uncritically these books which are based on two or three or four secondary defective sources for these quintessential nixon stories. so i don't think they're a good scholarship and i'm not a scholar. eisenhowerer's book, nixon is a gem hiding in plain sight so it was easy to dismiss it. it was very well received and it's a work and it has tremendous material that don't appear elsewhere, and i think she's remarkably objective. i would certainly put her in the positive category, but i think it's a book that deserves revisiting for a lot of the

material that's in there, and i'm so far over my point that nixon was a no new dealer and frank nixon voted for fighting bob and he did vote for fdr 32 and nixon's great hero nationally because he had adm e admired his career. he had followed his career before he went into the navy and in the south pacific he met saasen. and from that meeting, i think he brought mail with him, but he was going on a good will tour to the troops and nixon in the '48 convention was the man and one of nationson's other great memories from the war was that even talking to me in the '70s that he remembered fondly was

siegel nor roosevelt. he didn't know who it was. he knew there was a jeep convoy and he sort of craned his neck to see who it was and riding in the back of the jeep with no particular protection was eleanor roosevelt and he'd never seen a first lady and that made a great impression on him. the -- >> i think the early life is -- i'm very partial to it. both in the terms of the formation of nixon, his character and his ideas. and gary wilkes writes about going down to yorba linda and he talks about driving through the

wasteland of oil derek ricks and what else would you expect from richard nixon. yorba lenda, whittier and fullerton, nixon's youth was idyllic and he writes in the memoirs about that on a clear day you could see the snows of mt. bald ty to the pacific and whittier was a remarkable enclave, a quaker enclave of theology and education in the 1880s and then to college. it was a diverse community and it was misinterpreted by some authors.

he was not the psycho biography that was applied from the cradle although he didn't help us in the memoirs because the first memory was of being dropped on his head and running after a wagon and freud is in the wings waiting to deal with that. and he said the reason unfashionably somewhat combed his head backwards -- combed his hair backwards was because he had a big star from that early fall. and you can -- by looking at his bibliography, you can see my success, and you can see the first book or the book he should do after the memoirs was a book on his early life and i was inspired by president carter's book about growing up in christmas in plains.

i thought to tell the nixon story in yorba linda in whittier, and orange county in the time that he went away in the paper for herman perry. and his political career. it's important, formative, charming and interesting. and -- three to go? good lord. and i'm sort of out of things to say. >> did you want to comment on irvs? well, irv, first of all, it's great news that the second volume is going to be published and sooner than later. the first irv was a scholar, an

impeccable researcher and i think remarkable fair minded in terms of his judgment so he's a triple threat and he's a great contribution to nixon literature and his storiography. irv has gone back and actually gone back to the sources and read in human capacity the papers and documents and research to get back. why did nixon -- with most politicians if they succeed upward, the baggage from their earlier careers is sort of unpacked and becomes part of the mythology. with nixon, the baggage of each his careers was rechecked, weighed, opened and inspected and sent on to the next stage of his career.

i can remember when i was a white house fellow we invited henry fonda to come speak to the groups and spouses and he was in a play in washington and he was produced by a non-profit, and it would be sort of a national theater, and i was the middle man on this, and he said -- he said while he was not mrpolitic, and if we were a partisan or non-partisan group which we were he would consider speaking and that was, in fact, and after lunch he said a few things about the playhouse. he said i'm not political, so it's strange for me to be here, and they thought, i would go anywhere and do anything to prevent richard nixon from being elected to anything. at that point, we were up in the

office looking down on the white house and you would expect a missile silo to open up or lightning to come down. and i think he thought this would have a great effect on the group, but i think he thought there would be a rendering of garments. so somebody said is that because of vietnam? he said no, i hate the war, but i think we should be there and nixon is getting us out as fast as can be done. this was in '72 and it was in the spring of '72 and someone said, it's the economy. he thought for a minute and he said no -- i don't like the way things are going, but i don't think the president has that much effect on the economy and i have to tell you, it's because i will never forget and i will never forgive what he did in douglas in 1950 and so this

baggage, this was in 1972 and that baggage goes on, in working on the nixon memoir, i had a great opportunity to talk and to interview for the book. both jimmy roosevelt run for example governor that year and paul who became a legendary lawyer and was the campaign manager and both of them told me in separate interviews that it was a tough rough -- as nixon said a rocking, socking campaign, but not sure that he said it in reference to that one, but anyway, that's what it was, but they both said and roosevelt stood in for her at a debate and she didn't show up with a debate for candidate nixon and he stood in for her and he said that it was rough and tough, but on both sides and that nixon won and he won

