once again, the kaiser medical active and efficient model was brought forward as a good way of looking at it. >> our cities tour staff recently traveled to oakland, california. learn more about oakland and other stops on the tour at www.c-span.org. you are watching american history tv all weekend, every weekend on c-span3. >> next, a book party at the capital hill club for bob: cello -- colacello.

>> the book came out in october. it was supposed to come out in january. manuscript a few days before he died. my father was 86 and had prostate cancer. suddenly, they're using this new, magic drug. it killed him in eight weeks.

it wasn't experimental. it had been out a couple years. anyway, as i'm coming home for my father's funeral, i get in the car and hear that ronald reagan has died. up.ty fair pushes it was crazy. got it out in october. attention butf there was a whole second wind that started in early december once people were overall that. >> it is the gift that will keep on giving. it will be perennial. >> this goes from their birth,

1911. it ends the night he is elected president. there are all gathered and he .ctually finds out how delicately are you going to have to handle the details? >> she would never let me see him. i told her one day it was important i go to the house because the house says it so much about the person. mind sitting don't by the phone, i will call you. the tricky thing to

figure out is one was he showing signs of alzheimer's? there were no signs until after he left the white house. it was a turning point. was 1989. then, it's fair to say it is a thing of old age. someone who had cancer operations in his second term. that is what i think you here. howard baker tells the story about how they were worried about him.

>> obviously, he had a horrible memory. at one -- what point was he not able to converse? the hipld say after operation. , he he was in a wheelchair never lost his good manners. the service people helped him. the white talked to house doctor and he was a close contact with the team. he said ronald reagan was a rare case. and the doctor, has known nancy since chicago, he said he didn't have a lot of anger in him.

they usually get angry at themselves. and things that you were pressed in your life, frustration. ronald reagan achieved everything he wanted to achieve in life. joke that it was all nancy pushing him. >> he is always on the road and working on those issues. to find out what is really going on in washington, go to this person. >> my hero. >> how are you? >> nice to meet you.

[indiscernible conversations] >> thank you. >> if you don't understand that, you don't understand her and if you don't understand her, you don't understand the whole

thing. >> you have got it. early on i met him and he said what is your book about? really looking at the cabinet and nancy's role. >> it was a pyramid. he said revolving around at the top of the pyramid was the social friends. figureuld never quite out what they did, how much their influence was, if he changed his opinion because he spent a weekend with them. didn't like politics. he knew everything. after the first five minutes, we had nothing to talk about. i think he cared about

ideology. think he really cared about the nitty-gritty of abortion. >> so many of those people he wrote about never wrote checks. it was very hard to raise money for ronald reagan. how is the bookselling? >> there are 70,000 copies out there. they have printed 100. there are almost no returns so they are selling.

i think it's doing well. would like the manuscript by november but it's not going to happen that way. support yourself on these big advances unless you get millions. biographies, you have to travel. i do most of my own research. there's just so much. you have to pay for the photos. it's the same kind of focus. how their marriage, her role in all of this. it's very much like the story i did in vanity fair. a lot about her role. in 1997, we talked about a lot

of stuff. i said could we say you had any impact on policy, the area that you influence? "no, i have nothing to do with policy." "well, maybetly, the whole russian thing." >> she is right. memoirs really reveal that but no one really picks up on it. days,ing the white house nixon's speaks very rarely to rake in. -- to reagan. >> that's the kind of stuff i'm looking for. >> often nancy will pick up the phone on the other line and listen. >> i have never heard that anywhere. >> heard it from him. >> we have got to talk.

she was not a memo writer. you will see like on the back of one of her schedules for the , offered bloomfield for mrs. reagan. what were they calling her for? she just related to the wise but she sat next to the guys at dinner. >> there were a lot of misgivings.

anyway, we are giving away our secrets. great to see you. it was so nice. i truly appreciate it. >> we will catch up in new york. >> great. ♪ >> the thing so hard about nonfiction publishing, you have to pay for the photo rights. kitty kelley held me up for $3000. wanted 1500 for the hardcover edition and 1500 for the large print edition.

