for city contracts and other fevers and this became the sf federal fbi case of plunder dome led by an aged and dennis akin originally from the end he fled the that resulted in vice conviction. after an epic two-month trial in a city where people said you never get equal to convict by the cianci went to prison for

60% of voters still thinking he'd done a good job, even though he was guilty. when he was sentenced, the judge talked about you was to people, dr. jekyll and mr. hyde. but buddy and assembly said privately to a friend later, how come i didn't get to acting paychecks. he was convicted of racketeering conspiracy in knowing about it, but not been physically involved in any of the underlying facts. by the kind of framed it as did i do? and convicted of being the mayor. he was the guy who knew how to keep himself insulated like a bob ross he had once prosecuted ironically and he was able to sit at the direct lines, but knew everything that was going on. he was the guy who would know how many rolls of toilet paper when city hall.

he said that was part of his miss in his or her that he conveyed that fear in people that everything, but he really didn't. so that was his defense, but ultimately didn't play out with the jury and he went to prison and relinquish his famous to pay for what he called his dead squirrel. he did his time, came out and went on talk radio on a local radio station. i think he went from being a relevant political figure to be more like a quaint uncle who you have around the holidays, but most of the people in providence who lived here when he got out of prison to live here when he went to prison which says something about the remarkable translation tantra voters. it has really changed and his

succession, the mayor that followed was the first openly mayor, david sisley me he's not congress and the mayor followed him, angel prepares to sue city's first hispanic mayor and reflect and not growing population. buddy cianci compared to q3 loss in the sense that they were both incredibly charismatic figures. they're both politicians who were beloved despite a third flaws and corrections, who had a real populist, evangelical fervor as the to the ability to be successful with a larger stage. huey long was a residential candidate. buddy is audacious it seems from such a small city was actually someone who could be a national figure in washington. under this pivotal moments of his career in the 1970s, is in

his first term as mayor in rhode island i thought about whether he should run or not any ultimately without maneuvered by john chafee and a lot of people feel like i was a real turning point because if it got not providence then, he would have gotten out of the place that reads corruption and ultimately dragged him down, not to excuse his culpability or you can be a showman, on the national stage. he spoke at the republican national convention in 1876 and again in 1880. it was funny before the 1980 election, he went and met with ronald reagan and pitched himself as a running mate for reagan and while he was out there, he went to palm springs and visited gerry ford who had been good friends with him when he was president and he also got invited to a dinner at frankston archer's house. so is having dinner at frankston

archer's house as he tells the story, you know, he sees picture frame in nature, wall behind the bar and the bartender says buddy, you're from providence. i was reading and doing? thyrsus bizarre cross occurrences. buddy and i had an interesting relationship as i wrote this book because the one thing about buddy -- the two things that matter to have more power and control and of course money. he did not control over this book or he didn't get the money and he couldn't control his legacy and he didn't like some of the negative things i found about him. but i try to be fair because there are two sides of the coin and that's what makes it so compelling. he was going to write his own book and later did a few years ago called politics and pasta. easterly's kidney, i'm going to write my own memoirs i'm not going to talk to you about my

insight stories. i remember he called me into his office a month before he went to prison. he had been convicted, was awaiting sentencing. a sign of days in office it was quite a nice piece in this office, he starts to say hey, how much you rip up your contract with random house to my right a bit i'll get you a six-figure advance. how much are you getting? is that i'm not getting that much but enough to make it fair and it's really about more than money to me. it's about telling a good story. buddy looked at me and said why is there no about money? happy to sell yourself so cheap? a thunderstorm started to play over city hall and there's a loud crash of thunder and buddy said, you know, writing this book without me in my insight stories is kind of like the thunder without the lightning. this book i think says american

