bush: laura and i want to welcome you. all of us who work here are thrilled you are here.

i got mixed emotions. i am thrilled to be a part of this. but i'm disappointed you're not here to give me the pulitzer prize for the book i wrote. [laughter] good organization needs a pulitzer prize recipient on the staff. here's the bush center, we have bill mckenzie. [applause] thank you for convincing us to join you in hosting this. it is very exciting for the bush center that you are here. all the members of the pulitzer prize board as well as the representatives from 41's library and i forgot lbj's number. [laughter] as a history buff, i aim thrilled that i met and to john

and ron turn our here to be interviewed. [applause] get my book reconsidered, i thought i would share an active with you. talk to vladimir about the necessities to have a free press in order for the society to be a wholesome and vibrant society. he had just suspended the independent press. this was in slovakia. i couldn't identify during the debates. it's during the debates. during the debates. [laughter]

i said, vladimir it is very important that you have a vibrant press. he said, you are a hypocrite. you fired the famous newsman. i said what the hell you're talking about? [applause] [laughter] he said you fired the news man. are you talking about dan rather? in our society, the press is independent from the politicians. job of the press and a free society is to hold people who got power to account. you are going to need that. t to have a vibrant society. make sure you don't say that. that i fired the famous newsman.

people in our country going to think the you are ignorant. sure enough, we have the press conference. first question, moscow times. mr. president putin, the president bush talked to about a free press in russia? did you bring up the fact that i fired the famous newsman? want to thank the press for what you do. ,y relationship with the press it's a symbiotic relationship. you need me and i needed to do. i really don't miss much about washington. stimulationtual from dealing with a vibrant free press was a very important part of the job. thank you for coming and i hope you enjoy the evening. [applause] in a moment i will ask all of

the pulitzer prize winners with us tonight to stand and be recognized for their great work. i would like to recognize one winner in particular. his work has special relevance. think back to 1963. a remarkably composed photograph that crystallized a historic moment. actually, there were two remarkable photos. jackson wasob snapped a fraction of a second thelater than the one by dallas morning news photographer and as a result they captured the grimace on lee harvey on his world's face as the bullet from jack ruby's gun penetrated his gut. post,te the denver

maintainedhoto has to the commands that d andournalism always ha still does. it can tell a full story by freezing time. jackson to be bob with us here tonight. flew in from his home in colorado to be with us tonight. [applause] i would like to ask all the pulitzer prize winners who are with us here tonight to stand and be recognized for the great work. [applause]

steve benson, please remain standing. prize-winning editorial cartoonist for the arizona republic in phoenix. he is a witty and prolific spot cartoonist who will be covering these events over the next couple of days. is a graduate of richardson high school right here in north texas. [applause] please think an opportunity to introduce yourself to steve during the intermission. is my pleasure to invite the president and ceo of the george

w. bush presidential center to the podium. mr. ken hirsch. [applause] ken hirsch: thank you very much. the performance from the dallas theater center, i want to thank joel farrell. and all the great performers for that treat. also the charming and witty chair, julie hirsch. [applause] i was born at night but not last night. center is a special place. this is my first week on the job. it is a little bit humbling to present tonight is very humbling

panel. even more than the fuel to prizewinners, the absolute wonderful public servants who have helped and served this country in summary capacities. i want to thank haley barbour, the former governor of mississippi. general michael hayden the former director of the cia. leon panetta, the former secretary of defense. investor mark langdale. thank you for your service. [applause] two of surprises marked historical scenario work and recognize great contributions that help tell the past and shape the future. here's the bush center, we think about that every day. the mission of the bush center is to motivate and develop

leaders. we try to foster policy and take action. we do that around key areas like economic growth and human freedom and democracy. we understand that our job here is to use the power of this amplify to convene and and make an impact on very important issues of the day. you serve that purpose in my role is to help build connections between those communities. dallas, smu, the united states and the world. it is a fantastic task. when we study the past, the presidents have a lot to do with it. we are honored to have some of the most esteemed voices join in

selling and describing the history of what the presidency and the press are all about. said, a strongsh press is not something that we talk about only in emerging economies. it is something that is very vital to the foundation of our democracy. to have this great panel is a real pleasure. chernow is one of the most distinguished commentators on history today. in 2009 his work with lin-manuel miranda on the pulitzer prize winning broadway musical hamilton was inspired by his biography of alexander hamilton. is the gordon reed professor of legal history at

