history. >> host: cynthia sherry, how would you describe the publishing world today business wise? >> guest: oh, i think it's really exciting right now because there's so many new developments in terms of e-books and electronic media and just the way we're producing and distributing books and all the new opportunities. so i think it's a pretty exciting time in publishing right now. i'm enjoying it. >> host: this is booktv at bookexpo america. >> up next on booktv, david cross recounts his road trip to all of the presidential libraries. he speaks from the franklin d. roosevelt presidential library and museum in hyde park, new york, which is home to the annual roosevelt reading festival. this is about 40 minutes. [inaudible conversations]

>> good morning, everyone. good morning, everyone. my name is bob clark, and i'm the deputy director here at the franklin d. roosevelt presidential library and museum, and it is my pleasure to welcome you to the 11th annual roosevelt reading festival. you know, when fdr established the first presidential library here at his home in hyde park, he envisioned it becoming the premier research center for the study of the roosevelt era. and we're consistently one of the busiest research rooms in the entire presidential library system. and one of the reasons why we love this base so much is we get to see the fruit of the labors of all the people who use our research room throughout the year. so it's our pleasure to have you here. let me quickly go over the

format of the day as well as a couple of housekeeping matters. the first thing is would everyone please take out your electronic devices and turn them off so that our presentation isn't interrupted today. thank you. the second housekeeping matter is if you will find somebody on the staff here today, they will be happy to give you one of these roosevelt library buttons, and that will get you into free admission into the new permanent exhibits we opened just a year ago after our three-and-a-half year venerations, so i encourage you all. and finally, i want to thank our friends from c-span who are filming here today. they are always great at showing their support for our public programs here at roosevelt library, so i appreciate them being here again today. so the format of the session is that our distinguished guest will speak for about 30 minutes, after which there will be an opportunity for questions and answers. because c san is filming in -- c-span is filming in this room,

i'd like you to come up and line up at the microphone so they cannot only capture your question on tape, but also your smiling face to see how much you're enjoying yourself. and after the question and answer period, i will whisk the guest out to the lobby where he will be happy to sign all of the books you are going to buy at the museum store. so david cross is a trial attorney and lives in philadelphia. his trial manual, "how not to think like a lawyer," was a bestseller on amazon in 2013. his earlier book, "cross-examined," is a collection of literature, history, music and travel. his new book, "chasing history: one man's road trip through the presidential libraries," came about from a desire to flee the criminal courtrooms of philadelphia in order to get to know the presidents better. david spends the bulk of his time quoting bob dylan and trying to decide which three d he would take to a desert

island. david is married to his lovely wife, nicole, and is the loving father of five chirp. ladies and gentlemen -- five children. ladies and gentlemen, our good friend, david cross. [applause] >> good morning, everybody. >> good morning. >> well, it is a delight and an honor for me to be here at the franklin roosevelt library to discuss, to discuss my book. when i decided to take a road trip across the country to visit all of the presidential libraries, i really had no idea what it was i was going to find. and i had no specific point of view at that time. i had heard some of the academic criticisms that these are all giant mausoleums to ego, that they don't confront us enough with both sides of the

presidents and the most damning of all criticisms that academics have levied that they were like theme parks. that young people might actually come to some of these places for fun. and so when i came, i didn't know what i was going to find. and the first library i visited happened to be the frank lip roosevelt library -- franklin roosevelt library, and that was just pure serendipity. i live in philadelphia, so it was the nearest one. and i came out to this library, and i fell in love with this place. as i traveled across the country, i can't say that none of these criticisms are ever worth while, but i found so much that was positive about the libraries, and i think franklin roosevelt did a lot of things, but this is one of the big ones. and i think everybody interested in american history and everybody interested in the presidents needs to thank

