tonight on booktv on c-span2 in primetime, a look at some of the places we stopped on our c-span cities tour. >> one of the most alluring women to apparently ever walked the earth, a very beautiful woman, ms. denmark of 1931 but even as pretty as she appears to be photographed, people said it would never did her justice you have to see her in person to understand all the fuss. she had an extraordinary charisma and a way about her she would take over a room she would walk into and turn heads and that was one reason she was an interesting pairing with kennedy who was a good-looking man with a lot of charisma but it wasn't

just her looks, she was also a very accomplished person, very bright and spoke four languages. she had a marvelous ability to draw people out and talk about themselves and make them feel they were fascinating. >> all of the biographies that have come out since the 1970s because at the beginning of world war ii they met i think about coburn of 1941 at the time she was married to her second husband so that was a reason to be discreet about the relationship and they also turned out to be a suspected nazi spies to she came under the surveillance of the fbi said they did their best to keep their relationship a secret so after j. edgar hoover died in the 70s and the fbi files were opened up and people learned more about this relationship was very pivotal in his life, it

appears no one devoted a book in their own life and i argued that she was the great half of his life and that includes the relationship with jack kennedy. that's not to say he didn't love jackie towards the end of his life he developed an appreciation for all they brought to the marriage into the white house but before that the woman he cared about the most and wanted to marry was in the end for a variety of reasons i mentioned she was beautiful and whawould attract men and she was his equal in terms of sophistication. kennedy had traveled the world as the ambassador and he was well traveled and interested in public affairs and world events so they developed a very tight bond together and she was a different woman than anybody dated. he tended to date schoolgirls when he was in school were

stewardesses and cocktail waitresses that this is somebody he became smitten with almost immediately. she is still married a second husband and was a suspected spy and the kennedys of course were the preeminent family who have been involved in a considerable scandal in those days but he found her very attractive and they were introduced by the sister, kathleen everyone called her cake. she worked at the harold newspaper that has been absorbed by the "washington post" and she was a columnist and had a column every day called did you happen to see where she interviewed top people in washington, d.c. would come to participate in the war effort such as j. edgar hoover pointed out was a great cover as a nazi spy but she was fascinating and beautiful and was also quite skilled he found

that fascinating but found everything about her enthralling and wanted to marry her but it couldn't have been. >> why did the romance of all attentioattention from the fbi? >> in 1934 she'd been married and divorced once and she tried her hand at film acting falling in love with a man who would become her second husband a film director who charlie chaplin was the greatest geniuses of cinema she plays in so many different parts of the world it's a very wild story that she turned out to be a great actress so she decided it was a great deal of charm so she went to a couple newspapers and said would you give me press credentials so i can become a foreign correspondent because that was her potential focus as a great interest what hitler was doing in germany. they did on their knees after world war i mired in a terrible

depression in the 1920s with a staggering inflation not two or three digits before digit inflation and turned everything around so everybody wanted to go to germany and find out why this was so she became a foreign correspondent to germany for a couple of newspapers and again because of her considerable charm. one of which got international attention doing what we would call human interest profiles to. he had a private dinner and gave an expensive gift.

she was in her early 20s. obviously that raised some eyebrows whether she was a nazi spy and things got so. away. they took personal charge of the investigation and again.

president roosevelt himself said no i want you to keep her under surveillance i'm interested and want to know what she's doing. when john kennedy was nominated in 1960, j. edgar hoover called bobby kennedy who was his brother and campaign manager and said he was calling to assure the kennedys that even though the file existed at the fbi they could rest assured j. edgar hoover would make sure the file was taken care of and wanting to see the light of day. they got the message int and the very first phone call jack kennedy made after he was elected president was to call j. edgar hoover and asked him to stay on as the director even

though he'd been under considerable pressure to fire hoover said he would ensure his own continued performance as the director of the fbi. >> what is the importance of this story? >> i don't believe he would have been president of the united states without having known her and that is the thing. first gave him the confidence to pursue a political career. always cared about world affairs and wanted to get into politics but understood he was always being compared unfavorably in the family to his older brother. kathleen kennedy said of his hair seemed to suggest jack was better than joe at anything. she said that's nonsense i bet the world great statesman, the president of france, king and queen of denmark i can tell you someone that's been on the world stage to the president of the united states if that's what you want to do spitfire to that ambition and go all the way to the white house and she encouraged jack to confront his

