have and neck cancer. my grandfather was in world war ii also. we believe in america we believe no one is above the law even watches and other programs online. the city to her explores the american story. to see how they go about their research. i think when you write about history you to realize that human memory is fallible.

even if you look at people's oral history. they may contradict i would like to combined the discipline by going into the archives. also when possible interviewing people and seen seeing what was it really like. multiple sources before you say here's what i think the truth really is. you can keep growing. they needed to find other sources. you don't want to make them upset or is that even

something for me i like the people i write about. but he have a lot of aspects of his personality that were difficult. he was tough on people. when i was dealing with him. especially when he was ill. he would almost give me permission to put in the book. i think the same was true with kissinger. there were times i criticized in the narrative his lack of appreciation for the values of american democracy and how they have to be included in the foreign policy yes, some journalists are very good at

being tough about the subjects for me at the little bit more difficult when i have to push myself. i respected him i admired him but i like ben franklin a lot too. so when you have to do the downside you kind of flinch about it. he almost feel like these are your friends you don't want to say anything unnecessarily harsh about them. i think it makes me less of a good biographer in a way. i tend to find the good light

i can find on a political in a dough or subject. but i know the people read my books including people who been the subjects of the book. that's what you try to balance. you try to do it honestly but not us just rigorously. let me see if i can understand why someone did it this way even though i don't think it turned out to be the right way to do it. did you get any pushback i think henry kissinger he would think it was understated that said, over the years had certainly spent a lot of time with him.

they mentioned that they like to choose people. what else goes into other people write about military people or sports heroes. or even literary heroes. and people that stand at the intersection of the arts. who are able to love from the humanities. they tend to be very creative. that's ben franklin.

i look for people who had creative minds and his creativity comes from the types of things that you and i can appreciate. it's not just unfathomable they kind of dropped out of school. they become very observant, very curious very much in love. those are the types of people i thought it would be a way to show how a different mix of ethnic groups.

or the spiritual sounds coming down. all nailed together. to be a birthplace of jazz. i think i learned almost everything you can learn. what did he like. and so i put that aside and someday i may try to take on that. of time i might work with marsalis you always have things that you might go back to.

can you go back to your connection to new orleans. >> i was obviously born and raised there. both my parents and all of my grandparents and ins and uncles went there. so i love the city and the house i grew up in. with a house in the french quarter. especially after the hurricane 15 years ago. i came back as the vice chairman of the authority recovery. a city that is so embedded into your heart and your soul might not recover it just reminded me of the importance of home. it reminded me of the importance of the community and more recently of the dysfunction and poise in international politics. i said you know, by

politicians in washington. we should all take times and move back to our home community. and maybe work on the neighborhood level. in the community level. and try to make sure that we do things that are healing and bring people together. i always felt that way. a year ago i came back pretty much full-time my wife and myself. have you written any books about new orleans and if not do you have any coming up. >> i had written a book called american sketches. it's a series of essays in reported pieces that mainly deal with the heroes of the hurricane. it begins with walker percy. he was a mentor of mine and novelist from here.

and he have a theory of hurricanes this is many years ago. i remember when i was a young kid he would tell me the theory of hurricanes was that they were actually happy when there was a hurricane because we knew how to pull together. suddenly we are can be tested and we have to work together. this is a challenge. then i go through the great people in the city who came back after the storm and rebuilt it. i did ask them about other leaders as well. with the importance to me of new orleans. as i said, i've also been interested in armstrong. where louis armstrong first started playing his cornet when he was six or seven or eight years old. which was the red light

district right on the edge of the french quarter. in which there was a great mixing of socio- xm economic races. she have the biggest hole. the greatest businesswoman. the music and the race in the and all that jazz. i keep poking around in the to see if there is a good book. >> can we talk about how did you choose him and where did you start in your research process. >> i chose him because over the years i began to notice the pattern of how attracted i was to people who connected the arts in the humanity in the sciences in the engineering and all of these

