sear the conscience of the american people that this was not just wrong legally but morally. morally. black people were entitled to the same rights, not because the government was going to give it to them or should, but because they enjoyed the same in doubt inalienable rights as every human being. >> government had to enforce equal treatment. government was an important instrument. >> again, not throwing the baby out with the bathwater, there is reason for government. government needs to needs to restrain what the theologians call central people. that is the purpose of government, a biblically established institution that has its limitations. the founders want government to be with strained so that

the people would be unlimited. >> thank you for coming in. commonsense solutions for a stronger america. a groundhog over his left shoulder because he thinks that we keep ignoring the commonsense solutions that our forefathers give. >> repeating the same thing everyday. >> thank you for joining us here. >> that was book tv signature program in which authors of the latest nonfiction books are interviewed by journalists, public policymakers, and others. errors every weekend. and you can watch online.

up next, author and historian, former editor in chief of simon & schuster. the oxford graduate discusses his books and biographies on pres. grant, president grant, eisenhower, lawrence of arabia, and robert e lee. >> who is alex kohler? >> the name that my uncle was born with and which he changed when he moved to budapest because at first he spelled the knew name c - o

- r --dash d --dash a. >> who was see and what did he do? >> perhaps the prototypical film producer but also film director. producer, also film director. he directed his first film at a teenage age in 1914 and directed at least 100 or twice thatvi he directed at least 100 movies during the course of his life don't know how many. europe, the united kingdom, hollywood when he was fair, he was an affable genius and being his nephew was a full-time excitement.

>> host: what was his influence on you? he and your father and your other uncle? >> guest: and enormous respect for talent of any kind. he was that making films and recognizing all sorts of talent even if they don't share it themselves. secondly although they were in tense at making the best possible film and the best possible film, they also had a great capacity for in forming what they were doing, having fun and the friendships that came along with business relationships. they were enormously influential. >> host: what was your childhood like? >> guest: barring the great and foreseeable episode of the second world war first through canada and the united states in

1940, because alex found himself unable to complete three films in england, one was the thief of baghdad and the hamilton woman. the only way to get them done was to go to hollywood and do them. so we all went to california and that was a huge upset in my life. of myself as english. those thoughts occurred at 6 or 7 years old. i suddenly found myself plunged into america and not brought back until 1945 or 1946. my childhood was in no way difficult but was a constant successions of ups and downs and changes in mood. i stick close to home now.

>> host: in your book "charmed lives: a family romance" you write like my father, ours went to immense struggle to see that the children were scared the grim deprivations of his own use while at the same time believing an unhappy childhood was essentials to success. paradoxically because we had not suffered, he was unable to take seriously. >> i think that is true. alex had gone through so much, fears anti-semitism, being unimaginably for by any standards we can draw today when the father of three children die. bent then becoming the mainstay of his family in his teens, making enough money to support is two brothers and his mother and alex was in any case by

instinct survivor no matter what happened. first world war, second world war, he kept surviving. he loved us very much but he didn't take seriously people who had not had that experience of having to scramble and fight for survival. >> guest: why did you not going to the movie business? >> guest: i could not see myself as having a real talent in the movie business. it struck me the only thing i knew how to do was play with words and so i became a book publisher, a book writer. i think that was quite satisfactory. i don't think the words need another quarter in the movie. >> host: you fell into publishing. >> guest: i never thought of it as a serious protection. i was a book consumer, it never

occurred to me how books are produced or why they are produced for any of those things and i came over here after completing my education at oxford to work for my cousin sidney kingsley on a book about the hungarian revolution which i wrote a play about. next i went to cbs as a scriptwriter which is really hard to imagine how grubby that is. it was like the shape of the longshoremen, you went in every morning to cbs, said in a big room and waited, they presented you with a book or script and once they did, you go back for the report and got paid. one job opened up in book publishing it was a huge change in my life because you got a weekly paycheck, you have a desk, a place to work and because it was such a huge change in my life, my

relationship became a fixed one. i spent 48 years working on assignment and that is because in some sense -- >> host: when did you become editor and chief? >> i can't remember. certainly it was back 40 years, maybe four or five years after i went there in 1968. >> host: when did you leave simon and schuster? what year? >> i don't remember exactly what year. it would be perhaps ten years ago or something like that. i was halfway tempted to try for 50 because it is a round number. seemed like a serious episode in life but i felt that eking out the last two years, being able to save 50 as opposed to 48

didn't make much sense of a left no regrets. and for all those who work there, had good relationships with them too but there came a moment when i no longer wanted to do it. >> host: what does an editor-in-chief do? >> guest: it is like being company commander. you do all the older soldiers do except that supposedly you do it better and with more experience. it is not in direct order job, you don't tell other editors what to buy or what not to buy. you may try to influence them to do those things that he sensually not. >> host: what was it like to work with mack schuster and dick simon? >> guest: was fascinating. he was a deep eccentric and because they went back to the

very beginning of book publishing when they brought young people together going into the book business, in an age when the book business did not have a lot of juice. they were among the first to confront that. i believe dick simon actually worked for a horse, who was the alcoholic genius of book publishing in his age and so they connected themselves to a whole world of book publishing that was utterly fascinating and they were as i say, in different ways interesting people. >> host: how often is an editor also a writer, which he became? >> most editors take a stab at

writing a book. it is rather like eating out in restaurants and deciding to be a coke. i don't think very many editors have become full-time writers or written as many books as i have, 42 or 43. that i think is probably unique. most people retire from their book publishing careers before they pick up a writing career. i did not. i put a toe in the water writing books. to everybody at surprise, above all to my own, the first of those books was a sensation. it was the number-1 bestseller, i want to go back and read them again now and that did have a marked effect on my life goes in producing much more money than i had made before in book publishing but also in carving

half for myself a kind of parallel universe, one side of it going towards book publishing and editing and the other side of it going towards writing. bringing those two into focus, a difficult balancing act. >> host: your first book and l 1972, "male chauvinism: how it works," your second book was that good will and in that will befall you write all life is a game of power. the object of the game is simple enough, to know what you want and get it. >> guest: i think it was true then and what is known, there should be some moral basis to it. if what you want is entirely immoral and wrong than your life is going to pursue a difficult pattern, but assuming that is

the case, if of course what we want is not to have power but its own sake, but power to do the job when one wants to do as we think it should be done and to live the life we want to live, as we have always wanted to live. >> host: ready about male chauvinism in 1972 is pretty cutting edge. >> guest: i didn't realize it would be. we were all astonished at how trendy it became. that is largely due to a piece of it on the cover of new york magazine, hilarious cover of a young woman taking dictation and in front of her seated at the desk is a pig in an absolutely beautiful cuts suit and shirt and tie and it just clicked in

the public's mind as something they absolutely understood and worked in a way which astonished us all. >> guest: >> host: in your book another life, where did you get that title? >> guest: that wanted to call it secret beast, but i decided i can't really do that to these people. even though it was true so i changed the title to another life because it was from the beginning another life and because it had been at the beginning of another life to the one that was represented by being over the film business, moving to london and growing up not knowing where the rich wanted to go but it was this choice of another life.

was about book publishing and getting. >> host: who are the sacred piece? >> guest: jacqueline suzanne, harold robbins. ronald reagan, richard nixon, henry kissinger, the people that i published. some of comparison pathetic piece by the way. >> host: a lot of your personal life reads like a nonfiction madmen. >> guest: i'm not a huge watcher of mad men, but that is true. that dovetails with the whole thing geographically and partly because in the office grammar will resemble mad men of course. all office dramas resemble other office dramas. >> host: a lot of drinking,

smoking, extramarital affairs? >> host: yes. is not the advertising business. i don't remember in all my time at simon and schuster anyone being a really heavy drinker, certainly not while working. i remember a level of drinking when i first came into book publishing that was astonishing that that was the age of the two month and lunge so i had never done that myself. many of my elders in the book publishing business word that kind of steady, habituated drinker. the smoking, everybody smoked and everybody had an overflowing ashtray and nobody ever said anything about it so wasn't necessarily a very different world. key link in we have an e-mail from a viewer named brian. i enjoyed reading about richard snyder when i read another life, very well drawn figure in the book, could you dredge up a few

of your favorite memories of his steamroller tactics in his rapid rise to the rank of simon and schuster. >> use extremely confrontational and aggressive. he was never confrontational and aggressive with me. and could be very difficult. he was apt to say whenever anybody said they liked a particular manuscript and wanted to publish it, how would you sell it to the sales force and if you couldn't answer the question he wouldn't buy it. he made instant judgment

