all day monday, americ"amer history tv"'s is featuring america's first ladies. who do you think was our most influential first lady? vote and join the conversation with us on facebook, at facebook.com/c-span. >> each week at this time "american history tv" features an hourlong conversation from c-span's a sunday night interview series "q and a." here's this week's encore "q and a" on "american history tv."

this week on "q and a," historian and author edmund morris discusses his newly released book the last in a trilogy about teddy roosevelt. it's called ""colonel roosevelt" >> i want to go back to the first words you wrote about theodore roosevelt in yours first three books, you started off with a prologue, new year's day 1907 at 11:00 precisely the sound of trumpets echoes within the white house. and floats through open windows out into the sunny morning. you remember what mood you were in when you had to write those first words? >> yes. it was a mood of complete despair. i'd been trying for months to get the book started. i knew in my head that i was going to start with new year's

day of 1907 because i found out quite by accident that on january the 1st, 1907 shook more hands than any other president in history. and i thought i could see the book growing out of that reception when he received the american people on that day. and for months i researched the day, discovering to my amazement how detailed newspaper records were in those days. people didn't have televisions, so they needed details, visual details, olfactory details, all sort of atmospheric stuff. so, i absorbed all this massive material. and then i had to sit down and write a prologue in which the reader as it were meets the president, as though the reader's in that line.

i never want to take the stylistic liberty of saying you are there. i wanted it to be a straight autobiography, so developing a technique of writing a prologue in the third impression which gives the impression that it's written in the first person was so difficult that when i wrote that first line i didn't think i'd ever be able to finish. it took me about a year to write that. >> that was in 1979. this is 2010. >> uh-huh. >> here are the last words you wrote in your final book, volume three, 1 million words, 2,500 pages later. as part of a class exercise paying tribute to the late colonel thomas maher, m-a-h-e-r, wrote: he was a fulfiller of good intention. >> thanks, brian. you just gave away my last line. >> but you told me years ago

that you had already written that last line. >> yes. it was written in my head. in fact, more or less when i wrote the first line of the book, of the first book. because i was doing research in theodore roosevelt's birthplace in new york which in those days was a disused library of dusty parts of old papers and records. and i came across some yellow manila envelope on some school boy essay written shortly after his death. some class exercise. the children were asked to write appreciations of the dead man. and i came across this one essay with this one sentence, he was the fulfiller of good intentions and i knew then, in 1979, that no matter how long it took to write the three volumes, that was going to be the last line of the last book. >> when did you actually physically write that last line? what time in the last several months? >> i wrote it in january of this

year, 2010. i called my wife up from downstairs, i said, darling, come and look at this. and as i wrote it, she stood over me and i tapped it out. and that was the end of 30 years of work. >> this is a very broad question. but what's this experience been like? >> it's been enriching, life enhancing, educational. because i'm not an american -- i'm not american born, as you can tell from my accent. i am an american citizen who came here in 1968 wanting to learn about my country of adoption. and i couldn't think of a better way to learn all about america, its character and its history and its essential principles than by studying the life of theodore roosevelt. >> back in 1999 i think maybe the last time we talked, i'm not

sure, was your reagan book "dutch" i asked you, we've got some video of that moment, i asked you about the early introduction to thee theodore roosevelt, let's watch. >> there's a preliminary apprehension of him when i'm a small boy. at the age of 10 i looked at the history of nairobi that was published to celebrate the 50th anniversary, and it had this historic photograph of president theodore roosevelt heading to nairobi, kenya, in 1909 on his great safari. i remember identifying as a small boy with that picture. the smile, the snarl, the spectacles. there's something about him that affected me. and a quarter of a century later, i ended up writing his biography. >> when is your second edition of the three-parter on theodore roosevelt going to come out? >> it's going to have to come

out on september the 14th, 2001, because that will be the centennial of his inauguration as mckinley's successor. >> are you on time this time also with the third book? >> i was just thinking thank god it did not come out on september 14th, 2001, because that would have been three days after 9/11 and i don't think anybody in the country read a book for the next two months. as it happened, it was slightly delayed and it came after thanksgiving just when people in need for reading something about a really positive presidential force, and the book did very well. but it would have been a disaster for it to come out when it was planned to come out. >> is this one on schedule, then, the new one, the third one? >> yeah, yeah. >> how have you changed your mind about theodore roosevelt in the last 30-plus years? >> i've been increasingly impressed by the quality of his

