>> here are some of the featured programs for the weekend. on booktv 10 p.m. eastern,

president of american for tax reform says americans are tired of the irs and our tax system. and on american history tv on cspan 3 on lectures and history university of texas has changed from the reconstruction error to present. and remembering the 150th anniversary of the con federate surrender and the end thof civil war. she

>> and now viewers question are answered for three hours. he is a former chair of cnn and the editor of time and severs as ceo of the aspen institute and chair of the board of governors. >> host: what is the link between ben franklin steve jobs and others? >> guest: they're all creative minds and that creative minds and that interested me throughout interested me a lot of people my career. a lot of people write write about sports heroes about sports heroes or or literary literary figures, but to me figures, but to me it's people who it's people who can can combine different discipline combine different discipline like the arts like the arts and sciences, and sciences, the way ben the way ben franklin franklin did, did, the way ada lovelace the way ada lovelace did and albert did and albert einstein. we talk einstein. we talk about about innovations so often, innovations so often, it's almost drained it's almost drained of its of its meaning, and i've meaning, and i've

always liked always liked to write about real people to write about real people who are in a who are in a situation, whether situation, whether it it be be averill hairman averill hairman after world war ii and you have after world war ii and you have a create a create a new world a new world ordinary like nato and the ordinary like nato and the world bank and world bank and the marshall the marshall plan 0, plan 0, steve jobs who says we're now in steve jobs who says we're now in a digital a digital revolution, we have to make revolution, we have to make it personal. it personal. these are people who -- these are people who -- to use to use steve jobs' words, steve jobs' words, were able were able to think different, to think different, think out of the box. think out of the box. i want i want to try to explore to try to explore the creative mind the creative mind and how and how it it works. >> host: one of of them them themes -- themes -- themes in your book themes in your book seems seems to be to be a connect a connect to spirituality. >> to spirituality. >> guest: everybody believed they guest: everybody believed they were part of something larger were part of something larger than themselves. i remember i remember sitting with steve jobs sitting with steve jobs and i asked him, and i asked him, why did you do why did you do what you do? what you do? and he said, life is and he said, life is like a like a river. you get river. you get to pick things to pick things out of the river, out of the river, really cool really cool things people things people have done, they have done, they put before you put before you in in the river, great the river, great devices or great ideas,

devices or great ideas, but after a while but after a while you realize it's not you realize it's not how much you get to how much you get to take take out of the river, it's out of the river, it's what you what you put back into the river, what put back into the river, what you leave behind so that you leave behind so that your spirit is your spirit is still manifest after still manifest after you have been gone, you have been gone, and whether and whether it's albert it's albert einstein einstein or or benjamin franklin or benjamin franklin or anybody else, they did anybody else, they did have a have a connection to something connection to something super natural, super natural, something somewhat larger something somewhat larger than themselves. >> host: from 2011, host: from 2011, your your book book on steve jobs, opening on steve jobs, opening sentence. in the sentence. in the early summer early summer of 204 i got a of 204 i got a phone call from steve phone call from steve jobs. >> guest: jobs. >> guest: i had guest: i had written written a biography a biography of of benjamin franklin, and benjamin franklin, and he asked he asked unidentified speaker me to do him me to do him next. i thought, next. franklin, albert franklin, albert einstein, then einstein, then you? then i you? then i realize he had been realize he

had been sick and fighting sick and fighting cancer, and we don't always cancer, and we don't always look at look at creative minds in creative minds in business and business and entrepreneurship, and to entrepreneurship, and to me to be able to get me to be able to get very close to very close to and try to and try to peel back peel back the layers the layers from from the greatest the greatest business business and and technology innovator of our technology innovator of our day and generation, day and generation, was going to was going to be be something something truly special. truly special. i'd known him i'd known him since since around 1984 when around 1984 when he came to "time he came to "time magazine magazine toy toy to show toy toy to show off the off the original macintosh, original macintosh, and and we had remained moderately we had remained moderately good friends, good friends, especially when i especially when i was was editing" time" editing" time" and he used and he used me me to to market. i liked market. i liked stop jones and stop jones and his passion. his passion. when i got his call when i got his call i thought is i thought >> host: i asked jobs why he wanted me to he wanted me to be the one be the one to write to write his biography. i think you're his biography. i think you're good at getting people to good at getting people to talk, talk, he he says. >> learned from him a little bit, too.

when i started working i would ask questions with premises and then finally i realized if i let them go and said ipod he would go on for an hour or two i could pick up to rictme rhythms of the way his mind work. i am not the best reporter or the best writer but i am getting good at people talking to you. i will try to do that i said i should go visit gordon and spend time with the people or larry

page because i have been blessed to have that luckyness of having access to some of these people because i have been a journalist my whole life. that is what i try to bring to the party. there are people who take the steve jobs book and look at what it means, how it reads&leadership lessons. i can call people up sit down listen try to get the quotes right and try to put it as a first draft for people to analyze. >> host: is this book an authorized biography? >> guest: >> guest: he said he didn't want to read the book.

he said i have been brutally honest and i want you to be so i will not ask to read the book before it comes out. we discussed when the book should come out and i said i think he should make the last seen when i step down as ceo of apple and the book went to the printer hoping he was going to be alive when the book came out. he told me and the last time we talked was when i turned the book in.

and i thought he will beat the cancer one more time but we were not so lucky. >> host: he has no idea? >> guest: i did sit and read parts of the book to him especially the last chapter. i let him have the last word for four or five pages of the book and from different interviews i took his broad thoughts about why he did what he did, what made him creative, what was the meaning of life for him and so i put those together and really put them together from two or three separate formal interviews i had and wanted to read it outloud to him to make sure he was comfortable with it. there were things in the book where he is you know personal and tough on people and you know anidote i am not sure you and i would want in books. i made sure he knew about each one of them.

especially ones i thought where he doesn't give somebody stock options or he is mean to somebody. i wanted him to explain his side of it. anything in the book i thought might be tough that he would not like i made sure he knew about it before hand because that is how steve jobs was. he didn't try to sugar coat things. he would say something out right. i am not as brave or curage as steve was. but i went over things in the book i thought he might not like. >> host: if you go to the index you will find mood swings of and offensive behaviors of and there is five lines of offensive behavior is in there. a couple other things as prankster and primal therapy.