well. >> host: has book publishing she? >> guest: it is in the process of transforming itself from the book, the object of which is familiar in to a business that concentrates itself around electronic purchase of a book in a non paper form, eliminating the bookstore which is a bigger institution so it is very hard for those who are outside and even those who are inside to keep track of what is happening but and say that behind all the technological changes the book publishing business is the same old business which is you have to find books people want to read and will -- >> host: is insular? >> host: i would never citizens

of their. i would say of all industries if it can be called an industry, the most open to other people's ideas, to radical ideas and ideas that you might not want to -- book publishers have always been open to new ideas and new ways of writing, in a way for example like the movie business. >> host: welcome to booktv on c-span2. this is our monthly index program. this month it is author, book publisher michael korda. we are going to put the numbers on the screen. if you would like to conversation, 585-388 zero. five 85-3881. in a mountain or pacific times and you can also ask a question, make a comment in social media. @booktv is our twitter handle,

facebook.com/booktv, you can make your kind there as well and you can send e-mail to booktv@c-span.org. michael korda is the author of many books, both nonfiction and fiction on booktv. we will concentrate on the nonfiction. to give you an idea of the topics that he has written about here's a list of some of his nonfiction books including a and 11, his first win the discuss a little bit, "power! how to get it, how to use it," "charmed lives: a family romance" came out in 1979, man-to-man, surviving prostate cancer, another life, a memoir of other people can out in 1999, country matters, pleasures and tribulations of moving from a big ci

country hamas, the untold story of the battle of britain, "hero: the life and times of laurence of arabia," clouds of glory, the life and legend of robert e. lee is his most recent book. who was t. e. lawrence? >> guest: perhaps the only hero anybody remembers of the first world war. lawrence of arabia was bigger than life even before being put on screen in the greatest single epic motion picture ever made. lawrence was an extraordinarily charismatic figure. i was taken by lawrence had a very early age when i read my father's copy and followed in

some degree lawrence's half. i loved motorcycles, joined the royal air force, when i did my military service, i felt that in some respects lawrence was my guide. that is the impulse under which i worked for the hungarian revolution following winston churchill less famous remark that it is pleasant to be shot at and survive it. that was an experience one should have at some point in one's life. much of that comes from a childhood misspent in reading about lawrence. >> host: in net books this book is about the creation of a legend, a mythic figure and a man who became a hero not by accident or even by a single act of heroism but who made himself a hero by design and did it so successfully that he became the victim of his own fame. >> yes.

lawrence is the first modern victim of his own celebrity. that has become familiar, that is the basis of which all gossip magazines and reality shows are based, that people reach a level of fame that not only cuts them off from the rest of the world that at the same time makes them eliminated even when they don't want to be so that lawrence became somebody who could not step out the door to pick up his bottle of milk without flashbulbs going off in his face. something for an essentially shy person became more than he could bear his he joined the royal air force under an assumed name. and taking george bernard shaw's name very aptly because shaw was a friend. and attempted on the one hand to

escape which was undoable. it was the most famous person in the world. lowell thomas created in a show that contained lawrence's music and played to millions around the english-speaking world so that the more famous lawrence became -- tried to avoid an escape that fate and the more he tried to escape the fate of the more curious journalists where to dig him out. it is a difficult combination of factors in which to live. >> host: you said he created his own fame. c-span2 in the sense that all heroes do. it is what robert e. lee did.

even unconsciously, what will build their faith. they know the image that will be useful for them in extreme circumstances that heroism calls for. they didn't necessarily every aspect is thought out and not that every aspect, that is not the case but the hero knows how to make the camera focused on him. for example if you read about them you realize most people who write about these enormous battles of the american civil war place at the center of is the vision of lee on his horse even though they may not have seen him. >> host: how do you pick your topics? you have quite a variety of topics. >> guest: i like to write about people who overcome their difficulties. succeed in a very large way and

somehow balance as best they can seek fame and success which they have won. the two things are very difficult. it is difficult to become enormously successful or enormously famous. is difficult to balance that with some kind of a life-and-death like to write about people who have gone from a relatively humble position to a position of the enormous fame and success and had to cope with that difficulty. >> host: e-book published by simon and schuster? >> guest: yes, a huge best seller about the actress which was in a into a television miniseries, and a novel about nelson rockefeller and his death

and several other novels including one about marilyn monroe called the immortal cent during that period i was published by various houses of simon and schuster happy to be published by them. is probably a little uncomfortable to be published by your own house and have to deal with your own colleagues about your own books so i was not totally unhappy when i left to go to harpercollins. >> host: from your most recent and distant, lee had developed his skill at reconnaissance his courage without which no military virtue has meaning and his ability to keep his head when all about and the bruising there is to pare phrase kipling. all in all he was the perfect warrior. >> guest: had thought of calling my biography the perfect warrior.

and yet i felt clouds--so much better described because despite his defeat, despite our doubts today to put it mildly about the wisdom of forming the confederacy, despite the question of whether we should continued fighting after failing at gettysburg, as that lee had nevertheless, in a magic quality of self conviction, courage and ability to see exactly how to get there. he was the perfect warrior. he was gentle and manner can't yet he was impeccable and aggressive and bold on the battlefield is altogether very

remarkable figure. >> host: this deal, mr. korda was general be truly a great virginia gentleman to give grant, sherman and mcclellan had never come on the scene and the southern blockade had failed, with the u.s. aid be as divided today as a nation? >> guest: a wonder if he means that the confederacy survived, in what form with the united states -- >> host: i think if he is asking if grant and sherman and mcclellan had come done the scene, would the u.s. be two nations today? >> guest: i don't think so.

he was a very reluctant secessionist. he disliked the idea of secession, call that silly, anarchy. he often be moaned that we were giving up a republic earned by our patriot father's, his tone was washington's favored cavalry commander and was pushed into secession slowly, very varying and enthusiastically, and eventually arrived there because he had drawn a famous phrase a line in the sand as early as 1850-eating 69, which was that he could not agree to see the state of virginia, his home state, attacked by federal troops. .. when that happened, he would have to, as

he put it, draw his sword. otherwise he would not. so when virginia was attacked, he with great reluctance joined the virginia militia as its head. and when virginia voted to join the confederacy -- though lee had very strong doubts about that -- he assumed the rank of a con fed rate general. confederate general. once he had done that, had made that progression, then he fought on during rately, he fought completely, he raced any doubt from his mind which is the very correct thing for a general to do and became the most famous of confederate generals and commanders. and, indeed can, i think became the symbol for the confederacy, certainly the symbol that people admired then most and still do. >> host: what was his feelings about slavery? was he a supporter? and on the flip side, was ulysses s. grant an opponent of slavery? was slavery an issue with these

two? >> guest: slavery's always an issue. [laughter] it cannot be erased from the civil war. i would say that to do the question separately, grant dislikes the idea of slavery although that was slightly altered by the fact that his wife, mrs. grant, came from a slave-owning family, had her own slaves and that grant's brief experience and fall your as a farm aer was sustained by -- farmer was sustained by the slaves his father-in-law gave him to do the actual work. in lee's case, lee grew up in the vast lee family, branches which extend through virginia, and slavery was as familiar to him as anything else around him. he expressioned frequently and certainly very strongly in 1858 and 1895 a dislike for the institution of slavery which he

thought evil in any country where it exists. that does not necessarily mean that lee would have met a litmus test for racial equality in our final. in our time. he thought that slavery was a weigh station towards a better future for blacks. he thought that though freeing them was a worthy ambition, that they were not at present suitable to vote or be citizens. so he was not by any means a paragon of racial equality. however, it has to be said for lee that, a, he would not have fought for slavery. he disliked it. b, that he had the ability to see the slaves as people, not as objects or as potential wealth.