intellect. it was always obvious to me right from the start he was a superbly bright man, but i thought his smarts were primary political. and indeed they were through most of his early years, but after he left the white house in march of 1909 and began a life of journalism and book writing, the quality of his mind deepened and broadened to an astonishing degree. some of the essays that he wrote about the conflict between science and religion and imagery and medieval literature and subjects like that and in the year 1911 when he was completely out of political power, these essays are truly impressive. they reflect reading in three languages, english, german, and french, some italian, too. enormous intelligence and

erudition, and to think he was a superb president of the united states, he was as someone once said, a polygon, a man of many, many dimensions. >> in the middle of this all your book "dutch" came out, and the question i want to ask you is, is it -- what's the difference about writing about a man who has been dead for years versus a man who was alive? what are the two experiences like? >> a journalist once asked me that question after i made the contract to do the reagan biography. he said to me, is it easier to write about a live person or a dead person. and i hadn't thought of it, and i was struggling to think what to say when my wife who was in the next room shouted out dead is easier. and, of course, the journalist used that line to begin his article in "the new york times" the following day, and she got a

t-shirt a couple of days later which said dead is easier all over the front which she wears when she goes to lectures. however, i think that they both have difficulties. to write about a dead person is to be a prisoner of the existing material. if there is not any material on something important, if the material happens to have evaporated or was never set down, then one cannot chronicle that event. but if you're writing about a live person, you have to deal with the live sensibilities, not of that person but of his family, contemporaries, his friends. in reagan's case i was writing about a living president of the united states. so, i had to deal not too much with his sensibilities, because reagan was so sure of himself he didn't care what people wrote or thought about him. but with his wife, his children, his friends, and the american

people. so, that posed problems, too. >> who did you get closest to in the theodore roosevelt family? how many of his family were you able to talk to? >> oh, i interviewed his youngest son -- his second youngest son archie shortly before he died and also alhis roosevelt longworth when she was pretty ancient, and descendents, grandchildren, great grandchildren, who had to a certain extent been helpful. i guess the most -- the most useful was archibald roosevelt jr. who was quite a fixture here in washington in the 1980s and '90s because of all the roosevelt descendants he was the one with the best mind. he spoke 16 or 17 languages and his intellect was enormous, very much like his grandfather. and when i published my first book about t.r., archie called

me up and he said, i've read your book, edmund, and i'm staggered by the number of mannerism that you describe that i thought were my own mannerisms, turned out to have been my grandfather's. >> back when we talked in '99, we talked about -- you mentioned the people who were alive and the family and friends, but we talked about nancy reagan, and this is cut seven on our list here. i want to run that and get your reaction to what you said back then. >> she has always been throughout her life very insecure, very suspicious and totally besotted with her husband. and she had any inkling or any suspicion, should i say, that i was going to write a book that would make him seem less -- and less uncertain, then it would have caused obvious problems of access.

so i had a friendship with her which was quite genuine on a superficial. i enjoyed being with her. i would lunch with her whenever i was in l.a. she's fun to lunch with, providing conversation on the level that suits her personality. >> looking back the 11 years since this book came out, any thoughts about anything that that book brought out, the relationships you had? have you talked to nancy reagan since then? >> no, no, i knew i would not. i sent her the first copy the day before it was published with a letter saying i know that this is not going to be what you were hoping for, nancy, but i hope as the years go by you'll realize if not from reading it yourself but from what other people are saying, this book shows your husband was a genuinely great president, whatever his private failings. and i just hope that gives you some consolation for the fact that i have written very honestly about him.

and looking back at dutch, more than ten years ago now, it's 11, i look back on it as the happiest period of my life. i had an enormous sense of accomplishment with that book. i know in many quarters of washington it was received as a failure. i heard you last week saying that during your interview with a couple of historians, i know it was widely criticized at the time, but it also got at the same time the kind of reviews that many authors would die for. it sold over 300,000 copies, it's still selling. i wouldn't change a word of it now. i regard it as my best book. i'm enormously happy i had that privilege, that unique privilege, to see a sitting president in power and write up what i saw and experienced. >> why did you consider that the happiest time of your life? >> because i'd done something

original, which is what all writers want. i think i pioneered a new form of biography, and over the years since other books have come out that use similar techniques, so i think i was on to something new. the poet laureate of great britain, for example, wrote a biography a couple years after "dutch" a romantic poet, i've forgotten his name at the moment, but used the same device of an imaginary narraters and questionings back and forth between the narrater and other points of view. and these techniques are being more and more part of the new nonfiction which i have been watching with great interest ever since "dutch" came out. >> a couple of years ago the other book you've written, it was about beethoven, why? >> well, i've always loved music, and what i like is literary challenges. to write about ronald reagan is a literary challenge because he was a very difficult man to penetrate.