fields. whether it was ben franklin who was a great scientist as well as a great lament whoever was stumped by the creative when i was writing about steve jobs he kept emphasizing that all of my books have been about people at the intersection of the arts in technology. and he said the ultimate in that tradition was leonardo da vinci. people write about him who are historians through the great works of art. he should've said somebody should also treat him as he thought of himself. bill gates bought the most

beautiful wonderful of the notebooks. called the kodak fiesta. it was a 72 page notebook filled with when they bought it. how cool it would be to ascend that amount. and i approached it by going through his notebook. other writers approach them by saying let's go through his artwork. he left more than 7,000 pages of a notebooks. and on a single page you can

see him do a sketch for the last supper. but try to figure out how to square the circle. introduce spirals. and then do some at the mathematics. why is a sky-blue. just pure curiosity questions. so i'd sorry go through the notebooks and connect his art and his engineering. >> he went to italy to see this? where to go to places where they have notebooks and its florence milan and paris in madrid it was a lot of fun because nobody has ever collected all of his notebooks they get to go to the places. where that notebook on the flight of birds is. or in seattle. where the notebook on geology

is. and there is something thrilling about being in the actual presence of a notebook page looking at the true man is in the top floor of the place in venice. just steering and and seen all my look at the grooves on the paper. and feeling a connection after 500 years. was there anything in discovered of the research and may be anyone else that really surprise you that you did not expect to come across. i was surprised at how he connected all of these disciplines. and how the muscles that deal with the eyebrow touches the lips. when he's doing that smile of the mona lisa. i loved looking at how theater affected him. because during his 20s his main work was as a theatrical

producer of pageants and plays both in florence and then in milan. and so those contraptions that starts off as a prop to bring angels down to the stage. you look at the last supper at how the walls come in kinda fast. it's like the seaweed drawings he did in his notebook. when they come in faster. looking at how his theatrical work connected to the science and his art. was just one of the many wonderful discoveries that i enjoyed. >> do you ever see yourself going back to washington? >> i think that most of the creativity is happening at the local level. most of the binding of the

nations together is happening at the community level. people pulling apart it operates on a bigger stage. this is why c-span not just on this type of trip but for 40 or 50 years in my mind is always at its best when it's on a bus and going somewhere. and stopping in at local communities. i watch that for 40 years on c-span. but also they are going to get it right in the nation. all of those things we are going to start by getting it right or keeping it rate at right at the local level. he is the author of multiple books on the civil war including works on general and

president ulysses s grant. he discusses some of the criticisms he has faced in his approach to writing history. >> oftentimes early morning the house is quiet nothing else is going on. i also like writing oddly enough late at night. during the evenings or early mornings. that's my time. i make the past come to life. who tells her story. i'm the person that tells that story. demonstrated at the best i can as honestly as i can but i get to do something fundamentally creative and say this is what i think happened.

sometimes the night before i taken notes about things that i want to talk about sometimes some sentence fragments. i have a pretty good idea by the time i get in front of my computer what i meant to do but i usually thought about it for quite some time before that. >> most people know me as a historian of the 19th century american. especially political and military topics. in the area the place where i'm best known as the civil reconstruction. where i've written about the united states military and political leaders. i would spend some time walking about presidents --dash make talking up presents as a whole. i now bear that title.

the concept can be very busy for me. it's a very busy time for me. i think one of the challenges is that you know you're not working with everything that happened that they material head. but a slice of what happened. things survive. other things. trying to take that material and say now let's find out what really happened. forget about what you think about. and how you interpret it. but what really happened. i find a lot of historians don't understand what did happen. how did people see it at that time. forget about the notion that some people have that historians sit down and they have a prearranged agenda and it acts to grind that they want to celebrate their subject or denigrate it.

