follow those who know doing signings of the book. please do that now. if you're staying for the next speaker please have your tickets out and ready to be scanned. thank you. >> sunday, in depth will feature a live discussion on the presidency of barack obama. we'll take in your phone calls, tweets and facebook questions. our panel includes april ryan and author of the presidency in black-and-white. my close view of three presidents and race in america. princeton university professor eddie, author of democracy in black, how race democracy in black, how ray still enslaves the american soul. and journalist and editor of the washington post david meredith, watch in-depth live from noon until 3:00 p.m. eastern on sunday on book tv on c-span2.

>> my name is jonathan, i am here from the washington post but i left it a long time ago come about 18 years ago my wife and i were on capitol hill with my stepdaughter who is working at the time at the national geographic. one day she said could i bring a friend home from the office for dinner and we said sure. >> am afraid that the technical problem than somebody else will have to cope with it. if i shout does that help?at n my stepdaughter was working at national geographic and one day asked if she could bring a friend home from dinner we said sure. the next day dinnertime lovely young woman shows up with her stepdaughter my wife in a room immediately enchanted with her.

she was still lovely and enchanting but now she is one of the most accomplished the most successful writers of nonfiction in the united states.y good to the thread good to see you again. >> it's very good to see you. [applause] can i just say, just veryy briefly what an 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 ofs books. if by some crazy chance you don't know his work, i urge you to go out and find it. he is brilliant. it's very humbling to me. i should be interviewing him as he is a much more interesting figure than i am. >> flattery gets you everywhere] and we will get over there to

winston churchill and the empire soon enough but have a few questions of how you've got to this point in your life. you're at national geography fo> how many years?verely e >> six years. >> they have a reputation for being very tightly run w publication. what influence did you use on your own evolution as a writer? >> i say that my real educationh happened at national geographic. i learned so much about storytelling, but the fact that the world is full of fascinating people, fascinating events and stories. but most of all i learned about research. i learned that you need to dig deep, you need to take the time to understand it and you need t find the people who really know the subject that you're going to look into. and national geographic you

could be working on something about meerkats one day and something about a river another day. it really fluctuated. but the one consistent thing throughout his there's always somebody who knows the subject and knows it really well and has spent most of his or her life studying it. you need to find that person and make them your friend. >> when and how did it come to that you should try to write this book. you are young not a trainedgo a historian, the subject involve travel to a dangerous place. dealing with languages otherua than your own. tell us about the challenges and apprehensions that confronted you. >> i first heard the story i was having lunch with a friend, james who wrote the book 1912. his extraordinary man and thispl

is where rose will try to regain the presidency and lost. he said have you heard about this trip that roosevelt took in the amazon after that election. i had read about theodore roosevelt but because it was after his active political career it was glossed over. i started researching it went back to national geographic, they have a great library there. i went to the library of congress and i was stunneder inh because there is murder, drowning, they left the murder in the rain forest and roosevelt nearly took his own life.st it was said that amazon, the richest ecosystem on earth. so i was hooked right away. but it is daunting to take on the a, to take on the amazon. >> it to take on the book. >> to take on a book exactly. but i was excited about it because i knew that to a writer

this is a gift. it had so much to work with.i kw let thankful to my years at national geographic i knew how to do research. that was the only thing i was confident about. >> you went to the amazon the right? >> i did. i went to this river that is incredibly remote.re i did some research on rea and then i went to this little town in northwestern brazil. i rented a plane, hired a pilot and i flew for hours over on broken rain forest, horizon to horizon. >> now this raises a question, where did you get the money to do that? >> i had an advance. got an from doubleday. i have gotten an agent and they sent my proposal to his agent, very generous man and unfortunately unfortunately he

passed away right before the book came a which was really difficult for me.so they e so doubleday gave me this great advance you get it in threeturni parts, one part when he sell it, one part when you turn in the manuscript and one when you comes out. i had that money that's how i used it. >> i thought you would've on the plane yourself. >> notebook. >> i say that because in your other two books you are incredible and generous in your acknowledgments. you seem to to travel to a great many places. you seem to be afraid of nothing.s >> well, that's not true. i have a lot of fears, but i think my fears are shadowed by my interest. >> did you go down a mine in south africa? >> i went to where the mine was. it is close the but there is a hole where it was. >> so far you've written about

teddy roosevelt, garfield and churchill. what elements do you to their story. >> what interests me and were talking earlier, i love to reada biographies, but as a writer i'd like to tell a tighter story, a more personal story where i can spend five years really focusing and taking it deep. i'm looking for a story that i hope is a laminating about theme person and the time in which they live. what interests me think often when we look at history we are drawn to the big public moment.o of triumph or infamy. but what interests me are the more private moments of struggle when someone is sick like james garfield were terrified like

theodore roosevelt or desperate like winston churchill. and searching for a foothold and uncertain. i think it's in those moments and it's true for all of us that we all share with these great historical figures is that is when your true nature is revealed. >> quite specifically what drew you to winston churchill? >> i heard the story years ago. my husband was a journalist for the new york times and he began his career in south africa. covering the ansi national congress in the early 80s. when i met him 25 years ago did you know and that his skate. and i thought you are kidding me.. how do i not know this?