politics is a blood sport, but it's very entertaining. but when he was first elected mayor, he was the republican candidate. he was championed by kind of the uppercrust liberals at the 30th on the east side of providence around brown university and they were the elites, the people who didn't need things for city hall. they were looking for feature nature contracts. they were looking for good government. buddy had a cynical same even though he was saying good government will make it to good government. when you come down from collegeville across the providence river, you have to cut deals and do things like that to get things done. when he came in a snare the first time, remember he was republican in a state that hasn't elected a republican since the great depression. the first time in american mayor in the city will by irish democrats for decades and he had a city council that was committed to his destruction

like the republican congress is committed to barack obama's downfall in his first term. he did work with them and also machiavellian maneuvers that he had outlasted them and he outmaneuvered them. they refused to confirm any of his appointments and then there was a famous massacre they called it the more the city council had a meeting and they didn't have a quorum because there were three members who had been arrested or indicted or convicted of various kinds such as insurance fraud and fixing races at a local tribe. to buddy used that. "the l.a. times" came to town and did a feature about him and he said in the general population, something like one in 10,000 on the providence city council is one in eight. the genius of buddy as he could connect with people.

your charm, charisma. he'd walk in to reminisce there were a hundred people coming into the election, he'd go to the one that hated him and when that person over and invariably he could. they said he would go to the opening of an envelope that he would show up in any event. our member be make a reporter at the providence journal, not covering fattier city hall at the time. it's another reporter's backyard cookout in the summer and we were sitting around drinking and buddy pulls up in his limousine. it was in a politician making a token appearance. he was there were for hours. he was one of the last persons to leave. so he was a chance and at the city of providence. the city was a downtrodden city. he would go on national tv and it was really popular and sigma cities praises and people loved him for that. they figure with always had corruption. it predates buddy and post a

thin, but at least he makes us feel good about ourselves. we see hope of providence back on the map. so that's why people loved him. >> i am buddy of cellar stories bookstores. we have a new england with the bookstore that you will find. this is the greatest job in the world. it's just never knowing which

are going to see, what books will comment to the store, what people will come into the store. we've had fitness authors come into the store, shopping. we've had people performing in rhode island or massachusetts come into the story. it's exciting to not know its going to happen every day. and to be surrounded by all these great books is just a wonderful environment. a friend and i kind of had a romantic idea about starting a used bookstore. we both had anguished agrees it needs to go to different bookstores and thought it would be neat to open one and we didn't quickly found that we didn't know anything about them. but the business of the book business and he dropped out in pursuit of their quest and i kind of stuck with it. at that time there was a magazine called the antiquarian bookman's weekly and people

first 25 or 30 pages for articles about booktrade and the rest of the magazine were this a book for sale in the back of the magazine books that people want to. so that was pretty much how i learned about the book business, going through that magazine every week and quoting books to other dealers in reading the articles. we started in 81 in the basement of the building not the street and hence that was the name, cellar stories because we begin in the basement. while we have a little bit of everything, we also have in-depth collections of rhode island history. we have a lot asked the. we have art and architecture, modern first editions of poetry.

those are probably leave the things strongest. salem books does have a popular culture pretty much. however, this literature section has always been the best-selling fiction in the store and that's kind of people are always reading that kind of thing. providence always has been a wonderful place for use works because it's one of the oldest colonies, said there were vast collections of books and providence and we've been able to tap into that over years and by collections from some of the oldest families in rhode island and we just have a white bread of books that most stores don't have just because of the geographical location. we get collectors coming in from all over the country. providence is the renaissance

city, so to riesling has really picked up over the last 10 or 15 years and we do get an awful lot of tourists coming in, people who use their vacations to go looking for books in different cities and that's been a real boost to the story. we are very two-volume first edition of adam bovary published in france. that's relatively scarce. there are too many of those surviving. once i got a call from a person in providence who got a donation. he was running some kind of outreach program and it was a donation of books, about eight or 10 of them had been signed by ernest hemingway and that was a really great find. there were other books in their signed by barnaby conrad who was

an author that wrote about old sites, so it was related to hemingway, who is also an aficionado of all faith. there is a they make john steinbeck. it is just a great catch. when i get something like that, either collectors are rather dealers are quick to comment and make purchases. we started out as a pretty small store and slowly grew over the years and have been able to adapt teaching is in the booktrade, which have been pretty substantial with the introduction of the internet and changes in people spoke buying habits. the people coming into the store was the dominant driving force for sales. we did some mail order, but it was pretty small.