harvard law school. she won the fuel to prize in history in 2009 from having since of monticello. an american family. her forthcoming book on thomas jefferson, we'll look forward to that. jon meacham is a presidential historian and executive vice president and random house. , andrew american lion jackson at the white house, one appeal to prize in 2009. he just wrote a book on george herbert walker bush. is the director of the lbj presidential library in austin. he's an analyst for abc news on matters relating to politics in the presidency. to each of you in

attendance for making this a very special evening. please welcome our panelists. [applause] mark: is a pleasure to moderate this panel. we will start with presidential icons like washington and jefferson and lincoln. that is well trodden territory for biographies. for george washington alone, there are 900 biographies. i will ask each of you, when you are tackling a mammoth subject like a george washington or thomas jefferson earn andrew jackson, where do you start? i was misinformed.

i didn't know there were other books. i have two tests. one is, do i feel there is a place in the scholarly and popular conversation for argument about that person. it is wonderful that we are here with ron because one of the interesting things about jefferson is that he surrounded jefferson both from hamilton's and washington's perspective. our friends david mccullough had done john adams. jefferson had been more of a foil and a supporting character in the broad historiography of the last decade or so. i thought there was a place to talk about jefferson on his own terms. to make as much use

of archives as i can. see can justify a new look. nette: every generation asks new questions. thomas jefferson is the most interesting man in the world. there's only aspects of his life. we've learned so much more about him. and so at monticello forth. there was a life to be rediscovered. it has always been present but it never been looked at. there are always new things about jefferson. there were some aspects to his life. it's not just the politics. it could be music and art and all kinds of things. because of the declaration of independence, it is a continuing story in the american saga. every generation who tries to make their place in the american

nation uses the declaration. people around the world do it. is a fountain of information and questions. there was no question for me at all whether there was anything to say about them. they're different questions depending on the answers we want to have today. ron: a lot of my so-called friends kept asking me why i wanted to perpetrate number 901. u dual biography because you have new information or you can take a fresh look at a person. i had an epiphany when i was working on hamilton. he was george washington's a day camp during the war.

he had to justify this decision to quit washington's staff. justify this decision to his father-in-law, philip schuyler. he said that the great man and i have come to an open rupture. he shall for once repent of his single human. humor. that line kept reverberating in my mind. hamilton is giving me the sense that he was a volatile boss. tended to hand that very perceptive word portraits of people. even working with george washington for several years. washington is seemingly the most familiar person in our history but in some ways he was the most unfamiliar.

that was my opening wedge. worldd pry open a whole of emotions that were very .ntense and volatile he was a wee seen as a man of marble. he wasn't that at all. mark: you say to great figures in history can carry the weight of their flaws. that you arere present in a balanced view? ron: if i feel it is going to be an admiring biography i go out of my way to find every unpleasant fact about the character. that peoplefear is will say he did not mention all these things. thatd he is a great figure

he or she will be able to carry the weight of those flaws. one of the interesting things that happened with the hamilton show. said of broadway producers the protagonist of her broadway musical has to be sympathetic throughout the show. actlton in the second really loses the sympathy of the audience. he is involved in a sex scandal. he encourages his son to go off on a dual in which his son dies. there were all sorts of flaws. as i watch the audience's reaction, i found them having even more admiration for him. we had humanized him. i had the same experience. i finished the washington biography i sent a copy to jim reese, the president of mount vernon. 150 pages into this you

may think this is a very negative portrait. he was often rather crass as a young man. very money conscious and status conscious. i tried to have all of that in there. i am soe back and said glad that you were completely unsparing in this portrait of washington. the main problem they have with the million plus people who come is that he seems like a plaster saint. and perhaps boring. someone,humanized their compliments actually seem that much greater because the reader can identify with them. he has the same source of problems that they do. annette: i became interested in thomas jefferson when i was in the third grade.

in texas. [applause] if you really care about the person, there is no reason to write something that is not real or not realistic. if you care about the individual and you think that individual's life says something to audience as worth spending your time no point int this doing an unrealistic picture. you want everything there. you want to take the measure of the person. you gloss't mean that over anything. you try to see the world through that person's perspective and bring that perspective to your readers. it,ou are serious about that is the thing that is motivated me to write about jefferson.

you have to have warts and all. as a jackson biographer i don't have this problem. [laughter] my guy has had a tough couple of months. annette: the tough couple of decades. my guide is even have the 20 no ability more. he is the link from the founding to lincoln. he was the only president who who has an era named for him. for better or worse.

