it's about 300 miles west in the pacific off costa rica, and supposedly there are number of buried treasures on the island. now, mr. roosevelt was a fisherman, he liked to fish in those waters and in fact caught a 110-pound sail fish that is with the something i sewnan today. -- something i sewnan today -- signature sewnan today. and one time he had entertained a couple of british treasure hunters on the houston on whether they can find treasure on cocoa island. the houston was sunk by the japanese, went down with the hmm perking dhmsperth. there's children of some of the

survivors and those who perished still have an association and there's famous book called the ship of ghosts, written about the houston, and if win saw the movie, the bridge of the river kwai, and william holden next british prisoner, at the bridge they asked him how did he end up there? he said he was off the houston when the houston sunk and it's true that some of the survivors of the uss houston did in fact build that railroad in burma, thighland, which was the genesis of that movie. >> host: what's the mystery of the so-called buried treasure. >> well, the mystery is created by the fact that the -- there is the speaker of the house wants to deal with -- speaker of the house of representatives in washington wanted to deal with polarization going on in washington, dc. this is fiction so of course that's not true. right?

so he has a scheme, a plan he is going to deal with the polarizeddation. he wanted to expand mount rush rushmore and add ronald reagan and franklin roosevelt. i try to snowfall polarization. well, there's a journalist, kind of a nasty guy, who says, i've got some history on franklin roosevelt you don't want to put him up on the mountain so the speaker to be safe, contacts the fbi and says i have to find out about this, and zane rigby is ordered, reluctantly, doesn't like to do this work, but is off to find -- initially rejected by the journalist but determined find out what hes no, and when he goes back he finds the journalist has been murdered. so, he is a ready to give up on the case but the speaker says, have to know what the journalist knew or i can't go ahead with my

project. so the fbi agent has to find out why the journalist was killed and what is the back story with fdr hat the journalist was going to use to undercut the speaker's plan. so he goes off to cocoa island initially to see what he can find out about the treasure. and then there's a subplot that runs through this -- runs through both books -- a terrorist in this country who tries to disrupt america by attacking its monuments. call them the monument bomber and in the first book, the lincoln memorial is in jeopardy inch the second book, mount mount rushmore, the goal of the speaker to expand, is in jeopardy. so we have our agent who has to deal with the terrorists and solve the puzzle of the president and find out why people are being murdered. >> host: are you trying to teach history, politics in these books or pure adventure. >> guest: i've always believed

that history is really important to understand, and beyond that, i believe that those people who seem to reject history -- it's -- i once heard a history professor -- i actually a high school professor, high school teacher in history, say, have -- i teach the second least popular subject in school, after mag, and that should not be the way it is. i think history is dynamic. history hat all the ingredients of the drama we watch today. there's love affairs, blackmail, tension, and i don't know if it's taught well but if it's dramatized a little bit people will come to try to understand history, and i know that i'm not the only one that has that belief was i was at the "los angeles times" festival of books over the weekend, selling my book, and a young lady came up

who had a student in middle school and she said, i want my student to understand hoyt, and i think the pest way to do it is to get them involved in an adventure around history, and she asked me about my books and actually both my books, and that gratified me because i think that is what i would like to do. i used to love the old movies based in history. and hoping that i add a little bit to that with my books. >> host: his webs is joelfox.com. what is fox and hounds. >> guest: a blog that i created here in california, dealing with business and politics. i'm the fox, obviously. my hundreds are my other writers. not just me. we have different perspectives on there. unlike political blogs. i lean in one direction but certainly have people who are opposed to me inch fact, in some of the ballot proposition campaigns we discussed earlier on the ballot, when i was

actually a visible advocate for one side i would publish an article from someone on the other side, and trying to get the word out to business community and about business and advocacy for business, and the political scene here in california. so i have journalists, former journalists writing for me, slow cats on each side of issues. someone who represents the unions, people who work for the state chamber of commerce who writes a regular column for me, and then i write my columns maybe too often, three or four times a week. so we're monday through friday, fox and hounds daily.com and that's and, for the and, and even though we say daily it's monday through friday, and it's fairly well read by the journalists. insiders, politicians, i -- governor schwarzenegger wrote an article for me, something from the lieutenant governor on the other side. speaker perez, democrat, has

written for me. so we try to get the word out about politics and in caseic. >> host: we have been talk only book tv with joel fox. thinks for being with us. >> thank you for inviting me. >> now pore from book tough's visit to perrer dine. we talk about "lift ofup heart. >> host: ambassador douglas kim mick, what's your reel here. >> guest: i'm the chair of constitutional law and human rights and teach primarily the subjects related to our constitution but also the hopes and as separations of the world's communities that's manifests themselves to the variation iterations of human rights. most of my teaching, i have to say, has originated out of my -- from the classroom. if a been at the teaching business probably for 35 years