he saw them, by and large, as people which which wasn't true of everybody. he stood up and would shake the hand of a black man who was leaving to pursue a career. he kneeled at the communion rail next to a black man, to the shock of the congregation of his church in richmond. he was that paradoxical of figures, a man who ended up fighting for something in which he did not completely believe. >> host: what makes for a good editor? >> guest: i think a good editor is somebody who not only knows what's wrong with a book and what could be done to fix it, but also knows when to leave things ahone. alone. the only thing worse than a sloppy or unambitious editor who

doesn't bring to the page any serious way to improve it is an editor who does too much. so it's a balance. you must do enough, but you really can't take on the job of authorship. you certainly must not change the author's idea, however abhorrent they may be to you. >> host: what was it like to work as richard nixon's editor? >> guest: he was very, very easy to work with. first of all, he wrote himself extremely well in longhand on yellow legal pads. and his prose, while it's not poetic, is nevertheless very solid and very readable. and he was open to advice, suggestions. he was quite firm about what he didn't want to accept, but on the other hand he was always quite willing to listen. i found him a very, very

interesting and likable man. he was the only one of my authors, the only person i've ever dealt with who always spoke of himself in the third person so that if you had dinner with him, he would say nixon will have another glass of wine. or if you suggested a change in a manuscript to him, he would think of it seriously, almost as if he were pantomiming thought with a kind of furrowed brow. he was a great actor in his way, and he'd say, nixon would not like that. and it was remarkable. you had to accept the fact that he thought of himself, he thought of nixon, essentially, as a separate creature altogether and referred to nixon in the third person. even at home. even having lunch at his house, he would still say, nixon will have another cup of coffee as if it were a perfectly normal thing

to say. >> host: ronald reagan. >> guest: charming man. he was a great pleasure to edit. he did not, i have to say, do much writing himself, although his letters and his diaries and his documents are very, very well written, indeed. the book that we published by him, his autobiography, "an american life," he regarded as something being done by others. he went over it carefully or had other people go over it carefully. he was a pleasure to be around. he had a very good relationship with my wife margaret by phone because she is a great horse woman and lover of horses, and of course, so was he. and they both shared a great interest in pigs. at one time we had a number of pigs on our farm in duchess county, and it turned out that ronald reagan had been very interested in pigs and never failed when going to state fairs like the iowa state fair to go

and visit the pigs. and he sent us a live picture of him -- with the winning pig at the iowa state fair. >> host: you told us of a time when his autobiography was finished and he turned and waved and said, "i hear it's a good book, i'll have to read it sometime." >> guest: absolutely. unfortunately, it was true. [laughter] and he did eventually read it and like it. but he was not deeply connected. nixon was. nixon, nixon started out writing every book himself, a certain amount of editing went into it. a lot of other people's research. he was a lawyer. he would stack it up in front of him and then take a yellow legal pad and then write. he took some pride in his work. ronald reagan, i think, was not essentially interested in that. but i remember visiting his office in california after he had ended his presidency, and he

had this magnificent glass cabinet that stretched forever containing every single saddle that he had been presented with during his gubernatorial, his acting and his presidential career. this wonderful row of western and english saddles, all beautifully -- [inaudible] and he was so proud. he took one down and showed each one and described what it was and where it had come from and who had presented it to him. it was quite, quite extraordinary. i describe, i think, in the book the fact that when you visited his office, what you got was a photograph of yourself with the president. which is he what you got was a photograph of yourself with the president, which he signed.

a polaroid camera. it could be signed and put in a frame for you. and. and when he did that, i realized that there was a mark on the floor of his office, this beautiful carpet, two pieces of duct tape crossed so that you and he would step to the right place together for the picture to be taken. and i thought to myself, that is extraordinary. the event has been governor of california, president of the united states, and is still a movie actor. >> did that book sell? >> ronald reagan? >> yes. >> disappointing. to this day it is difficult for me to say why. these things do happen. political books are very risky. you can pay a lot of money for them, and you cannot gauge the success of the

book by its popularity this a security or the author. some of them work. some of them don't. it is maybe that risky is kind of book to publish. >> simon and schuster just this past year published hillary clinton's second book. if you had been editor in chief would you have advocated for that book? >> the hypothetical is always difficult to answer. probably, but probably for the wrong reasons. .. charmed when i published jimmy carter's book, "a government as good as its people," and i'm sure i would have been absolutely charmed by hillary clinton who's a woman that i hugely admire. so the answer is, yes, probably, but for the wrong reasons. that's often the case with political books. >> host: joan crawford. >> guest: ah, you couldn't go wrong with joan crawford.

i published joan crawford's book. i had a great time with her. i used to go to her apartment so we could edit it. she, too, wrote in longhand very carefully and knew what she wanted to say, and she maintained that firm control over everything that was always a part of her career, and i remember that although by that time she had been reduced to quite a large but not impressive apartment in new york city, this was after her husband had died and she had lost her temporary control of the pepsi cola corporation. and she took me in one day to show me what she called her closet. in fact, if there were three or four bedrooms in this apartment, they were completely covered in clothes. each dress in a plastic, zippered bag with a note on it in her hand of the place and the date where she had worn it and

the matching pair of shoes underneath it. hund of matching pair of shoes bac underneath it and it was just amazing. it's one of those times you say to your self i cannot really see what it was. >> host: who is well grant? >> guest: a philosophy student and teacher who set out to the cofounder not only the philosophy but also yearn to publish large cones on the philosophy of history and satisfied that over the years it was very substantial volumes

behind you. i became the editor of the last two or three. >> guest: there were days that they would determine what happened to the nonfiction book and the mainstay, the foundation was founded upon the story of civilization that sold large i'm not sure that anybody necessary uses it today. >> host: when you were editing ronald reagan you were also katie kelly's editor. >> guest: she did a book about nancy reagan which we published at the same time that we were publishing ronald reagan and

they felt as one might feel about a hand grenade with the pin removed. but when it was explained that we had a contract and therefore would have to publish it and that it was just as it was in that movie a contract is something you have to respect, he totally understood and forgave. >> host: going to read one more quote and then we will get into phone calls and e-mails but this one is from 2006 journey to the revolution a personal memoir and history of the hungarian revolution of 1956. when things get bad enough men will get a gold watch for bread for bread and winning their virtue. it teaches the relative of the value. >> guest: i think it is

prudent. there is nothing like the hardship and danger to bring out just how far people will go when bullets are flying overhead at the gold rush doesn't seem like a big thing to give away in return for some kind of safety. the same can be said for extreme inflation and it takes $100,000 a billion dollars and a trillion dollars overnight to buy a loaf of bread that becomes important and keeps you alive. so i think that's so. i think that we go through life stating the law something that is on a huge historical scale

and that we go into the volition and then realized that the scale of values is quite different from the one that we ordinarily pursue. >> host: are you a trained historian? >> guest: though, i am not trained at all. i did a study with great admiration of little bit under that was superb and readable disorder called document the way that history should be. that is a book that combines i think the storyteller in a way that i always wanted to do. i found my way towards it by writing the books. that's what i started into

biography in the biography i said to myself this is what i've been aiming for. so if was in the back of my mind. i do not claim any special training or skill is that the biggest project is the robert e. lee biography because i could deal with that. it was a relatively small book and i could deal with the background knowledge that i came to him as somebody that wasn't born in america and it wasn't a any stretch of the imagination a southerner or sympathizer so i had to have a vast amount of material and somehow make it come out as a story. i think that when you write a big biography you have to say to your self however much how do i

fit this into a story that people will read from page to page, not a telephone book of facts but a story. >> host: carmen gonzález e-mails and from glendale california when you spoke to this first question a little bit can you ask if the general ever had any doubts about the cause of the south and the civil war, the second question were there any letters or die year he and trees that made him think the war wasn't the best option for the resolution >> guest: let me answer the second if i may. robert e. lee was from west point in the 36 years in the united states army. his father had been a very successful general. not so successful after the revolutionary war but a very special general. and a professional soldier. he didn't seem. he fought in the mexican-american war, he had his doubts about whether it was a

good idea. the doubts were very different. i do not think that he wrote out under the battlefield and found himself repelled by what he saw. that's not to say that the professional soldier who is as we say in english put off by the war is a contradiction in terms. that's what we expect into tommy gets promoted. as for the doubts about the secession, yes. we never gave up the doubts about the secession. he disliked politics to begin with whether they were considered politics or human politics. he had been pushed into the session with an extra long sentence and yet once he was

there he could not forego his professionalism. he had chosen to commit himself in virginia during the confederacy that he was committed to the confederacy and he would fight to the end. i think it is very interesting that when he surrendered first of all just before he surrendered one of the generals said to him why not to dispose dispose of the army and don't surrender it, take its weapons and each man will fight the union troops all the way to their homes and we wouldn't hear of it. he was determined to surrender his army and of the weapons down to the last weapon except for the officers that were able to carry over their horses. he was determined to make a professional and complete surrender. the idea of the guerrilla warfare as any professional