i knew how to refute the things she kind of made up about nancy reagan. she just gives biography and journalism a bad name. i and saying it on c-span and i don't care. >> you paid $3000 for the right to say this. [laughter] there is a pile of nancy reagan's papers about that thick of letters people wrote to her, friends. she said she printed some quotes that were nothing like what i

would have said. like 50 letters like that. it was nancy who cultivated those people. ok. can we all gather around? we all gather around? we're going to begin the evening. introducing bob, i guess i should tell you the reason i was so interested in reading this book is the subject of the reagan marriage was really ofays a long-standing source speculation. i remember being a 22-year-old aid and i made the career faux pas of every friday, marine one up mr. andd pick and they come walking up holding hands and i said to my boss, what is the deal with them? [laughter] >> this apparently was not

smart. my boss looked at me and said "there is no deal." at the time come i was single. now that i've been married, i understand of course there has to be a deal. it doesn't have to be corrupt or people but there has to be a deal of some kind and i think what's interesting about bob's book is it begins to unravel the answer to that question. i amot suggesting -- what suggesting is it's interesting what makes a partnership like this work. 20 years, it's finally good to have 500 pages of someone answering the question i was reprimanded for. is also known as the former editor of interview magazine and is a special correspondent now for vanity fair.

he is also the author of holy terror. we are very honored to have bob with us tonight to talk about the reagan partnership. thank you for coming and please come on out. [applause] mr. colacella: thank you and thank all of the people on the host committee. i was called out of the blue blend this book was published late last year. he said he was probably one of the few ronald reagan fans who was also a collector of andy warhol's work. i do go from writing a book about andy warhol to ronald reagan? great american stories, self-made men who came out of poor families and went to the top. even when they were on top, they

were not taken seriously by a lot of disestablishment. this book is very much about the reagan marriage. it begins with ronald reagan's birth in 1911, nancy's birth in 1921. thelternates chapters on two of them because i felt it was important to see where they both came from and why they were such a perfect match when they met in 1949. this is the first of two volumes. this goes up to the night ronald reagan was president. the whole project began as the vanity fair assignment in 1997 and mrs. reagan gave me access to her friends and understood i had to speak to people who were not her friends. what i heard across the board whether it was betsy bloomingdale or the wives of the kitchen cabinet members or jim

baker, ronald reagan would have never made it without nancy. no one wanted to take away from his qualities, the great communicator. hisvisionary character, moral crusade to bring down the people empire, to make sure we never had a communist or socialist form of government by trying to lower taxes and forcing the government to make more. this was a man who is much more intelligent than he was given credit for by most of the press. that idea i think has changed. he was a big picture guy. it was nancy who was the detail .erson a good friend of nancy reagan told me he met the reagan's when he was governor.

aboutd ronald worried nothing so nancy worried about everything. ronald reagan liked everybody, everyone liked him. he was elected president of every club he joined in high school and college, president of the screen actors guild. part of the reasons people made him president of these organizations is because he came across as someone who was ambitious, likable. a lot of that was good acting. ronald reagan was very ambitious, competitive from an early age in so many ways. ansi reagan said people don't realize how competitive ronnie really was. didn't like everybody. she was adjudged mental, critical. -- judge mental, medical.

had best friends and they were frequent houseguests at the apartment in chicago. friends of katherine hepburn, walter houston. mary martin, william gish -- lillian gish. they had lunch with the mayor every sunday. very grew up in a world, a sophisticated world. she knew how to cultivate people like her mother, how to make friends and keep them. her mother was always writing letters to people, nancy was always on the telephone. really, not ino a calculating or conscious way, put together what we call the

kitchen cabinet. in --onald and nancy met married in night and 52, they were to out of work actors. warner bros. ended his contact. renew hernot contract. 14 years later, they are in the governor's mansion. 14 years after that, the white house. me was how did that happen. how did one and one become 22 with this couple? nancy knew her husband loved politics. -- ronald reagan read the news allowed every morning. he came home from testifying -- this is something in the book -- he came home from testifying in

