>> we are delighted this evening on our other programs welcome author michael dobbs. michael has written a wonderful book that's been well received

called "king richard" and he's a journalist with the "washington post" and he has tied at the university of michigan, princeton and georgetown. he is going to speak to us this evening for a little bit about his book and he will answer questions later in the book -- excuse me later in the program. i do want to alert you to the fact that this coming thursday we have another author robert skiles and he has written a book called when truth matters about the incident at kent state and on monday june 7 we have -- and on june 10 we have the author of the book in the wee small hours, conversations with frank sinatra. i want to return to tonight's program into author michael

dobbs who's going to talk to us about his book "king richard" nixon and watergate -- an american tragedy hardcover. michael what can you tell us about king richard? >> will thank you very much. for those of you who haven't seen it this is a copy of my book which came out last week. it's full title is "king richard" nixon and watergate -- an american tragedy hardcover. it has as you can see a rather dark picture of richard nixon on the front cover. i'm going to explain a little bit the structure of the book and why he chose to call a king richard but first i will tell you a little bit about myself and why he chose to write this book which is usually the first question that is aimed at authors, why did he write the book?

as you can tell from my accent i'm originally from the uk but i'm now living in the u.s.. i worked for a long time for the "washington post" for 25 years and when i was a kid i don't know this was typical of everyone but for me, used to take these train rides around the uk and it would go through suburbs into towns and villages and often the houses were very close to the railway. they used to look inside people's houses when the train went past and i was so curious about what was going on inside of these houses and what were the conversations around the dinner table and the lunch table and were people arguing with each other and what were the family dynamics inside these anonymous houses and so perhaps

it's not surprising that i could paint a reporter as a profession because of the profession that allows you to exercise your insatiable curiosity and to pry into other people's lives. i started covering big clinical events. i was chosen by the "washington post" as a foreign correspondent in poland in the middle of the whole collapse of communism actually and later on i went to russia and when i arrived in russia the whole system was in the process of collapsing and unraveling. so i was a witness to the collapse of commonism but i understood when i was a reporter that there was a lot that i didn't know that was going on

behind closed doors. so again i was curious to know what was really happening in the kremlin. as opposed to the politics that russian soviet politicians chose to reveal of themselves. sometimes said that journalism is the first rough draft of history but i wanted to, particularly when i left russia wanted to find out all the things that i hadn't understood or known about when i was a reporter in moscow. so i read this book called down with big brother which is a narrative history of the collapse of communism which includes, because of the release of kremlin documents and interviews with participants in these events i was able to

describe what was happening behind all these closed doors but i was unable to penetrate as a reporter. i always felt like a little boy with my nose pressed to the glass trying to figure out what was going on inside places that i really had no right to be and first to the kremlin and later here in washington and the white house. so this adds me to the subject of why he chose to wrote this book about nixon and watergate particularly during his presidency as it against to unravel at the beginning of 1973. and the answer is we will never get as rich and our kabul

resource and never get as close to any american president as we were able to get or we are able to get to the 37th president richard nixon particularly at this very crucial time of his political career as he was facing the gravest political crisis imaginable and it's extensional crisis to him which ended up with his own resignation. as you all know no doubt other presidents had -- but they all controlled the recording and they turned it off and turned it on when they wanted to to record something. with nixon he was rather ham-fisted with technology and nobody would trust him and he wouldn't trust himself to turn on the recording when he wanted

to turn it on. so they invented a system that the recording devices would turn on automatically whenever nixon went into her room or picked up the telephone. that means that we have got much more recordings of nixon than any other president. i think with lbj there were about 700 hours of lbj's telephone conversations. with nixon there were nearly 4000 tape recordings not just of his telephone conversations that he had microphones planted in the oval office in the cabinet room at camp david and then on telephone -- telephones including the most private in the white house where he liked to retire at the end of the day and his favorite room in the white house actually was the lincoln sitting room.

