not long after that, he returns to britain two years before the world send. but by then, he is a hero of the entire. newspapers have played up the exploits on the train and covered the imprisonment on the escape. he has an amazing skill for bringing to life the famous historical figures in previous books she gave us teddy roosevelt and president james garfield. her latest book hero of the empire makes the notables list for its great storytelling, it's careful research and fine deta detail. [applause]

>> i'm not going to read the rules and regulations because i would expect you've heard them already. my name is jonathan. i left a long time ago about 18 years ago my wife and i were living on capitol hill with my stepdaughter who was working at the time of the national geographic and one day [inaudible] >> i'm afraid it's a technical problem someone else is going to have to cope with. if i shout, does that help? my stepdaughter was working at

the national geographic and one day after she asked if she could have a friend home for dinner and i said sure. they were immediately enchanted with her. now she's one of the most respected and successful writers in the united states.sf it's good to see you again. [applause] could i just say briefly what as incredible honor it is to sit here with jonathan, who all of you know is a huge figure in the world of journalism and in the world of books. and if by some crazy chance you don't know his work, i urge you to go out i should be

interviewing him because he's a much more trusting figure than g am. >> flattery will get youhere. anywhere. what influence did it have on your own influence as a writer? >> i always say that my education happened at the national geographic and i learned so much about storytelling, and about the fact the world is full of fascinating stories and events and stories,

but most of all i learned about research, and i learned that you need to dig deeply and take the time to understand it. you can be looking at meerkats one day so it really fluctuated. but the one consistent theme throughout is they know ittent i really well and spent most of the life studying and you need to find this person and make them your friend. >> the subject involved dealing with languages other than your own. tell us about the challenges and

apprehensions when you started out. >> i first heard a story having lunch with a friend of mine who wrote the book and an extraordinary man this is the election where roosevelt tried to regain the presidency and lost. he said have you heard about this trip. i read about theodore roosevelt and because she's after his was political career sort of glossed over and i started researching it and went back to national geographic, they have a library there and went to the library of congress and i was stunned because there was murder in the rain forest and it was set in the amazon and it's something i would love to write about so i

was hooked right away. but it is daunting to take on theodore roosevelt and amazon. i was really excited about it,>> because i knew that this is just a gift. it has so much to work with. and i think on my years in the national geographic i knew how to do research and it was the only thing i was confident, i kt about. >> you into the amazon, right? >> i went to a river that is incredibly remote. and then i went to this little town in northwestern brazil. i rented a plane, hired a pilot and flew for hours.

>> they sent my proposal to the agent, very generous man. unfortunately, he passed away right before the book came out, which was difficult for me. so they gave me this great advance in three parts. >> you seem to be endlessly curious and afraid of nothing my

fear is shattered by our interest. >> did you go down line in souto africa >> is closed now, bu but there a hole where it was. >> we were talking about this earlier. i love to read biographies and as a writer i like to tell the story of a more assertive personal story where i can spend five years focusing and digging in deep. i'm looking for a story that i hope is eliminatin illuminatinge time in which they live and what interests me in the triumph or

the infamy what interests me are the more private moments of struggle when someone is sick like james garfield. they are searching for a foothold in the insertion it's something we all share with these historical figures that is when you are true nature is revealed. >> [inaudible] >> i heard a story 25 years ago. my husband was a journalist for "the new york times" and actually began his career in south africa. it was in the early '80s and

when i met him 25 years ago, he said did you know that winston churchill was a prisoner of war in south africa and that he escaped. i thought you are kidding me. how did i not know this. it stayed with me all these years and after i turned in the manuscript for my second book we went to lunch and he said you have any ideas for your next book. i would love to write about winston churchill and he said yes. >> i wonder if it was somewhere in the back of your head.

to be honest, as you know i havs three kids, i live in kansas city and i have a normal day-to-day life with dinner plans and stuff, but i have an office outside of my home and when i go to my office and i closed the door, it's like a time machine. i feel like i'm going back in time and i just immersed myself and the documents that i've gathered and the pictures and the maps and things like that. i'm really only thinking about this moment in history. >> you seem to be drawn to the late 19th or the early 20th centuries. >> i do. i think that's fair. i do find it very evocative.