horrified him and he would not have the war stretch out to infinity by a hundred thousand jesse james trying to shoot a soldier. once he had surrendered, then that was it. the war was over and he himself i thought was very moving that under all circumstances whatever we saw the events might prove and he hoped would prove that god had in mind a restoration of the community. and he put his shoulder to the wheel as the phrase goes to make the union possible by surrendering completely. when he got home he was in the habit at first of cutting off one of the buttons from his uniform to give to his daughter and her friend, one of his daughter's and her friends and then he was told, which was

correct, that the federal governor of richmond had forbidden the wearing of the confederate tins and so he moved them and replaced them with whether and he was determined to live up to the surrender and determine to unite the two parts of the country. and more than any other figure he helped to cement the two parts of the country together in the four or five after surrendering in northern virginia. he was in a store captain and he was already a national hero and a kernel quite famous and one of the great heroes of the

mexican-american war. he came to grant waite and grant delete and his life and didn't come front. and he came to a great respect for grant after the war when there was a move to have him tried for treason. grant put an end to it immediately by biting the contradicted terms of the courthouse and therefore it could take the price. and in 1868 when he came to testify before the congress, he actually met grant and with respect on each time. as grant describes in his memoirs it is to read one of the glories of americans nonfiction

writing. there are two great stars. in the fiction, moby dick and nonfiction it is the general memoir. there was a time when there was no house or the mason-dixon line and when there wasn't a bible and into the general memoir somewhere in the home. that book, to read the description of the surrender is the overwhelmed by the dignity of both men and by that respect they had for each other and each other's army. it is an enormously moving part of american literature. >> host: in another bikes you wrote general grant was the first to write his own memoirs. just for the last president to write his own memoir without any help. richard nixon wrote his that large numbers and helpers.

grant was dying and also bankrupt when he wrote his memoirs because mark twain invented the idea of paying grants for the book before it was written. something publishers until that point they had done and it was a huge fortune, so grant thomas bankrupt bankrupt bankrupt in the dying of throat cancer sapped down with pads of paper and a white linen scarf wiped around and rode without anybody's help. remember it is one of the epic and courageous offenses in the history of literature. and we did if sitting on the porch of a borrowed house and

while people came by to watch president grant sitting there writing and die in. >> host: in your book grant had a dislike of turning back and retracing his steps. if he set out for somewhere he would get there somehow. whatever the difficulties the lead in his way. the city of secrecy would turn out to be one of the factors that made him a formidable general. >> host: it is very for a general. grant would not go back on his steps and always put his foot where he wanted to go. as a general it was much the same thing. the result is that he took very large casualties. not always but quite often. we was a much will see much more inventive generals and grant. first of all, he was always

short of men and guns. his men were short of blankets in the winter and short of everything in the confederacy they couldn't supply or replace it. he made up for that and an enormous ingenuity and maneuvering he was spectacular. he would advance and vanish for days and reappear to the side. he was one of the great in military history. he fought his battles when he wanted to fight them and when he wanted to fight them. and when he got all of those equations right, he won. what he did and when he lost, but the speed with which he moved as stonewall jackson as the commander marched his core 54 miles in two days before the second manassas. 54 miles in two days in the

middle of the summer for those that were mostly barefoot and carrying their rifles and bayonets admonition and at a huge distance he counted all of that. when they eat all of their called their technique it was the and jackson. the germans knew more about the shenandoah valley then anybody does in this country. they studied it as if were a part of their own homes to read every single town, village, river, stream, fueled they the learned and the german military school. it's quite extraordinary. the he was an enormous genius. he had as i described in clouds of glory the serenity of genius that he relied on the genius and by and large, it served him very

well indeed. ultimately the numbers tell and the ability to use the members and the determination to keep going towards where you want to go, he was forced to retreat again and again until it had become a long and painful siege. >> host: you've been listening to our conversation the last hour. former editor-in-chief of simon and schuster, historian, writer, etc.. they want to talk about. i don't think you will be able to stump him. we've covered a lot of topics and whatever you want to ask it is your turn. we are going to begin with david and hope south florida. good afternoon. >> caller: good afternoon. it's always a pleasure to say hello to you. and i absolutely do out of my

ear you very much and i'm somewhat familiar with your writing. years ago, i read a book, child of the century, a biography in which he talked about and wrote about a conversation that he had with your own goals alexander at the time that israel was coming into existence. and he said to him this isn't as accurate that i can muster after all these years if the jews in palestine act up, we will exterminate them. that was a terrible thing to say, and i've never forgotten it and it's covered a lot. every time i see his name on the credits in a movie, i get a

greedy cause of it. i am just wondering what you have to say. >> guest: first of all, i wouldn't trust his word about anything. so that is very unlikely. i will not say that as a naturalized subject he would have necessarily been in favor of israel, but he was a sympathetic person and cautious to have said anything like that about the jews in palestine and that i've always thought of as talented and of whom i wouldn't necessarily take seriously. i read the book and it is a wonderful book i just don't believe most of the quotes and certainly not that one.

>> host: you wrote that you were not fully jewish. >> guest: that isn't the right word. i wasn't aware at all until quite late in life when my uncle died and my father flew to california to meet before the funeral and mentioned that he had been searching for a rabbi and it suddenly hit me in and of curious enthusiasm and as we all know, los angeles is a place where people develop very unfamiliar religious colts. he would have wanted a rabbi at his funeral i asked about it and finally came to the conclusion that the answer to that question as i soon learned that they were called they were jewish and not

an advantage, to put it mildly. my mother's family was firmly in galicia, and go back to the beginning of time. so, i have never -- and my mother in fact long after my father's death when she read a charmed life she said she liked the book very much but she thought the whole description of my father having been jewish is a great exaggeration because he would have told her and he never did so she went to her grave thinking my father was not jewish, which she just thought i was wrong. so, i came to accept that instantly and explained a great deal about them that otherwise would have been inexplicable, but that is not to say that any one of them would have ever made an anti-semitic or anti-zionist

statements. quite far from it. and i think that the answer is we have to somehow place ourselves back in the spirit of the 20s and 30s where people coming from hungary which had been part of the empire and it now had become a fascist state in europe, people were already exotic, strangely accented, and peculiar. they saw no reason to further complicate that. by turning himself into what would have been a jewish refugee program. they were exotic enough to begin without that and so without ever having made the point, they slid into the world without being forced to confront that. that's very understandable in terms of where they came from

and in terms of europe and the 20s and 30s. so i think however that none of them would have been foolish enough to say it. >> host: (202)585-3880 in the east and central time zone and if you would like to converse. to do 3881 for those of you out west. west. knoxville, tennessee. hello, linda. >> caller: hello. you are a horse person. i am a horse person. in 2003, you published a book called horse people in the writing life. i pulled it from my shelves in january of 2005. okay my question is what do you see as a horse person is the future of horse people and culture including poor horse people in america given all of

the anti-war sentiment and pressure in the development, zoning boards, environmentalists, the recent carriage first controversy and even agricultural land preservation is another example if you want it. >> guest: but we see first answer to that question, that's where the speaker is is is with you were harboring over my head like an angel i should do that. if my wife margaret who is really the horse person, i'm fairly late in life a horse enthusiast, but it is margaret who pulled me into this horse world on the scale to which we reached, and whatever i know about horses i learned by being around her. second, let me say that you are combining a number of different factors. a lot of people who love horses don't think that the carriage

horses in central park are a good idea because they are exposed to bad weather, freezing rain, accidents, heavy traffic and pollution. i don't feel one way or the other. i like the carriage horses being there but as an animal lover i am not entirely sure that it's a good idea for the animals. i -- in part of the country where i live, there sentiment that i know of them but that is preceded under the certain proceedings but there is no anti-coors feeling that i know of. we keep a number of forces at our property, and nobody's ever objected to it. i would agree with you that it's a difficult thing to do because it is expensive. i have to say but on the other hand i think that we would have been much poorer for it.

my wife and i have always been attracted to horses and we are attracted to each other because we used to write a together early in the morning in central park and so forces have become a part of my life and i am enormously sympathetic as long as they are well kept and provided for and looked after. i don't think that i would want to push them out of the way way way that i would certainly want to make sure that they were treated well. >> host: you were the first one to talk about the hungarian revolution revolution all in the same program. you were born in 1933. do you still ride today? >> guest: yes if i were not hear a would have been on a horse this morning. yes, i arrived as a rule four or five times a week and i and joy very much there are days of the wind turbine that is getting to be difficult to do because it is so cold and wind circulation is

not as good as it used to be. but i am a fairly consistent writer and my wife rides every day of the week. so for her it is a seven days a week activity. >> host: cj in the pacific states california. good afternoon. you are on. >> caller: hello. what a wonderful interview this has been. i have enjoyed it so much and i've been a great admirer ever since charmed lives. you have a wonderful overview of our world. i wanted to ask given what you spoke of earlier in the scale of values, what advice would you give to a young man graduating from a university today in light of all of that matt is that looks like we'll be ruling the years to come?