franklin roosevelt for coming up with this idea of the presidential library. because we didn't have this idea before, and there's really nothing like this in other countries. and i just thought when i started my trip, well, who would be opposed to this? who would be opposed to having a presidential library? and when roosevelt was president, most to have the presidents used to put their documents into the library of congress. but documents went all over the place. and we all know that lincoln's documents went all over the place. some presidents had a bonfire, and many of the papers were eaten by rats. george washington was the first person to have the idea of the presidential library. he was meticulous about protecting his paperwork. but he did not have the chutzpah to say let's create a presidential library for me. that took franklin roosevelt. and franklin roosevelt came up with that idea, and we all talk

about how where in the most partisan of times, if you read through the arguments that went on about whether or not to allow for this library that's right here, whether or not to allow it to take place, you'd realize that there's been partisanship throughout our history, of course. a lot of people thought it was bad idea, and the man who thought it was the worse idea of all was hamilton fish who's from this district. [laughter] and he, if roosevelt said it was sunny, he said it was dark. [laughter] so we know some hamilton fishes out there. this is not a new, this is not a new thing. and he said, this is a terrible idea. first of all, it's this giant monument to this man's ego. and more importantly, we've got the library of congress. why don't we put 'em there? what he said was we're going to have to drive from squadunk to

podunk because everyone's going to want one of these libraries. so i thought, that's a great title. [laughter] my publisher didn't think so. any title that requires five minutes to explain is not a good title. so i didn't call it that. but when you come to the roosevelt library and when you come to a lot of other libraries, you see this wonderful thing which is that when you go to where roosevelt was, when you see the hudson river that he used to actually look at, when you in the house -- when you're in the house that he lived at, you get closer to them. it's one thing to read about a president, and it's another thing to be where he is. and if you're a writer, this is a wonderful opportunity. it's a wonderful opportunity. and let me get started. i've got a powerpoint presentation here. this, of course, is the roosevelt library. now, this is actually a different room from where the

research takes place now in the roosevelt library, but this is what you would see if you went to the back room where the researchers are doing their work. and as you see the gentleman back there with his camera, that's how most of us get our information now. i'm old enough to remember back in the time you used to have to come in, and you had to request, and they had to xerox. now you can just come in and snap the pictures. and i came into that room, and i was interested in finding out, i want to know how the presidential libraries came about. i want to know how franklin roosevelt did this. so gentleman who introduced me, bob clark, wheeled me up one of these carts which you can see. and i opened up the first box, and i took out one file, and what's wonderful about this library is it's before the freedom of information act took

place, and the around kentuckyists and each -- archivists and -- were able to organize the papers very well. and i looked at this fest -- first file, and i found be about 20 things cross-referenced. and i saw that, and i thought, my god, if i'm a writer and i footnote this, it looks like i've done this for six months. so for all of these books we read -- [laughter] and this is why my book, "chasing history," this is why i dedicated it to the archivists because you don't see their names. they may not even be alive anymore, but for the mcculloughs and the doris westerns goodwomens, they couldn't do what they do without their work. and why do they do it? in this world where everything's self-aggrandizement, as i drove across the country and met archivists, i never met so many people who just love coming to

work every day, and they just love their role in this. they're not going to get their name in many books. some of them are in my book, but for the most part, they're just going to have that feeling that they've helped bring history about. and this is how it looks like, this is the card you're going to get. these are for anybody to go to. a lot of people feel like, well, are you allowed to go? yeah. anybody in america can go. and you can go and hold a document that franklin roosevelt signed or that winston churchill signed. here's something with fdr, grand. and when you look at that, it's hard to even describe how exciting that can feel the actually see the actual material. here's the cartoon that game about when he was fighting to to get this library put forward, and they're saying, look, here's fdr as santa claus giving himself his hyde park memorial. there was a lot of opposition.