handily. am i almost up? >> yes. >> if you said to central casting, nixon was unfortunate in the people he ran against. in the year he ran against voor hes, the most popular congressman in washington. and he sent his candidates to run against nixon like movie stars. his next opponent was a movie star and then he ran against stevenson and he was an intellectual model and eisenhower used him to be the political attack man, and then, of course, he runs against john kennedy and pat brown. so in terms of the coverage and the baggage from these campaigns, just staying with him and lumbering throughout his career with most people and a lot of these books and these nixon biographies, if a kennedy,

if president kennedy biography, if you turn to the index and all of the quotes were from victor laski or nigel hamilton or sigh hirsch, you would dismiss it, you would say it's pol emic and some original stuff, but it's skewed and books that do this with nixon have become part of the canon, so that's something that in the future, the papers are here. the nixon library are now the 12 presidential libraries, the state of the art here are archival and all of the materials are here so yorba linda will become the center of international mix and research with the storying why ravi of the nixon administration can be seen in the more general -- not

things were done, anyway, a more generous perspective. thank you. [ applause ] >> i want to invite the audience into the conversation. questions, reactions, for any of our panelists, there are two people running around with microphone s around the lecture hall. please don't speak until you have the microphone. the first question, rick? right over there. >> hi. my question is for dr. cannon, did you say those were 750,000 words that you wrote together with nixon on his early life? >> that's a lot. a real lot.

>> so are those thousands of pages? do they exist and are they available to read? >> i can't answer -- we all know nothing was thrown away or erased. it might have been inat vertently erased or mechanically erased, but i don't know the answer to that, but i'm sure the answer is yes, and as i say, for two years or almost two years we worked exclusively on the early life with the knowledge that it would be cut and also with the knowledge that it was creating a pace and it was creating a tone and it was creating a working operation with a very small team work under pressure to create a style and method and i don't think anyone could feel it was time wasted or material lost. i'm sure the answer is there in the archives and it's waiting to

be discovered. >> this question is directed at destroying and spent the last years of his life examining the nixon-eisenhower relationship and i just completed ambrose's biography of eisen hower in which he speaks at length that the conversations that took place between eisenhower and nixon and trying to -- where eisenhower was trying to dissuade nixon for being on the ticket for the 56th run for releshgsz instead of saying it was in his interest to run dod, and obviously, this must have came from personal conversations that ambrose had with eisenhower that i imagine you investigated the other side.

what were your comments about what had happened, in the run up for the 56 and for nixon to stay on the ticket. >> first of all, before i answer i forgot to mention david coleman. i don't know. if he's here or not. is he here? >> thank you, david and over in the far corner with the shiny light on top of his shiny head is ken who is one of the most brilliant individuals who works at the miller center and if you want to talk about someone who wants to know tapes and the 9/11 you are of the presidency he's one of the primary people to speak to despite being a really nice guy. the answer to your question is that ambrose normally gets a lot of stuff wrong. his interviews that he has with eisenhowerer, many of them didn't happen.

he was outed, if you read something in "the new yorker" called challenging ike in april 2010, i believe, he made up many of the meetings. they never occurred and the answer from your question in the research is eisenhower felt that no one since martin van buren had moved from the vice presidency to be elected president of the united states. eisenhower had an incredible sense of history and was very protective of nixon in many ways and he felt this nixon needed training, the first attempt came in learning the conversation who talked to leonard hall who is the chairman of the national committee and he talked about it on january 9, 1956 and he says, look, i really think that nixon

should get a cabinet position so he could be really an effective president because he would have the management of a large organizati organization. he thought so much of that conversation that he went into the white house in front of the press conference, i endorse the re-election of eisenhower and nixon and the amount of emphasis that eisenhowerer really paid to this was probably minimalist. his brother wrote a letter in 1983 where milton says, and my brother wanted to get rid of nixon as vice president and he could do it in a new york heartbeat and obviously, he never did. >> mr. mayor? >> my name is dr. richard arena, former professor of whittier

college. i'm the one that did the richard nixon oral history project which was a two-year assignment. i was put on leave to do that. it took me all over the country. it took me away from my family. i'm referring to the comments in particularly of the last speaker, but also the third speaker nixon's life is very complex and that i found out. i worked under historians like thomas c. cochran who was president of the american historical association and i worked under him the -- i'm going along with this comment, but it will come to an end, we historians love to talk. i'm retired. i don't get enough practice, and

thomas cochran was for the wharton school of business, and he was leftist and socially oriented and when i interviewed the some 400 persons who are located now in yorba linda museum and whittier college with the professor, let me say, one person who did publish some of the things i said, quote, you're too wordy. you're too wordy, and i was wordy because i remember one victim of the trainings for my ph.d in history is don't leave things unside so i am wordy.

