. rosenthal, an editor of news week, tune out about and it i wrote a little piece -- a long piece in "newsweek" about neil a remember strong, and my university rights, we celebrated the 15th anniversary of john f. kennedy challenging america to go to the moon on the campus i teach. and kennedy said we go to the moon because it's there, and listening to kennedy years about the moon shot, you wonder why politicians today don't get behind a war on cancer or don't talk up a going to mars or something. we seem to have lost that sense of bigness. hopefully it will come back. >> host: we've been talking for a short time with doug brink eley. his most recent book, cronkite, and we appreciate y