father and tell him what his aspirations were and we can actually almost precisely in january of 1942 with her encouragement he went to palm beach florida to the kennedy compound and had a very frank discussion with his father and said i would like a political career just like joe, don't think that he's the only one and from that moment, joe kennedy senior promoted both of his sons within a week of having a conversation. he called david, the president of nbc and said i want to buy some radio stations of massachusetts. they were going to court-martial them and they transferred jack down to the naval yards in south

carolina. he'd been there a few months and thought he was so isolated he began to pester his father said he was put into the school to become commander of the boat. >> he was the skipper and it was a black night august 1, 43. [inaudible] kennedy was listening for about a week there were tremendous efforts and he was able to rescue the members of his crew so that is the second when he helped her. they wouldn't have gone into combat but then of course people have to know when he first

disappeared not a lot of detail about what happened. when kennedy came home stateside during the war in january of 44 he didn't go visit his mom and dad or friends or siblings, he immediately went to visit inge who by this time was an influential gossip columnists with 20 million readers every day. he wanted to see her and was trying to rekindle the romance. she was amazed by what he had told her into his own efforts people still debate whether the accident itself is kennedy's fault but there's no doubt in the aftermath he performed heroically and did allow his crew to survive so she brought it up for the nationally syndicated story that appeared in newspapers around the country including the front page of the

"boston globe" and it became a template for the story going forward and the story was read by another writer sort of a casual acquaintance i read the story about what he went through the senate and i have a longer version for the new yorker so kennedy gave him more on the story and it became very famous and in the "reader's digest" this was the primary campaign material that john kennedy handed out in every election participated in so that was if she hadn't gotten that story at first it may not ever have become. he felt he was at least partially if not fully responsible for the incident and the death of the crew members and he didn't really like to be seen as a hero he was okay with other people calling him a hero but he didn't want to brag about it because it opened up a question. she gave him the confidence to tell about the aspirations.

he calls up and says maybe we can get together this weekend and she said wait a minute you've already made clear marriage is not an option. so periodically over the next several years he would try to rekindle the relationship and to get the romance going and she was always glad to see him but said no it's time for both of us

to move on with our lives. they had one final after he was elected to congress in november of 1946 and she was kind of him and all the place of her life so they had one more romantic interlude and then they never saw each other again. jack kennedy went on, went to congress and wrote a letter to the presidency, she married so their lives kind of the church did they thought about each other a great deal and there's a lot of clues in the behavior he followed the career when he was nominated and when he was shot in dallas at 63 she was devastated for several days and just cried but it meant an awful lot to each other and it was a great romantic story obviously a little bit of a tragedy but they both felt it meant something very special and at some level they had a perfect love except

she was already married to another man but under suspicion of being a nazi spy otherwise it would have been the perfect romance. >> what is the big take away of the book lacks >> i think one of the reasons i wrote the book in addition to explaining this wonderful woman who is just fascinating and everyone would like to get to know and i think everyone would say what a life, what a person i wish i could have a cup of coffee or something stronger and hear more about her life story but i think what she does, kennedy has gone up again when he was first assassinated he was a saint, you couldn't say anything negative about the kennedys. then there was a sort of terrible reaction which there was this revisionist history where he was a terrible president, we would have had the bay of pigs were the cuban missile crisis and he was a philanderer in a liar and all this kind of stuff.

he was trying to find himself in the world to improvise because he's a young man whose very bright with great ambitions and loves life. even then his mortality wasn't going to be as long as most people. all sorts of ailments but for the right reasons. he did have a big heart in many ways. he remains one of the popular presidents. something about john kennedy.

there is people doing great things so that is the take away from the book so a fascinating woman you couldn't have dreamed up no matter what kind of novel you were trying to write. you are watching book tv on c-span2 in prime time tonight they invite them to tell about their travels and she saw big pictures