once the internet started, especially amazon, that kind of changed people's buying habits, suicide reduction of people coming into the store, walk in traffic and an increase in mail-order traffic and people ordering over the phone, by mail, especially over the internet. it's affected us in a couple of ways. one is that it's kind of driven down prices for average books, for run-of-the-mill books. even some of the books priced slightly higher, people thought they were fairly scarce because you could go to five or 10 stories announcing a copy of the book. but when you look on the internet, they were readily available. so the price has gone down for a lot of things.

on the other hand committees to be if we brought a book about a city in oklahoma, we would really have to wait until someone from oklahoma came in and this address, but. but the internet we can with that book to someone in oklahoma finds the listing and we saw the boat pretty readily. but publishers producing fewer books every year now, if they don't patronize stories like this are independent stores, they're going to find that there are going to be books around. there's already a decrease in the number of books available because of e-books, textbooks being put online instead of being produced. so there'll definitely be a decrease in the number of books available and it's stories like this don't survive, then there won't be books would be available for the public. as the book business continues

to change, i'd like to either tubular persevere and stay here for the indefinite future. >> author james morone is next from rhode island. he details the u.s. presidents in office and how it impacts decisions on health care issues. his book is "the heart of power: health and politics in the oval office (from roosevelt to bush)." >> in the 1930s, beginning around 1935, franklin roosevelt's death began to break into the national health insurance into law. they have a social security package going through congress and roosevelt decided health care would destroy the entire social security bill, said he said no, took it out. but for the rest of his administration's staff says please, let's make national health insurance part of social security.

social security was becoming popular. roosevelt was becoming a huge colossus in american politics and in 1943 he decides i'm going to do it. world war ii is going to win the war. he's going to come home at the end of the war and he's decided i need another crocheted and that's not so health insurance. he takes his most trusted advisor and so sam, write me a bill and more important, write me a way to win this thing through congress. the crackers off, writes for national health insurance package. one great memo in which someone says health care is the most boring subject i've ever encountered. so it is good laugh about it. it comes back, this whole package and just as it arrives on his desk in the roosevelt i said late in april of 1945. this new guy no one knows

anything about him coming hairy truman takes over and here comes this package from roosevelt grade. national health insurance. truman lake said the cause of his life. no one knew it who's going to like it, but it becomes his crusade. truman fails to a national health insurance, but this idea passes from every president to president. no president, liberal, moderate or conservative has ever been able to talk to national health insurance issue. every time a ferocious debate. this is socialism, this is terrible. i'm the one hand, it's something all citizens deserve on the other. knowing this history puts the obama administration's success in an extraordinary light. everybody tried it, everybody failed to do some extent or another there've been some successes mainly from republicans. but this is really an

extraordinary achievement and our book kind of gives the story of each president and how they try to the national health insurance. we had a hypothesis is the same social science is. health care is the one area that all presidents now. they tend to be a very sickly bunch. presidente president you'd be surprised how many health care problems they had. john f. kennedy got the last rites of the catholic church four times as a missile. his father weeping by his hospital bed as the priest performs the last race of the church. this is a few years before he runs for president. so these have been to understand health than illness. there's so big because secrecy is more than half care. at least that's been true in the past. without these guys know health