>> guest: madness hasn't always co. madness hasn't always ruled the world. there've been brief periods when certain areas are stable. england or the united kingdom looked stable and felt stable. america after the civil war went to a log period not without problems or issues with stability and reliability and another world war ended and the culture. there's never been in the history of the world a time where some part of it somewhere where there there was a furious battles taking place for whatever reason. religious, political, ethnic. the fact that they are not taking place right here and right now doesn't mean they are not taking place someplace else

and that's always been true. so i would advise any young people not that they are not necessarily looking for my advice to keep an even keel without these things. there will never be judging from past experience a time when the world is absolutely peaceful all the way at around itself conference -- its circumference and we will always do whatever we can about it. do about it. so, that is a permanent factor of life. i think that taking it on an even keel is what matters. when the worst comes along and a crisis hits us and we will know it and we will figure out what to do. >> host: i go in fayetteville alabama. you are on book tv. >> caller: yes it is a thrill

to meet you. i understand that you are the nephew or the son of alexander? would you -- evidentially your book is going to talk about much more than what the last caller said, i arrived late, more than just the movie industry, but i did have two big questions for you i will ask as briefly as possible. i've been -- i loved your father's image or uncles movies. i am a big stickler and it sometimes burns me up about the copyright and loyalties for one's work not going to the original producers or at least the heirs had heiresses partly because i'm a commercial artist in studio artist full time. >> host: if you could get to your question and we will get an

answer. >> caller: partly because as a disney type cartoonist i am a big fan of old warner bros. work. so many of the studios so sold their copyrights to their old libraries and the television syndication companies in the 50s and 60s. that is not as tragic as the folk artists and musicians like the composer in south africa. >> guest: i understand that the question is insofar as it applies, my uncle sold the copyrights when he wanted to sell them. he regarded his films as children that would bring him to his old age. so deals were made then that have since led to the films to all sorts of areas of ownership that are unfamiliar.

certainly that's that much i can assure you. but that's the way that life is. people assigned these rights and you cannot expect to ... children or grandchildren necessarily to inherited when they've been sold. >> host: please go ahead with your question or comment. >> caller: enjoying the interview and i wanted to have you tell more about mr. green hu ibb does one of the people that he mentioned. >> host: first tell us who graham greene was. >> guest: everybody should have read some of him. he is one of i believe the great novelist of the century as well as an extraordinary figure in his own light and with a vast body of fiction and nonfiction.

i had known him ever my childhood because he was a friend of my father's and he wrote a film script which was later made into a motion picture and became perhaps the most famous and successful and emblematic of the european films about the post-cold war. those that are old enough to remember well feel their nerves. even today he was a man of charm and conviction but that's the wrong word, deeply divergent drive into catholic who

nevertheless was not able to follow the adopted religion. in an extraordinary. i owe him a great deal and i was very happy that in my publishing career i finally came to be his these editor as well as his friend. >> host: i think in another life you indicate that he is one that encouraged you to go to hungary during the revolution. >> guest: he felt that adventure was always good for a young man. and that the machine gun fire over one's head was a forceful way of getting more into reality. i think that he was probably correct about that because if it doesn't make you think about reality very hard, nothing will. and yes he was in favor of my

domain and he helped me considerably. he was always in favor of the adventure, stepping out of the ordinary. he loved to go to places. he'd he loved being on what he would call the edge of things and his wife was spent on the edge of things. he had an enormous talent. >> host: writers are always outsiders and ought to be. it's only them that see things clearly. the people that publish them or make movies or produce plays are always more powerful. however successful the writer is. >> guest: i was going to say my uncle that he is the author of the petri it's among other

things if the detective story. a very successful. her prize-winning playwright who married the rifle as a child star and he told me that at my first meeting he had agreed to take me under his wing to advise him on a play he was been writing about the area and revolution. so he was my first step into paid work as a young man and i'm grateful to him because i should probably have gone on in a variety of other ways and never put myself back into the world of book publishing. >> host: as soon as i was to discover there was a tendency among the publishers especially making speeches on public

occasions to the writer and publisher are part of the same team. this of course is nonsense. >> guest: even though the book publishing industry is sliding into a mass where peoples books are being sold for eight or $9 of electronic books and the authors share of that is tiny and they sold the copies of the work is still the pretense that the publisher and the writers are at the same business and i never thought that that is entirely truth. the writer is at her or her own business of writing and the publisher is at the business of trying to make money out of what they do. it's not the same position. >> host: mary is in rochester minnesota. >> caller: please tell us

about the later life. thank you. >> guest: unashamedly at his attempt to tell in the course of a novel the factor of the life and about my uncle alex which on a professional basis was a stroke of genius to turn the name and make her a movie star. i wanted to tell that story. i had known it for years but i couldn't really tell it in a nonfiction way. so i told it as a novel which was the right decision because i needed to get inside. and i believe that i did because the first thing to be said is that it was an enormously appealing figure.

she's courageous handspun gm is talented. she is in her own way very loyal in her life. i do not been sexually loyal but loyal to people that have helped her. she is loyal to those that helped her on the way to stardom in a way that is very rare for movie stars, period. and she was also enormously gifted to see the films today she could be with the right director just wonderful and many of those films are terrific. i had a wonderful novel, it was much more difficult to date first of to first of all because i never pretend the novel but that is different from sitting down in those days were in front of a typewriter and actually trying to write fiction. and i think that i was fortunate because i didn't know the story

and i had to fall back on why am i was writing. but what he had said or done that and the answer was no. we shouldn't do it or see it either. so, i'm very happy that you remember to do that. i remember it was a great fondness. it was the gorgeously fun to write and it was a very big just made into with my own goal as of all people and as the mother, so it was altogether an extraordinary occasion, one which hasn't been repeated, so i think of it as my most successful into the world of fiction. >> host: what was the process like going from novel to military clicks to >> guest: fortunately for me i was not involved. nobody in the world.

so, you are on the side, and i look at it as an interesting process. >> host: that isn't the same and my uncle alex wouldn't have done. and it was interesting going to a foreign country enjoying it but never for a moment to revisit. >> host: pennsylvania, please go ahead. >> caller: the university of mechanics writing and how you write longhand typewriter or word processor into the second is in comparison of the screenwriter and novelist do you

have any feeling how did you view -- how did they seem different? was there anything >> i had never written a screenplay. i did write in treatment the film based on charmed life and found it difficult to do but it never went anywhere. i don't think that writing is separable into different writers anyway that you write is good whether you write screenplays, novels, poetry and if you have a

sense of how to write poetry and you cannot write screenplays. but ultimately all of the writing is one and everybody that does it is linked to a fraternity or sorority of people that have decided to do some of which sounds easy but is not what you sits down in front of the page and type one at the upper right hand side of it. >> host: george in washington. >> caller: . she served an antiaircraft service and is researching that a little bit that i found very little detail. i will her if you knew more about the director of the

service. >> guest: i'm surprised you can find a lot about actually. there were plenty of photographs about them in the women's army uniform and there were plenty of photographs standing next to the army vehicle that was taught how to repair and change the tires. and even some on the computer where the antiaircraft guns were aimed at the mechanical equivalent and princess elizabeth was in charge of that and a part of that throughout the early part of the war. i think you fight if you pursue this hard enough but there is an awful lot about that certainty in any biography.

