police are concerned like we have to move forward in the right direction. >> all right, well, thanks again everyone. we went to be respectful of your time. we have appreciated our time together so much and we appreciate you. thank you for coming. .. the heritage foundation mike gonzalez argued that identity politics is dividing america.

cnn chief legal analyst jeffrey tobin weighs in on the mueller investigation and the impeachment of president trump. that's all tonight on booktv on c-span2. for more schedule information visit booktv.org or consult your program guide. >> like the office they commemorate, presidential libraries are living institutions, certainly it is my hope that the reagan library will become a dynamic intellectual forum where scholars interpret the past and policymakers debate the future. >> welcome to the ronald reagan presidential foundation and institute virtual event series. to fulfill president reagan's vision ãbour center for public affairs programming offers lectures and forms presenting perspectives on important public policy issues of the day, each year we bring

you 20 to 30 events from politicians, authors, members of the media, business and military leaders and more. since the march 2020 closures of many businesses across our country the reagan foundation is bringing its events online to ensure we are still delivering world-class content even if you can't get to our hilltop to watch it in person. in this week's center for public affairs for virtual event we bring you chris wallace, anchor fox news sunday. 2014 marked his 50th year in the broadcasting industry. he is participated in coverage of nearly every major political event and also secured high profile interviews with dignitaries and us leaders. for the past three years chris wallace has broadcast a sunday morning show live from the reagan library air force one polian following our reagan national defense form in december of every year. chris wallace is with us today to speak about his new book "countdown 1945", the extraordinary story of the atomic bomb and the 116 days that changed the world". an unforgettable count of the lives of the ordinary american

and japanese civilians in war times as well as merck and soldiers fighting in the pacific. it's the story of how in 116 days harry truman goes from being the vice president to completely cut out of the sdr white house to suddenly becoming the president, not only historian it's the history of scientists, flight crew and others. we invite you to enjoy our virtual program coming to you from our air force one pavilion leadership academy oval office with chris wallace and the reagan foundation institute executive director john hi brush. >> chris wallace, congratulations. what a terrific book. as you may know, we have a lot of guests come to the reagan library with good books and am not able to read them all. i could not put this one down. this was a terrific book. a thriller, really a historic thriller i just loved it. congratulations on not just the

first effort but a great first effort. >> thank you! that's awfully nice. i will say this idea of the historical thriller seems to be out there because my favorite review was one in the washington post that said, i know what happened in 1945 but this book is a thriller and a lot of people have said that it's a page turner, they couldn't put it down. and throw because, frankly, that's exactly what i wanted to do. i think so much history is written in the distant past, we know what happened, why did it happen, that's not at all what i wanted to do.i wanted to take you into the moment and in this case count down 1945 the 115 days that changed the world. the key moment in those 116 days from april 12 45 when truman is summoned to the white house. he thinks to talk to president roosevelt and then he finds out that roosevelt is dead and he

is sworn in and henry stimson, secretary work takes the side afterward and says i need to tell you about an immense project to create the most devastating weapon in history, the first inkling vice president, no president truman, has of the existence of the manhattan project and to take you not just truman as he is struggling and making the decision but los alamos who don't know whether the gadget the atom bomb would even work until 21 days before the bombing and the flight crew of the enola gay, who on a mission during their mission to hiroshima, the 1500 miles to hiroshima from tinian island don't know if the bomb when they drop it, it's never been dropped out of a plane, whether the aftershocks will knock them right out of the sky. that's what i was trying to do in the fact that you and some other people have done said it was a page turner and thriller. i'm thrilled.

>> my father after he was a b-29 pilot in the army air force, i was riveted, as you can imagine. your father does need to be have been in the army air corps to like this book. really well done. you put us in the room where it happens on many occasions and that is just a masterful job. well done. >> thank you. that's exactly what i was trying to do. there are so many dramatic moments. truman, he has a meeting with his war cabinet on june 18 and henry stimson, secretary of war is there, george marshall the general of the army is there, all the top brass and discussing the nazis have surrendered on may 8 how they are going to finish and win the war against the japanese.