care, coursers sensitive to health care issues. wrong, wrong, wrong. never was it more thoroughly refuted. kennedy may be sickly, but he wants to give the impression of how their health care doesn't matter to them at all. the health of the people they love. every president while in office confronts the illness of kennedy's case. his father has a stroke. health care goes from some and i could take it or leave it to something he success rate. he won't stop talking about it so it goes on his daily briefing from number 37 read it to number four or five. talk after talk in speech after speech, he describes his father's help problem. he's a wealthy man. i couldn't afford all the care he skated in and i don't know how the ordinary person could. all is said and medicare, the program to pay for health care for people over 65, which is debated at that moment comes

from a sideshow at the kennedy administration to kennedy succession. this has been true president after president. someone they love get sick and eisenhower, conservative eisenhower, his wife's mother has a health episode. all of a sudden i guess mr. health care. he decides to have a year of health care. this is a guy who didn't think you should submit a budget to congress because congress should be the budget authority. and all of a sudden you of health care. he discovers health care in part because his mother-in-law get sick. so that's one thing driving this presidents. but there's another thing. health care is problematic. people get sick of the problems of health care, cost, access to health insurance, america's health in general is a problem that presidents can't avoid. so they're driven by personal

reasons because people they love get sick and they're driven because of the problem that won't go away. the issue, boring, complicated, convoluted, but presidents can't avoid it. we went to every presidential archive and studied the memos written and so forth and discover lots of unexpected things. but our favorite story is the lyndon b. johnson story. so when we went to the archives, derrick tapes. remember the tapes that got nixon so much trouble? johnson had this thing keeps going, but they kept them hidden. they didn't release to the public till two or three years ago and our book was one of the first that had access to these tapes. now lyndon johnson famously was that when medicare passed in 1965 and the normal story that johnson himself tells in his autobiography goes like this.

representative wilbur mills was fighting, resisting medicare. he stopped he single-handedly and as chair of the ways and means committee could do that. after the 1964 election, and insight for the democrats, he stated that the last day of the markup of the bill. there's three bills before the committee. administration proposal which covered hospital care. the ama proposal, which discover doctors care that another proposal, which suggested let's not cover all people over 65. vicious cover poor people. the great antagonist of medicare sits back and says let's pass all three. the johnson administration officials in the room at the time panic. what is her girdle set to? by the way come he says can you rewrite the bill of habit on my desk but at a tomorrow morning?

they asked for an extension, could we have until 5:00 p.m.? no. they go running to johnson in dublin had up to what he said too. in cities is i'll go call my brother. what are you talking about, mr. president. this is a story of johnson's autobiography. johnson says you don't know that story to every texan knows that story. turns out every job boy wants to be a as wichman for the railroad and they give them a test. they say the trade going north or two miles an hour, here's a switch. what you do, some? the boy looks up and says they think i'll go call my brother. they say that's not the right answer. he had never seen a train wreck before. give wilbur the money. we'll find it in the budget somewhere. so johnson then says he went for the goat to the hero for the old folks. he did something no one

expected. it's the usual story of medicare. johnson delighted at the sidelines. then we go to the tapes. but to the cape saint? bassoonist johnson takes over, with got this on tape. i need medicare. i need it bad. you've got to pass medicare for me. he says mr. president, i've been fighting medicare on my life. i can't just turn around. he says make it bigger. say it wasn't good enough for you. you'll get all the credit. this could make you vice president. this is in five or six different tapes we've heard. the quotes i've just given you, that johnson is relentless. he's the one who suggests come up with these programs together. wilbur's first resisted many to backstab johnson. but at the end of the day they make a deal.

at one point he's talking to the floor of congress. this is never done. on the phone to one of his liaisons for congress he hears wilbur's voice and says he's that? but wilbur on. they complete breach of protocol they put wilbur on the phone. johnson has housed that no spill? i hope you're trying to get that. that's what he was medicare. what's remarkable is the bill passes in march of 1965 and not till to designate to the discover that lyndon johnson was in on the secret. he managed to give all the credit to wilbur mills and he sometimes submitted to interviews, two interviewers without lending this would've never passed. nevertheless, johnson was in on it from the very start. here's the lesson. he gave no further credit. he didn't need the credit. he helped negotiate this extraordinary bill.