and at the end of the day he would call people up and talk to them about the events of the day. he had this entire record of nixon and sounding off about everything that happened during the day. in addition to that his chief of staff bob alderman kept an audio diary every night, memoirs of the former white house aide. practically everybody who played an important role in watergate, hundreds of thousands of documents from the nixon white house. so you end up with the richest repository of information that you can imagine for any president in because no president is going ever going to -- we are never going to get as close a view of what's really

going on in the white house as we do with richard nixon even though this was never nixon's intention. nixon were regarded these recordings as public which he intended to use for his memoirs and was horrified when the recording started to be publicly released. he was completely indiscreet in these conversations. so this wealth of documentation poses both a challenge, it's both a blessing and a church -- a curse for biographers. if you are trying to discord -- described all of the nixon's life from birth to death you don't have the space to go into

detail about was was occurring day by day minute by minute. these tapes allowed it so instead of choosing to write about all of nixon's life and all of watergate i chose to focus on the most dramatic moments of all which for reasons i will try to explain where the 100 days after his removal from january 20, 1973 when he seemed to be at the top of his game. he still had a 67% approval rating at that time. he had won re-election by one of the largest margins of the popular vote in american history if not the largest margin and wanted to put watergate behind him. he is about to conclude a peace agreement in vietnam. he had policy triumphs including the detente with russia and so

one. he really was feeling confident in them within 100 days it all falls apart and is very disciplined white house, the aides start fighting with each other. watergate, the cover-up of watergate and the attempted cover up everybody's running for cover. the aid starts trying to shift the blame on each other and finally they start shifting the blame onto the president himself. there is a very dramatic period all of which is captured or most of it is captured on tape. ..

right as i pulled the book king richard, is an allusion to shakespearean tragedy. i see nixon as a tragic figure. but another reason for the title is his mother was a pious quaker out in california, named all of her boys after kings of england. including richard who she named after the crusader king richard the lion heart. so this title is very apt i feel.

so the book begins, the opening scene is between, is set in the lincoln sitting room as i said nixon's favorite room and the white house on the second floor of the white house in the private quarters. the smallest room in the white house actually. and nixon would go up there every night to listen to music and scribble on his legal pads. and on the night of january 20 covid 1973 at 1:00 a.m. among other things he had trouble sleeping, he could not get to sleep. he called his aid was also known at his hatchet man. i talked about is a to get even with his enemies. and how he's going to wrap up

the vietnam war. and how he was going to get even with the washington post that was pursuing my former newspaper into watergate. i'm going to play a little bit , extract from that tape. so you can see how rich this material is. now, he has just come back from the kennedy center. there is an inaugural day concert at the kennedy center. actually they played tchaikovsky's 1812 overture. the pianist was a bennett clyburn. he has pumped up about that. he does not like the washington symphony orchestra for political reasons. he's brought the philadelphia philharmonic down to play for him. he considers the more politically aligned with them particularly the conductor so

i am going to play a little bit of that. he goes on and other extract is about his inaugural address that he is about to deliver. he shares portions of it with chuck colson. then he talks about the vietnam war and then he talks about finally how is going to stick it to the washington post. i'm going to try to share this with you. and we will meet you on the other side here. okay, i think i am sharing this with you. lincoln sitting room generally h 1973, president nixon and chuck segment one. and odd.

great symphony. [inaudible] even. [inaudible] he said. [inaudible] put his arm around me and it's there. [inaudible] >> segment two. >> you want to hear a little bit of the speech. [inaudible] the time has come to turn away.

>> the only responsibility that is human nature. and do more for himself and decide more for themselves. let us measure but we will do for others by what they will do for themselves. we live too long with that. [inaudible] with this frustration with the government can't do. it takes less from people do more but each of us remember that in america.

[inaudible] not by their work, not by shirking responsibility. and then our own lives what can i do for myself? but how can i help? [inaudible] self. [inaudible] >> segment three. [inaudible] [inaudible]

[inaudible] [inaudible] eisenhower maybe he wants to end the war. [inaudible] the atomic bomb because he wanted to end the war. dwight eisenhower bombed out of the cities and that's the end of the war you know. >> okay i'm going to ended their without going into the last thing which is just attacking the washington post and expressing displeasure over colson's campaign to

bring down the share price of the "washington post". but i think you get the flavor of this. and you see that this allows a writer and hopefully the reader to beat flies on the wall to these very intimate conversations, very frank conversations and go to places that we normally completely out of bounds to ordinary mortals. so, now within 100 days of that conversation has a life had completely unraveled and his presidency had unraveled. and as i said all have his fighting with each other. and you heard chuck colson who was incredibly loyal to nixon and was really in charge of the dirty tricks.