especially what interests me there is so much primary source material. it's a just this enormous wealth and diary of newspaper articles and writing that i do. when the research takes the most of the time and i feel like i will never get through this. >> when you have that wealth of research material it's choosing what not to use. >> i would be interested to see if you agree as most of it i. don't.

you have to be tough about it. but i feel like all of it informs me and i hope the reader of the book because you have to truly understand it before you can begin writing about it. >> in his memoir my early years ias a lost world when it began o change incredibly dramatically. >> that is another thing that interests me.

that is fascinating in the churchill is right in the middle of that, right on the cusp of this incredible change in its fascinating to see it through his eyes. >> you write on the challenges that would be a grand challenge is a strong undercurrent in the book and in the introduction to the memoir it says his experiences in india and south africa see the glorification of the war for all it was. do you agree with that judgmenti >> i do. at the time it was huge, 450 million people, a quarter of the population. they were spread all over the

world, so they were spread very thin constantly putting down. to them these little colonial boards they would find this all about gallantry and keane -- being dashing. when they began they were still fighting on these lines. >> it was a prelude to world war i.>> gue >> it was the beginning of modern warfare and i don't think that many americans do much about it but it was some of the first guerrilla fighting ander concentration camps and the modernization of weapons and all feasting just the british army going in was completely different and it prepared them for world war i. >> you write splendidly about the people whom we know very

little. is there the presence in south africa still very strong? >> fortunately, things are changing a lot. the boards were interesting. they were very independent and religious and unabashedly racist and he may have heard of the great track in 1835 they moved hundreds of miles into the interior and that was set up primarily by the fact two years earlier, they had abolished slavery.of even though the british empirehi promised native africans into the indiana population that was living there as soon as they won the war things would change and be better for them as we all know it took much longer than anyone would have hoped.

so of course there is a presence. but of course nelson mandela was a still racing point for that and things have changed quite a bit. >> churchill did change. absolute but, he was a bundle of burning ambition that the one description that's absolutely true throughout his life. >> some of it isn't all that common. it's looked down upon and i always thought this beautiful

socialized was american and in fact he told his mother is pushing agthis isthe pushing agh with and she was very connected and had all these powerful men who adored her it's because he thought that the best way for me to win fame and he called the glittering gateway to extinction. >> once you get to know him what was wrong and what was right? >> not only ambitious butuest: incredibly arrogant and that is probably throughout.

i found it entertaining becausen again and again in the letters and journals and different newspaper articles, people would say you know that winston churchill, i can't stand him he's going to be prime minister one day that he drives me crazy. >> [inaudible] [laughter] >> he went to south africa with what? >> pays valet and ten year old whiskey. so he's willing to risk his life that he doesn't want to be uncivilized. what was interesting about him to me at this point in his life is if you look at pictures of him coming you almost don't recognize him. so obviously we think of the older winston churchill as being

older and he's got his cigar and whiskey and he's the one throwing himself into war. but it's fascinating to read the letters that he wrote at that time and there's one in particular that he wrote for parliament. during the election, he's loving all these opportunities to be on stage. he writes to her and says i don't know what's going to happen with the election but with every speech i gave, i can feel a growin my growing power. >> something you don't really go into in the book that you covered what happened between him and pamela. >> this is a great story because it was a beautiful young woman,

he met her in india when he was there fighting in british india and she was the sort of -- he was in love and wanted to marry her but her father wouldn't let her marry him because he didn't think churchill would amount to anything. >> finally, before we turn this over to questions from the floor can you say a few words about popular history for the review of "the wall street journal" last week describes it as, quote, the smooth writing popular historian and i guess that was a compliment. it seems to be pejorative and condescend and that is being done by the non- academics.

do you ever feel defensive about being popular? >> to be honest, i feel so incredibly fortunate to be able to do what i do. everyday i go to work and think i can't believe this is my job to read most of the time and it is to meet fascinating stories. i know a lot of historians and i read a lot of academic histories and respect them. i hope that is a collaborative thing.t i hope there are people that -- people say i hated history, i was never interested in history and then i read something by david and i was hooked. a lot of times they say that it made me want to learn more so i started to read more deeply. so i hope that in a way it's a conduit for people that think

they don't like history to realize they do and there are these fascinating stories that they will absolutely love. >> they've also stepped into a gap in the decline of thee decl narrative history and there are various theories about the cause of death but as the academic historians dig more deeply into the specialized areas often with political or ideological patterns it's left for people that want to tell stories. >> there are microphones in the middle of each aisle and you are welcome to come up and ask anything you would like to. the workers, so you get the first question. >> i appreciate your book.