for about 45 minutes there is a long discussion of the invasion of japan how many troops it will take, how long it will prolong the war, how many hundreds of thousands of casualties on both sides at the end there is a subsistent secretary of war, john mccoy, who ended up becoming major figure in midcentury america, the high commissioner to germany, he was a member of the warren commission, head of the world bank and he was a junior guide and truman said, nobody gets out of the room without telling what they think. his boss says go ahead he says, i think we ought to have our heads examined if we don't at least discuss the bomb. it was literally in the war cabinet the first time in this meeting they been talking about the casualties and the length of the invasion and how bloody it was gonna be a nobody ever said, but we might have the bomb, until he said it and then basically it was dismissed at that point largely because it

had never been tested. it wasn't tested until july 18 just 21 days before the bomb was used against hiroshima and at that point back in june truman viewed it as a science project. if it worked, great, if it didn't, we had to go ahead. >> so many historical moments you wrote about, i wonder, i know you are a student of history, what is it that made you choose this particular moment? >> it's a funny story. i had the idea of doing exactly what i talked about, to take a key moment in history and try to put you in it. at the time they didn't know all these, faced with these momentous challenges and they don't know what's going to happen, it would be like talking about reagan and what ended up happening in terms of berber control of gorbachev, i was fortunate enough to cover six years of reagan including world war reagan gorbachev. some have it covered in real

life the drama of the wreck of it. just say they went there with these hopes and have this meeting and creates a tremendous sense of suspense and so i wanted to do that but i didn't have the subject. in february 2019 it was the day that president trump was going to deliver his state of the union address and nancy pelosi, the speaker of the house, invited several of the tv anchors over to her hideaway in the capital and this was the hideaway that a lot of speakers have and a tradition in washington that if the speaker and the president are of opposing parties, this is true for republican president, democratic speaker, vice versa, that the speaker will deliver a

pre-bomb, basically before the president even delivers a speech to tell you all the reasons that bad. we are sitting in this room and nancy pelosi says this is the board of education. i don't think the other folks in the room knew but i knew that the board of education used to be sam rayburn's hideaway. this is where he would have people come after hours to gossip or plot strategy or have a bourbon and branch water and vice president truman was a regular there. on april 12 after he finished residing over the senate he went to pelosi telling the story she said it was in this room that truman called the white house, he was told they wanted to speak to him, he calls and speaks to a white house official and said, you need to get to the white house as quickly and quietly as possible and it truman puts down the phone and says, jesus christ and general jackson. [laughter] which i had never heard before. i thought to myself, that's it,

that's my story, that's the one i'm going to delve into and try to create a historical thriller and as it turned out i didn't know then, 116 days from when he is alerted that roosevelt has died and he is president, until the bomb is dropped on hiroshima. >> your first book, chris, some writers report after their first book, they just had a fabulous time, they loved the experience. some found it miserable. how did you find writing your first book? >> it is a very odd experience there are times you get a delicious fact. that's what's so exciting, i didn't know that when truman, i

knew the story of jesus christ and general jackson, knew that would be a good start. i didn't know when i started the project that when truman gets to the white house and sworn in, he is alerted for the first time about the existence of the manhattan project and so many juicy little details like that. one of the details is the fact that they only attested the bomb once on july 21, july 16, and 21 days before they ended up using it. now there at tinian island, the launchpad for the flight to hiroshima about 1500 miles and somebody says, if we put this 10,000 pound bomb, which was very inappropriately called to a boy, in the front of the plane and then we have to put a bunch of baxter gas in the back of the plane so that it will fall down, it will be more weight we ever carried and the plane might crash on takeoff. and if there is an atom bomb we could have an atomic explosion at the u.s. which will destroy

all of us who want to anything to the japanese. they suddenly say, this is only about two days before the mission we can't take off with a live bomb were to have to arm the bomb on the plane during the mission. they turned to the chief ordinance officer a guy name deke parsons and said, can you do that? he says i never have but i guess i will learn. so he sits in the plane on the ground in tinian island in sweltering heat working on it trying to do it and when they finally take off an unarmed bomb off safely and they are on the way to hiroshima, he gets down cradles in the bomb bay next to little boy and has to take off some of the case and do some of the rewiring and then they have to take off the safety plugs and put in the arming plugs and it's only then midway through the flight that they say the bomb is actually armed and ready to go.