he was the first to go. and later on other aids including the chief of staff who is in charge of domestic policy, they were forced to resign as sacrificial, sacrifices to push the blame of a watergate onto someone else. among other things i'm interested in these group of people around nixon and how they started fighting with each other in their different personalities. we can talk about this more later. you have colson who was willing to do absolutely anything that nixon even hinted at. and believe the president's orders should be carried out immediately without question. you had somebody like the chief of staff served as a buffer between nixon and the

rest of the white house. nixon was doing things and hold him and felt would not be good for the country or the presidency. and then you have people like henry kissinger. kissinger comes across in these tapes and my book as the arch flatterer. he tells nixon you save this country mr. president, the history books will show that no one will know what watergate means excuse my bad german accent. there is a rivalry between nixon and kissinger. one of the reasons nixon wanted to record his conversations was to show he, nixon, was the architect of all of these foreign policy ms. not henry kissinger. so at the center of the story

is the figure of nixon himself the 37th president who i and many other historians, biographers find endlessly fascinating. one of the reasons i wrote this book as i had a conversation with the man who's written one of the classical books about watergate in which he goes into every twist and turn most of which don't mean much to modern day readers. from the "washington post" and i was surprised when he said to me that in 20 years, this was about ten years ago before his death, nobody will pay much attention to all the

other people in the watergate saga. they will pay attention to richard nixon. richard nixon will endure forever. i structured this book from hubris in january of 1973 when he is about to be re- inaugurated through crisis, catastrophe and in the end up setting the stage for the downfall of the president. but as you see there is an american twist at the end. that is different from a

shakespearean tragedy for one important reason you'll have to read the book for that. the other character in the book very important is not a human character. it is these tape recordings. that nixon cannot control. and ultimately lead to his downfall. i don't think nixon would have been forced to resign had not been for this tape recordings but there would have been his version of events and of his accusers. it's particularly john dean his former legal counsel. it would have been a he said, she said story. it was only because of the existence of the tapes which nixon was finally forced to release, the smoking gun tape

on the orders of the supreme court that really sealed nixon's fate. i argue about this as we can see his suffering and the pain that he felt as he gets involved in a situation which she cannot extricate himself. he specializing getting out of crises. but an watergate he finally met a crisis he could not get out of. it was also very painful to him to part with people who had worked with him for many years particularly bob holderman. and donald trump went through for president in four years. i'm sorry donald trump went through four chiefs of staff in four years.

nixon had the same man as chief of staff for those four years. then found extremely painful to demand holderman's resignation as a scapegoat for watergate in april 1973. i'm going to end before taking any questions by playing it one little extract of a conversation between nixon and holderman after nixon has announced holderman's resignation. that's so painful to him that nixon starts drinking and by the time he talks to holderman he has put back a few whiskeys. until you can hear that in his voice. he talks about holderman as you are going to hear, my brother. i think this is a reference to

nixon's own brother. one of his brothers who died from tuberculosis when nixon was a young man. so when is forced to part company with holderman hayes thinking of the tragedy that happened to him when he was a young man. two of his brothers died with tuberculosis. there was one in particular he was very close. i'm just going to share the screen again we can talk on the other side of this last bit of recording i'm going to play for you. >> camp david april 28, 1973 president nixon. >> sorry that's the wrong one just before that.

lincoln sitting room april 30, 1973 president nixon and bob holderman. >> hello hi. [inaudible] you're right we ought to be. [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] you filled out your position. [inaudible] [inaudible]

[inaudible] no, no, no they know, they know. in any event just want to let you know called let me see you are a strong man. i love john and all the rest. who knows what he said about the violence and so forth on the other side. [inaudible] with a deeply felt, god bless

america. [inaudible] >> i am all for that. [inaudible] reactions and call me back. >> i don't think i can bring. >> i know i agree. [inaudible] an hour after words and think got a staff member. [inaudible] that might be why you haven't gotten them though. [inaudible] [inaudible]

okay. >> like my brother. right. >> okay, so that was the end of this study day. i actually go a little beyond that. this is the main ark of the narrative. so if there are any questions i would love to respond. but thank you for bearing with me. i hope you could all year those audio extracts without any trouble. happy to answer any questions. >> thank you michael. why do you have questions but first and foremost can you talk to me a little bit about you access these tapes and about how many hours of tapes there are? >> there are a total of 3700 hours. only a small fraction of which were released back while nixon