when you take colorful figures like you've written about quite a bit. when dealing with churchill andi the more a lot of it is going to be with churchill wrote that i always find that he exaggerates things and puts himself in the best light so how do you deal with the challenge of dealing with that? >> most of the time he wasn't alone. as most of you know, he went to the board to cover it as akn journalist and he was on very soon after you arrived it was attacked by the board and so hie good friend invited him along and he was in that command at ce time invited him along and many other men including those that were attacking them and so we have their accounts of it as

well demand that organized the attack you may know he became the first minister in south africa and he was a very young and charismatic exciting general and they became friends later in life and he always insisted that it was both personally whond chc captured him. we've done the research, and this is impossible that that is

to personally capturewho personu churchill said it was. end of discussion. but it wasn't. >> they talked about it but that is the main thing. >> this is more of a general historical question in terms of the writing. it's to their own liking. how do you avoid revising history to your own personal opinion about things? >> i do a lot of research and i don't come at it with an opinion. for instance, i wrote a book

about james garfield, and i honestly did come to admire him but i didn't even set out wanting to write about james garfield, i wanted to write about alexander graham bell and i found out that he invented some thing called an induction to try to find a board in garfield and i thought i wonder what james garfield is like ~ so early into the first term and he's largely been forgotten so i started researching him and he was extraordinary and brilliant, kind of guy instrumental in bringing about black suffrage and was a decent modest human became. that's what i tried to do with all of my books.

in the history of the roosevelt administration and then in the very guess object from a distinct ideological point of vi view. >> absolutely. >> my question, i came awayy>> after reading this thinking that we missed out on the potentially great president so i just wanted to hear your thoughts on its garfield hadn't been assassinated what typ this typef president do you think he would have been. >> he would have been one of our great presidents and i think that he was an inspiration because he had come from such

poverty and to bring the country together in a way. they were really dividing thepef country even more and so many people admired him into so manyy people had put so much hope. so as i said, the sea was forced into this situation. and i think that because of that he was uniquely powerful because he wasn't beholden to anyone. s he hadn't made any promises were sacrifices because it isn't something that he hungered four. you used to call it the presidential fever because he'd been in congress for 18 years and that would have made him a uniquely powerful president had

he lived and i do think it was quite a loss to the country. >> i came to the end with aof tremendous sense of loss that hs ever had the opportunity to be the president he could have been. >> you made a brief reference tr the british policy of concentration camps after the war which was one of the moreich shameful episodes of the british empire history particularly in its impact on women and children and noncombatants. did churchill ever acknowledge that or did that affect him in any way? >> with affected him was his own imprisonment and he never forgot it. it was completely on the other end of the spectrum from the concenand for those of you that don't know, the british had

gotten into the war thinking it's going to last a couple of months and october would be out by christmas but it ended up lasting for almost three years and so by the end, they were desperate to get out so they did some pretty horrible things and resorted to the publicity and set up these concentration camps for women and children supporting beast me men that wee out fighting in the field and the board so that they wouldn't have any support into this disastrous it was forced into the concentration camps. churchill on the other hand, his imprisonment, the boards were eager to show that they were civilized, too. they were backwards and rough. there was this incredible leniency, but churchill couldn't stand the idea of being

transferred. he said he hated that more than he hated any other in his life and he was desperate to get out and later on when he gets into public life and become o secretary, it was one of his missions to show compassion to prisoners and he made sure that they had access to books and they have acces had access to ts and they could exercise and whether or not they are guilty of some her in this crime, they are still human beings. >> the first two books were wonderful, some of the best i've ever read.