one lady sent in a check for $1 and said -- no, i'm sorry 20 cents and said i don't send more because of the economy. and so there was a lot of criticism about doing this. you learn sometimes by bumping into something about someone. everything i'd always read about roosevelt was after pearl harbor. he was depressed, here he is thinking about his presidential library the next day. roosevelt kept his happened in everything. his hand in everything. and one of the things you do as you go across, you look at these presidents, and you learn lessons about how to live. and you see that roosevelt would never have had to say, you know what? this guy ran my bank account. i didn't know he invest inside that or i didn't know this. if you look at the documentation, it's clear, he keeps his hand in every pot. and there's, of course, his car that you can see. the mansion. now, this really affected me

looking at his elevator. and you all can go look at this today if you want to do that. again, you read about somebody, you understand about somebody and, of course, we all know about his physical limitations. but when i saw this heavy wooden elevator and was told he would pull himself up and bring himself down on it for exercise, you realize -- and his wheelchair, of course, was not like a modern wheelchair, it was heavy. and you realize the upper body strength that he would have had to have to do that. this is the driveway. he used the try the walk down that entire driveway. so, depp, in a book i like a lot -- again, in a book i like a lot, "confederates in the closet," a character called robert t. hodge says it just tkos you, that combination of history and landscape. and that's the brilliance of franklin roosevelt's idea, to combine the history and the

landscape for scholars and for anybody else who's interested. and here you get the opportunity to sit and look at the cab by he created -- cabin with he created. and this library has been recently refurbished, and i wanted to show that if you go to this library, you're going find both sides, both sides of franklin roosevelt. and a little bit more about that. the next one i went to was the kennedy library, and i write the bay of what. it's a complicated issue, what should go into a library and what shouldn't. but, for instance, to understand john kennedy, you need to understand about addison's disease, you need to understand about his physical limitations, and these are things that are pretty much bypassed in that library. and i spoke to the directer, and the director said, well, we don't go into the personal

things because there are still relatives. so it was interesting. after i had that conversation, i came out here to the roosevelt library, and i'm looking at that lucy mercer thing you just saw, and i look next to me, and i was here at the anniversary and who's there but eleanor roosevelt's granddaughter. i was ready to catch her if she fainted. [laughter] i was ready, but she didn't. just in case nip at the kennedy -- anyone at the kennedy library is watching this, i think it's going to be okay. beautiful library, though, out on columbia point with the -- jutting out into the waters that john kennedy actually sailed in. he had chosen to have his library in harvard, and there was such a fight. harvard was so up happy about that. there was so much -- unhappy about that that he was unable to do that. and, again, a lot of talk about kennedy and classical music and the dresses that jackie wore.

and right now there's sort of an argument going on between the bobby folks and the john kennedy folks because they don't feel like bobby has been given enough attention. and again, the roosevelt library does a good job in incorporating eleanor because she's such a part of the story. and bobby's family is interested in maybe going off to a different, to a different place. i would go and i would do a research topic everywhere i went. so what i wrote about in the kennedy library was this man and how he actually got pardoned. he's a jazz pianist. so if you want to hear that story, you know where to get it, "chasing history." [laughter] so gerald ford, once he gets a library, it's official. everybody gets a library no matter what. [laughter] his library's very interesting though. the one problem with the library which the director would tell you is they have the museum is

about 100 miles away there the archives. so as she told me, she wouldn't want anyone to have to go through the difficulties she has to go through, and it's pretty much considered by everybody that that was not a great idea. they have a little disco hall here to talk about what was going on in the ford years. now, one of the nice things about the ford library, though, is he was very willing to put good things and bad things. there's the famous stairwell that we all recall from the end of vietnam war, and when kissinger saw they were going to do this, he said, why op earth would you put that in your library? and ford said, it's history. now each of the libraries tends to create a rep la ca -- replica of what the oval office looked like at the time of that particular president. this was a type of videotape that probably existed for eight years, very, very difficult to access. now the w. library has to deal