was still president on the orders of the supreme court. so most of the standard nixon, watergate books do not include 3700 hours of tapes which were only released in the past ten years or so. they're actually up on the nixon library website. it takes a bit of navigating you can also listen to some of the extracts on my website at least some of the tapes i use in the book, michael dobbs books.com. if you go there you will find some of the tapes i've quoted from including the ones i've played this evening. >> thank you. why do you think we are still fascinated with the 37th president? >> , partly it is the

important nature of his presidency. it was the combination of the vietnam war important moves in foreign policy, which we are living with the implications of that now. mainly it's nixon's own personality, men who really brought himself up from nothing. he was born to a dirt poor quaker family out in california. he is often compared to trump. trump was born on third base, nixon everything he achieved he did through his own efforts. and then he threw it away because of the flaws in his character. particularly his paranoia and mistrust in his determination to fight for everything he

achieved. that became his fatal flaw. he is a contradictory character. he is a man of great talents, great vision, he worked extremely hard. i say he is a kind of ordinary american that only more so. he has all of the virtues and the flaws of the average american. he worked harder than anybody else. he hated people of greater intensity than anybody else. and so he just took everything to an extreme. and that for me at least is a fascinating character study. >> currently is interested in the makeup of the supreme court at the time. and if nixon had any vision of this ending up at the supreme

court? >> chose to keep the tapes. actually i and the book with the scene. this is in july/august of 1973 after one of his aides, alexander butterfield has revealed the president has been taping himself. and so then nixon when he hears about this he is in hospital suffering from pneumonia in the same naval hospital actually where i lived just outside of washington, same hospital president trump was taken to a few months ago. and nixon is there. he is feeling terrible so his mind is a bit clouded. he is on heavy painkillers and so on. so he has to take a decision

on what many of his aides and destroy the tapes. but he still thanks he can control the tapes. the tapes will be his ally in this fight with john dean and others, he will release selected portions of the conversation that will bolster his version of events. it is a terrible miscalculation, obviously we know that now. but at the time it seemed logical to nixon. as for the supreme court it was actually probably equal numbers of liberal and conservative justices on the supreme court. but when it came to the question of whether the tapes should be released, there was a unanimous decision among all of the justices including the conservative ones to

release -- to order nixon to release those tapes which would shed light on whether crimes had been committed in the white house. >> did the supreme court require transcripts of those tapes? or did they require making those tapes a publicly acceptable? >> there is a long argument over how exactly he would release the tapes. i don't deal with this in the book myself. this is what happens after words becomes a legal political argument from being a personal psychodrama i described in the book. so initially nixon says i won't release the tapes. i will release transcripts. he released doctored transcripts. people of my age will remember he released these transcripts

with every other sentence was deleted. and so it was suspected he wasn't really releasing all of the incriminating stuff on the tapes. finally the supreme court said no, transcripts are not good enough. you have to actually release the tapes themselves. >> host: you talk about nixon and the very beginning of your book and hubris. can you expound a little bit about the hubris that nixon has? >> yes, i quote chuck tolson the man you heard at the beginning says hubris became the mark of the nixon man. hubris was the quality nixon admired most. hubris is a greek word which means excessive pride, presumption or absence. and in greek tragedy the hero

is always brought down by his arrogance or pride. so i think this pretty much sums up nixon in january of 1973. everything is going great for him. he is kind of coasting after his reelection. he thanks he can stick it to his enemies, he is more colorful language than this often. but i am toning it down here. he tries to stick it to his enemies. he is really setting himself up for the fault later. that is what hubris means there plenty evidence of this in the early scenes i described in my book. >> michael it's been said mr. nixon had the language of a drunken sailor.