and is finding out what happened it's challenge enough many times. >> when you write about civil war generals you're trying to get your reader to understand with the pollutant particular individuals. you know in hindsight what happened. in hindsight you think would sharpen your understanding but it's actually very distorted because now you know what the result was. why did someone do something that was so stupid? history goes up from from front to back not back to front. and then you have to look and say what were they thinking. what was their her understanding of the situation at the time. sometimes people we can understand they made the wrong decision but at least we have a better idea of why they made the wrong decision given what they knew at the time. political figures i think that's a challenge in a

different way. i think a they to carry their own baggage and popular memory and you have to think about the decisions that they have. and how they sense what political rally is before them. it's a great political leader. they respond to the situation and took advantage of opportunities. and moved forward they did not always do very much to expand that even if he was frustrated by it. i want you to understand for me has been a moving target. when i start to write about grant as a historian the most famous biography. they took a largely negative view of grant.

and if you said anything else and was bound to be more positive. by the time i started writing and making some points about grant other people then started to get interested thinking he might be safe as a biographical topic. some of them went too far in the other direction. at the beginning people saw me as the anti- mcfeely. that i was can correct the historical record we have a lot of grant biographies. now they are around. when the big names come in that they seem to be right for revision. it's been going on for about 25 years. they're really coming in near the end. i noticed that one of those people how they had elevated

him. it's not my objective. what he did and the things that he did that we might find praiseworthy. the man in all his humanity and in that sense the people i study i can identify with them at certain times and other times if i have them in the room i would say what were they thinking. why did you do that. i don't see myself as someone who is there to raise grant a few pegs on something. on some of scale of greatness. but i do see myself as this is what grant was about. i think in that way i try to be very fair and dispassionate. i don't try to become enamored.

i think some people are still refighting them. heading especially someone who has taught the american self. who is married to the southern born woman. people are just there. they talk about how we lost. they become very agitated. they take as a personal attack. it's all about their heritage and honoring their ancestors. that's all well and good but not the same as understanding their ancestors. i think a lot of people get involved in this very personal. of time.

they aren't interested in wreak construction. reconstruction is the story of americans and they ought to pay attention to. with the use of terrorism a white supremacist order in the american south a process that many white northerners were there. and yet i think we must understand that. we must understand why after the civil war the united states came back together after that. that the reconciliation took place by trampling over racial justice. not just the celebratory part. i think it's something we ought to pay attention to.

when people react to my writing and they're not enamored with it. first, that's their problem but sometimes i think it is because people that read what other people right. they do assume they come with an agenda. that they do have heroes and villains that they cannot celebrate. and that they come to their task with really solid ideas about what they want to do. they are going to exult to somebody or praise somebody. it's interesting you see it as an assumption. those critics are actually projecting their own issues on to me. one time i wrote a book on henry adams and i knew it would be controversial.

they would take issue with that. it. even if they have to admit that i might have a point. so when the book came out and then the reviews followed. simpson doesn't appreciate the great literary achievement. i understood that because that was not what the book was about. it's how they tried to forge the political career. there are critics that did not. i knew what i was getting into. history is never just the facts. it's how you put those facts together and how you bring the past alive to the readers. and give your insight with the things that you know that as a lot of fun when the work is over. and you can reflect on what you had written. that little phrase you like. that can be a really delightful moment.

>> while in sina barbara california we visited the home of ronald reagan as he talks about his relationship with the president reagan and the challenges of writing about a sitting president. i was a reporter in sacramento in the 60s i covered ronald reagan a little in his first campaign for governor which he started out and 65. when he was elected in 66. i had been there eight months maybe six months into his governorship. and i thought i really don't understand this guy. as i got into writing what was the history and some ways the

early parts were a political history of california. in the history of these two men. i would say that they would give me insights that they never would as a news reporter. and i was not interested in that. it wasn't so much how you rigging about on that bill or why but where did you come from and why do you care about the things that you care about. i became deeply involved in the stories of these two people and i gained a lot of confidence writing it. i can do this. this is something i can do. it's something i enjoy doing. and the other thing is. when i was finished with it although i liked the critical acclaim and all that. i realized i know an awful lot

more about them than i did when i started. there was a lot of things that i didn't know. i think as you get old it's a matter of subtraction. i guess they inspired to write more books. my second book which was simply about reagan. he never commented. reagan was smart. there was another book written he said i did not had time for light reading. he was smart enough not to get drawn into their conversation about it. i remember what it was. he had been elected and it was december of 1980.