>> host: where were you physically? >> guest: during the first part of it, that is for those of us that were british crown of, september, 1939 to about november of 1940 i was in one did and in november after 1940 to 1945 i was first in canada and the sedulous and then i came back to the united kingdom. asked how i remember the sirens very well. and the school on the island that i remember was accidentally bombed. nobody was hurt there was a big noise. my uncle had made a movie based

on a novel and they believed as did everybody at the time that when the war came would begin and they had actually shown this at the beginning of this movie in the novel and so we all move to the country in the days before the war broke out looking to the horizon. of course we had no idea that first of all they were not prepared to do that if it wasn't close enough to do it even when they started to. there was this apocalyptic vision that we were waiting for, and they were forced to live in one house for a time with disastrous consequences because

they were in attendance in various ways and my mother used to go to bed every night saying where is richard, just longing for him to arrive. i don't have dramatic memories of the war except during that period. >> host: frink e-mails since since you're working so well researched i would like to know if there are any resources online or do you still have to handle primary resources with gloved hands? >> guest: i don't think i ever used a loved hand. i am more at ease with paper they have the screen. that's not in any way a combination of it at all i just have come late to the computer

and i think of myself as being quite competent with it but i'm not as my son is for example or young people today are. so yes i rather like to get a stack of paper and go through and mark the records of the war. i like to have it in front of me and go through and mark it up to see what's important. i'm always afraid that i will lose it or he won't be able to get back to it. but it is a piece of paper, i know it's there. >> host: carol in texas. >> caller: i read the book the revolt in the desert. he's probably the ability to his

expertise on demolition. how did this resource find its way into the betrayal of him demand lawrence of arabia and that is my question is how do you square the real lawrence away with the one they projected on the screen. >> guest: his ruthlessness and his unaffected boyish pleasure in blowing things up in his lack of remarks about killing people, these are the things that they

do not sit around wondering about the thing is for how they did it. his remarks crept into his life leader but not strongly. he was haunted by many things. i don't see much evidence that was a huge concern of his at all. i think that found its way because they were both the screenwriter that put it there but i don't think that lawrence would have accepted that at all. >> host: 585-3881 for those of you out west. we having an hour in a half left of the on the program today. here are some of the books that we've been discussing.

male chauvinism help it works at home and in the office 1972. how working out in 1975, charmed wives family romance 1979, man to man surviving cancer 1977 in another life, and water of other people, 1999. country matters was in 2001, ulysses s. grant the unlikely hero of 2004 into the journey to the revolution, 2006 about the hungarian revolution. an american hero, 2008 with wings like eagles the battle of britain, 2009. the life and legend of lawrence of arabia, 2010 and finally the most recent clouds of glory the life and legend of robert e. lee came out this year. what book are you working on currently? >> guest: iem edging words i don't want to start too soon. i think if i start another long

biographical work my wife margaret would feel that that was a mistake. i want to write this time a shorter book. i don't see myself writing another book of these pages. history almost certainly but not the length it was sure as it was to do that is ambitious for somebody. >> host: one of the things we like to do is find out what folks they are reading and what influenced them. what are some of their major influences. here is a look at his answers. ♪ ♪

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♪ ♪ >> host: back to in depth as we continue to take your calls. tom is in new jersey. you are on the air. >> caller: about the experiences working with jacqueline suzanne. why are you interested in that? we will never find out. you published her second book. >> guest: and end higher film

why isn't she great about my relationship with jackie suzanne. we got along famously and she is ingrained in my mind the fact that if she was for any reason she would get onto another line about this voice that would come over and say i want the name of the girl that put me on hold. i want that girl fired. she was amazing. she could be very nice. she could be tremendously difficult. i've never forgotten that she had the only typewriter in the world that was painted pink and always wrote on pink paper. >> host: and capital letters and revised in what appears to

be eyebrow pencil. she was amazing. when we published jacqueline suzanne, we didn't manage to come to an agreement on the book after the one that we published and that book which i think is called once is not enough inspired the publisher of simon & schuster to send a single note that said once is enough for us. >> host: was it high maintenance working with an offer like this? >> guest: very high maintenance indeed was quite an experience. it gave an insight into what was then the publicity machine that you would not have had sitting at your desk at any poetry or

serious nonfiction book. that was the day of the plug of the columnists getting onto the johnny carson tonight. all that mattered is that was useful to have that experience and see it close up. >> host: this isn't typically a booktv topic that it is a book publishing topic so we will tell a quick story. the first night that you met her or the first time that you met her in new york you tell two stories. you ended up with the husband blue cashmere jacket then you went to dinner with a motley crew of people. he was so proud of his shoes made with some extraordinarily elegant unlikely whether that he passed them around the table for

us to look at and he passed it around the table and i said what are we doing to you. we are sitting at the dinner table looking at his tissue and i thought to myself how on earth did i fall into this part of book publishing but it is fascinating to me. >> host: was she profitable for simon and schuster? >> guest: we paid a fortune. the difficulty was you couldn't keep up with their demand. they expected to have the full attention of the publishing house directed and high early on jacqueline suzanne and the buck that they had as the publisher. she was the most successful author but a big publisher however much effort it would make for a book and jackie could

never grapple with that notion that we might be publishing somebody else about her was hard for her to accept. >> host: who was swifty lazare? >> guest: he was a force of nature under 5 feet tall and having had a successful career and then as a film major one of his authors and i cannot remember which one famously said everybody in the world has to -- two agents. selling a book without even asking the author he was a

wonderful man, quite extraordinary. in some ways terrifying. always kind to me and margaret, but he was a vanished breed. he would get up every morning late perhaps around noon, have a swim in his pool in beverly hills and then he would start to call publishers all over new york city before they went to lunch or just after they got back and he picked up the phone because he always had the private number that you picked up and he would say what's cooking. if nothing was cooking he would give you a list of things to

prepare. he would say kirk douglas and you are interested, then he would say i have a publisher that's interested in you i can give you a million dollars. that's the way that he behaved. he did it with everybody. he was an amazing person. >> host: what was your relationship with and been -- bennet? >> guest: he went on to found random house and the modern library and went on to become an enormous publishing success and had his own television show and appeared constantly as one of the judges on what's my line so he became a television celebrity

which is unusual for a book publisher. publishing was divided between the newer firms and the older firms that were connect it more than they were in new york in some respects and who were brought into the modern world of publishing and the first people to get out and start to sell books and print books, they were very serious. they wanted to publish the best authors and the best books about they understood you might have to publish commodities in order to have them do that kind of publishing and therefore change the publishing world's. >> host: you are on with

michael. >> caller: interesting program. i am your age and i think i have this correct, my father had a company in new york in 1938 i saw them play being the first radars that i learned where the actual hardware that you wrote about in your fantastic book so i wanted to thank you for that. >> guest: thank you for that. it is true that the invention more importantly the willingness to build radar in britain in the

years between 1937 and 1940, that was the critical factor winning the battle in britain the construction of the towers that enabled them to know who was coming from witch traction and so that we didn't have to keep aircraft in the air waiting to see both when they knew exactly where to go when the ground controller told them where to go. that is the critical factor and the invention of the radar is one of the great triumphs. >> host: rules of power number

one, act impeccably. never reveal all of yourself to other people. learn to use time. think of as a friend, not an enemy. number four, learn how to accept your mistakes. don't a perfectionist about everything. and number five, don't make waves. move smoothly without disturbing >> guest: i think five is very good. i must say that i'm not in that category of people that willingly go back to the books that i'd written at any time and i'm not ashamed of anything that i had written although there are a number of things but i rather like those and i think that they would stand the test of time for anybody that is ambitious in trying to get something done. >> host: tacoma washington please go ahead with your question or comment.

>> caller: i read power, charmed life and hero and they are all different. it's sort of an analysis of the contemporary culture into their rightful memoir of your family and a straight biography i wonder what led you to go away from writing about what you experienced and into biographies of other people. >> guest: that is an interesting question. i began writing what i knew and saw going on around. it came out of the perception that i didn't perceive as radical at the time that women were by and large in period in the early 70s and subservient positions in office and in general other areas under the

rule and i think i can do that because in my family, the women have of course been married to the man that -- a whole separate category. and it is a very powerful direct source. they are used to having their own way. is that the spirit was alive and well certainly. nevertheless my mother was a very successful but actress in some films and my aunt was a hugely successful actress in her own right and later by other

people. he had been a success before 1948 which put an end to her career because she had such an accent that there was no way that she could hear him sound. so, there was a country reality in my family of strong and ambitious women have made a lot and in many ways they got their own way when it came to their careers and what mattered and so i was very surprised. when i finally ended up in the office in new york as it happened in 1958 where i got my first real job as an assistant editor to discover the depth to which women were such merged as

simon and schuster there were a couple exceptions. we had a wonderful counter production and he ran the financial side and once at a meeting said for this or for that matter and she famously followed him into the men's room and biology was standing there explained how she had to have this money and he finally come out and said get out of here. in those days it was unthinkable. not surprising that she was actually the first woman to wear pants suit and you might have thought of the world was coming to an end. the fact that she had a pants suit caused them to take back whether it should be a loud and

all of us was present in this little book world, despite the fact that many of the most powerful people in the book were then as they still are now. but that tradition of male chauvinism was still. so it was. i wrote about it and i thought i had no idea that it would make me famous and the expectation of anything of the kind. >> host: you )-right-paren are indexed of forcing women to become stereotypes. >> guest: that is still true and i also think that it is true of all that the greatest of motion pictures that the couriers have suffered by men and putting them into a stereotypical role and not giving them the chance of growing and changing and doing

different things for example meryl streep's career where she has done so many different things with such great ability but it is quite amazing. even the best of the institutions at the time that i wrote male chauvinism didn't do that. >> host: mercer island e-mails both books sell best in america and why? >> guest: i don't think that that ever changes. books with a strong story and a somewhat sympathetic character. bond girl which was number one since forever and i read as i explained when you asked me what i was reading i said i've been reading nothing but the orders

and the papers and i've come back to reading fiction because margaret said when she read on girl with a wonderful book and i said yes i can't. so now at last out there in charge of glory is done i can pick up on google and read it and i told her you are so right. i could not put this book down. and there was an element of likability despite the fact she was vicious and conniving that's totally explained the books suspense. it's a question of her character and personality in the book. and i think that is always true. i think that there are two kinds of books to succeed. that succeed. one is very risky which is the celebrity autobiography of your men are. others fall on their face.