so that stayed with me all of these years and after i turned in the manuscript for my second book we went to lunch and i said you have any ideas for your next book i said i would love to write about winston churchill and the war. and he said yes. >> i wondered when i was reading your wonderful book with its story in this nearly disastrous war, i wonder if the vietnam war was in the back of your head when you are right in that? >> to be honest nothing was in the back of my head. >> i can absolutely see the connection. but to be honest as you know i have three kids, i live in kansas city and i have this very normal day-to-day life with laundry and dinner plans andn oi stuff.

but i have an office outside ofc my home. when when i go into my office and i close the door, it's like a time machine. i literally feel like i'm going back in time. i am her's myself in the documents that i have gathered in the pictures and maps. i am really only thinking about this moment in history. >> speaking of time, you seem to be drawn to the late 19th and early 20th centuries. >> i think that's fair. i did not set out that way, do, what do not think this is what i want to write about and i never do. i do feel like i can really,l that time you can see it, smell it, tasted but especially what interests me is there so much primary source material. it's an enormous wealth of

letters and diaries and newspaper articles. especially for the type of writing i do, narrative, nonfiction you have to have that. we have to have not or not even a huge amount but you have to be drowning in it. there are certainly times when i'm working on a book of the research takes me most of the time and i feel like good god, i will never get through all of the. >> i have done projects much less ambitious than yours, but when you have that wealth there's a problem of choosing what to use. cin >> that's right. i'd be interested to see if you agree. and most most of it i don't, you have to whittle it down and be tough about it. but i feel like all of it informs me and i hope the reader in the book. you have to truly understand it before you can begin writing about it. whether or not it makes it into

the book, it does in a sense that i understand this much better because of it. >> one thing about the late 19th and early as centuries they read in the memoir of churchill is that it's a lost world, it's a time when the world began to change in dramatic ways even more than now. you really went from the horse and buggy to the airplane in that time. >> and that's another thing thah interests me because the world was changing so quickly in every conceivable way. also our knowledge of the world this is the gilded a jet of exploration and so that two is fascinating and churchill was right in the middle of that. he is right on the cusp of thisa incredible change and it's fascinating to see it through his eyes. >> a couple of things that are connected, you write that they

faced dangerous challenges and it would be a grand adventure, a next line of the most romantic kind.deas o the notion of reddish ideas of war is a strong undercurrent in your book. yet william manchester in his introduction in the early years says his experiences in india, and south africa let him to see the glorification of work for all it was, do you agree with that?e >> i do. at that time the british empire was huge. peoplth they rolled 450,000,000 people, and 50 million people, they were spread all over the world and sy they are spread very thin. so to them the colonial wars that they would fight is all about being dashing. . . ts. they thought the khakis made

them look like bus drivers. even for the boer war when it began, they would fight in precise lines. it absolutely was. it was the beginning of modern warfare and i think, you know, not that many salespersons specially know much about the boer war but it was some of the first guerrilla fighting andd modernization of weapons and all those things. the british army going in wasn w completely different going inm than coming out and prepared them for world war i. you were right about the most of us know -- whom we knowo very little. is the boer present.g? >> fortunately, things are changing a lot. the boer's were interesting people. they were very independent.

they are very religious and racist and that's sort of -- you may have heard of the great track in 1835 they were moved to the i don't your. and so even though the british empire promised people in native africans and the indian population that was living there that as soon as they won the war, things would change and would be better for them, as we all know, that took much longer than anyone would have hoped and so, of course, there is still a presence but, you know, obviously nelson mandela was a huge breaking point. >> tell us about churchill, he did change the experience in south africa did change him, but

i kept thinking and ambition. >> yes yes r absolutely, a bundle of burning ambition.. the one description of him that's absolutely true. >> do you think that that's traceable to his dealings about his father. >> prominent, is not all that common in that particular class. >> it's looked down upon. i thought that was the american in him..the his mother, beautiful social jarome was american. he told his mother this is a pushing age. she was very connected. she had all the powerful men who adored her and so he was always having her help me out, haveow person get an assignment because

he was throwing himself into wars because he thought that's the best way to win fame and propel myself to political power.o he called it the glittering gateway to distinction. >> you quote at tend famous remark of first love, pamela. >> when you first meet winston, you see all things that are wrong and once you get to know him you see all things that were right about him. >> that's right. >> what was it about what you came to know him. >> incredibly acroggant. >> throughout his life. in letters and journals and different newspapers articles people would say, you know, that winston churchill, i cannot stand the kid.lls whil