with the e-mails. there's a lot of technical issues that each of these places has to deal with. this is what i saw for about several hundred miles. and then we get to the hoover library which was interesting because i came to the hoover library the way a lot of people might come to libraries, really not knowing a lot about hoover, knowing only what my teacher had told me which was that he didn't care about the depression, and he was very grumpy op that car ride with -- on that car ride with franklin roosevelt. [laughter] and it's a great library. some of the funniest archivists that aye met because they tell me, you know, the third world of presidential libraries, that's a quote from one of the archivists. he said, you know, no one announces from the hoover library. [laughter] but what they were doing when i was there was having a pool, and they were all guessing. we all, many of us are in

offices, and we have these basketball pools and so forth. their pool was how many days a year did hoover spend in his vacation retreat? and i saw them a all discussing this, and i thought, this is cool. [laughter] and i learned a great deal about hoover there. this is the house he grew up in. had really a dickensian library. i ended up getting his memoirs. i'm the one who's read his them our who's -- his memoirs. [laughter] the first volume, i'll tell you, is very interesting and very funny. the guy had quite is a sense of humor. and so that's one of the things that academics don't seem to come prehend when they criticize libraries for not showing both

sides and say you can't be cop fronted. you can be confronted by positive be information as well as by negative information, and i was confronted with some things about hoover, and, of course, it's the first step. it's not the last step to go to a presidential library and then you've learned everything. but what you do if the presidential library does its job, you're going to go out, and you're going to want to read about that president. and there he is. tom schwartz, he actually is one of the people who created the lincoln library which changed the way we do these libraries, and now he's the directer of the hoover library. so he sort of went from the top to the bottom. [laughter] but he got fired of -- he got tired of having to beg for money, so he's very happy to be in the federal system with herbert hoover. and, of course, if you're doing a road trip, you have to stop at

captain james t. kirk's future birthplace. [laughter] then i get to independence, missouri, and this place is as interested in truman as springfield is in lincoln because he went back there after he was president. so the town is really everywhere you go. turn on truman street and have some truman coffee, and let's go to the truman bar. and here's something we're not going to get in the future, letters. i just ppedded up reading -- ended up reading all of his letters to his wife, bess, and they're so touching. and you really are able to see a different time and a different place. and i'm very concerned about the future of our presidential scholarship, and this is one of the reasons, nobody writes these things anymore.

they do a great job at showing both sides of the issue. and the it's funny, though, they do this incredible job about discussing truman's decision to drop the atomic bomb, and they attack some of the many -- [inaudible] we've all group up hearing, and they quote eisenhower and other people, and then they say leave your own thoughts, and page after page after page after page say it is the same thing, my uncle walt told me if he hadn't dropped the bomb with, thank god truman dropped the bomb. only one guy kiss agreed. -- disagreed. he said, dude, that was so dumb. [laughter] now, my favorite part of my visit to truman library was they tack me downstairs -- took me downstairs. here's his army cot that i saw downstairs, his cards, his id and, interestingly, the hotel

towels that he and his wife stole as they drove across the country. [laughter] so i went to abilene, kansas, and this was in 2011. tough economy, tough town, let me tell ya with. not a lot happening. this is main street. so not a lot happening. and i went to the, i went to the tour spot -- tourist spot there, and i told this lady, this elderly lady who seemed like she hadn't seen anyone come in there in quite a while. she said, what are you typing here? i said, well, i'm traveling across the country to visit all the presidential libraries. and she said, well, you don't though how lucky you are, we have one across the street. [laughter]

museum of telephony. i just have to have that on there. eisenhower, interestingly, there have been a slew of new books on eisenhower within the last couple of years, and people are now looking at him anew. the feeling has always been, well, he was vague, he was unconnected, he didn't really understand what he was doing, and now people are taking another look at that. so that's one of the interesting things that happens with presidential history. there never is an ending to it. but you look back at eisenhower's time, and there's not a lot to complain about in terms of how the economy was going and many of the things that were going on. and, of course, much of it deals with him as commander in chief. thank you, starbucks. i -- when i did my trip, i was staying in tents a lot of the time and visiting the libraries, so wherever i was, i was able to