it is like going to the tables in las vegas and picking a number. you win or you don't plan to. the other, however, are nonfiction books that tell you how to improve the sad part of your life. that is a particularly american phenomenon and one that sells millions and millions in whatever form. it doesn't matter if they are in e-book or hardcover book. books that changed your life. .. as an ongoing entity by making friends and influencing people, the prototypical self-help change your life book, read this book and it will change your life. and that book, whatever it is,

will always be -- that is not to say what people want to days make friends and influence people. each generation seeks for its own kind of help and susnce and it would be different in each generation but there would always be somebody who captures that need. those. >> host: you write debt shuster was the genius at writing comedy. guess that he could spout it like the mountains in rome. wonderful wonderful and he had many gifts even though he was a a difficult and invasive personality but he could spout slap copy and advertising copy just like an endless without thinking about it. tonight i walked while he explained to me -- in a book,

the one thing it was that would make somebody want to go to the stores and buy it. it's an unusual talent and not all that widespread. >> host: die in the horn e-mail, given the changes in the industry and absence of transoms what is the equivalent of getting a book over the transom today for unpublished writers like me? >> guest: well it's been some years since i actually have been on the receiving end of the cell is hard for me to say. the trouble is publishers habited workout that employing a lot of people who sit around

reading manuscripts that come in and packages from unknown sources is not a productive way of spending money. there is obviously always the exception to that rule but nevertheless, that role isn't given any respect in publishing today and it hasn't for many decades and increasingly dying out. the statements that say we do not accept manuscripts unless they come from somebody you know. my feeling is that the internet will lead not necessarily to self-publishing and there will be a lot of that it will be interesting to see but it affords a forum with its various internet sites that allows a writer to get their work read, a chapter read by many many people and by experience of book

publishers is they now are very much attuned to that and they go to the internet to look for what's interesting on the internet. so what's coming to them isn't coming as it were over the transom at pratt -- package from the post office. coming on screen from the internet. >> host: the first thing i found on my desk a right when i came to work officially on august 11, 1958 was a cast bronze plaques bearing the words quote gives the reader a break. >> guest: by richard l. simon. i have one on my desk at home. this is vital to keep in mind. you must always ask yourself about anything you have written. is it clear to the reader? when you are in the publishing business particularly as an editor but also as a book designer and anybody involved in books must be, you must ask yourself does that help the reader to give the reader a

break? so you want some space between the lines because otherwise it's too hard to read. you want a nonfiction book. you need a chapter to have a beginning and a middle and an end and to fit into sequence chronologically. you want all of these things so when ever you are satisfied with what you are done whether are done with your writer are your writer or an your writer and editor in looking at it spread out ask yourself have i given the reader a break and that's what i'm here for. smack is from when you were editor-in-chief. even though the time had not arrived when snyder the publisher and i were to get to the other evenings over drinking his office to invent meaningless titles in order to lure senior editorial talent from other houses to simon & schuster vice president and associate publisher chairman emeritus of the editorial board senior editor and corporate vice president. nobody with their head screwed

on tight could possibly believe that an editor's title held in a genuine significance. >> guest: i think that's always true and i have held every publishing title that's possible to hold and am now i believe editor-in-chief emeritus of simon & schuster if you accept the presence of so dazzling in object in the studio. but the truth of the matter is an editor is judged on one thing and one thing only and that is the books that he or she brings and how successful they are. now if you lower them you have to pay more money, fine. if you have to invent a title to make them feel that they are important part of management that's fine to too but nobody pays any attention. an editor is judged by his or her authors.

>> host: like most people snyder the publisher credited me with machiavelli and deviousness fueled by fierce ambition. >> guest: well he did, yes and there's probably an element of me that is true of but nothing like to the degree which he thought. i have always found in publishing that the most interesting thing about it is reading people's books and liking them. machiavellian ambition is not uncommon in book publishing but i think that is a factor that is also, the less there is at stake the more people want to have a big part of it so that even the book publishing isn't essentially a corporate business

with a lot of titles that mean something as in a corporate charter at general motors, of course a failed company although he's been successful, nevertheless people maneuver and want those things which they think will earn him respect and race them in the hierarchy. the truth of the matter is that there is a cleavage, a difference in publishing between people whose career rests on what they do as editors and people whose careers to rest on running a business i.e. publishing. it's possible to move between these two things. it's possible to share some of those things that they are quite different ways of looking at the same interest. >> host: joseph in pittsburgh pennsylvania, thanks for holding. you are on with author and historian and former editor-in-chief, michael korda. >> caller: hi michael. i was wondering why general

grant changed his given name hiram simpson grant to ulysses simpson grant? why did he change his name? >> guest: well he did with all due respect. mrs. grant disliked the name hiram and wouldn't hear of it and when her husband came home and said that the boy would be hiram grant she chose the name ulysses and actually she had a raffle for it to put names into a bowl and her mother picked up a the name ulysses and he became ulysses s. grant because it was felt that he should have a middle initial. it's supposed to stand for simpson but there's no guarantee of that. in any case his father continued to refer to ms hiram and his mother always referred to him as ulysses. when he enlisted into west point

he was put down as ulysses s. grant which was embarrassing for him because his trunk which was then published a big deal among young men going to west point, had the initials hug, hiram ulysses grant and he very firmly moved to say his correct name was ulysses s. grant and get away from the embarrassing notion of hug for a young cadet. >> host: casey is in new york city. >> caller: hi. michael thank you so much for your work and you have such an expansive intellect and wonderful mind and you are a fantastic raconteur. it's so important to have you and people like you at the head of publishing houses because you select the books that make it out to society so thank you so much for your work. >> guest: that's very kind of

you to say. thank you. >> caller: my question for you is what you think of the publishing industry going forward and what do you think it is on the decline for nonfiction books and some say that what you did was wonderful and selecting important books but now publishers are really selecting authors who already have a presence primarily in social medium that sort of thing and in order to get your book published you have to have 50,000 followers on twitter as opposed to whether or not you are a wonderful writer and a -- and you have a wonderful book idea. thank you very much michael. >> guest: thank you. i think there have always been these two strains in book publishing. one strain is the rush for books by celebrities and that was even in the 1920s and even before then in the 19th century. the other is the strain to find good and important books which is more difficult because you have to read them and they are more time-consuming. i don't think book publishing is

changed much in any respect. i always like to make the point that books were originally written with sticks on clay tablets that were then dried in the sun and sold in the basket with x number of clay tablets. then papyrus was invented in the squirrel came about and people began to read books on papyrus with a squirrel as they still do with the torre in a synagogue. and i'm sure there were people who said this is not as good as the clay tablet. the book isn't as easy to read and isn't as much fun unrolled as it was on clay tablets and in the same way people say today, reading an e-book is not the same as reading a real book. but it's only a technological factor. the book is the same book. i was trying to think of a book which has had every one of those

technical innovations over the many many millennia and that's probably mri by. hammer of iowa's writing on clay tablets and so it's the same book. however you read it at the same book and i'll always be true. >> host: next. >> host: next call comes from dewayne and quincy california. joining? good afternoon. >> caller: hi mr. korda. i was stationed in 1956 with an airborne infantry regiment. we were out in an airport for three days on alert to go into budapest. i was wondering in your research whether you found out how serious eisenhower was about sending us in? thank you. >> guest: well, i know you didn't get there. that part of it i know but yes i think people up to a point and