medicare is now three times the size it would have been. we now call medicare part of the original bill and medicaid, the third part we've got all of those because lyndon johnson made the steel and if all the credit. so we really rewrite in this book the story of medicare. we try to put a lot of this in the book. how the politics feels, how you get it done. at the end of the book retry series of lessons. we teach each president and talk about the politics of them getting health care. at the end where the final chapter and say here at the lessons across all the presidencies. again from roosevelt to george w. bush. lesson number one is move fast. the concluding snippet at the lesson goes like this, the day after the election said they

hoped the kaiser turns to president-elect of the semester or not to president-elect, hurry up, were almost out of time. when you win an election for a very brief moment you have this enormous amount of capital. you say f. he singled day and most presidents forget that. they say that people have selected me. that means they selected my agenda and that's true. for six months the agenda will dominate washington. after month seven was someone talking about? everybody's running for the midterm and all the u. k. this gone. some presidents get this. johnson got it, george w. bush got it. he was very, very shrewd about creeping things through and we believe barack obama got it partially because he had read

the research. we have reason to believe he orale spacers that this boat and moved quickly. so imagine there is some feeling in the industry should to put health care off until things had settled down a little bit. the piping for health care, tom daschle had a tax problem. he was suddenly no longer part of the administration team and a lot of people said it's february of your first year. let's put this off. some people never put it off than it ever passes. imagine if they put it off to the point where bill clinton put health care on the congressional hopper. i would be the first month of the second year, january 2010. scott brown wins the special election. health care would never pass. lesson number one, move fast. one of our favorites is large of these.

often you lose the case, but what do you do with your loss? example, harry truman was his health care. he fights a nod, it gets nowhere. he was terrible at working with congress. he had no idea how to do it, but he kept fighting. so he kept saying the republicans, do-nothing republicans have done a terrible thing for the american people. he wrote letters to the next president so much so that lyndon lyndon johnson passes medicare, a shortened version of the health insurance at truman wanted for people over 65, he said we wouldn't be here today if not for harry truman. were going to fly out to independence missouri incentives bill. johnson stats is rated nannette, everybody's going to think socialized medicine if that's what republicans call the truman bill. johnson says were doing a

service like to independence in medicare assigned in front of an 82-year-old harry truman who then says if you're a liberal, this is the highest moment of the second half of the 20th century. lyndon johnson, the great liberal icon turns to truman and he goes, mr. president, only you could know how i feel is a scientist though. his voice breaking that said this is the happiest moment of my life. when they enhance harry medicare card number one. she's beaming, but you wonder what she thought to hear this is the happiest moment of his life, not some other moment. be that as it may, johnson makes it very explicit as he signs the bill that even though he lost, he thought and thought. that site made it possible for medicare to pass because it got

the public used to the idea. so one of our lessons is learn how to lose. when we wrote that, it never occurred to us that another lesson might've been, learn how to win. the obama administration passes health reform, but they forgot to truman lessig. they let the enemy of the legislature to find the legislature, defined the bill. we know from public opinion polls that almost every piece of the bill is very popular, but people don't know three-piece. so u.s. senate committee watches have preexisting causes and health insurers? gal, do like obamacare? no. again piece after piece. our argument and they can see this from president to president is health care is so complicated you have to explain it in simple terms the public understands.