and certainly he has a very objectionable language and tone. are there conversations and with whom do you find some of these were most surprising? he was horribly bad about swearing. what do you find most surprising as a reporter? >> there's a lot of anti- semitic racist remarks that he indulges in. of course he was not doing this in public and these are private tapes. not like trump's tweets these are private he never intended to be made public. to be fair to him, if we were tape-recorded or many of us would say things that are embarrassing we do not want the general public let alone everyone in the world to listen in on her private

conversation. you've got to cut him some slack for that. he did so we are more than the average person. he's got a very full colorful phrase. one of the things you see in steven someone what kissinger from a different background all of the aides are trying to compete with each other to swear like nixon. so partly you asked what surprised me, i guess it is this a dynamic of all of the people from which all of the court are trying to peak compete against each other to gain the attention and the

benevolence of the king. it is really interesting internal dynamic going on that i tried to describe. >> let's speak a little bit about that competition among the aides. what prompts the defection i suppose? >> that's a good question. really starts advancing they are caught red-handed and put on trial. the administration tries to cut off responsibility they are put on trial and the trial starts at the same time i begin the narrative.

in a man called jeb mcgruder who is the head of the committee to reelect the president goes before the judge and commits perjury the prosecutor asks the breaking of the watergate or the taping of the democratic national committee. mcgruder hers this young ambitious aid in his 30s, he says no it has nothing to do with him. and he was acting without any authorization at all. in fact mcgruder himself was authorized. one of the burglars and man called james mccord listens to this. he thanks why should i the rest of this take responsibility for this when we know the people who gave

the orders including mcgruder are getting off scott free while we are about to be sent to this horrible jail, the washington d.c. jail. so mccord decides he's not going to put up with us and write a letter to the judge. that is really when the whole cover-up starts unraveling. mccord says perjury has been committed in the trial. legal counsel john dean realizes the white house has been blackmailed. he feels he can be implicated. he's not willing to be sent to prison for the crimes he sees of other people. so he turns on it nixon. of all he turns on mcgruder

entrance into shoulder responsibility. there's this infighting is what nixon was monthly to boo has been broken there is just one person, james mccord is not willing to go along with this cover-up and start blowing the whistle on edge. this whole sort of "house of cards" begins to fall apart. >> aren't they mostly attorneys and lawyers? from my memory that seems like

nixon was quite the law student and several of the aides were law students. did they not? >> that's one of the points john dean makes actually. he writes up a list of everyone involved in either the white house or the committee to reelect the president. most of them are lawyers including nixon himself. the whole legal question of obstruction of justice and conspiracy are not necessarily criminal lawyers. some of them were smarter than others of realizing that legal jeopardy they were in. dean was the smartest and that he realized he could be sent to prison for many years.

that was one reason he blew the whistle on the whole conspiracy. they were lawyers, they should have known better. but as nixon says at one point, that means it is illegal. i think that the president orders a break-in he can claim he is justified for national security reasons. the whole political legal dispute of watergate that in the end just because the president orders it doesn't make it it's illegal at all. it became a constitutional crisis precisely for that reason. >> current ones who know about his enemies. who was nixon out to get? >> he was out to get anybody there is a a long list of

enemies beginning with the kennedys. if you recall nixon had lost an election to jack kennedy in 1960. here there's a modern-day echo we think about the events of the past few months that in 1960 election was extremely close, much closer than the next election. it was determined by few thousand votes in illinois and texas, including disputed votes in cook county that were patrolled by mayor daley of chicago. by challenging the results of the election then certainly donald trump did in my view in the last election. he did not challenge the results of the election.

who would the results of the election. but he would hold a lasting grudge against the kennedys. he was determined he would never again allow himself to be cheated. so this explains in part his thirst for political intelligence. when it came to the 1972 election he was determined not to be, i'm describing what's going on in his mind, he is determined to not allow the kennedys to cheat him of an election again. not so much the kennedys but it was the democrats. that thirst for political intelligence is one of the sources of watergate. as far as the enemy is concerned ranges from the kennedys to journalists to the

entire foreign policy establishment. the elites in general. i drew up a long enemies list. there are some white there is a dispute with the dean of the cathedral. lbj dies in the middle of this. they are deciding whether to have a memorial service for president johnson in the national cathedral in washington. one of his enemies as the dean of the cathedral who is a leader of the antiwar movement. nixon goes off on a charade of the dean of the cathedral does is not going to allow it to take place in the cathedral. if it does he's not going to attend and so on and so forth. all of this you get a kind of

insight into the depths of his hatred of the other side. which is very revealing. >> kathie watson about the environment of the newsroom at the post during that time. what do you know about that? >> i started working for the post after this. i do know some of the actors involved including carl bernstein. of course for a journalist like those two they were very young reporters at the time. this was the kind of story that perhaps they dreamt of. the post was under great pressure from the administration. it was just begun going the public. there was on the proprietor. to restrain the reporters. but she cited with the

reporters. the post was breaking all of this news it was extremely exciting for you had a whole generation of reporters that wanted to model themselves on bernstein and woodward. that's another story. i guess a lot of cobe reporters like myself when into journalist and part because the whole story of woodward and bernstein and watergate. excited to get back to the tapes. might want to ask there is a tremendous amount of tape. you focus on these months, these periods you said were the most passionate, the most critical perhaps. did you listen to them all? >> i did not listen to them all. ms. listen to the key ones.