so moments like that it's a joy and then there are times that you are just trying to, hideaway told the story and how i put all these different elements together. you think, this is hard work. my daughter is in publishing and at one point, she's been in publishing for 10 years, not my publisher. i said to her, writing a book is hard work and she rolled her eyes and said, g dad, i'm glad you discovered that. [laughter] >> it's tough to make a living. chris, did it surprise you, it did me, that truman didn't know the first thing about the building of this bomb. then i read you had written that he and roosevelt had only spoken a couple times during this fourth term of the presidency. but it just seems almost as the

vice president not as went into something as important of this but i guess that was the case? >> a lot of people have asked me about that. it does seem incredible. he had been vice president for 82 days and he met privately he had been in some big meetings but he met privately with roosevelt twice in those 82 days. the fact why does come you got to remember, this is roosevelt's fourth term.this wasn't his first or even his second vice president. he had gotten pretty good at ignoring vice presidents and i think he thought, vice president's come and go i got my war cabinet and those of people i count on to make the decisions and he had just sorted shonda truman off to the side so i mentioned the fact that stimson takes him aside in the day he is sworn in and says i'm going to tell you about this project but he knows that

truman is overwhelmed, he just become the president so he says i'm going to give you time to settle in and then i will come back, on april 25 13 days later he comes into the oval office to brief president truman now that he is settled in, not even quite two weeks, meanwhile, general leslie groves, the real military commander of the manhattan project his snuck in through underground tunnels and one of the reasons was they'd given this a lot of thought at the pentagon they thought that the two had come into the front door together people are going to wonder, he was a big mission man, what rose and stimson were doing together. so he snuck in and they gave truman a detailed document to read, which really explained the manhattan project in historical detail and technical detail and truman complained he said, i don't like reading long documents like this. groves said, mr. president, we

can't say it any more briefly or simply, it's a complicated project. that's how out of touch he was with it but by the end of the time that it counted when he made the decision, he knew had mastered all of it. >> another remarkable fact i found from reading your book was 125,000 people, americans, working on this manhattan project and not a word gets out. that's just amazing. >> you are exactly right it's one of the things that astonished me too. people say to me, what was it you covered trump in your covering all the ups and downs in the ins and outs of washington today, what was it like writing this book? i said one of the things i enjoyed most about writing, researching, writing and talking about this book is that it has absolutely nothing to do with donald trump.

[laughter] it's not a knock on the president. just to say that it took me away from all the stuff we are in and goes precisely to your point because they had been working on this project for almost 3 years, 2+ years, 125,000 people at oak ridge tennessee uranium enrichment lows almost working on the bomb flight crews in wendover utah and not one word leaks about the project. i thought to myself, if you had 125,000 people today working on a secret project to bake apple pie by day two somebody would tweet, this is outrageous it's immoral, i'm gonna blow the whistle on this. it was a simpler time, it was a time when the country was more unified, everybody pulled together in common cause to win the war against the nazis and the japanese and, boy, could we

use that now. >> you are not kidding. then another fascinating thing about how you wrote the book was of course to cover the major major figures involved in the project from truman to tibbets and groves and oppenheimer but then you also chose to focus in on root system and tomorrow. tell the listeners about those two because i thought it was a great juxtaposition throughout the book. >> one of the things that we wanted to do with this book, i very much wanted it not just to be on top level because of course the war wasn't just top level of the scientist. it engaged all of america and one of the stories i wanted to tell was the home front. we found ruth sisson, there are websites and where there is

commentary about various people and amazingly we found two people who are still alive, high: obviously the big players long gone. she was a 19-year-old girl, she had volunteered to work at oak ridge at the uranium enrichment facility, she didn't know what it was she just knew it was a big factory and there were these giant machines called couch on machines it was a different time, they were called the couch on girls. they basically had a bunch of knobs that they had to keep the needle or in the right place not go into the red. they had no idea, they were just told, keep the meter in the red and you will help win the war. they had no idea what they were doing was enriching uranium, creating 235 and plutonium to fuel the atom bombs. what made her story especially interesting was not just that she was on the home front but she had a boyfriend, later her

husband, lawrence huddleston who was in europe, had been an army medic and survived all the fighting. may 8 the war in europe ends, the nazis surrendered and like a lot of other people she's delighted because her boyfriend has gone through this but she's terrified because he's not going to come home, the expectation is he's not to be shipped to win even bloodier conflict in japan. so what she didn't realize was this dramatic irony of this is she is helping create the weapon that if it's used could save her boyfriend's life. that's exactly what happened. it's one of the great things as you know as a student of history often times history there are plot lines that you would never dream of inventing yourself if you are going to write a novel or to a movie. hideko tamura was a very

wealthy girl, they didn't have expectation of an atom bomb, they hadn't been bombed at all. so the parents would send their children out to the countryside so that if there were a bombing they would be safe. they sent hideko tamura, she hated it, she couldn't send a letter home because the school sensor that i think because a lot of students were telling their parents can get me out of here, she snuck into the town and she mailed a letter in the local post office saying, get me out of here. hideko's mother shows up on august 4 to rescue her and hideko was thrilled and runs and, thank you mom. the mother says, hideko, there is a lot of fear in the cities,