presidents who failed to do that get punished. a huge anomaly of the obama administration is they got it through congress, when the legislation, but they fail to explain it in terms people understand. they ended up getting away with it, but had a very high cost of the legislation itself. were still battling about it and its implementation. learn how to lose and really the lesson is explain it to the public because it's too complicated for them to understand details. explain in terms they understand. ironically the obama administration failed to do that. truman did magnificently. you know who ousted a good job? george w. bush. he had a medicare expansion. it is the largest in history, arguably the most conservative president in the second half of the 20 century. ronald reagan and george bush, both of them pass huge medicare

expansions and both of them were really good at explaining a nice simple terms. reagan passed catastrophic medicare expansion and he goes out and says we've got to worry about people going through. republicans hated it in a year later congress repeal said, the reagan got it through and explained it in nice, simple terms. for a while it was quite popular. the legislation is so convoluted it into the collapsing. bush got out there and say prescription drugs too expensive. the details of the bill were hellishly complicated, but bush didn't go into the details. liberalize liberals criticize bush. but a nice explanation was told. the democrats like the expansion, but that's a sign of a successful operator, someone who could manage to get republicans in enough democrats

with republicans to pass a then explain to the public in a simple terms. so no democrat wants to repeal the estate that it's never going to be repealed or predict. he moved quickly, expanded in simple terms that were told both sides of the aisle, three lessons for getting things through congress. the meats are you one other thing that's important. passion. this may seem obvious, but presidents can go health care service try to pass it with gusto. a gust of people, truman, kennedy, johnson, obama, w. bush. those presidents were successful because they came and gave everything to it. other presidents, jimmy carter, george bush the first, george herbert walker bush, eisenhower. these are presidents who while they pursued health care didn't

understand it, didn't like it, kind of pushed it halfheartedly. they got slaughtered every time. too complicated and too big to do halfheartedly. say less than for national health care really is a lesson for any major achievement. either go big or go home because if you go small, if you're not passionate, you're going to fail and fall flat on your face. one thing we really didn't expect to find was republicans have high and large been more successful at health care reform the democrats, that in a sense it's been exciting going to china so when republicans take office, everybody assumes we're going to go into a period of health care drought. but think about it. richard nixon comes in in 1968. he has been a very conservative politician for much of his life. he made his name as a

minor-league senator mccarthy and yet right away he begins to think about how we can reduce national health insurance and it comes up with creative thinking about national health insurance. is the first to say people at insurance do not want to give up their insurance. let's keep that make national health insurance around private health insurance. he's the first one to say, competition might be really useful. let's see if we can work in hmos and managed care organizations. so he put together quite complicated but very sophisticated health insurance package. trivia question. who's the first president to get national health insurance through a committee in congress? the ways and means committee. answer, richard nixon could sit through that one go. because it through.

all future national health insurance proposals are daughters or granddaughters of richard nixon's proposal. he does not win. he gets bounced out of office before he gets national health insurance through. we had an amazing appliance between democratic congressman in the nixon industry should try to get national health insurance through. ronald reagan comes to power. ronald reagan was the great antagonist of medicare. you find it on youtube in a wonderful recording fighting against medicare. if this passes will tell her children and children's children what it was like in america when men were free. and he's one of the people who call it socialism. we've got to passed catastrophic care for the old people and i hope i can do something for the working stiff to. we were sitting reading his

diary thinking what is going on? sure enough republicans in his administration hate the idea of expanding medicare to cover catastrophic costs and in the cabinet meeting, one officer goes for him. all the rest try to talk them out of it. reagan, were going for it and sends the bills. the collapses as bush takes over were going to cut this. this is very unpopular piece of legislation because it is this has democratic, house republicans. but notice it was ronald reagan who had the largest six inches of medicare up to that point in history and he's the next largest? george w. bush. the guy the liberals love to hate. his staff tells the same story. he wanted extension of advocate to cover drugs. yet crackerjack meetings. if you were 10 seconds later admitted when bush called it in

you came in 10 seconds after, they are very graphic descriptions of what he did to people and it was not nice. he had read some of us. he was incredibly well organized. he knew what he wanted. the george bush that emerges from these interviews that we did completely surprised us into a person including democratic staff in congress, they said this guy really was focused. so here are three examples, nixon, reagan and bush, three conservative presidents of the space standards of the day he did these massive expansions of medicare or health insurance. republicans have been surprisingly successful. obama broke that first successful democratic the big major health care program since 1965. there's one other story that's