>> he ordered a soup. [laughter] >> yes, exactly. >> he went to south africa, with what, cases of champagne? >> in his valet, 10-year-oldvile whiskey, what was interested tot me if you look at pictures, you almost don't recognize him. when you think of winston churchill we think of the old winston churchill, overweightch and older and has his cigar and whiskey. he's young and has red hair and he's the one throwing himself into war but inside, inside he was already the winston churchill we know. it's fascinating to read the

letters that he wrote at that time and one in particular that he wrote to pamela powell. during the election and he's loving it, loving all of the opportunities to be on a stage b and he writes to her, he says, i don't know what's going ton' happen with the election. i don't know what the outcome will be but with every speech i give i feel my growing powers. >> something you don't go into in the book it really occurs after the period that you cover, what happened between him and pamela. >> a beautiful young woman.ma he met her in india when he was there fighting in british india and she was sort of a toast of london when she went back and so she had many admirers but he was in love with her and he wanted to mary her but her father wouldn't let her marry him

because he didn't think he would amount to anything. >> could you say a few words about popular history? his favorable notice of empire, review of the wall street journal describes you a popular historian, i guess that was a complement. the phrase popular history has always seemed to be condescending even though much of the best history now beingen written these days is being done by nonacademics. i'm sure you're pleased to be put in such company but do you feel defensive about being popular? your to -- to be honest i feel fortunate to be able to do what i do. every day i go to work and think that this is my job, my job is to read most of the time and to

dig into the fascinatingd, you stories, and, you know, i know a lot of historians and i respect them, it's just not what i do and i hope that that it's actually a collaborative thing. i hope that there are people, a lot of people i met who say, you know, i thought i hated history. i read something by david and i was hooked.th i started to read more deeply. i hep that in a way it's ake conduit and fascinating stories that they will absolutely love. >> so-called popular historians have stepped into a gap that's been left by the decline of narrative history in the academic departments.

often with political or ideological patents, the field is really left wide open for people who want to tell stories. >> tell stories, right, that's what i love to do. >> there are microphones in the middle of each aisle, i believeu and you're welcome to come up and ask us anything you like to. you were first so you get the first question. >> i teach history and other things in high school, i appreciate your book, history tu me is very exciting and when you take colorful figures oror compelling historic figures like you've written about, i think you've add a lot of bit, but when dealing with churchill and the boer war, of course, one of the primary sources is going to be what churchill wrote, but i always find that he exaggerated things and he likes to put

himself in the best light, howim did you deal with the challengee of dealing with that? >> the nice thing for most of the part he wasn't alone. the way he's captured for those that don't know, he went to the boer war to cover it out to journalists, he was on very soon after he arrived, on an arm our trained attacked by the boer so his good friend elmer had invited him along. he was actually in command of the train and invited him along and he was there and many other men including the boers who wern attacking them, and so i have their accounts of it as well, and the same thick when he was in the pow. so almost always -- even when he was on the run he hid in the coal mine shaft, the men who helped him also wrote about it.

the only thing that i found out that he got wrong, the man who organized the attack on the train with a man name louis, first prime minister of south africa and he was a very young charismatic and churchill insisted that it was him who captured him. later churchill's son started researching, he was writing a biography of his father, i haved done the research and i don't think it would have been who personally captured you and churchill said, it was. [laughter] >>d of discussion. [laughter]rg >> he was there and saw everything and talked about it. that's the main --