will it stay out here in the countryside for a few days and hideko says absolutely not i want to go home. they spend the night and they go home on august 5 and of course that means they are in hiroshima when the bomb was dropped on august 7. >> just amazing. in fact, chris, i had the chance to see a clip of you and hideko going into the smithsonian to see the presence of a massive enola gay right in front of her, what a moment that must have been. >> this is the kind of thing you never would've imagined. we did a documentary for fox news and anybody out there i'm assuming a lot of you do subscribe to fox nation, countdown 1945 with the book. i said to her, we had just talked on the phone up to that

point, i said, would you consider coming to washington for an interview to mac she said i will, under one condition, i want to go see the enola gay. i would never have dropped or even asking her to do something like that but she wanted to do it. we drove out one day and we got permission to go there before the museum opened and we went to see the enola gay and i didn't know what her reaction would be and she was kind of stunned as you all know from your dad and b-29s, they are enormous, really big planes, big bright silver all shiny. we walked up to it and she was just taking it in and i said, do you feel anger?she said no, i just feel grief, i feel deeply grief stricken. she thought for a while and then she said, i want to say a prayer for peace, which she did and then she said, i think he's

an old man i think this plane is an old man and i think he needs to leave this museum and go to sleep. which i thought was interesting. then she went, sayonara, that was that. i think on some level they provided some closure. >> such a great moment. let's go back to truman for a second. i know it's not easy but summarize the dilemma that truman faced with the dropping of the bomb, his rationale. as you describe so well in your book, it was going to save a lot of lives but take a lot of lives as well. >> i think there are a couple points i would make. obviously this has been one of the great moral questions for the last 75 years, this of course the summer the 71st

anniversary of all these events and the dropping of the bomb on hiroshima. should we drop the bomb or not? i guess i hadn't really studied it and thought about it. it wasn't a choice between dropping the bomb or doing nothing. it was a choice between dropping the bomb or invading. if we invaded, as i said, the top experts, the general martial, secretary of war stimson, all the top people at the pentagon said this was in the summer of 45 can you can expect the war to go on at least another year and and a half until the end of 1946 and you can expect a million japanese casualties and and a half million american casualties because as they got closer and closer to the japanese homeland instead of the japanese soldiers beginning to lose spirit, they in fact fought warfare so they went to okinawa they thought they were to take it over the two days it took them three months and they ended up having to kill 100,000

japanese and the 20,000 that were left, none of them surrendered, some committed suicide, some kept fighting, some were taken prisoner but they didn't surrender. they knew they were going to have a terrible battle on their hands if they did invade. some people say, okay, but they would've surrendered anyway to which my response is, we dropped the bomb on hiroshima on august 6 and the japanese military government does not surrender, has not surrendered for three days. the u.s. then drops a second bomb on nagasaki and the japanese military government still does not surrender. it's only then that emperor ã decides to go over the japanese government and directly to the people and gets on the radio and literally the first time the vast majority of japanese

have ever heard the voice of their emperor and he basically says, we have to surrender. i think one issue for truman, honestly, i don't know that any president would've made any of the decision if you had invaded and if you had sent hundreds of thousands of americans to their death or to grieve the injury and later it were to come out that you had as a president you have access to a weapon that conceivably could have ended the war in a flash and you have said, eye and use it, i don't know any president could have face that are would've wanted to face that. i leave it to others as to whether it was the moral thing to do or not i think as a realistic practical matter, i don't think truman had any

choice. >> it was such a quick catch-22 at the time? one of the things that feel like you take the reader into the room in some locations is the material you got was just tremendous. i wondered, what were your core sources? particularly as it relates to truman? >> i wonder if you're doing this as a commercial. [laughter] maybe a little bit. after i read all histories, there's a lot of histories out there, they are very very good. you want more. so where did i go? i went to the truman library in independence missouri and spent a few days there with an arc of this-isms sure somebody's goers have with dragon. going through these. and the treasure trove was the diaries. i often think to myself of the

covered wagon in the 80s, as i cover not as directly because i spent six years in the white house press corps but as a covered trunk now, what are they thinking at that moment? what's really going on in there, not the press release but what's really going on? do we have access to reagan's diaries in a much better sense of that coming truman's diaries were terrific. he really was a very good diary keeper as was president reagan and also a very good writer as was reagan. he said a lot of things and those diaries that give you the inner conversation. one of the things i found very interesting is that, and it's different than i think most people's perceptions of truman because he's famously thought of as this very decisive man, the buck stops here, he made a decision and never look back.