>> that was something as i said felt very fortunate he let me get up close to talk about primal screen therapy or examples where he was tough and encouraged me to be honest and we will talk about those things. in some ways i felt by the end of the process i knew more about him than i did myself because he was a very self reflective individual. he understood himself extraordinary well and once he started pealing away the layers he was willing to talk about it and luckily for me he encouraged me to put it all in. there were a few things i thought were painful to other and didn't give as much insight on steve. i would go over him and say that should be left out and it will

hurt this person and won't help the reader. he said i told you put those things in. >> was shehe smart? no not exceptionally you said he was a genius. >> i compare him to bill gates. bill gates had more conventional mental processing power. i marvel and watch bill gates take large amounts olike two screens on his desk and he would be processing the information and be absolutely brilliant. steve wasn't brilliant in that way. he didn't have that analytical processing power. he is an intuitive jen genius.

we had a feel for beauty, what people liked, what would work and that is what i meant by genius. i saw it in albert einstein even. he was not the best doctor in europe in 1935. he was a third class patton examiner and couldn't get his ph.d or a job at the university. you would not say he is the greatest physciast but he was a genius. steve job put the same quantum orbit as albert einstein but

there was a similarity which is the genius of steve jobs came from making in intuitive leaves. and they questioned things that were obvious to us. question the perceived wisdom of newton writing at the beginning of the period that time marches along respective of how we observe it. albert einstein says how do we know that? how do we test that? take clocks and try to sink roinize them. people didn't know he needed a thousand songs in our pocket but steve was able to have a feel for beauty and customer experience that made him the

greatest intuitive genius of the middle age. that is what i meant by that sentence. >> host: there is one aspect steve jobs had a role in with the book and that is the cover. we had a couple different covers. we will show you the original and then the paperback cover as well. what was his concern about the cover? gustgust steve got mad and and we landed at the san francisco airport and the thing you least want to see is seven missed phone calls from steve jobs. i hit return phone call and answered instantly. he starts reaming me out saying you have no taste.

i had no what he was talking about. i kept saying tell me what you are upset about. he said bad cover. they put it into online categories and he said i don't want to cooperate with you any more because of the ugly cover. and i said i have not thought about the cover yet. the book isn't finished. and he said unless you let me collaborate with the cover i will not cooperate. and that was the easiest decision. i said great. suggest another. he said black and white and simple and we went through a lot of photos. i love the albert watson picture

we went through. he works for "time" magazine and maybe fortune as well. there were four or five pictures he was considering including one that "time" magazine did later. i was hoping that he could agree on the albert watston picture and be did by the very end and he wanted that type that says you know steve jobs by me and he said i like that font. it is very simple. steve loved fonts every since he was at college. that is why in the it is dozens of font.

theome thing i pushed back on is he wanted my name in dark type and his name in light gray thinking that it was my book and i said no no this has nothing to do with me. this book is all about you. every word in there is something built on something you said. i want to steve jobs to be in the darker type and me to be more recessive. it turned out this way. there was maybe eight or nine conversations and with directors making sure that that cover that looks so so simple it is pretty simple looking cover took a lot of work. sometimes simplicity is the ultimate sophistication and sometimes it is pretty difficult

because steve jobs said, and there is johnny hive another great design director, said simplicity isn't about making it easy or taking things out, you have to under the depth of something. you have to dig deep and go hard. it is hard work to create simplicity and leave out something. and that is what steve jobs was able to do on the ipod the i-phone, and the original mac. >> host: why the younger steve jobs on the paperback? >> guest: by the time the hardback was out for a year, the albert watson photograph was iconic. apple computer used it on their posters, it was used in the memorial services it had just become the standard iconic photograph. i think there were people at apple and simon and shuster who

said don't build on that. i saw the picture done for "rolling stones" in the early 1980's and steve is in the exact same pose. you have it there on the paperback. and i thought this will be something fresh and new. steve always used the phrase "think different" and i think whether it was albert watston, apple, or simon and shuster it would not be doing different with that. and i think apple felt that icon iconic image was something they owned. and i wanted to make sure with the paperback because i think they asked, too, that we try to think different. >> host: what was the importance of lorene powell in steve jobs' life? >> guest: she is an awesome

person, a person of deep moral track and helps kids underserved get into college. i think that you know he would say to me that, you know his life wouldn't have been the same having not met her. and had she not helped make him who he was. so and by the way the whole family unlike a lot of powerful people, he wasn't out on the boat every day and having dinner every night with famous people. he was having dinner at the long table in the kitchen of his house with his three kids he had, wonderful kids and he would talk, deep serious conversations. no playing on the ipad during dinner. steve was rough around the edges

as a family member whether it was home work or office but the one thing you discover and and -- is even though he is rough around the edges, at work he developed a team that were loyal to him and more than loyal they loved him. likewise it was his home. he has around him a family who deeply is not only loyal but deeply loves him. and so when people say steve jobs was a pretty rough character at times. he had an abrasive personality and could be mean to people i would say yes. i hope you look at what happened and that is he is able to have deep love and loyalty at home and at the office and therefore put it into a context. some people are mean and nasty and hate him and steve had something else. it wasn't like he was hard to

deal with. he connected with people and inspired them and made them love them. and that is the essence of steve jobs. every now and then i will read articles about bosses who try to be like steve jobs and be tough oh people being brutally honest trying to be like steve jobs. i said don't try this because he could pull it off because deep inside he knew how to connect with people and make them feel inspired. he really cared deeply about other people. otherwise we would not have known how to make products that connected emotionally to us. when you talk about his home and office life there were people around him; his wife and kids who truly felt deep love and passion for him. it was more complex than some

people make it out. i wish i had conveyed that in the book. people read the book and say he was kind of mean. i say wait wait i tried over and over again in the book to say he was tough on people but whether it was the original team or his family people would say i would give up anything in the world to have the opportunity to work with him, be with him, and be around him. >> host: in the introduction to your book "the innovators" as an electronic geek you right who loved teeth kit and ham radio with your address. >> guest: i am old enough to have gotten my first geek experiences tottering circuits for a radio and getting to play with a ham radio. >> host: i can remember when vacuum tubes gave way to

transitioners. you write historians are leery of causing great change as progress because they like to call them revolutions. is this a revolution? >> guest: this is like the industrial revolution. you have have steam engine connecting with looms and things and suddenly we move into an age where machines and people are having to work together. i think with we have that here with the microchip, the computer and the internet all working together. three inventions each important, but the combination of switch to digital networks with micro processors and chips and the computer revolution we have leads to a new way of doing