t.r. is a literary challenge because he's so enormous and multifaceted. just to portray the whole of him is a superhuman challenge. to write about a composer is to write about music, which is a language almost beyond the power of ordinary language to describe. mendelssohn once remarked, music is a superior language to ordinary speech. so, the challenge in that case was to write a short book about beethoven which used language to communicate the essence of music, and i found that a delightful challenge. >> why beethoven among all the compos composers? >> he's probably the most complex character of the great composers. bach, for example, is a composer of equal stature, but his character is amorphous and difficult to get at. but beethoven was so human, so

worldly, that it was a delight to write about him. >> came to the united states in '68. >> uh-huh. >> lived in london some time before that. born in kenya. >> yep. >> when we last talked, you had an apartment or a house over here on capitol hill, and a place to live up in new york. what's happened since? >> well, i left washington shortly after the publication of theodore x in 2001 and moved to connecticut. i have an apartment in new york city which has always been there, so i divide my time between kent, connecticut, and new york. >> three books. the first one "the rise of theodore roosevelt" was about what era? >> that was his prepresidential life. it ends with a cliffhanger the moment he hears on the summit of mt. marcie in new york that president mckinley's been assassinated and that he as vice president is now president of the united states. >> where did you write that?

>> where did i write that? in my apartment in new york. >> in new york. second book came out in 2001, as we're talking here, "rex." what's that era? >> rex describes his presidential years, 1901 to 1909. >> the third one, which is out right now called "colonel roosevelt" is for what period? >> that's the final ten years of t.r.'s life, 1909 to 1919. >> given what's going on in the country right now in the united states, what can we learn from this final book about what happens in a country where people are unhappy or in his case he was the third party candidate, what can we learn about third parties, and when did he run as a third party candidate and why? >> he ran as a third party candidate in 1912. but exactly a secentury ago, 19,

shortly after he'd come back to the country after having been a year away, t.r. became the spokesman, the oracle of this new force rising in america called progressivism. it was a largely middle-class movement whose common denominator apart from passion was a mounting dissatisfaction with government, federal government. the feeling of exclusion from the tight relationship between congress and corporations and capitalistic privilege. so, the white middle-class passionate movement developed in the later years of t.r.'s presidency, largely inspired by his own gradual swing to the left. and it more or less asked,

drafted him, back into politics as its spokesman in the summer of 1910. so, the midterm elections that subsequently took place exactly 100 years ago marked the emergence of this new progressive party. it wasn't quite a party yet. it didn't have a capital "p" but it was a formidable movement, which in two short years after that election mutated into a real party, the third party, the progressive bullnose party of 1912 and fought the most successful third party candidacy in our history. >> why did he not run in 1908? >> well, he was at the end of his very successful presidency. he was full of smarts and young. he was not yet 50. but he sort of knew in his heart of hearts that if he had another term, which he could have had on

a silver platter, if he'd served another four years he would begin to be corrupt, begin to be too self-righteous, too domineering. it was never a question of financial or political corruption with t.r., but he sense he'd had too much power too long. and he deeply believed that an american president should serve only a finite time and follow the example of george washington and retire after two terms. >> briefly go through how he became president from the vice president. who picked him to be vice president and why? >> he was picked as vice president by william mckinley in 1900. largely to keep him out of the way because he was already by pretty universal consent destined to be president in his own right. so mckinley took him as his vice

president, and that second term of mckinley lasted only a few days because he was shot in the fall of 1901, precipitating young 42-year-old theodore roosevelt into the presidency. the youngest president we've ever had. >> so he served out almost the four years of the mckinley term and served another four years. how much was he elected by? >> he was re-elected in 1904 by a huge margin. i think it was presidential victory up to that time. and he would have had a similar majority if he'd run again in 1908. constitutional he could have. he could have run as many types as he liked. >> when did it start after he left in '08 and he's getting ready nfor 1912, when did he actually start thinking about doing it again? >> he went to africa on a gigantic safari which lasted