he never look back on this.he always defended and said he would do it again. as is making the decision in germany at a summit conference with churchill and stalin in july 45 he was really struggling with the decision. he was having trouble sleeping at night, he complained of fierce headaches which he had whenever he was under stress in his career and in his diary he keeps talking about this terrible weapon and he describes it in apocalyptic terms.he describes it as the fire destruction prophecy in the bible. he made the decision, as i say, he never look back. this was an enormous decision and he gave it all of the weight and all the inner turmoil and struggling that i think you should have. he wrestled with it. >> tough job to be a president. >> robert oppenheimer. come and talk to us about him, i'm sure there's been extensive books written about him, what a

man. i think as you describe him, a renaissance figure and ingenious really. >> absolutely. he spoke and a half dozen languages, learned sanskrit so he could read the buddhist writings. fabulously brilliant as a physicist but also, and people had real questions about whether he would have any executive skills at all but he became the very skilled administrator. he was a scientific director at los alamos. one of the things he had to juggle was he had general groves which i mentioned before, this bulldozer of a man and military man and that he had all these, frankly, prima donna scientist who rebelled at the idea of deadlines and military order and he kind of had to keep both of those things going. we talk about second thoughts, another one of these great nuggets in the book is, after

the bombing and after the war ends, truman never looks back, he says, he's asked about it for the rest of his life and he keeps saying, i had to make the decision it ended the war if they had to make that call i do to get all the people on the flight crew said the same thing, paul tibbets, all of them, ended the war for military men and this was the way to defeat the enemy. the people who did have second thoughts were the scientists will stop albert einstein billy started the whole manhattan project in 1939 when he writes a letter to roosevelt and what his concern is the concern of a lot of the german refugees who left nazi germany and now in the west either england or the u.s., they were concerned, the nazis were going to get the atomic weapon before the same acted and god forbid adolf hitler had the monopoly on the

first true weapon of mass distraction. in any case, about a month after the explosion oppenheimer comes to the white house and sits down with truman and by this point he's just wracked with second thoughts. he says, mr. president, i have these terrible regrets, i feel that i have blood on my hands and truman says, don't worry about it, i gave the order, i've got the blood on my hands. they finish the conversation, oppenheimer leaves and truman says to his staff, ever want to see that some of the bitterness office ever again. >> you also tell a story in the book i've never heard before. i want you to tell the whole story come in with regards to the pulitzer. this fellow lawrence of the new york times. the opportunity that he had in this project and how all that

turned out. >> the joy come you talk about good day bad days, this was a very good day. william leonard lawrence was a science reporter and very distinguished science reporter for the new york times. he had won a pulitzer prize with a group of other people are thinking 37 for writing an article on a scientific project. groves, this military man, but also thinks to himself, this is going to be if it all works out an immense story and i want the story told right. this is another example of the difference between the unity of that time and what we have today. this military general walks into the new york times and goes to see the editor and says, i would like, he knows about lawrence, i would like to get william lawrence and i

would like you to ãhim i would like him to basically disappear off the face of the earth and i want him to go inside can easily get the greatest story of all time, i don't think he told the editor what the story was, i'm sure he didn't. but he basically, and the editor said, okay. imagine that today if the general said that at the times. lawrence is told and basically told, you can have the greatest story of all times but you're not gonna be able to tell it until we tell you you can. of course any news man worth a set would rebel at that. the idea of this great story, he did it. he then was brought inside and he hung out at los alamos he was there at alamogordo when they tested the bomb on july 16

he had a genius, we quote at great length from some of the dispatches he wrote, none of which appeared until after the bomb exploded and truman announced the whole project to the world but his writing was fantastic. he came up with the phrase maybe you've heard of it before him of the atomic aid, that was written by william lawrence he's there for all the testing i wish my writing was as good as william lawrence is but you get to read some of his in the book that he's brought to tinian island he's there with a crew, he is not allowed with on the first flight they had 12 men and they were going to spare an extra seat but he does end up going on the second flight, the nagasaki flight. he does there and describes his first person witness the atomic