information and conducting business and social life and it is definitely a revolution. and i remember i think there is a person who you know i quote somebody, steve chape a great historian of science at harvard who wrote a book about scientific revolution beginning with saying there is no such thing as a scientific revolution and this is a book about it. i introduce the book and as a kid you look at a vacuum tube and figure out how it works on a circuit and test to see if it is burned out. you say it is an ampflier and on and off switch. so you say how does this work with the on and off switch. you get a feel and this is what i worry today, people my dot's

generation don't have a feel about how the on/off switch and logical circuits and logic gates and algebra all come together to say we can have a machine that can do these tasks. >> host: and in fact you say math is spiritual. you quote somebody in the "the innovators" saying math is spiritual. >> guest: that is from ada lovelace and she was the at the beginning of the "the innovators." she is lord byron's daughter. the great late poetic. her mother was a mathematician and as you notice his wife lady bi byron, was not found of him. had ada tutored mainly in mathematics as if that was an antidote and what ada does is

create poetic science. the combination of poetry with science. of art with technology. this is the essence of everybody i have written about. ben franklin does it. alert alert alert alert einstein does it. what has driven progress since the great artist and science combines disciplines in all of the his work. to me that notion that there is a connection between math and natural beauty is something important for us to have a feel for just like ada did. a lot of people say i don't love math and get upset we don't do enough art or humanity education in schools and i agree. we need arts and humanities. they make us who we are but i

will the people that love the arts, like you love shakes spare and someone would be appalled if you don't know the difference between hamlet and macbeth but they don't know the difference between a gene in a chromosome and what ada new was mathematics was the good lord's brush stroke of something beautiful. and people say math is hard. and i say take a line of lord byron's poetry. she walks in beauty like the night. that is a tough line. but if you are ada you can visualize her walking in the night. and she could visualize allegor

writheright rhythms and she can visual that just like she walks in beauty in the middle of the night. that is what i mean when there is a beauty in arts and humanities on one side and technology and science on the other side. >> host: and you have a timeline in the "the innovators" that kicks off with ada and you have inventor of e-mail in here, google, etc what is it that she contributed? what made her -- >> guest: when she sees the beauty of the connection of arts and science see comes up with a general purpose computer. she travels and sees the mechanical looms -- i talk about the steam engines and they use

punched cards so the looms sewed a beautiful pattern or weave beautiful patterns. her father was a ledite and was snash smashing the looms thinking they put people out of work. but ada looked and said they make beautiful patterns and had a friend named charles bab who was trying to design a numbers crunching machine and she realized with punch cards the analytical engine as ada wrote and published, and it was un unusual for woman to publish in science journals she wrote punch cards can do anything noted in symbols. in other words a general purpose

computer. >> host: you quote her saying the bound of arithmetic were out stepped the moment of applying cards occurred. the analytical engine doesn't calculate the ground and holds it holy letting symbols and secession of extent and a uniting link is established between the operation of matter and the abstract mental process. >> that is a beautiful way of saying some day we will have computers. >> how many people did you get to talk to? how many innovators did you talk to? >> i list them all in my notes. i assume there was like i don't know, something about a hundred if you want to count all of the people. in 1992 or 1993 i became the head of digital media for "time" magazine and time warner and you would return into jim clark and

any grove who was man of the year at the time. and throughout the '90s i wanted to do a history of the digital revolution. each day and generation has a great revolution. whether it is the american revolution we know about george washington or industrial revolution or scientific revolution. i had a feeling we were living through the revolution and i had a chance to meet people. in the 1990's i started interviewing people and did a cover story on bill gates talking about what the revelation would bring and steve jobs. when i focused on the book for the last six or seven years off and an finishing the steve jobs' book i would go see gordon moore or mark anderson or the creator of the world wide web. and jim surf a wonderful guy

who with bob con writes the internet protocols. how do you take the packets and networks and make an internet out of it in ort words. i got a chance to be up close with the people and to me what i hoped to bring into the party is doing a little reporting and being able to find these people and have them talk to me because there are a lot of people who will be able to do better analysis than i do. but i am going to get surf to sit and talk over dinner and tell me why the tcip protocols were written the way they were. i think i did a lot of interviews for the book. >> host: if you were covering the auto industry, would this have been like talking to walter chrysler and the dodge brothers and etc? >> guest: yes, these are the people that invent thing.

the people early on in the internet are no longer with is. even robert noise -- if there is someone i wish i could talk to. he is the coinventor of the microchip. he worked with bill who created as part of a team a transitioner which takes a semi conductor like silicon that conducts electricity but resist it. if you dump silicone by making it impure you can make it semi conducting qualities fade. you can replace the horrible vacuum tubes with a transistor. and bob noise with a group of people put a lot of transistors

under one chip of silicone. that is what a microke chip is ro. he creates a company that is called intel now. it is a new type of company with no great higherarchy and not driven from an organization chart with a top down. they all sit in a big open space and bob noise draws a chart and says here is the center and the chart is you connecting to everybody else here. so that whole new way of doing business in the digital age and he was a mentor to steve jobs but he was very, very nice. he was so nice he could never say no to people which is why he had to form a partnership with andy grove because he knew how to get the microchips out the door saying you have to focus or you cannot do that or riding

heard on the rest of the team. from bob noise you get the genius and the concept of forming a right team. bob noise moore andy grove, it is like putting together a baseball team with who is the catcher, pitcher, and field utility. i got to interview gordon but until talking to him more about what it was like to work with bob noise i got to know andy grove and surround and figure those people. i wish i could have interviewed ada lovelace and alan turning who is one of the heroes of the book. i wanted him to be a bit famous

because among people who know computers he is very famous. but people that don't are probably not sure who he is. and benedict cumber back played it out. and he is going to make alan famous. >> host: how true to life is the movie? >> guest: it is very true to life but it takes some literary license. there are some things in the movie that didn't happen. biggest is the russian spy is not working in hut eight with alan touring. that is a little literary license. but what is true about the movie and so important is key facts. one is he was an a outsider. a loaner. he was gay. he discovered working and trying