eisenhower up to a point with serious about hungarians and i make a point in my book in my book about eisenhower "ike" that ike was very realistic. he would not confront the soviet union in a situation in which they would be expected to use nuclear weapons. he simply would not do that and i think he was right. i think that an american division crossing the iron curtain to come to the aid of the hungarian revolutionaries would have started a nuclear w war. ike wasn't about to let that happen and i think the hungarians did expect that to happen quite frankly but i would have been very happy to see you guys arriving in budapest. >> host: from your book "ike" an american hero, ike did not preside over an inner world of ge refrigerator commercials featuring ronald reagan. he presided over a country going to seismic change as as it

accepted at last what it had refused to accept in 1919, global power with all the associated dangers, temptations and risks, american isolationism for all practical purposes had ceased to exist. a ike himself had done as much as any man to kill it when he landed in north africa in 1942 and a normandy in 1944. >> guest: i think that's absolutely true. i wrote "ike" because i'm an enormous admirer of him as a president. i am an enormous admirer of him as a general where i think the god of rotten deal at the start because his critics came out with book after book, general montgomery, general bradley. everybody came up with books, putting ike's rolled down. in fact ike was an amazingly successful general and a

resourceful one and operated on a scale which is hardly even imaginable to us today. on the eve of d-day, he had 2 million men and women under his command. i believe 11,000 ships and over 10,000 bombing aircraft all under his command without any need or call for him to pick up the phone and ask washington in the form of general washington what to do. he was supreme commander commander. when he postponed because of bad weather he did not call washington. he simply didn't. it is extraordinary that degree to which ike coming from is relatively humble mennonite background in abilene from the

beginning of his career took on big positions named them the right way and put into action what he wanted to put into action the way he wanted to happen. he was a hugely successful president. i know he's over shattered -- overshadowed by the youth and brilliance and energy of john kennedy, but i think that eisenhower's place as one of the great american presidents had securely been written about and had securely been earned by what he did and second to none in american history. >> host: three work as a writer and at simon & schuster you you have gotten to know the eisenhower family? >> guest: well slightly. i know david eisenhower and met him when i was nixon editor and

publisher and susan eisenhower became a friend and i never set out to write a book that would please the eisenhower family nor did it occur to me that they should in any way have they say as to what i wrote about ike. i think in "ike" they found a book that portrayed ike honestly. portrayed him as the great man that he was. >> host: one more quote from your book on dwight eisenhower, the transformation in the way americans think about their own history has been accompanied by a perceived need to ignore and denigrate dead white males and since eisenhower's dead -- dad was white and indubitably a white man his role as a general supreme commander and president now seems less important to

historians than the social iss issue. >> guest: i think that's true of american history today. i think american history suffers from having been in essence shattered into tiny specialized areas of knowledge rather than giving a broader sense of american history and that there's a tendency to automatically underrate people like ike despite their importance. to see that ike's career was like grants, a jewel one that he was on the one hand a brilliant general and supreme commander and on the other hand a very successful president in addition to which he was the first commander being chief of nato and the president of columbia university. i think the last was the one in which he had the least impact. he was a very capable man. >> host: jemison sierra vista

or california. you're on with michael korda. >> caller: hi mr. korda. i have enjoyed your discussion very much. i recently read the memoir of william tecumseh sherman and i was amazed at his ability in some author, his ability to capture in one detail the essence of something and i would like to hear your thoughts on sherman and my perhaps he's underrated by people that are interested in books today? >> guest: i feel about that the way i feel about grant's memoir that people have stopped reading, that they been placed on the shelf of great american classics rather than being a living part of our history. like most people in the 19th century he wrote extremely well. he was also very smart, and his march though cruel as it may have been was a brilliant dress

that brought to an end that war. sherman is to say ike stuck with me when i was drunk and i stuck with him when he was crazy and there some truth to that. i agree his memoirs are readab readable. >> host: u.s. is one of your favorite books tolstoy's war and peace. how would you suggest people read that? what approach should they take? should they just open it and start reading? >> guest: there's no other way to approach a book but i think though that you first need to put yourself in the mood of wanting to read something that's hugely expansive and which encloses not just in the entire world but an entire point of

view about that world. so it's very important not to feel rushed. it's important to approach war and peace in a mood to receive. i've never thought it was a problem myself and i have read it i must say both in english and in russian. for me it's -- it sweeps me off my feet. i would agree that anna karenina is probably the more engaging book but on the other hand war and peace, it is like -- you can't do it in five minutes. you have to take the time and have the silence in which to hear it and appreciated and with war and peace you have to take that time and not not hurry it and let it work on you. if you do, it will come and it

won't seem that difficult. >> host: as an editor what would you say to an author when the author would say oh it's all written, just doesn't appear? >> guest: boasted a famous words of almost every author who has written a book. we don't care whether the book book is that they are not in the truth of the matter is it's probably not up there. it isn't up there. what counts is what you put on paper, now we say. >> host: this is an e-mail from arlene. hello mr. korda i worked with simon & schuster pocketbooks oh so many years ago. i admired your management style and insight then and still do. your book on chauvinism and your comment on women being molded by their mentors has me curious. i remember an executive secretary to the publisher wielding more power than most men in the building at that time. also in your book "power" description of a company having to move to another location to

ensure the removal of an executive who insisted on paying even after his retirement struck a magnificent memory with me. i love the i love this and again thank you. i just ordered three more of your books. >> guest: i thank you. it's absolutely true. there was a period in time when the quote great man unquote secretary had enormous power but it was a borrowed power. you couldn't get the great man himself. you could perhaps get the knowledge that she might perhaps take that case or that proposal or whatever it was. this is what television was like when i used to write scripts for cbs when i first came to this country. he stood around this great office hoping he would pass something and the notion of

going to see one of the upper-level executives at cbs was unthinkable. if you're lucky you got to have a cup of coffee with the great man assistant and he would hope she might say a word about you to the great man. of course that's a form of power but it's a form of power which rests nevertheless on the assumption that the real power is behind the closed door in the office and not at the desk outside. women have changed that sonar asleep. they just don't get recognized for it at this point and at this point many of the great and important publishers to make the decision to attract big publishing houses and for that matter are women. a few of them have men as their assistance or their secretaries.

the movie business which had to do partly with stardom and female stardom in particular the big studios tend still to be run by men. there are exceptions but nevertheless that's still true but it's a vanishing phenomenon. i don't think gender has anything to do with it at all. >> host: mary theresa's calling from corpus christi texas. >> caller: yes, as an aspiring nonfiction writer michael i found your responses to be both inspiring and fascinating and i have a couple of questions that are very similar. one, what would be your words of wisdom to aspiring nonfiction writers like myself who are considering writing autobiographies and number two cost, in your opinion what are the biggest challenges facing a

writer in the process of writing an autobiography perhaps including any pitfalls you might want to avoid? >> guest: the autobiography is a difficult part. i'm glad you asked that question. i have written about my family and in a little bit about myself and book publishing in another life. i think that the first thing you have to do is to find a way of telling your story that is sequential beginning with a metal, beginning at the beginning going to the middle and getting to the end telling a story. it reads like a story. some people can do it in some people can't. the second is that i think you

have to force yourself to a certain kind of objective impartiality about your own li life. an autobiography is always difficult to read when somebody is trying to rewrite the history of their own lives and come out looking better than they did in the actual facts. you have to be able to put down the times you are wrong and the times when you are sad and write about it with a certain objectivity. very few people can write an autobiography that his a selfie a saying book. such books do sometimes work that is rare. >> host: michael korda you write in "another life" the first time he approved of the f word in a book. >> guest: we couldn't say no to herald because he was our

number one best-selling fiction writer for many many years and so what herald wanted to heral herald.and when harold finally got tired of having the f word eliminated from his books and insisted on keeping it in everybody expected the sky would fall and of course it did not. we have always been able to put the f word and were imminent to be without seeing it on the paper and secondly because by that time nobody cared for the f word in a book or not. i think it's true a lot has to do with book publishing and that people built up this resistance to things to the use of words in the use of phrases. when i first came into book publishing london's defense of any number of books which were considered unpublishable was a

famous -- which i believe was taken all the way to the supreme court by her son-in-law but within 10 years of the great victory books are being published that lady chatterji will's lover look like a sunday school track. .. then it is all right. and remember being told about any member -- number. is not the publisher is their job to figure out what people want to read.