get a coffee, and i was able to plug in, and i was able to write my blog, so i don't think i would have made it without starbucks. now, nixon, as he always does, pushes things to the level where you start to have some problems. [laughter] and when i was at the nixon library, there was an absolute civil war going on between the folks in the national archives and the nixon people. much of this had to do with the watergate exhibit which was up there which went along the nixon line. if you've read nixon's books arguing, you know, his total especially in on it. his total innocence on it. not particularly different from what clinton does in terms of his impeachment museum, by way. now, the original watergate

exhibit, tim naftali created a new exhibit which the folks at the nixon library aren't too crazy about. it's a very good exhibit, but there's a lot of debate about what do we do, what are these libraries for? are they for the president's point of view or history's point of view? ask there's this fun beny sign up here that -- funny sign that he put on because somebody claimed there was a statue of mao, a chinese person complained, and it said, well, this doesn't mean that the united states is supporting mao which seem obvious because there are hitler pictures in the eisenhower museum as well. and recently mr. naftali wrote an op-ed piece about his concerns that the nixon library people are going to put up an exhibit involving vietnam. so the question is, is this up to the libraries, or should there be some governmental board that really, really looks at

what the, what the content is. i will say that one of the great things about these libraries is they're all different. they're not like going to holiday inns. every one of these places is different, and a lot of them are like the president. i don't want to get what i would get if i looked it up on the computer. i'm okay hearing other interpretations of history. history is an argument without end. there's nobody up there who can tell us, certainly not in this country, what the proper history is. so this is, this is his house. and this beautiful lace back there where they seem to be constantly having weddings which is sort of interesting. then you get to the reagan library. the reagan library brings in the most money, and the reagan library certainly does whatever

the heck it wants to do. and it's a gorgeous lie bare up on the -- library up on the top of simi valley. and you're going to have, certainly, the reagan point of view. this is my favorite part, knockdown regulations. instead of angry birds, you knock down federal regulations. [laughter] and then here's the game of life which everyone wins because reagan is president. [laughter] but one of the things that i found fascinating when i was at the reagan library was i was looking at the speech he gave about the evil, the famous evil empire speech we all remember. and i found out, first of all, he had meant to do that in england but had been blocked by his own state department can. so he snuck it in the bottom of a speech that he was going to do in orlando, florida, and he's hoping his state department tokes don't see it. -- folks

don't see it. about a day before he's going to give the speech, some of them did see it, and he ended up making the speech anyway. those of you who remember the time, everyone said, oh, my god, he's crazy, how can we have him say this? well, when i'm at the reagan library, a jewish dissident spoke, and he talked about when that speech came out he was impressed in a russian cell, and he heard about that speech. and it gave him so much hope. and he, he was in solitary, so the only way he could communicate was either talking through the toilets or doing morse code. so he tells the perp next the him in morse code, and they all told each other that the united states president had finally said the truth about the soviet union. so, again, you can be confronted. i mean, i was -- when ronald reagan was president, there wasn't a thing he did that i thought was a good thing. and then i came and heard that

story, and i thought, wow, that's a completely different perspective that i'd never looked at. so that's one of great things that we get. it's to also the only library with a pub. [laughter] reagan, when he went to ireland, he had gone, he had gone to a pub. he wasn't a drinker because his father was such an alcoholic, but he went to a pub, and after they closed the pub down, they shipped it out and put it into the reagan library. so here's air force one facing out into simi valley. yeah, if you want to call it a theme park, it's a theme park. i'm not offended if kids come and have a good time and want to read books about ronald reagan. again, it's the first step, not the last step. richard reeves, who i spoke to who writes about -- and then you get to read about lyndon johnson, short for a two-word