to break the german code and developing the concept of the computer based on the reading of ada lovelace. the computing machine and if he is going to break the german code we will have to work as a team. so joan clark, one of the woman programmers in the movie, did a brilliant job as to thedo the others, we are with you. you have to work collaboratively. he does. key lessons of the movie. the limitation game and the name of the movie is based on a paper that alan touring wrote after the war about artificial intelligence. ten machines think, was it? he believed perhaps knowing his

own personal life humans are pre-programmed and maybe you would never tell them a part. the imitation game a computer can imitate a human and you would not know the difference. it hasn't been that successful at reaching artificial intelligence. but we have been successful at putting machines in humans working in partnership like ada lovelace talked about. when he writes the paper about the imitation game he calls it lady lovelaces objection; the notion that machines will not be created to think on their own. and very tragically as you know the pre-program and re-program and he is arrested because of his homosexual acts they try to give him chemical hormone treatment do is stop him as if he is a machine and you can

reprogram him chemically. he takes an apple, dips it into cyanide and bites into it. it is sad but it shows he is a human. a machine would not have done that. there is so much depth from the movie. and andrew hodges wrote a great book about alan touring. i have a chapter on this in my book. and my book "the innovators" ends with something called ada forever which is how ada's concept of the symbiosis between humans and machines and alan's quest for artificial intelligence and i find it all very interesting. but the great truths about toring are conveyed in the movie. and like any movie you can say

oh, that didn't happen with the soviet spy debt. >> host: good afternoon and welcome to booktv on c-span 2. 48 hours of books and non-fiction authors every weekend. this is indepth where we invite one author on to talk about their work and this month it is walter isaacson. wiseman came out first, evan thomas was the co-author of the book. and then "kissinger" and "benjamin franklin" and "einstein" in 2007,' steve jobs" 2011 and the "the innovators" came out last year. he is also the ceo of the aspen institute. former editor of time and

chairman of the broadcasting board of governors. he will be with us for the next three yours. we will put the numbers on the screen. 202-748-8200 central and east. 748-8201 in the mountain and pacific time. try social media if you can not get through on the line. you can join us on twitter or facebook. you will see at the page vade we shared earlier this week and you can make a comment underneath the video in the comment section. and you can send an e-mail. we will begin talking calls and social media comments in a minute. i want to get through a couple more of your books before

getting to calls. this is the "benjamin franklin" book. you might the most interesting thing that franklin invented and continually reinvented was himself. >> guest: i love ben franklin. there is a great story about him he tells where he is a young tradesman arriving in philadelphia and he is trying to be a good civic person. he forms a club of people called the weatherizing club for the working class and shop keepers. they make a list of values and he marks what he has done and masters all 12 and shows them to the people in the club. and one of the person said you for got a vurture and he said what is that? and his friend said humility and franklin said i never mastered

that vurture but i was good at the pretense in other words he could fake it and he learned it was just as useful because it made you listen to the people around you, find the common ground and that was the essence of the we the middle of the people in democracy they were trying to forge. so not only doing that and self-improvement which was his goal but writing about it and doing an autobiography so we will show the way he was. that is why he was constantly inventing, reinventing and polishing himself for history. >> host: how well known was he? >> guest: he was probably one of the best well known in the western world.

after he is you know done everything from electricity experiments, lightning rod, helped edit the declaration of independence when he goes to france because of the writing and electricity experiments they car carry him to the steps to meet volitare. and you say franklin reinventing himself he wears a coon skin cap and an old backwood coat was people in france were reading rue so once too often and like the notion of the natural philosopher from out in the woods. he had never lived in the wilderness. he listed in boston philadelphia and london but he want to be the natural

philosopher coming from this wilderness of a country you know of land called america to meet with the french and he knows how to play it. the french love him and make all sorts of coins of him and you know even in america john adams who was partly a friend and partly a rival, you have to read david mcculloch's book. respect is also rivaly they had. but john adams said the history of the american revolution is ben franklin put the stake in the ground and lightning happened and ben would get too much credit but i am partial because i think he deserves credit for inventing what we have as a country.

>> host: which founding fathers was he close to? >> very close to thomas jefferson. jefferson is much younger but they particularly shared a belief that an educated person should love science, and love the arts and love music and should understand botany and electricity and plants and everything else. and thought was the enlightment and the period where laws of state clash and the laws of how you live your life came together. and i think the two great icons of the enlightment of america are ben franklin and jefferson. jefferson writes the first draft of the declaration and there is a committee that helps him. maybe the last time congress

created a good committee with franklin adams and jefferson has it. he carved out self evident. the notion of science and there are certain ways the rights come from rational and not dictated from a religion. you see john adams putting in by the creator. so they are balancing the role of divine providence and role of rights, rationality and reason. you can see the minds of them working together. >> the epitat he wrote the body of b-franklin like the cover of an old book its contents stripped out lies here.

food for worms. but the work should not be last or work will appear in a new and elgent edition revised and corrected by the author. >> first of all, he always considered himself a printer. i love that about ben franklin. he is the most famous person in the world. great scientist and statesman and leader of the constitutional convention he still signs when he goes to a lodge b franklin printer. and he had an amused outlook on life and even the afterlife. one of the last letters he does when he is dying, president of yale religious man said do you believe in the divinity of jesus chris and god or afterlife and he wrote about revised by the author for better edition, but he never took -- he didn't agonize. he just had a generalized feel

about the beauty of the lord's creation. he writes back and says you know i never figured it out but i would find out soon enough meaning he was about to die, so there is no need to start worrying about it now. >> alert enstein. 1905. why is that a big deal? albert einstein -- >> guest: he is working with clocks because the swiss went on standard time zones and the swiss people are swiss and they care it strikes seven at the same instance. so if you put the clocks together you have to send the signals between the clock and they travel at the speed of light like a light signal or radio. and you have this patton

examiners saying what if i caught up with a signal when the light wave seems stationary. what if i am travelling really fast. and what will it look different to me? and he comes up with this mental leap that time is relative depending on your state of motion. speed of light is constant. he does that exact same spring. another paper that talks about how basically the fundamentals of quantum theory. that light is a wave and a particle so particles of light and a wave and it is a whole concept that becomes quantum theory

theory. so you have two great scientific theories that are the pillars that bring us into the 21st century and take us from newton mechanics into a new world that is relative theory and quantum theory and both happen in the spring of 1905 while he is sitting on a stool doing thought experiments as a patton examiner. >> host: what do those things mean to us today? >> guest: every single great advance of the 20th century has the finger prints of albert einstein. space travel splitting of the atom, dps television even the microship and microprocessors. when they are making the transistor in my book "the innovators" people knew how to fix silicone and make it a semi conductor but you need someone like john bar dine a great