bomb in warfare. he is a great character. it's a delight to read, think about how do you describe the first atomic bomb class? which is the test how do you describe seeing an atomic bomb take out a city, he does it masterfully. >> the surprising thing, almost like a postscript you wrote about was that i guess there was a movement several years later to pull the pulitzer prize from him and the new york times because the arrangement made at the time i thought, i would've opposed that. an interesting story. >> because what had happened was, during the period of time that he was behind-the-scenes he was on the government payroll. there was just a different sort of relationship in terms of people, the media, the country, it was much more of a sense that we are all in this

together that obviously has ended. at a certain point, i think in the 50s, maybe the 60s, he went to the times and said, basically he was writing government press releases william lawrence did not. >> rightly so. there's a big player you mentioned. i think maybe only once. just left up leapt off the pages because i didn't know this is a piece of history but this fellow klaus fuchs. i think the german that was a scientist on the manhattan project, actually turned out to be a russian spy, can you tell that story? >> just real quickly. one of the big issues for churchill and truman, the british and the u.s. had been involved in this all along together, roosevelt and churchill and now truman.

when the bomb explodes, truman gets word and churchill gets word, almost at the same time. one of the things they are discussing is, when do we tell stalin because stalin doesn't know anything about this project, or so they think. just before the conference ends the decision is, we don't want to tell too early, we don't want to tone too much, if we don't tell him anything or supposedly analyze the data presented it will create more problems. of course russia has swept in from the east and taken over most of eastern europe and not to give it up. he goes he doesn't even bring a translator, he uses the russian

translator the translator stalin and truman by themselves and truman says, i just want you know that we have an enormous indescribably powerful weapon we developed and stalin says basically, i hope you will put it to good use of the enemy and then he turns away. truman is dumbfounded. he doesn't ask a question? churchill comes up to him and says, because he wasn't there but he can see that it's a very short conversation, what happened? he said i don't know i told him and he didn't seem interested. even truman's russian translator, not the russian but the american who served as a translator is wondering whether the translator had translated it properly. the truth is, stalin wasn't interested, he just wasn't surprised because, exactly as you say, there was this german

scientist who becoming a refugee and ended up in the united states, he'd been a member of the german communist party because he saw the communist party as being the only force inside germany that was resistant to hitler. he leaves eddies in the united states and because he was a brilliant scientist he's working in the manhattan project but his loyalty is still to communism. he gives a career name raymond all kinds of information, which goes back to the russians and the postscript to the entire story is, later that night stalin and molotov, the foreign minister, and up back in the russian compound together and somebody overhears them having conversation and in which they are discussing the fact that truman is now told them they got the bomb and the bomb works and stalin says, i guess we need to get going. a historian would later say that 7:25 pm on that night is

one the nuclear arms race between russia and the u.s. officially began. >> what a moment. >> chris, do you have another book in you? it seems like you must because it seems like you really enjoyed this, it's turned ã turned out to be best-selling book. what's your next one? you've got one in mind? >> one of the thoughts i had was to not only do all the things i said, create a historical thriller, but to be able to replicate it. so when i came up with a cutdown idea that instead of telling it as history but count down the days, i thought, if you can do cutdown 1945 you can do cutdown whatever. i have a couple ideas i haven't settled on one yet but as i

said, writing a history book, there are ups and downs, highs and lows. i think there are enough ups. one of them ãband not just blowing smoke, getting to talk to you about this book. there will be another cutdown. >> i can't wait to read it. you got a whole another career heavy. just wonderful to see the work you've done and thank you so much for joining us today. best of luck as you do this book tour virtually around the world. >> the virus is going to end and i will be out at one of my favorite places in the world. the reagan library as you know i've been there many times including with mrs. ragan when she was still alive and look forward to coming and talking to all you folks in person. >> you are welcome anytime. >> thank you for joining us for today's virtual program event, we hope this conversation has inspired you to share what you've learned with your family and friends. and that you will join us again for an upcoming event. >> let me offer lesson number

one about america, all great change in america begins at the dinner table. tomorrow night in the kitchen, i hope the talking begins. children, if your parents haven't been teaching you what it means to be american, let them know and nail them on it. that would be a very american thing to do. >> next on booktv, steve olson provides a history of the hanford nuclear power plant constructed in eastern washington state in 1943. manufactured the plutonium for the bomb that was dropped on nagasaki. then french philosopher bernard libby weighs in on the societal impact of the current numbers pandemic around the world. later, booktv looks at books about president trump and the upcoming election in advance of next week's republican national convention. for more information visit booktv.org ok