1947. he was the star witness. the washington post and the new york times both wrote editorials extolling his performance as a witness and said he was the only sense, who made talked about the constitution, how do you deal with a subversive party like the communists directed by an overseas power? he came home. he took a train five bay -- five days back to los angeles. from neck's into to the head of the ada congratulating him. he walks in, jane says "you bore he says what are

you talking about? she says "it's all over." he moved into a hotel room that night. that's how he met -- his first marriage ended. nancy, she became more interested in politics because he was interested. more interested in horseback riding because he was. he knew he found the right person but still took three years before he proposed. he determined he would not make another mistake. she knew what this man was about by the time they got married. she knew it was all over in hollywood. invited toot being dinner by any of the a-list hollywood people. there was another side of los , l aes called downtown society. nancy started making friends with those people.

that these were the people who were very powerful in the republican party in southern california. tuttle.eagan met holmes he had dinner with walter annenberg, justin dart. he never kept up with them. picture,y got into the she started making sure that -- calling them, saying thank you for dinner, writing notes, inviting them to dinner, really building a social set that became his political base. that's at the core of this book. itselfchen cabinet group , each one you could write a full-length wild or free about. these were rugged individual lists, westerners who made their own way in life. come from thedid

families that walter annenberg inherited a bankrupt empire. to ronald reagan. they believed in what he believed in, the free enterprise system, anti-communism. this is not a group of people who attach themselves to reagan because they were in that needed the government. , there's so much i could talk to you about. i will end on one note. as eric said, he wanted to know what was the deal. if you ask nancy reagan, she would say there wasn't a deal. when i first published the article that the book started out with infinity fair -- in vanity fair, i went on the today show with harry benson who photographed the reagan's for

the cover. is telling katie correct a lot about what a love story they had and how in love they were. so when katie turned to me, i said i should talk about them as a political team. i no sooner got back to my apartment from the studio when the phone rang and it was the reagan calling to say she watched me. i said how was i? she said "you were good." i said yes? she said "you know, don't make me sound like this backstage master manipulator. everything i did come i did for ronald, i did for love." i have gotten to know her really well in the last five or six years and that is true.

one of the reasons we are here today is because it was ronald reagan's birthday on sunday. he would have been 94 years old. and see reagan on his last birthday -- nancy reagan on his last birthday comes you can imagine, she still had balloons in his room with the nurses saying happy birthday. she really was in love with him. valentine's day is coming up and he always managed to write the most incredible letters on valentine's day. this is the perfect valentine's day gift. [laughter] thank you all for being here. [applause] mr. colacella: i guess it is

time for questions. >> when you get back from the 47th congressional hearing and conducting this kitchen and was told to get out. important like an point in his life. i had never heard that story. mr. colacella: it had never been told. it's only a story known to the reagan family. it's a sickly his version of events, which he never told anybody. greatow, jane was a actress. of the three of them, the best, certainly the only one on an oscar. -- one who won an oscar. she got so into her roles. she really was not the right

woman for ronald reagan. nancy reagan said jane was not interested in what ronnie was interested in and she wasn't about to become interested in what he was interested in. i think it's probably safe to say she was having a romance with her costar. unclear if that began while they were filming or afterwards but certainly one ronald reagan joked he would name johnny belinda as the correspondent in his divorce, he was tried to say something i think. he was very wounded by that breakup. this was a man raised by a mother in the church, he went with his mother visiting jails and hospitals as a young boy. he played the ukulele while she

would sing these religious songs. divorce is just not a word in his vocabulary. he was very hurt and disturbed by the fact he got a divorce and once they agreed to divorce, jane try to get him back. he was an emotional wreck. he also broke his leg in a charity baseball game. life was not going well for him for he wasn't doing the movies he wanted. that was driving was his presidency of the screen actors guild. he would spend many an evening g office. he worked all the time. when he met nancy, he really was a little other lost soul. he wrote himself that he was

drinking a lot. he was spending more money on nightclubs. being quite frank about promiscuous. he wrote he woke up one morning and couldn't remember the name of the woman next to him and thought things are getting out of control. that's one nancy davis came along and kind of saved him. he wrote that nancy davis saved him. do you know how the reagan children's relationship changed? mr. colacella: when i started the project, things were at an all-time low between nancy and the children except maureen. maureen was very elusive, like her mother, jane. they were not giving about -- marine had written her own book and didn't seem to really take

to me for some reason. i know quite well because his wife was my secretary for two years at interview magazine. that's when of the ways i got to know mrs. reagan in the early 1980's. i've spoken to and she has also written quite a few books. patty i've spoken to and she has also written quite a few books. patti came back to the full glenna was writing the book. maureen's death and illness had a lot to do with bringing the family back together. i think everyone realized no one is guaranteed tomorrow and it's time to be a little nicer to each other. [indiscernible] [laughter] [applause]

>> the book signing will be over here. mr. colacella: ok, that's great. yes. >> [indiscernible] >> hello. >> hello.