i wanted the people that i interviewed to be completely known to the reader or listener of the tape. so will a complete early life history of richard nixon which is complex. the idea of black history, nixon and whittier college had black football players at that time before world war ii. there were very few colleges allowed and richard took the black historian whom i interviewed, by the way, he ended up in the merchant marine and had nothing, but praise for the nixon family. >> so let me -- >> i just want to clarify, "the l.a. times" made the error of saying that i was appointed and they announced it as the director of the project to interview friends and associates. don't believe it. i interviewed anti-nixon people.

we tried to get jerry voorhies among others and he refused. those who knew -- he hated nixon's guts. the last thing i would do is try to gifz a biased interview collection on nixon. >> let me ask you to -- let me ask one of them to respond. >> the last speaker in particular who said there's a need and the third spoeaker. there's a need for an early life history. thank you very much. excuse the wordiness. >>. >> which one of you would like to respond? >> first of all, frank gannon has his interviews nine days long. very profitable in the university of georgia website and it's where i learned nixon met lbj. it's the only document that

shows the early relationship between lbj and richard nixon. second, dr. marina, i hate you. i really do. you did 335 of these oral histories, and i'm almost two-thirds through them, and i've got to tell you it's long, and the other person i should comment on who is no longer with us is harry jeffrey who did a marvelous series of 212 interviews, but the one question that you had is when will it be done and the problem with the early life of richard nixon has nothing to do with the fascination. it has to do with the state of publishing in the united states today and it's very, very hard to get someone, especially a commercial press to do the early life of richard nixon. >> i should say, i went -- like a lot of my thingis started and

i urged the president to consider writing the book partly because we had written a lot of it already about his early life and he said to go and see which was a memorable event for me. he said go see his publisher, simon & schuster and that was an event for me and he said pretty much the same thing and this was 25, 30 years ago and in the wake of the success of the mem ors that it's just -- anda, gen, i was suggesting it in terms of the carter books which were commercial successes. it's a tough sell and i don't think it's worth doing, and the thing is that the early life and the jefferies collection is a resource and nixon's book and

preat the time dae dates. it predates his political career and i would suggest ending it when he goes away to war buzz where he's the non-drinking, noncard playing, non-swearing nixon pacifist nixon goes away to war. so that's the end, and although he did, you can't go home again. he came home, but everything was different in america and the world and with him. so it's not necessarily something that appeals to an historian or the psychobiographer and so much of the unfortunate stuff, and all of the franklins and stuff and how nixon was like and he was nixon even when he was young. he was a very serious person, but he was very popular and the president of various classes,

but he was a serious fellow and there isn't a lot of material and it's not necessarily going to appeal to an historian who was interested in politics or in his later career which is so vivid. >> joe, did you want to respond to that? we had the whittier -- we got that in 2008 from the nixon library and we started a project to digitize the transcripts and those were all digitized and we're still in the process of developing a website to load the materials up. >> one thing i would agree also is the cal-state fullerton collection has valuable materials that may be overlooked, but those are still -- the yorba linda public library put 20 of those transcripts that are at the

website in the library and the fullerton transcripts are in the office and a researcher can come in there and use it as a very valuable resource. >> any questions? i'm sorry. the author of the forthcoming vice presidential book. >> gelman? >> yes, mr. gelman, your research indicates that the eisenhower-nixon relationship was an a-minus. why is the more common, public perception that it's c-minus, d-plus. how did that come about? was it on purpose or just lack of research? >> well, since i already need a

visa to get to harvard and let me into the boston area, what i think happened is this is that the academics who -- and author schlessinger, jr., of a wonderful friend of mine, but the academics who are in the ivy leagues and great graduate collars all supported almost to a man, richard hot stet ler, harry kulling aer, i mean, these are seminal figures in the historical profession. they couldn't get a life. every time they worked and worked and worked there was never a prayer for adly stevenson to defeat dwight eisenhower. the first time in 52 stevenson lost by 3.5 million votes. the second time he only lost by

9.7 million votes. it when these they taught grat watt system fares. when a brat was and nixon was, and it became the stuff of the rightings, and their graduate stings and it's lattsted until now. there's a biography coming out, a man who is a journalist did an enormous amount of research. he went to dartmouth and went to the library of congress, spent considerable time in abilene. he lives in los angeles and never came to the nixon lean

raer. that's the lock and the short of it. it's an ingrained nature among a certain subset of very, very influential people that looked at nixon from the beginning of his vice presidency and for that matter dwight eisenhower was a twit in the books written about him in the late 50s and early 60s and sometimes even now, but it, for whatever reason nobody really passionately looked at the papers of either dwight eisenhower and richard nixon, if you want to give another plug. then the major berries and there's the yeah lfr mae done p/e if yoi twosh peruse it in