>> thank you. >> this is more of a general historical question in terms of your writing and hearing about how you decide cha you're going to use in your research or what you don't use when you do your research. how do historical writers avoid revising history to their ownn liking. i wrote about james garfield anr honestly came to admire him, i was wanting to write about alexander graham bell and i found out that he invented something called an induction balance to try to find the bullet in garfield and i thought, i wonder what james was

like. he was killed so early into his first term and he's largely been forgotten and so i start researching him and he was extraordinary, she was absolutely brilliant, he was kind, he was instrumental in bringing about black suffrage, decent, modest human being and i was impressed with him but i didn't start out thinking i want to make people think that he is extraordinary man, i took him as i found him and that's what i tried to do with all of my books. >> if i might interject, i know what he's complaining about, not the pick on one person but arthur in multivolume incomplete history of the roosevelt administration, franklin roosevelt and in various writings on jack kennedy was writing from a distinct ideological point of view and may have been bending history to

suit his ideology. >> of course, it does. >> hi, my question is actually about republic. i loved it. i came away after reading it that we missed out on a great president, if garfield had not been assassinated, what type of president do you think he would have been and would he have been different than some of the other string of 19th century presidents? >> i agree. i agree that he would have been one of our great presidents and he was inspiration, really, to the country because he had come from such poverty and he seemed to bring the country together in a way that was sharp contrast from what happened after lincoln assassination where it divided the country even more and it's because so many people admired him and so many people had put

so much hope into him and as i said, he was a very progressive thinker for that time.e he -- and if you can imagine it, didn't even want to be president, was forced, shoved into this situation and so, i think, that because of that he was uniquely powerful because he wasn't beholding to anyone, he hadn't made any promises, he hadn't made any sacrifices, it's not something he hungered for. he saw it all around him because he had been in congress forouldv almost 18 years. that would have made himtr uniquely powerful president and it was quite a loss. >> i came to the end of the republic with a tremendous sense of loss that this man never had his opportunity to be the president he could have been. >> you made a brief reference to

the british policy of concentration camps in the boer war which was really one of the most shameful episodes in the british empire's history particularly its impact on women and children and another noncombatants. did churchill ever acknowledge that or did that affect him in any way? >> well, what affected him and i don't know was his own imprisonment. it affected him deeply and he never forgot it and even though it was -- completely on the other end of the spectrum and just for those of you who don't know, the british had gotten into the war thinking it's going to last a couple of months and it started, it will be out by christmas and it ending up lasting a couple of years and by the end they were desperate to get out and they did horrible things and they referred to scorch or policy and they set up

concentration camps for as you say women and children who were supporting these men who were out fighting in the fields so that they didn't have any support and it was disastrous, and native africans were forced to concentration camps and even more died than the boers, churchill on the other hand, the boers were eager to show the british that they were civilized too. so they allowed incredible but churchill couldn't stand the idea of being captured. he hated that period in his life more than he had ever hated any other period in his whole life and he was desperate to get out and he remembered that so later when he gets into public life and becomes home secretary it

was one of his missions to show compassion to prisoners and you know, he made sure that they had access to books, they had access to the outdoors, exercise because he said, whether or not they are guilty of some horrendous crime, they are still human beings. my question is that early on in the book there's sort of a passing reference to teddy roosevelt, i think the other journalists adkins, i believe, had met him in cuba. >> right. >> i couldn't believe how close those two seemed. could you contrast with teddy roosevelt and winston churchill. >> throughout the process i kepe thinking how much they reminded me of each other, how many similarities they were, young incredibly ambitious men very

arrogant, drive everybody around them crazy, incredibly well read, very, very talented writers, they had so much in common and i think that's why they really didn't like each other. >> thank you. >> since churchill went to south africa as a journalist he had sort of preconceived notion about the british empire and as the experience the boer war, how did his view change about the british empire, did he really realize, did he see evidence that the sun was actually setting on the british empire at this time and my second question is, if he did, did that contribute to some of the most amazing things he did in life like the battle of london when hit we -- hitler was trying to

take over and the idea that i don't ever want to be dominated again, did you see evidence of him changing his thinking towards what the british empire was and how he wanted it to fit into the world? >> i think we all know that winston churchill was far from a perfect man and one of the things about him is he was unbashed materialist. and i don't think the boer war changed that at all. i mean, i think that another thing on the opposite side that i will say about winston churchill and something that i admire although no one fought harder than he did during war, no one was quicker to reach out the hand of friendship after regard and incredibly trying to

help somebody who had been his enemy and that was true absolutely during the boer war and got him in trouble with the country member and it was, you know, true later in his life, you can see that. that was sort of a constant throughout his life, but he was at that time for many, many years absolutely and imperialist . >> i felt like the republic was an extraordinary book and how much i enjoyed reading it. as i was reading it, i totally marveled at the conversations that the characters had with each other and, you know, as if you had a tape recorder in the room and i was wondering how you -- what you drew upon to get very similar to it in terms of what these people were actually saying to each other or how you