>> i just couldn't believe how close the two seemed. >> throughout the process, i kept thinking how much they reminded me of each other. how many similarities there were of these incredibly ambitious men come in very arrogant, drive everybody around them crazy and they were incredibly well read. very talented writers and they had so much in common. and i think that is why they didn't really like each other. they did need and it definitely was a love affair.in [laughter] >> since churchill went to south africa as a journalist and had a preconceived notion about thet, british empire and as you experienced the war, how did his view change about the british empire, and did he realize that

the sun was actually sitting on the british and iraq this time, and my second question is if he did, did that contribute to some of the most amazing things he did like when hitler was trying to take over and there was that whole idea of i don't want to be dominated again, did you see evidence of pinching i thing his thinking towards the british see empire was and how he wanted itr to fit into the world? >> i think that we all know winston churchill was far from ? perfect man and he was anone th unabashedly imperialist. he felt that it was part of his mission to keep it intact and i don't think they changed that at

all. no one was quicker to reach out afterwards and he was incredibly magnanimous and trying to help someone who would then his enemy and that was true after the world war and it got him in trouble with his countrymen and it was true leader in his life. that was a constant throughout his life. he was at that time and for many years and imperialist. >> as i was reading this, i

marveled at the conversation the characters have with each other and it's as if you had a tape recorder in your room, and i wa wondering how what you drew upon to give similar terms in with these people were actually singing to each other and how you do that. >> my father said the same thing after he read this book.st: my f the dialogue, it's important to me that everybody knows this is all absolutely factual in the get the letters from the accounts to be i was talking to churchill and they said this and that's where that comes from. it's important to is it's a trd sometimes in the narrative nonfiction that you get a paragraph on each chapter as a

general these were my sources. but in my book, you can look it up. i use notes so you could say how this she know that, you can look it up yourself. so that's something that is important to me. and going back to the primary source material. w although we can get the fantastic story, i really wanted to tell them that we finally had to give them up because i just didn't have enough primary source material to work with toe have those details that you hoped would bring the story alive. so i won't commit to it and i had a wealth of information to work with on this book. >> you may have touched on this earlier concerning the river ofr doubt.

i was amazed twice the ge wife e roosevelt was doing this. what do you believe was his motivation for doing it?want to >> for those of you that don't know the story and he lost inec 1912 and then he goes on this incredibly dangerous river that no one knows. it's called the river of doubt and it's because no one knew where it was going to take them ofor what was around each bend.r the reason he did it, winston churchill would have done it, too. so, he has one and one throughout his life and then he

loses and he is a pariah so for the first time in his life he puts went for a delete to -- puts booker wilson a democrat and the vote and he has a depression that sort of haunted him his whole life and was the stated. so, he gets this invitation to go on a speaking tour in south america. he's written many books and he's going to take another trip. he gets there and he wants this friend of his who is a priest that hired an arctic explorer to plan a trip in the amazon, so they are not even prepared for the collecting trip.p. he gets there and they say you can do that or you can ask the unmasked river and theodore roosevelt is goin was going to o that?

know, so they throw them into this outrageously dangerous trip. >> time for one more. >> can you talk about how you reconstructed these event is into the medical care received they might very well live. >> i guess those of you that don't know, he was shot in a train station on the mal mall we the national gallery six and there is no notice at all that an american president was shot here. with the bullet that hit him dit hit any vital organs, defended his spinal cord from his injuries were so far less severe than ronald reagan but he had 12 different doctors especially this beautifully named doctor

willard whose first name was doctor. [laughter] inserted unsterilized fingers and instrument in his back probing for this even though he discovered 16 years earlier. it's sickening to watch throughs the lens of 135 years happening to this extraordinary man.braryf even though garfield was present for a short time he'd been there for almost 18 years and his papers and a lot of people surrounding it. also, i went to the national museum of health and medicine, and they actually have the autopsy report. but more than that, i held a

section with this red plastic pen going through where thela bullet had gone through and it is stunning. they also have what i call theey assassins drawer because they have charles who assassinated garfield and they also have john wilkes booth kind of in the same drawer. it's just bizarre.dr they also have hr with chunks of his brain. he was in scene and mentally ill and after he was executed, they wanted to study it for science to see if you could see physical signs of insanity so they cut it up and send it to experts aroun the country. they put it in this jar, and

they still have it. >> bthe told me before i started the program he's still looking around for his next subject. i'm almost 77-years-old [inaudible] [laughter] [applause]

>> .. >>