theorist read einstein and was dedicated to the mechanics arriving from einstein's 1905 paper and bill shockly, people like bill, working with him. and they can envision the dance of electrons on the material based on the quantum mechanics that come out of einstein's paper. whether it is space travel gps in the i-phone, or the splitting of the atom which is not only a scientific advance but a huge geopolitical and strategic issue of using the atom bomb, it is hard to thing of something that makes our life what it is today that doesn't have a couple finger prints of albert einstein. >> his papers contain at cal

state but he spent time at princeton? >> the official papers are at hebrew university in jerusalem. on his death bed, he has nine pages of equation and trying to but the two theories together to make a unified theory. >> we will show the formula on his bed side. >> and one last line of equation dribbles off. i went to hebrew university because i love seeing the physical document. i went to cal tech to go through all of his papers and wonderful people at cal tech. the people that run the nine side paper project are great. there was a copy there. but i felt i ought to pay a

visit to the shrine and see the papers. i went there. and by the way, something really cool that all viewers should do right now is starting about two months ago cal tech princeton and hebrew university all agreed to put the papers online. now we can crowd source and understanding einstein. all of the papers are online with the english translations so you can read the hundreds and hundreds of letters. in 1905 if you are trying to figure out what role did his wife play in the mathematics of special relative? go read the papers. the excitement these days that we can get the papers online i

really salute the einstein papers project for doing that. >> toward the end of the book you write for some people miracles serve as evidence of god's existence and for einstein it was the absence of miracles that reflected the design prophet. >> einstein believed there was a spirit manifesting in society. he wrote about it a lot. he believed in a spirit manifest in the laws of the universe in the face we must be humbled and awed and that is his sense of a divine being. someone that created things according to rules. the amazing thing is the universe didn't necessarily have to have these elgent beautiful rules like e equals mc squared but it does. and so understanding those rules helps you have this sense of who

god is. but he did not believe in a personal god. he didn't believe in a personal god that if you prayed long and hard and break the laws of the universe so the new england patriots would win the super bowl if you prayed hard enough. and he said you know, as that quote you do which is for some people miracles show god exist, but for me it is the elegance of the laws and the fact they always hold and that to me is a miracle and that is spiritual. that is kind of interesting to move to that level of thinking ah, yes it is in that spirit of the mutable laws laws of deep beauty complexity is the kwaigz for general relative and it is complex but it is still there always holds, and in some ways that is evidence of a divine

existence rather than playing for a miracle and having a miracle happen. >> we have three minutes to cover the cold war and henry kissinger before going to calls. "kissinger" in 1992. for a while after this book came out he didn't speak nee. why is that? >> like the steve jobs book and i think if you reread the noble peace prize it would not do justice. ... a dinner last night, he was there, and i saw him -- >> host: you consider him a friend. >> guest: i would consider him something i respect somebody i find has a deep, great sense of world order and how the world works. and i think anybody who has a biography written about them will think, at first could have been more favorable, and kissinger -- i don't think he had a fingertip feel at that thyme when he was nixon's national security advicer and

then secretary of state with ford, for the value and idealism that has to be an underpinning for foreign policy in the democratic system. and so great realist who understood balance of power and my fundamental criticism is we have to have a moral and even idealistic foreign policy and they have to be woven together. when i was at a tough time we invited everybody on the cover back and i thought, i wonder if dr. kissinger will come back because he was annoyed at parts of the book. i got to phone call saying well walter even at 30 years the war had to end at some point, so i will dom your dinner. he has a good sense of humor and you don't always have to agree with especially the certain things that the nixon foreign policy did when it came to cambodia and dealing with the

bombing of north vietnam and a lot of things one could second guess, but if you read him you feel a deep understanding for statescraft and the creation of world order and speaking of the cold war, he was able to do a brilliant out of the box thinking with nixon to balance off russia and china to create a triangular diplomacy where opening to china and a detente with russia as we pulled out of vietnam, preserves the united states' influence and power in the world after a retreat from vietna after a retreat from vietnam by doing this balance with russia, china and to me that was a creative leap that even the bright people the best and the brightest. had not thought of earlier and that helped to preserve our influence in the world.

wise man. six friends and the world that they made george kenneth. charles. dean atcheson. and john mcenvoy loy were they the essence of the establishment? they were. i wrote that book with a friend he have an thomas. i was covering ronald reagan's campaign. and the people were handing out leaflets. and sort of an establishment. and the rock ferrells and evan a friend from college had come from a more prep school back ground saying evan what is this thing? we decided to demystify it by writing a book about six people about the core of the establishment and went through republicans and democrats. they had a passion. you know for rising a above politics. they are creative. they think out of the box. after world war ii in which russia had been the ally suddenly he having to contain russia and so they create new intuitions. nato.

the marshall plan. world bank. you know. radio free europe. and all created in the big bang by the people that say we have to help to win the war of ideas and economy. and a defensive struggle against soviet backed communism. so that was thinking out of the box and by the way today, we are engaged in a new type of struggle against terrorism, and islamic radical terrorists. and we are still using the old institution that wise men invented and make nato and the world bank and the imf to deal with it. we are as creative as they were. we can think out of the would, and say, what international anti-terrorist organization should replace nato? what should we do instead radio for europe to fight you know the hearts and the minds of people around the world. so i like the creativity of the wise men. clearly it was weird to have

two young people. evan and myself out of college to go to a publisher saying that we want to write about the six people that we barely heard of in the time that is was far distant. simon and schuster. and they said, she said yeah. i always wanted to do that though. and i always wanted to call the wise man. it was the best and the brightest and the generation before, and she was able to make that book good. she was able to untangle a pretty complicated narrative to make it flow. that is why every book. ever since then have i ever had has been published by simon & schuster and that i feel a sense of loyalty. that you know. they would and she would publish a book about these statesmen and nobody had ever heard of. and make it into a book that actually made sense after we turned in the manuscript that would need untangling alice mayhew pops up on book tv quite often as editor of best selling authors of nonfiction books. what is it about her from the author's perspective?