almost a year. and in odd dribs and drabs, mail which would reach him by the odd naked runner letters from the american -- from friends in america. he began to realize that president taft was turning out to be a pretty ineffective successor. and that to this desire of t.r. to come back and articulate the hopes and aspir spispirations progressives that was getting stronger and stronger. but it wasn't until he actually returned in the spring of 1910 to discover how he'd been missed during his year abroad and how urgent the political priorities were that he reluctantly allowed himself to be coaxed back into politics. >> who was pushing him? >> at first it was governor hughes of new york who is a progressive governor, who needed political help then. i won't go into the details.

but t.r. reluctantly agreed to do him a favor and help him campaign for primary reform. and by making that fateful decision to help out a struggling governor, he found himself sucked back into party politics. and by the fall of that year, was articulating all the new principles of progressivism. >> when did he signal that he was ready to go? >> to run for the presidency? >> yeah. >> he signaled that in january of 1912. by then the pressure for him to run was so enormous that he really couldn't resist it. and, to be honest, he had in his heart ambition, which began to dominate him. like all men of great gifts, when they give up power, even though they may give it up for principled reasons, they begin

to hanker for it the moment they give it up. he hankered for the presidency during his four years out of power to such an extent that he agreed to run again in 1912. >> when you said he was not yet 50 when he left the white house and we know you tell us he died when he was 60, so he only really had ten years, how -- you talk about this. how sick was he all through his life? >> his health seemed to be excellent. he was a strong, florid, enormously energetic man, but privately he did have medical problems. i think he always had a fluttery heart and his health problems began to be manifest around 1911, 1912. he began to put on weight seriously. he began to have rheumatic problems and arteriosclerosis and he had chronic malaria in his system from his years --

from his service in cuba in 1898, the spanish-american war. gradually as the last ten years of his life progressed, he began to be more and more subject. particularly went to the amazon in 1914 and explored the river of dart, and very nearly died of tropical fever. >> when you set out to get to know him, what year was it originally? >> when i set out to get to know him? >> to know him. in other words, your first book was in '79. when did you start the process? >> it was oddly enough, it was after richard nixon resigned the white house. nixon, as you may recall in his farewell speech to the white house staff, suddenly started to quote theodore roosevelt. >> speech from t.r.? >> he quoted a passage that she was beautiful in face and form

that had never come to her any great sorrow, very young flower she lived a fair flower, she died. i think nixon is talking about his mother, but i got curious. as to what circumstance had prompted theodore roosevelt to write these words. so, i did a little research and found it was the death of his beautiful young wife beginning his political career, and i began to get interested in this real life drama and began to write a screen play about it in 1975 i think it was, which i hoped i could sell to television. as i wrote the screen play, i got more and more interested in him as a character, and a book grew out of the screen play, and a book grew out of book, and here i am, three volumes later. >> as you look back on your process of getting to know theodore roosevelt, how did you do it? where did you go? where did you start to see what he was all about, places that

you rummaged through? >> i began to get a physical feel for him which is important for a biographer. one must have the ability to imagen this person in the room or within visible distance. must have a palpable feeling for the subject or it's impossible to write about them. i began to get that feeling after about two years of research. after i'd been out of the badlands of dakota where he was a young ranchman in the 1880s, after i'd been out to sagamore hill and held in my hand the gold lock of hair from the head of his dead young wife, alice lee, after i'd read his diaries, written at harvard and had turned over the pages that his hand had turned over. i remember coming across one

page describing his honeymoon night with his beautiful alice lee, and i was naturally interested to see what he wrote about that night. and in his handwriting he said our sacred happiness cannot be written about. i had the distinct feeling that i, posterity, future biographer, was being addressed by him. this is private. stay out of my life. so, that's when the consciousness of him began. >> how long was he married to alice? >> four years. >> what did he die of? >> she died of bright's disease, same disease that took woodrow wilson's wife shortly after wilson became president. >> what's bright's disease? >> it's acute nephritis. >> kidney disease. they had one child alice roosevelt longworth.