did that so well. >> that's interesting, my father said the same thing after he read the book, he said the dialogue that you have, it's like a novel or something and it's very, very important to me that everybody knows that this is all absolutely factual and i get that dialogue from letters, from the accounts that they wrote themselves and so i was talking to churchill and he said this and i said that, that's where all of that comes from and it's very important. i think that there's sort of a trend, narrative nonfiction that in the nose section you just get paragraph about each chapter, these are the sources, in myge book, you can look it up. i use notes and you could say, how does she know that she said that, well, turn to the notes and find out and you can look it up yourself, so that's something that really, really important to me and just going back to primary source material, it

takes me a long time before i will commit to a subject even if i think it's a fantastic story and there have been stories that broke my heart because i reallyr wanted to tell them but i finally had to give them up because we didn't have primary source material to have that dialogue, to have the details that you hope will bring a story alive and so unless i do, i just won't commit to it and i had a wealth of information to work with for this one. thank you. >> hello, you may have touched on this earlier concerning the river of doubt, as i was reading it, i was just amazed at why theodore roosevelt was doing this. why do you believe -- what was his motivation for doing it?

i don't want to give you my own opinion. >> well, those of you who don'tw know the story he lost the election of 1912 and he goes to south america and goes through rapid river that no one knows where it leads, the man isis called rio, the river of doubt and because no one knew where it was going to take them and what was around each bend and the o reason he did it because because he was theodore roosevelt and winston churchill would have done it too. you know, he had won and won, and won throughout his life and he loses and he loses huge context and he's a pariah for the first time in his life. he put wood row wilson, a democrat in the house because he split the republican vote andwi he, you know, had this depression that had sort of haunted him through his life and he was devastated and so he gets

this invitation to go on a speaking tour in south america. he has written many books aboutt bird and so he's going to take another collecting trip, he gets there and nobody has been preparing -- he loves -- the g friend of his who is a priest and hired arctic explore to plan this trip in the amazon and so they're not even prepared for a collecting trip and he gets in, the foreign minister says, you can do that or you could map and unmapped river and theodore roosevelt is going say no toca that, no. the people with him and outrageously dangerous trip. >> i have time for one more. you're a lucky person. >> can you talk a little bit about how you reconstructed the events after president garfield was shot, particularly the medical care he received. i find it so remarkable that if the doctors had left him alone

he might very well lived. >> right. >> yeah, he would have. again for those who don't know, so garfield was shot actually in a train station that was on the mall, it's where the national gallery now to my outrage, no plaque, no notice at all that an american president was shot here, but the bullet that hit him that went in the right side of his back didn't hit any vital organs, didn't hit the spinal chord, injuries were far less severe than reagan's when reagan was shot an his--- but he had 12 different doctors, doctor doctod willard whose name was doctor and repeated inserted fingers to his back probing for the bullet. 16 years earlier and spoke to american doctors.

and so it's sickening to watch this -- through the lens of 135 years happening to this -- toe this extraordinary man. and so i did a ton of research, even though garfield had been in congress for 18 years, a lot of people surrounding it, i went to national museum of medicine and they actually have the autopsy report there, but more than that, they have -- i held in myu glove hand a section of churchill -- i'm sorry, garfield's spine with this red plastic pen going through where the bullet had gone through and it's stunning and they also have strangely there, they have what i call assassins drawer. they have the remains of charles

who assassinated garfield and kind of in the same drawer, ankle bone, it's bizarre, theyey also have a jar with junction and he was insane, he was mentally ill. after he was executed they we wanted to study it for science, specially the brain to see if you can see physical signs of insanity and they sent to experts around the country. we probably had -- >> she also admitted that book l for her is about a 5-year project. thank you so much.

>> thank you, jonathan. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> here is a look at some of the current best-selling nonfiction books according to the wall street journal. topping the news bill o'reilly and story about japan's defeat during world war ii in killing the rising sun. tim's book on success tips tools of titans is next. followed by hgtv chip and joanna gaines. the nobel-prize winning theory

of the mind they developed in the undoing project. that's followed by missionary books, jesus always. our look at the wall street journal's best selling nonfiction books continues with guinness world records 2017. next on the list is the food network's who shares family's favorite meals in cooking for jeffrey. settle for more is number eight on the list. book tv recently covered megyn kelly. bruce springsteen autobiography born to run is on the wall street nonfiction best-seller's list. at 10:00 hill billiology.

many authors will be appearing on book tv c-span2. booktv.org. >> you're watching book tv, television for serious readers. you can watch any program you see here online at booktv.org. [inaudible conversations] >> good evening, everybody, good evening and welcome to the lowee east side museum, my name is annie, vice president for