well she is the big picture. detail. and the essence to me of creativity. and whether you are a bob, or steve jobs you will care about each you know beauty of each curve in the computer you are making. and also we are moving to the mobile system. let's get the iphone. that was steve jobs genius. and the people like kissinger had that as well. ben franklin. a big picture. also know that the devil and the godded is in the details. our members of the very first chapter of the wise man and it was trying to keep. trying to keep lovity who were you know. friends of brown. and together with harriman and atcheson. the school together. and part of the skull and bones at yale. getting confusing and she wrote. in the margin. it was alice's. what is that? no all things are in good time. don't get ahead of the chronology.

do not get behind it. keep it chronological. don't have to flash forward or back. that was the first piece of advice that i ever got on a book and every book that i have done since then may not have been as brilliant as faulkner would move around in time. and i realize that you know. in our lives we will build on the moments that it happened before. and that you should keep all thing in good time. and do things chronological and you should start a biography. with a person being born. and with the person dying. and show how it would build up. this handful here. in the wise men. this hand full of men and the close colleagues knew that america would have to assume the burden of the global role out of duty and desire the heed of call of public service. they were the original brightest and best men whose out sized forceful actions

brought order to the postwar chaos and left allege see that dominates american policy to this day. well we spent an hour talking with walter isaacson a little bit over an hour. and y all have been patient and we will begin to take calls e-mails. tweets and facebook comments right now. we will flash the addresses and phone numbers up on the screen one more time to get in. but this is an e-mail from jim gibb. east peoria illinois. mr. issacson. big fan. i am reading your biography on kissinger. of your biographies on kissinger, franklin, einstein and jobs. who do you identify with the most and why? >> ben franklin. and i will leave the words of my daughter who when she was young, and the books -- she said well you know biography is autobiography. you know. emerson said. and she said when you were

writing about ben franklin. were you writing about yourself. i said what do you mean. that is who you wanted to be a publisher and an editor. a person in the media and cared about diplomacy. and juggled a few things. so ben franklin was an ideal self. i said yeah, that makes sense. what was i doing when i wrote about einstein? she said you are writing about. my father. engineer. kind and wonderful guy who loves electrical engineering and has a halo of hair and said you know you are doing. because your father loved einstein. and trying to. did i say that is great? well. what was i doing with kissinger. said oh, you were writing about a little bit of your dark side too. you know. when i did steve jobs. we need a steve jobs. you know, i was writing about a young person that

could be a little bit bratty. and beauty and technology and was hard to deal with. and i scared at her. and said oh yeah. you are right. that too. yeah. i love ben franklin. i this i that ben franklin was the one. i get to talk with members of congress later not this week. and the library of congress. there is a gathering. david rubenstein helps to put together and what do you want to talk about? ben franklin. the ern that is able to do the practicality and to hold true to values. that we like the most in this country. and so i can't say how it would be a benjamin franklin if i wake up every morning and say what do i aspire to be, you know i will read the ben franklin autobiography. e-mail. very much enjoyed your book on franklin.

there has been a number of years that i read it. i recall you write that can during the revolution and the latter part of franklin's life there is was animosity to many of the peers. and i recalled that continued passed the death and it took a number of years before he was appreciated again. >> this happens to everybody's reputation in public life. more so then with all of our media you could be torn down very quickly. and franklin was somebody who was very much a compromiser and he believed that compromisers may not make great heroes but they make great democracies and there were passionate people on either side that felt that he was too willing to compromise. and secondly franklin you know, he rubbed a few people the wrong way because just of his jovial personality and bringing people together, so you know i think that anybody who is powerful, and well

respected. greatest scientist of his era and greatest publisher, and diplomat of his era and a great statesman of era there is people that resisted him. he was not the most profound of our thinkers. and he was not madison. not jefferson. and there was a sort of a genius surface quality to him that i argue in the last chapter of the book land much deeper that the ability to say that we should all. working together that it is the essence of what america is all about. and some people say that it was sort of a shallow, and even a mark twain or others you know. desparage and auto bog feet. and to succeed. and win friends. to influence people. side of ben franklin. i of course think that it is deeper than that. i will try to show that in my biography of him. ann santee california you are the first call for

walter issacson. yes. i have been reading the innovators and i am trying to figure out if there is anything any particular symbolism behind the design of the cover of your book. no. i wish that steve jobs would help more. and i wanted to show sort of interconnected and i wanted to show that people woef together and wanted to make it feel a little bit creative and also show some of the pictures. but there was not a grand secret design. but thank you for asking. the four people on the cover? there is ada at the very top. and steve jobs. bill gates. and then allen touring. they are about 30 main characters in the innovators and those four i felt were the ones that inspired me. phil. portland oregon. good morning to you. you are on with walter issacson. good morning.

thank you c-span for taking my questions. and i appreciate mr. walter issacson. you are a great man. i write about great people. >> i wish you along life and keep bringing the history and the icon to the common thinking folk. first question. and just an additional question. with the computing and the 3 d printing do you see this as an event you'll change or industrial revolution to the whole world and my second is when is elan musk going to talk with you? >> yes, i see the computing 3-d printing and mobile you know, we will have a transformative effect. we are seeing it now. which is really since the

industrial revolution and the way that we organized the work is through firms and corporations and whatever. you have to be a big company to sort of have all of the equipment that you needed to manufacture things. to distribute things and to bring together the people in a working environment to do creativity. nowadays, i think that we are beginning to see that anybody can be an on call worker if they want. whether it is driving the uber or designing something really cool that stores you northbound in the clouds or uses server farms in order to instead having their own big old servers and having this. and 3 d printing for things to be manufactured in a tailored way. when lord byron was worried about the add vent of the mechanical looms, he thought that we would be putting up the same fabrics over and over. and now, we can go back to

the artisanal period and artisans will get to create whatever they want to and instead of having it be mass produced and mass marketed by mass corporations i think that the notification cloud computing and the notion of 3 d printing and notion of on demand services will allow people to be more entrepreneurial and create he is terribly if we get digital kurnls sees to allow easier transactions and sales online that allow people to create on their own rather than being a part of large industrial organizations. >> richard in palm springs, california. please go ahead with your question and comments for mr. issacson. fascinating to listen to you. i have two questions. first of all. where could you place stephen hawkings in the overall scheme of things say in relation to albert einstein.