very important. when harry truman proposed as national health, the leader in the senate, the senate minority leader, bob taft, not a warm and cuddly individual, but he gets up and calls this the most socialistic bill ever before this body and he walks out of the hearings after a bitter battle. the rhetorical message had been cast in stone. every suggestion for expanding health care they socialism. people remember how bitter the fake in the obamacare debate. what's remarkable metellus clearly in the book every single time it is socialism, the end of america as we know it. it is a huge rhetorical battle and it's always one sided. the republicans, opponents say this is socialism, iraq receive

an amount. if is death panels. the panelist in a long legacy. the democratic response, no it's not. let us tell you the details of the bill. i'm the one hand a clear ideological message. on the other hand, panic. the inability to craft an alternative set of simple symbols about what is going on has been a theme occurred every single time. one of the questions we ask ourselves in the book is to go through these presidencies is why this national health insurance, much more than other pieces of legislation, much like another issue is, why does it create such fervent debate and argument and anger? as far as we can tell, i think for reasons that we explained, complicated reasons, health care has become a symbol of the way

americans are. for democrats it is a symbol of whether or not we as a society afford each other basic decency. so it goes to the very heart of what it means to be a liberal democrat. for republicans, health care is an example of something that should be a private market could. it goes into the heart of what a capitalist economy should be. that's the heart of the republican message. since 1935, both democrats and republicans have used health care to answer the question, who are we as americans? said this is not about a program. it's not about taxes or benefits. it's about the definition of what americans are as each party sees it. so the two definitions of what it needs to be republican and what it means to be a democrat seems to come into play with these proposals.

ironically, that's why republicans have been more successful at it. they can assuage some of their own party to come along with the program. however, when republicans do that, the party base ends up never forgiving then. people love ronald reagan, but they didn't love his medicare expansion. the party base has never forgiven george bush for passing the medicare expansion. so those cost in the long run because they violate the fundamental principle of what it is to be republican request for democrats goes to the heart of what it is to be a democrat. that's why battles are so great and the story we tell, the story beneath his story. because the archives in the case people as men, but also like it to be and what they mean for parties and for americans. there's lots and lots of books on health care.

some are dull books about health care policy. i've written some myself. let's call technical books. his other books that look at the congressional process or some piece of it. as far as i know, there's no book that goes from president to president and looks at the presidency a solo, the books have his name is stephen b. grappled with health care, got through congress, went to the public, the whole package. so this is the only book as far as i know and i think i know, the folks at the presidency as an institution, as a set of human b. and how they grapple with what has it been one of the great challenges for every president. one thing that's interesting is these very few kinds of legislation that take up every single presidency. roosevelt and eisenhower and truman and kennedy and nixon,

they'll talk up the economy. they all had to deal with foreign policy and they'll have to to do with health care. this offers a window into the presidency itself and into the way we've developed our health care system. it's a combination that's quite unique about this book. when people read our book, i think the first thing i take them to come away with this to see these precedents, every one of them as human beings. we make such icons out of them. their statues had larger than life, but these are mine, some men and women, the human beans with all the frailties that human beings have. the thing that really strikes you as you begin the archives, a complicated policy area, but when you see humanity in both their strengths and weaknesses,

somethings are just crazy. the prime minister of england caught at one point during the craziest and richard nixon is too drunk to take the call and the white house is trying to figure out come hungry for the prime minister on because the president is strong? i say this about richard nixon. he was a brilliant man. he was maybe pound for pound of gray matter the smartest man we see. she sits across from the oval office, fireplace going, air-conditioner full crank because it's summer and rice thoughts. sun is i have to be strong. some of it is brilliant stuff. you've read this and see the future of health care predicted piece by piece. i'll health care is the shadow of richard nixon. you think this is a political genius.