but he have not been sworn in yet. we called him governor until he became president. and he said i hear you are writing another book about me and i said yes governor i'm get a write about you until i get it right. he said good line. it was about as much praise or, as you can get. the reporters are always struggling with questions of access. it wasn't so much of a problem for me. when you're writing the book about someone. i'm being fair-minded and trying to get all sides of the story. people will talk to you i say most people all these years

the one person who would never talk to me was jay weiland. most people would talk to you. the problem with reagan was this. there is a specific problem. in 1968 nixon had been nominated. and reagan was going around the country speaking for republican candidate. the way they put it to me as they said you will have more time but actually it was mostly because reagan was afraid to fly. they liked having someone in there to occupy his time. i know the second night in. i would interview him during the day. i took notes.

to see and i realized he have told me he told me almost word for word what he said in a memoir. where is the rest of me in 1965. i feel anxious about this. i said this is very interesting. but you've artie told the story. and he looked at me and cocked his head and said do you want something new. in every interview after that included it was always something that he would tell me that was new. and i remember going over there with a colleague from

the washington post many years later he was complaining that he just repeated the speeches. he will tell us something new. and he always did. but you have a sort of listen for it so with reagan the question for me wasn't so much about access as it was separate the chaff from the wheat. the kernel of what he was telling me. >> after all of the years i feel like i couldn't really get to know him. and mrs. reagan bailed me out. i called her up and she said come on over to the house. she never did this before or after this is the only time she was addressed jeans.

i just feel stuck. she said there are times that i can't get can get behind this barrier also. in her analysis was we always focus on the alcoholism of his father there. but the other thing was that he had been nomadic. he kept moving from town to town partly that was because of his father's drinking. because of the times so reagan did not had a lot of friends like you or i may have in grade school or something. his only friend was his brother.

there was a part of him. he kind of developed in interlake that was very personal. he was a challenge. he always have good manners. and he got very angry at me at some of the stuff i wrote in the washington post but he was never uncivil about it. in one sense he was good to cover because he recognize you have a job to do and it wasn't just promoting him. and the hardest thing for anyone is not to be judged by somebody else's premises the hardest thing is to judge you by your own premises because none of us ever quite come up reagan included to our own

opinion of ourselves. that's why it would not do very well writing about stalin or hitler i would not had enough empathy with them to be able to want to see the world. the way they saw. but in fact i tried it once. a mac in the say the subject. and i quickly gave it up. because i did not had enough respect for the person that i was writing about to really want to write about him. after write about people not that i agree with but that i have some regard too. i don't know what they meant it. the same name as his father. he was also an alcoholic. reagan said once.

he did not say this kind of thing. maybe that's why the reason you are interested in me. i don't know what i said i meant to say i'm very critical. i think becoming too critical because you can always see in much more clearly there is a british history and a woman named cb wedgwood. she wrote that history is written backwards but it is lived to forward. those of you that are not there can never understand what it was like at the time. i ask one of my editors once.