and you mention the imitation game of course the theory of everything as also another film about stephen hawkings and secondly in the game ellen touring was having a problem with the charles dancer's character until they got to winston churchill. and churchill signeded off on that and i have read that winston churchill loved these sort of slightly outside of the box ideas, the bouncing ball. and the mulberry harbor and all of the different inventions from world war ii. would you talk a little bit about winston churchill who i personally regard as the greatest figure of the 20th century? thank you very much. sfu thank you we will rewind that tape a little bit we will do elan musk and i did get the chance. and what we do in san

frarngs i was on stage with him and i admire the way that elan musk. it is easier to do the invasion in the information technology and digital space. and in is less regulation. and dorm room and create facebook. apple and doing something like cars or batteries or rocket ships. that will require a larger degree of collaboration and a higher degree of difficulty because i think that we sometimes have so many regulation it's is hard to innovate in the fields. so his ability to think out of the box is something i deeply admire. stephen hawking. stephen hawking you know. somebody that i have also deeply admire and we wrote about. i spent time dealing with in "time" magazine. and a strange thing about einstein's theory of general relativity that einstein was uncomfortable with that at first. and if the equations and

general relativity are true. you can have the black holes and all of a sudden gravity. you know. everything will come in on itself. singulairity. and stephen hawk something the one that helped us to understand among so many other thing. stephen hawking has done. how it works. so i see him as one of the great thinkers of our time and i love the movie about him. finally winston churchill. the good thing about churchill is that he encouraged out of the box thinking. and he was somebody that did indeed as the movie shows. and the movie simplifies here a little bit. when the letter comes in from the park saying that we need the resources churchill gets it. and he understands how important it is. however. as much as i admire churchill. talking about him being the greatest of the 25th century. in time magazine. we picked the person of the century. we spent five years doing conversations and working on it. and the public events to discuss it. and it came down to four or five people. and if you thought that it

was a century of great, you know. political struggles against communism and against naziism. and fashionism. will you have people like franklin roosevelt and winston churchill. and also this is a century of civil rights where women and blacks and colonial people all get their own individual rights. and ghandi. and martin luther king jr. as part of that. and finally. if you think that it was a century of science and technology took us to the moon and took us to the transistor and everything else. einstein, his fingerprints are on it. we ended up going with einstein and the one thing that in ways cut against churchill as much as i a meyer him. he was on the wrong side of history whether it came to the colonial rights and the rights of everything from blacks and women. and his clash with ghandi was a legion and in the in. the side of history was towards more individual and civil rights and many

poweringment and hurt churchill was the head of every gamech when it came to fighting communist. and naziism. and he sort of is caught behind on that one. so when we look at history, we will admire the strengths of great people. and we also have to look at hey where did they turn out not to be as right as they could have been. how much our conversation was about albert einstein getting the person of the century. and studying him. to say the person of the is not thank youy. and i realize that there is was no biography of him. the papers had become available. no biography. here through the end. you know. and chronological biography. and written you know. in english. by an american or something that would be published in germany. and so i realize that it was going to be fun to write a biography for him. and you can tell from the things that i have said that my vote in the end as much as i like churchill and

ghandi. and franklin roosevelt, my vote was for einstein because some centuries become remembered you know. maybe five or six ten centuries from now will be remembered for a huge advance of science. the fact that we went to the moon. the fact that we invented the microchip and the computer and transistor and the internet that we had an not tire new revolution that would be based on digital technology and splitting the atom and the way electrons will dance on surface states and semi-conductor material. all that have will create a revolution. it was a revolution that was political and others would be remembered for other things so i came down on the side of einstein. were you editor at the time? yeah. well, i had a balance.

we went up to hyde park. and i certainly went to churchill's war rooms in england and had fun exploring all of this. and i read all of ghandi. and south africa. where ghandi had started and i loved to soak myself into the history. and there is a great debate. there is no right answer. i mean that is why this is an interesting and i kept saying. you know. steve jobs would say that the journey is a reward meaning instead a destination that is how much destination is being a reward. and ability to talk it through. we did for two years. and our magazines have people talking through what matters. what will matter a center other he from now. what will matter ten centuries from now. you can come down on churchill. and franklin to be just as right, but the conversation about it was is really a fun one to have. >> you are on with walter issacson on book tv.

>> thank you. mr. issacson. i enjoyed the kissinger book very much. and i have not seen the film. if they could help me out. i know that basically, the geometry of the enigma machines. an electronic and mechanical device, so if two people want to communicate, the with unthat wants to send a message uses machines to put the message in the siefr. correct. and the one that wants the decipher will need the identical machine and the identical settings to decipher it. >> what happens is that this is the enigma machine and the code changes each day for how you decipher it. so they only have and they show it in the movie. 24 hours to be able to break exactly you know what the

desiefrg is that the letter, w. the code. it actually will refer to the letter p or something. so there were multiple rotors so it was difficult to break the code of which the letters said. a few things that helped them is that part of the enigma process was no letter could stand for itself. so the w could not be representative of w. it was very hard to break until they realized that there was certain phrase that's they can use. and one thing that the movie did not show fully that i think is very important is that the breaking the enigma code. the bombe was an electric mechanical device with rotors. the movie. they show him building an electronic device. one that uses vacuum tubes and that was called close us and it was not a mechanical device but one that uses electronic circuits to do it. and that is was something that wasn't really built by allen touring though his ideas and he was part of the

team. his ideas were used on it. and many people like max nooum in cambridge that would help to do this. so it is good that andrew hodges not enigma book and shorter version to read the chapter in my book the innovators that talk about how close us. that is one of the first all electric tropic computers was built. nan is in georgia. hi nancy. the responsive containous generation and how it is was debate with the jefferson and franklin and dr. richard price?