at the same time, this is a man who could be so drunk that night in the white house, this tortured, hurt and that the whole white house staff has to explain to the people in england that the president is still an indicted call you back tomorrow morning. so you get a sense of the full package, not just is fairly dull national health insurance bill that he really had a hand in. he see the extent to which andersen of health care and the extent to which he had to negotiate his own personal demons. take another example. jimmy carter. jimmy's carter's problem with e-mail he was smarter than everybody in iran and he tried to get into such detail. at one point and that will close around a jimmy carter would take notes. he see his handwriting at one point and one half, though he says don't forget about psi rose

this is a very good skier, a physician review organization in which physicians get together. look, if you're the president of the united states, you've got no business down the steep in the weeds. jimmy carter got way into the wee, so he is writing we meet these minor interventions by physicians. and that was his problem. he got so into the weeds that he forgot the president job is to tell the big picture. it's easy to see jimmy carter's real problem was he was not good at articulating the big picture. what you don't see until you get into the archives and i think when people read her book, they will get a sense of this. the president as an individual, his personality is really

driving this kind of detailed look. so that is an aspect of the presidency in health care. the individual really just think spyware. >> here's a look at upcoming book fairs and festivals happening around the country.

>> charles kupfer come to associate american studies

professor at harrisburg. the author of a new book, "indomitable will: turning defeat into victory from pearl harbor to midway" focusing on the first half of world war ii, what is the thesis of your book? >> i'm trying to remind people that defeat was in the early part of the major american or experience. this correctly on it the greatest generation unmercifully we know we've won the war and thank heavens, but it less-expensive really catastrophic defeat that conditioned the american people for their war experience. >> what defeats do you speak of in the first half of the work? >> at first, pearl harbor was the shot, the subsequent japanese were on the move across the pacific that the united states lost one and wake island and hong kong. we were pushed back and back and the philippines down the peninsula and probably the most successful japanese attack, the one that did the most to shatter

halide morale was the loss of singapore by the british. >> and the curse to world war ii in the first have come is your book focusing on american involvement? or are they talking allies? >> i'm an american studies professor in the american subject has pride of place. it was about this time the united states officially use the phrase allies and importantly, the united nations to refer to the allied cause. even from the beginning after pearl harbor, franklin roosevelt and other american leaders were speaking in terms of a collective endeavor often used in allies in united nations went on the american able were involved. >> wended the type change for americans in regard of going from defeat to success in the war? >> it can be pinpointed at midway. six months after pearl harbor,

prior with the battle of the coral sea from a sort of a draw, in advance for the americans, but allowed the united states and hence united nations to seize the initiative and from then on the battles will be fought with the allies determined and how the allies determined. >> was very general understanding against u.s. forces during the first half of the war that they're losing? >> i think it wasn't just as important as a general awareness on the american public we were losing. i really stress there's a lot of journalism history by how open the culture was, how frank the media coverage was and how mature the american public was in response to a lot of bad news. never lost heart, never lost focus, never took there i set the ball, which is ultimate victory. >> when people talk about american war propaganda, are you saying the aware it was just that, propaganda?

>> the public understood the reason need for communication on message. one of the things i came across this word in canada is how much flexibility the media hasn't covered the war when the news was bad. you could report operational detail. on the other hand it was easy for editorial writers to speculate what might be happening or what might happen next and speculate they did. >> inevitable compared contrast question to work overtime and more cover now. >> is a conceit of ours that we live in a media saturated environment where else to thank every day in every way things get better and better. frankly be hard to top during the second world war and those difficult days. >> charles kupfer, author wrote "indomitable will: turning

defeat into victory from pearl harbor to midway." >> it's been a pleasure, thank you. >> is quite true that a people's history is the result of howard synthesizing the work of a great many other historians. but it happened in the 1960s with the counterculture was that a whole new generation of young historians had come up and they were renascence reevaluating all aspects of our past.

>> over the last few weeks, but tv has aired several best of 2012 toklas, all available at booktv to work. >> next, former speaker of the

house,