phrase i won't say. [laughter] but, you know, again, history and landscape. where we grew up looks pretty much like it did when he was there. that's the school he went to, and this was his original home. and then we see his ranch. and now if you're the people at the roosevelt high prayer don't know how -- library don't know how lucky you are, because you need to be able to take care of hereford cattle as well because he said he wanted it still to be a working ranch. and he also said nobody should have to pay to go to the lbj library, so there's no fee. and you've got to love a mace that combines the liquor store and post office. and there it is. doesn't it look like johnson? soldstoll lid, strong. his wife came up with the idea into actually turning the papers into a work of hart here, and there's just file after file

after file after file of the folders that makes up what johnson did. of course, lyndon johnson is about accomplish bement. robert caro, who i interviewed for this book -- yeah, wonderful -- there's his outline behind him, if you can get up close and read to see what's coming up. but, of course, he visited, and hid whole first book is about the hill cup. but he says when he first saw those red files, he almost turned around and went home and came up with a new project. he also, it's funny, when i interviewed him and told him the prompt i was doing, he said, you know, that's going to take a lot of time and effort. and i didn't take him seriously. robert caro said this was going to take a lot of time and effort. and there i am. you can see i'm as happy as can be. i've got a roosevelt -- [laughter] a roosevelt mug, a so field book, i'm in heaven, and i'm in austin, texas. and this is where bats all show

up at one point in the day in austin. and then we get to the george bush library, and this is when it starts to become very hard to get your hand on any or archives. i was able to find a lot of documents this which bush told oak ridge boys that they're great, but i wasn't able to get a lot of documents about the arms race. i wanted to hook at the letters nixon had written to him, and they were all considered too high security even though there is no soviet union. so i worry about what, what the robert caro who wants to do the thing about george bush is going to do when he can't get his hands on these documents. and we all hared he jumped out of a plane, what, a couple of weeks ago on his 90th birthday, so god bless him. there's, of course, where john kennedy was assassinated. and then we get to little rock.

people sometimes ask if you had any advice to president obama, what would you give? and i would say don't get too involved in your own library. and one of the problems that the clinton library had -- and i think it's because of's own involvement -- was that he doesn't realize how interesting he is. so we got all the accomplishments of the bill clinton years but without sort of an art and a way to understand it. of course; we all know that these libraries get redone and redone and redope, and it's evolution. so i'm sure it'll move on. but you get a lot of these kind of placards. and then they had a discussion of the impeachment, although they didn't mention she who will not be named. [laughter] but they did have someone saying, well, you know, i think it's very fitting that he was acquitted on lincoln's birthday, because only great presidents like lincoln and clinton ever get confronted with things like this. here's his house and a few feet

in front of it is his, is a train. taylor bran be. , who discussed -- branch, who i interviewed and discussed how difficult it is, central high, it looks exactly like we all remember it on the films, and it's one of those goose bump moments. i had the opportunity to see president cliptop up close ask to shake his hand. watching him and the people in pennsylvania, he was speaking for, just really drove home the difference between these presidents and the rest of us. there are -- and then last but not quite least, jimmy carter's library. until the roosevelt library redid theirs, i think theirs was the top in terms of the modern gizmos and so forth. it's about, i don't know, five minutes away from atlanta. feels like a different world, and it's a wonderful library.

and here's something where he just shows one day in the life of a president, and you see all these meetings and discussions and things that are going op. now -- going op. now, here's, you remember the reagan game. i would have played their video game, but i didn't want get my ph.d. in -- very complicated. [laughter] and then where it all ends is i went out to see the george w. bush library be opened after they invited me the fly out, they told me i couldn't be be there, but i could watch it on c-span in the base bement. there's the director, alan lowe. but i had the joy of actually getting inside the c-span bus. and as you can see, i snuck through and did it anyway. [laughter] okay. and there we have it. so i'd be delighted to answer any questions. [applause]