british minister who said that the purpose of the miracles is to prevent the need for miracles. nancy why is this of interest to you? >> because of the fossil water in the automatic questioner for aquifer. that debate between the american philosophical society of the theory of responsive containous generation is because of the sea shells being the andes and jefferson did not think that it was a miracle. and discovery of the plate tectonics and the last ice age. so to 12,000 years ago and i this i that we are living a similar time right now. and a british biologist. and has that the earth. the name for the earth is gaya. and he thinks that we have

developed the communications systems which i can't use. i have photo sensitive. to keep to protect earth. nancy we will leave it there. i think that if you look at einstein. jefferson. franklin. they were right when it comes to the foilsz. and leonardo da vinci figure it had out to the it was not just miracles but there is a natural explanation. and the important thing in life is not to debunk the explanations but to appreciate the beauty of natural explanations. something that was part of the real person that about believed that was trees would cure diseases and that french came and asked ben franklin to do attest. you know. can you vp a magnetic force

that's are supernatural and franklin just did a controlled study to tell people which will necessary rise them. and says no. there is a natural explanation. it is not some strange mystery. so i think that though we can appreciate the butte eve the life. and also look for natural explanations. rob is in fairfield connecticut. hi rob. hi peter. i hope that you and mr. issacson will find it amusing that my 9-year-old niece mikhail an and 7-year-old son brennan are debating what is more boring when uncle robby watches book tv or their father watches golf. my question to you mr. issacson is in regards to i am a secular agnostic european american and for the life of me. i cannot figure out how the martin luther king jr. or other social leaders have impacted my life positively

a half of one percent. and i just wonder if you think. if you can comment if we as a country because of guilt have placed an amount of import on social leaders as opposed to the jonas salk and i am ashamed to say. i do not know. man. women or created chemo therapy. and radiation. if you can comment on that when i was with "time" magazine. did i feel that political leaders, social leaders got on the cover of "time" and it was odd that the person that invented television. whether it is farnsworth. that was never a cover of "time" or the until that is why i wanted to make andy grove when running intel in the microchip. man of the year. or david ho who created medical treatments for aids and combination therapies and those that sequenced

genome they are as important in the affecting our lives. so you know. when we were looking for persons of the century as i described, would you have to look at the great and political and social leaders and great scientific leaders as well. as well as great political and military leaders. they all play apart. and in my writings. especially after i had did ben franklin who i began to write about with the state craft. he was a really good scientist. and i realized that we have to look at the scientists and the technologists and engineered and the internet and the computer. are the two most important inventionses of our time. they change our lives more than anything that is happening and yet most people do not know who invented them. my book the innovators says this is how the computer was invented. these are the people to thank for that likewise here. the internet. or search engines and what it is. it was invented. so i think that it is important to celebrate those

people as much as we might celebrate a political leader or you know. a social leader. bonnie lincoln. fort meyers florida. e-mail. you say that one of your strengths as a biographer is your ability to listen. and i am curious. how did you listen to ben franklin and albert einstein? the great thing about them is that they wrote letters every single day. and as i said earlier, you can go online and you can just you know. search einstein papers project. will you see every letter that he wrote you know. does dozens in a given day and the paper that's he wrote. and so if you go chronological. and back then befores online. the library in yale to go after page and page after papers. benjamin franklin. they were published. you feel that he is writing a letter to his son. and he writes to his sister. and then he writes a particular pamphlet.

and part of the almanac. and you see how it happened. and some ways. having that conversation. or if you look at leonardo da vinci. and all of the notebooks that he left. they are part of the conversation too. i worry about in this day and age. without leaving the letters in the archives we are having to write e-mails that disappear after 20 years. we are not writing the great notebooks or journals or diaries the way that people and the wise men did. so, conversations have happened not just. one thing that i learned about writing about kissinger and others that you read document they will tell you one thing and part of the picture. then you interview people and you say yeah. i wrote that letter. here is the real reason that i wrote it. it was or wasn't. he was that way. so it helps to be able to combine our area cave archival research with the old-fashioned journalist

interviews. as i said. i may not be the best journalist or the archive historian but i was able and have been able i hope to combine the two and to read document and to do the interviews. in san jose california, hi there. hello. thank you so much for taking my call. something very insight full that you said. we need to rethink institutions such as nato and to think outside of the box. for current applications. i used to volunteer with the late doug franco. and james franco's father. and he would say. we would do orphan development projects in high conflict and rural areas and he would often say orphan development is a front line on the war on terror. what are your thoughts about these types of approaches towards peace initiatives. with nato. by the way. we did that in the beginning of the cold war.

we did not just create nato but the monitary fund and the world bank and all sorts of social organizations from all over the world and world health organizations and development groups and u.n. development projects and the aspen institute. the middle east investment initiative for example will help the palestinians and others in the muslim world. other israeli banks to get people working together this. is something that benjamin franklin understood in philadelphia. it was not just about big organizations but it is was about the people that were getting together to form you know. the civic sweeping corps and militia. and a lending library that could be done that way. i think that as we fight this new global struggle it really helps, i just met desmond hammond who is a new head of the bill and melinda gates foundation and the development work that the gates foundation is doing on world health the type of things that i hope that we

at the aspen institute are doing on creating you know. the empowerment of the people in the world that the nongovernmental organizations. i think that it is part of the florida forefront of winning a war that demand hearts and minds and the loyalties of the people feeling that there is an opportunity in this world. that i can be apart of. what is the aspen institute. the aspen institute is a think tank with the policy organization that's look at everything from education reform. and to relations with russia. and to you know. the strategy groups and arms control. viernl. energy. and it is also a leadership institute. we have a young leader's programs all over the world. and starting you know. about a dozen in the united states. and different fields. and we will bring the young leaders together to try to come to common ground based on pragmatic fact based things to be nonpartisan. whether it is the rodell

program. half democrats. and republicans working together of the people that are elected officials or henry crown program. and they bring entrepreneurs and business leaders together to find sensible solutions to our problems, we will try to turn thought into action. so basically, this is a think tank of which we groom young leaders to turn thought into action. founded 1949. by the a group of chicago industrialists and one of the earlier questions talking about scientists. and technologists. and engineers as well as political leaders. we have to realize like steve jobs and others industrialistses and business leaders people that are engineers and help to start intel. that is good to look at. with the business and entrepreneurial community too. when we look at things. so there are entrepreneurs and business leaders in chicago in 1940s. that realize that in the beginning of the cold war. that not only do you need nato and the world bank and

the international fund. but would you need the think tank to look at the democratic values and free minds. free markets and will figure out how they will had help to make a better world. that group of the business leaders by walter who read the container corporation of america. and henry crown. crown family there. they helped to create the kinds institute to look at our values and how they could you know. help to shape a better world. how did you get the name? it has a campus in aspen colorado. and it is useful. and we are here in washington doing the show. and head quarters are in washington, one of the hundreds of glow he's of being apart of the aspen institute is that when it gets hot in washington june july and august. most of the programs are done in the campus of colorado and aspen. walter issacson is the ceo and author biographer. we have a little over an