or so, at notre dame and here and dean of catholic in washington, and each time those experiences have been punctuated by other things. so i got be reagan's lawyer for a while on matters of the constitution, and i brought that back into the classroom, and president obama made me -- gave me one of of the greatest privileges and that is to be our country in a foreign country, and to be ambassador to malta, and so i brought that back through the teaching of human right. >> host: how many presidents have you worked for? >> guest: well, three, if you count george h.w. bush, and of course i do. but the -- i really came to help ronald reagan in his second term. i joined the justice department in 1985, stayed through 1989, which allowed me to serve that first year of the senior bush administration. and then in 2008, after an

easter sunday epiphany, i endorsed barack obama, which he wasn't anticipating, and i wasn't anti pating either at the beginning of that campaign because i began as a legal adviser to mitt romney, and left that campaign only after he did, after his defeat in the primary, but i was very distressed, i have to tell you, about the manner which the candidates were treating each other and particularly the way in which mr. romney's religion had been handled, and that caused me to think more broadly, and one person that i discovered in my examination was kind of the ecumenical commune spirit of barack obama which resurrected probably where i began life, i began life as a democrat because my father was a coordinator for

one john f. kennedy. you may remember that was a close election, and some people say it was a close election because of cooking the vote in cook county. some people even say it was because of the cemetery vote in cook county, and we used to ask dad about that, and he had this little routine he do in response. he would get this troubled look on his face and say, well, son, if that were true, only explains how there is life after death. and then of course, under his breath he would say, if you were a democrat. but i have been both in my life, and one of the things that i tried to capture in this book, lift up your hearts, is a book that is bat life that begins at -- in the story with the challenge to love your enemies, ends up tragically killing

friends, and then explores the life that remains. so it's a bit of an auto biography, an auto biography blessed with extraordinary gifts of privileges to serve others and at the same time enaples tragedy, totally unexpected, and working through that tragedy, and then out of that tragedy trying to -- in the life that remains, to build something even grander than we could have thought of the beginning. the central figures in terms of the book are a kindly old priest named john sherri dan who after every morning mass would say, doug, houston about a little tea and toast, and of course with a that invitation it was an invitation to splore the world and all dimensions from spiritual side and a lovely little sister, sister mary

campbell, who was quite the opposite of john in terms of intellectual. john was the intellectual of intellectuals in terms of reading constantly. a breadth of knowledge of subjects with phenomenon. mary took her spirit prom the children around her and at the plants and flowers and so forth, and delighted john, just as being an irish counterpart. these people are in -- francis just stunned he world, and he stunned the world with humility. he said, let us change the world by embracing each other. not by excluding but by loving one another, and that was john's methodology. to love your enemies, and when you think about that, that's really quite an ordeal, to carry that off well, to actually love them, not just to tolerate them, not just to forth give them for an occasional slight, but to

love them is a change in attitude that is to discover something very important, and you discover that you're not the lead in your own life, you're not the lead character. and once you discover that, your heart is opened in a way for a real theology of kindness, and the two of us, john share don and i in the runup to the election, when i endorsed obama, we really stirred up a hornet's nest around here, unintentionally, because i was invited, among other things, as a conservative to address how catholics could vote, possibly vote, for barack obama. can you imagine the temerity of that question. how can someone vote for barack obama? and i went to a mass one evening, and i was the subject

of the homily, and you know things are not going well if you're the subject of to the homily, specially if it's a fire and brimstone homily. but i was too thick to realize that something even more exclusionary was going to happen. i got in the communion line and when i put out my hand authorize the communion, the press shook his head, no, and put is head over the which will has. i said i think you're making a mistake, father. he said, no, you, sir, made the mistake in endorsing barack obama. and at that moment i realized that love of enemy, if you could call a political opponent or a natural political opponent, an enemy, was having a cross cor rowsive effect all the way down. we see the divisions where congress can't meet fiscal

deadlines and can't come together on almost any topic where they start off well on immigration reforeign go nowhere. but it goes all the way down, and because itself goes all the way down it has to be addressed one soul at a time, and course here again comes francis, and john sherri dan was the emissary of pope francis. they didn't know each other but would have loved each other, and the message would have been you cannot think of people whose ideas differ from your as an enemy. they are mere lay challenge of honesty, a challenge of care and thoughtfulness, and you have to address them on the basis of their own dignity and ideas...