one of the great people i have ever worked for in a great reporter in his own right. whether he thought i have bent over backwards too much or was too critical of reagan. then i have to figure it out. those used to bother me a lot. after a while they didn't bother me at all. it was one of the few things about getting old that is good for that. i don't worry about if this is too soft on ask or to understanding. if the writer does try to get it right he's doing the greatest service to his readers into himself that he can possibly do. >> that is grand rapids into

the grand river which opens the book in which divides the city and in many ways defines the city. richard norton smith is working on a new auger fee of gerald ford we caught up with him in his home in grand rapids michigan. on the west side, in the 1820s a baptist mr. jerry put down roots in a year or two later on the east side the french speaking entrepreneur showed up who was as eager to sell liquor to the indians and the reverend mccoy was to save their souls. and it can kinda set the pattern. in some ways for the two faces if you well of grand rapids. both sides of the river banks

most of the 19th and early 20th century. were covered over with factories back when grand rapids they are gone now. the city that has replaced them in many ways was seated by that building the ford museum was opened in 1981. located downtown at the insistence that was some folks there in grand rapids who were interested in having a big

comprehensive biography of gerald ford done. one thing led to another. and so a year and half ago. after publishing the rockefeller i have the opportunity to move back to grand rapids and i had been working on the biography ever since. there's so much both personally and publicly. the popular notion is nothing during those two years. and then there are people that try to skip over it.

and international affairs but a self-destructive nature those are things of shakespeare ford actually is a bridge because reagan was reagan such a larger-than-life figure because he was so telegenic and witty in his own way like john kennedy master of the media they get overshadowed at the least.

and looking down at the ford museum in the gravesite. this is what a book looks like before it is about. essential research material. they are piles of oral history set off by themselves. they are dealing with the congressional career. he became house republican leader in 1965.

i think he was much more critical. i think he was perfectly willing to be underestimated including intellectually there are much worse things than politics than to be underestimated. as a political force. but he out campaigned the incumbent all his life with extraordinary stamina loved the oratory. it was just at home.

it really dr. the toll. mrs. ford and on the children because at that point he was on the road over 200 nights in the year. i think he felt guilty in later years about that. but he was a young man and he was climbing the ladder and he could see the life goal which was to be speaker of the house in front of him. this is a workspace might work tools begin with what any writer lies upon. i'm an autograph collector, managed to assemble a complete

set of the president's eye i liquidated a number of years ago. i've been collecting sporadically people who are heroes or objects of fascination. it illustrates both another authentic king. assertive a homecoming. i've lived here for six years. when i was director of the ford museum. and then it went away. did a couple other libraries and institutions and then wrote the rockefeller book but i knew him before i finish that and some days i wondered

if i ever would finish that. they have to be alive after rockefeller. unfortunately, the presidents mother was a packrat. she saved everything but she kept scrapbooks. and they grew and grew. they were about 65 immense source. what is so exciting is to be able to almost day by day the first serious love affair was with a supermodel the cover

girl of the cosmopolitan and other magazines a woman named phyllis brown who as i said played in reverse she was a whirling sophisticate who introduced him to new york. the two of them famously i was very much of that eastern establishment if you are they merged they never been east of ohio it was a scroll in many

ways. he was offered legal jobs in new york and philadelphia. he knew even then he wanted to come back to grand rapids. on the other hand did not. they agreed to go their separate ways but it was about which a great deal has not been written. in reshaping the man and that

she herself referred to from grand rapids the popular notion of general ford to congressman west michigan. and he was a man of great world and the fervor forward progress and but he also embodied civility and respect. he literally went to his grave believing he did not have an enemy. the picture on the wall actually was signed by all four presidents if you notice two of the signatures gerald ford and president bush himself have all but disappeared the president use

used to complain understandably about being in the sea of autographs. every time they got together there were literally hundreds of people who wanted them to sign these. and so i believe it was his idea that they would all sign 400 copies of this photo and no more. and that each of them would have 100 to distribute as he saw fit. it has to be critical. i thought long and hard about this book. i wondered if i was perceived as being too close to ford. he actually delivered one of the eulogies at his request. at his funeral.