it depends some are better quality than others. there are some tapes pretty much impossible job it was to listen they get clued you need listen for 100 hours and ordered to get one hour of transcript. if you multiply that by 3700 hours of tapes you can still take several lifetimes for somebody to listen to all the tapes and decipher them all. completely unintelligible. i have to confess i did not listen to them all. we went aren't there portions missing their something famous about the missing minutes?

>> the famous missing 17 minutes. this is probably one of the first tapes after the watergate break-in when nixon is talking to his aides for this conversations about watergate in it. there's been a lot of conspiracy theories about what is in those missing 17 minutes. does it reveal nixon ordered the break in at watergate i don't think it does. you have to triangulate with other sources of information including the holderman diaries. we know pretty much what was in those 17 minutes. i think it is nixon being vested he started listening to these tapes he probably wanted to rid of some bits that were compromising to him.

not a lot of other things on the tapes. that is what most historians including me believe. you can argue about that. >> what you think we have learned from all of this? >> nixon kept on saying the problem is not the original he had experienced himself of unraveling a cover-up when he was a young congressman. it shows what ever else you, don't cover it up. the cover up and watergate became worse than the original crime. he could have blamed watergate on subordinates and underlings. covering it up the obstruction

of justice is what really brought him down. on a larger level my book is an insight into this very introverted world. it is an american version of the royal court. they're all of these around the president. the president in that white house becomes extremely isolated. it is a kind of echo chamber in which everyone is telling the president but they think he wants to hear. that is a dangerous situation. not just nixon but for all presidents but after a bit they become isolated, distant from reality and particularly a problem of the second term.

the first term is rooted in reality. and then anyone is living in that very pressurized fishbowl type of environment you have to be a very sane person to remain grounded in common sense and some degree of humility. people say traditionally it's what the spouses do it's what the family does they keep the president sort of grounded. >> thank you for your discussion this evening. and for doing the research and appearing via zoom. i will greatly appreciate it. we encourage people to pick up this book, it was available in

amazon and most bookstores now we understand. we hope you enjoyed it. i hope you enjoy the book. >> thank you very much it has been great to be with you. i would encourage her to go out and buy the book or at least borrow it from the. >> thank you very much for. >> thank you i wish all you good evening thank you for joining us, good night. ♪ ♪ >> weekends on cspan2 are an intellectual feast. every saturday to find events and people explore our nations a pass on american history tv. on sunday, book to very bring to the lace and nonfiction books and authors. it is television for serious readers. learn, discover, explore, weekends on cspan2. >> sunday, cspan2 series january 6 views from the house

continues, three were members of congress are stories of what they saw, heard and experienced that day including democrat dean phillips of minnesota. >> at that very moment when capitol police officer announce we should take cover, i stood up at the back of the gallery is a second level of the mezzanine, representative from arizona was objecting to the arizona slate of electors. that moment i simply shout it out at the top of my lungs, this is because of you, i screamed it. >> this is because of you. [inaudible] >> i was representing four years of angst and anxiety and anger. many of us saw this coming from a mile away. many of us in the country did. i represent are probably millions of americans who felt the same way. at that very moment the entire country including myself

realize the fragility of our democracy. with the decorum i do not regret it. it was what i was feeling and it was four years of pent up anxiety about what wasn't transpiring right in front of her eyes for. >> this week hear from democrat of maryland and brian fitzpatrick of pennsylvania. january 5, views from the house sunday night at ten eastern on c-span, c-span.org are listed on the c-span radio app. this week's public affair virtual event would bring a conversation with the "washington post" national calmness karen tumulty who's joining us in conversation for brenda book the triumph of nancy reagan in addition to permit the post", karen tumulty's work at time magazine and the los angeles times as a recipie o