>> this is for my grandfather. >> should i say happy birthday? >> that would be great. [indiscernible conversations] >> i am trying to keep at it trouble. you are not. [laughter]

mr. colacella: late in, early april, i would like to speak to you about the reagan years. you were in the middle of them. >> i knew him pretty well. your book is good. he was a very great men and she is -- man and she is a lovely woman. it's a tremendous time to be here because there's a huge change taking place in america. i really think this is the kind of transition taking place. conrad wrote the best review ever in the telegraph. you should get him to send you that if you haven't read it. it was the best analysis of why

edmund morris went wrong. maybe it was for you. oh, ok. it was brilliant. i wrote him a letter about it. >> i will tell him you said that. >> you have been telling me for years how much great feet that yes gotten -- feedback he has gotten. mr. colacella: conrad and his wife commissioned andy. [indiscernible conversations]

mr. colacella: i don't think there is another layer to that than edward morris. he is british colonial. he especially doesn't get california and he has that attitude toward hollywood. that actors are face playing since the whole world

was fiction, you will understand it more. actors are real people who happen to be good at playing roles. it felt condescending. it is snobbish. [indiscernible conversations] she said later in life she was always a republican turn up one does lists of stars supporting fdr. she wrote a check to fdr. that's interesting. story inewed her for a palm springs.

haven't really gotten into this book yet so i didn't realize the first time she went to palm springs was on her honeymoon with ronald reagan. i asked my standard question. the firstyou remember time you came to palm springs. she looked at me like she was going to murder me right there. she said yes, i do, it was nothing special. this was her honeymoon. then we had dinner a couple times. whenever you try to steer the conversation toward reagan, she clams up. ask, why doesn't she talk? is history. point. -- sold this so old at this point.

so she didn't go to the funeral. mr. colacella: no. she is very frail for i think it was hard for her to go to the funeral. [indiscernible conversations] mr. colacella: reagan was one of the founders of the ada. aswas specifically founded the first liberal organization that did not allow communists

in. then you the communists were taking over everything. reagan was really smart. the longest chapter is the one about his conversion to liberal democrat to conservative republican in the 1940's and it his experience with these liberal organizations and i really track it to very carefully. walter isaacson said it was the first time it was put together in a way that made sense. they did believe in astrology. maybe that was their way -- >> did she do it more than him? mr. colacella: he was into it before she was. all of hollywood was. he was very religious.

she was not that religious. they both believed it was their destiny, that they were together and ronald reagan had this destiny to rescue the country, to free people in eastern europe. they don't talk about it that much but there's definitely an underlying thing. one of the games is that all of these women, whether we're talking about nancy reagan, betsy bloom dale, they were strong women who really help their husbands a lot. the men were the tycoons, great businessmen. they were real entrepreneurs. but the women used their social ,kills to push their husbands to promote their husbands and take them further than they would have gone without these wives. that is the theme of the book.

[indiscernible conversations] >> a liberal democrat that loved fdr came directly to chicago and stayed with the davises and clearly must have been telling stories. davis was perfectly capable -- on history bookshelf, here from the country's best-known american history writers of the past decade every saturday at 4:00 p.m. eastern and you can watch any of our programs at any time when you visit our website, www.c-span.org. you are watching american history tv all weekend, every weekend on c-span3. american history tv features oakland, california. the port of oak land established the firsts one of

ports and the world to specialize in container shipping, a method largely used today. recently visited sites showcasing the city's history. learn more about oakland all weekend here on american history tv. dorothea lange has made some of the most recognizable photographs in the world. the photograph of a migrant mother, the one pretty much everyone has ever seen has become a symbol of the great depression. the whole john steinbeck, woody guthrie -- it's those three artists that created the image and the mental picture we have in our minds of the great depression. one of her great sayings is that the cameras and instrument that teaches us how to see without the camera. that