the time has come when the president has passed on and indeed mrs. ford have passed away. enough paper has been opened supplemented by hundreds of interviews that i was doing and the others had done that i had access to for the first time. in above all the timing was right. i found buried in his writings. a great line i'm using it for the book. it jumps out at you. he wasn't particularly reflective. my whole philosophy in life is i don't assume someone is trying to screw me think about

that. in the content of the politics. he took office with his hands tied behind his back. the ford nixon relationship was close. in a way that politicians always talk about my friends and they almost devalue the word. they were friends they were allies he believed richard nixon. and i think they would literally do that. he never forgot. nor did he ever get over his disappointment in surprise that nixon lied to him.

john mitchell liked him. the weekend after the watergate break-in ford happened to be in a meeting with mitchell. and he said what's going on here. do you know anything at all about this. and mitchell swore up and down he didn't. and ford accepted it until he couldn't accept it one thing they did not know. after he lost the 76 election. bill simon who was his treasury secretary came to him and ask him if he would pardon mitchell had been convicted and ford said no. is almost as if one part and was enough. there were limits to what he would forgive mitchell lied to him.

some would say you spend 25 years around washington and your surprise that people fudged the truth. for better and worse. that was ford. i said emotionally he never left grand rapids. it was just a wonderful town. but blessed with several civic minded millionaires who have been extraordinary generous in his generosity is reflected in some world-class medical facilities in some research facilities. hotel. they have sprung up along the

river. president ford was offered a very nice site in the outskirts of town to build the museum. he thinks the donor but he always envisioned putting it downtown. i mentioned election day 1976. the night before there was a torture parade. they were very worried in fact they didn't even know if they could authorize the parade. because there were so many empty storefronts so many vacant buildings on the main street and grand rapid that they weren't sure that they could adequately protect all of them. will, it was a world-class

city. it's still reinventing itself in some ways was struck that night five years later. in 1981. on the same day that they opened the museum i have a daily nonroutine which is i basically don't sit down. .. ..

>> i write the first draft longhand. gerald ford is a surprising figure. the fact that he wasn't just the party loyalist, but he started his career as an insurgent, and he ended his career as an insurgent at the end of his life. he and mrs. ford were really marooned in a republican party that was increasingly hostile to their pro-choice views, for example. he told someone not long before he died that people had better prepare themselves for the coming of same-sex marriage. he expected it to be norm and in

rellively short order. -- relatively short order. he's first american president, actually, to sign his name to a petition for gay rights. i mean, he -- and, again, most of us as we get older, you know, our attitudes harden along with our arteries, you know? and we often, we have more to conserve, we become more conservative. and, you know, at the same time, you know, nostalgia. yesterday was better than today. all those factors come into play. he wasn't like that. he -- woodrow is too simple, but he was remarkably -- liberal is too simple. but he was remarkably open minded and compassionate. the schedule i'm working on will allow me to the, basically, recreate the ford presidency in something very close to realtime. a little over two years or so.

but beyond that, i mean, i'm living with them, as i say, in the kind of unique intimacy that any biographer has with his or her subject. and they're never far from your thoughts. >> here's a look at some books being published this week. former white house communications director anthony scaramucci reflects on his relationship with president trump in, "trump: the blue collar president." retired four-star general stanley mcchrystal identifies the qualities of great leaders in "let it bang: r.j. young takes a look at american gun culture." former reuters correspondent joshua hunt reports on the relationship between nike and the university of oregon and how it's provided a blueprint for other corporations and schools to follow their lead. university of nike. and in "beirut rules,"

co-authors fred burton and samuel katz recount the fatal kidnapping of cia station chief william buckley in lennon in 1984. -- lebanon in 1984. our list continues with a look at how andrew jackson was elected president in 1828. boston college law professor and former supreme court clerk kent greenfield weighs in on the supreme court's decision to grant corporations with personhood in "corporations are people too." and in "nine pints," rose george shares her research on the science and commodification of blood. look for these titles in bookstores this coming week, and watch for many of the authors in the near future on booktv on c-span2. >> host: and now joining us on booktv is vicki alger. her book, "failure: the federal miseducation of america's