>> and if we have any questions f you'd please come and stand at the mic and ask, we have seven minutes for questions -- [inaudible] oh, come on, people. >> [inaudible] >> all right. >> all right. >> how long actually did it take to do all of this traveling and writing? >> well, the traveling took me about two and a half months. that was the easy part. it wasn't until later i realized what robert caro was probably telling me. i thought he was saying the trip would be hard. the trip was easy. i know if anyone's read books that combined traveling and history, they look, they look easy to write. it becomes very hard because you start thinking, well, now i'm talking about myself too much,

now i'm talking about this too much. so the way i wrote a book, which i wouldn't advise anybody to do, was i wrote everything ask then spent, like, two years editing, editing, editing. the thing was about a i thousand payments, i think, when i first wrote it. i just put everything in. so it took me a couple years to write it. >> did you at any point this time ever feel caught up in those political or divisive school of thought camps at various of the libraries? >> well, the only library that had any was the nixon library. be in terms of different people in the library having different issues. most of the libraries i went to i didn't even know who was from the archives, who was from the foundation. i mean, it's pretty seamless in most of the libraries. everything gets along pretty well. i go to the nixon library, and i walk through. in the nixon library you go

through the bookstore, and then you want to go to the archives, there's an elevator right behind. so i asked the lady who worked for the foundation, where are the archives? she's standing maybe three feet behind, and she says, i don't know. i said, really? [laughter] so i was picking up on all these weird things, and then somebody came up to me -- he told me don't use his name, so i call him mark felt in my book -- [laughter] and he just started suing. this is his library -- spewing. this is his library, and they're not letting us tell his stories, and many of the do sents have quit -- doe sents have quit, and so it became this thing where the two sides weren't even speaking to each other. and, you know, when tim naftali became the director, he made a comment which they were very

offended about which was i'm not here to run a shrine, and he basically took over the process of doing this watergate exhibit and wouldn't allow any involvement from the foundation. and it took him about two years to put it together. and then they, then he said you have a weich to respond -- a week to respond. so they got a few more weeks to respond, and then they wrote like 150-page thing. really saying we understand, which bob bostick had a lot to do with, we understand it's going to change, but we disagree with this and this. for instance, it often said things like, well, the the white house did this criminal act, and they would say, well, the white house is a building. or who are you saying did it? and they had a lit of other criticism. a lot of other criticism. tim naftali said i'm not changing anything, i'll quit. so, again, i thought it was a

very good exhibit. but right now they're still going through that, and they're planning to put some exhibits together. they don't have a director. i don't think they want a director of -- >> was it as much fun as it seems to be now in the retelling? >> yeah. i was nervous the very first day because i had read many -- i'd read books where people do these trips. and on the first day they always talk about how great they feel, and they're just thumbing their noses at everyone outside their car, because they're all going to work, and they're starting this trip. then i started the trip, and i felt nervous. i thought, you know, what happened? i was supposed to feel this. how women are supposed to get that instinct to clean the house before they have their baby. i thought i would have this come. and then it occurred to me, they all got advances, you know? so is that's probably the difference. [laughter] be yes, sir.

>> [inaudible] in accumulating these papers, would you now consider that to be presidential library? >> well, i consider it a presidential library. it's not considered an official be presidential library similarly because it's not -- that has to do with a designationing with the national archives. that doesn't mean it's any worse or any better or anything like that, all right? it's not part of that federal system. but i haven't been there since they have refurbished it. but my understanding is, it is an incredible library. and so that isn't pejorative in any way that it's not part of the official. if i hadn't just stuck to those 13 libraries, i'd still be taking this trip, and my wife would have divorced me. [laughter] >> [inaudible] >> so now that you've finished this one, what do you think you're going to write next? [laughter] >> well, i'm not going to say

what it is specifically, but i'm going to say it's going to have an outline. i'm so excited to have an outline to work off of. laugh thank you for your question. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> let's thank david cross for great presentation. [applause] we'll see you at the new deal store. [inaudible conversations] >> every weekend booktv officers programming -- offers programming on nonfiction authors and week -- and books. watch any of our past programs online at booktv.org. >> here's a rook at some of the best selling nonfiction books according to chicago tribune.