just because you are the most honored person in the world. .sys and escorted read it dined alone has there been such a gathering. embodied some of our instincts and our worst. if you don't deal with jackson, you can't deal with antebellum america. he made been on the extreme edge of the mainstream on the two central sins of american life, slavery and native american removal. but he was within the mainstream. that may be uncomfortable to talk about but it is true. anddy ever went back re-open to the question of native american removal.

congress never revisited that. he put down john c calhoun to keep the union together. he gave the union 30 more years to form those mystic chords of memory. if you don't deal with jackson, you can't deal with the american soul in its light and dark elements. we learned more from the past if we look at in the eye that if we look out at it adoringly or down on it condescendingly. said with awain small part of a person's life is his acts and his words. when you are tackling a biographical subject, you have about theirrences

mindset and their motivations. how does one responsibly introduce psychology into biography? annette: i think it is necessary. biographer form brodie who got into trouble writing about thomas jefferson and calling it a psychohistory. the book most blessed of the patriarchs is out now. what my co-author and i tried to do is to be responsible in reading jefferson's words and looking at his actions and making inferences about that. you can look at the patterns you discern. you hope you see what the person was attempting to do in the world. i don't think it's possible to present a picture of a subject without trying to get into their mind. that is what all biographers do.

whether they are doing psychology or not they are psychoanalyzing. jon: ralph waldo emerson said there is no history only biography. if you don't practice psychiatry without a license, you should find another line of work. ron: there has to be psychological understanding. what is very important in general is not to introduce anachronism. biographyut the is that it casts a spell, it transports you into the past. to introduce modern psychological jargon has a way of breaking that spell.

the present suddenly invades the past. is that if the word did not exist as of phenomenon it describes also may not. aboutd freud wrote hysteria. i don't want to write about that for the 18th-century but the phenomenon was foreign. maybe it wasn't even happening in freud's vienna. to use psychological insight but without the whole paraphernalia of modern psychology. if i suddenly start saying the

george washington had an edit oedipus complex, you have to find a way to analyze the character that is true to the. . people were not introspective in the way that they are today. starting perhaps in the mid-19th century. people were not analyzing their own psyches. john adams did. george washington and alexander hamilton were so extraordinarily bright and they never seemed to determine that searchlight of their intelligence on themselves. themselveseveal i could give one

small example with george washington. noticed he had this poker face. it was very difficult to read his emotions. i found myself wondering was this accidental or deliberate. term, as heecond was approaching the end, the said, iinvesto ambassador can see the happiness on your face. washington said my face never reveals my emotions. he directed someone for suggesting that it could reveal his emotions. different because we all pride ourselves now i'm showing emotion. in the 18th century, we would consider silence if you had a troubled childhood. we see that as a lack of mental health.

in the 18th century that was a strength. you are not constantly stewing about what your mother did to you. jon: i have a theory i have never been able to prove -- which is the best kind. -- only in this talk psychological detail, but the narrative details. you can see a shift from the founding to the jackson era into the lincoln era where suddenly, people start narrating scenes. the distinction between the jefferson air at in doing this and the jackson era is quite fascinating. it is partly attributable to the rise of the novel. people were reading novels and seeing themselves there. annette: women began to keep diaries in ways they had not before.

for the female side of it, storytelling. i started doing washington, we probably have at least 1000 descriptions, firsthand descriptions of washington left by different people. frustrating because some would say -- i had dinner with the general last night. i have never felt such veneration in the presence of a man. with a biographer, you are looking for details. that would make the person come alive. you can see this if you read alexander pope. as part of english literature. the language by our standards is very abstract. as the 19th century goes on, not only is there more psychological awareness but there is more sensory detail, descriptive detail.

i have gone from writing hamilton and washington and now i am doing grant and i feel a guy have died and gone to heaven because when people describe grant, they describe the way he looked, the way he moved, the way he sounded. to writingt compared washington and hamilton, with invokei will be able to this personality that would have been almost impossible with an 18th century physical. the reminiscences are so much more colorful and detaed and anecdotal. you mentioned john adams -- he mind.ve a novelist's -- others were very washington and hamilton and

jefferson and madison, were very controlled. annette: it is wonderful that jefferson had grandchildren. from the 19th century. -- there arello the family letters project. they are collecting a lot of letters from his grandchildren. many of the things that happened in the 1790's or when he was in france or elsewhere, you get descriptions of him that are from his grandchildren. there was an episode when his manservant becomes ill and he is frantic. he writes a letter to his daughter saying that we almost lost him but he is fine. -- hisranddaughters granddaughters right to their mother about how he was pacing, frantic, waiting for the doctor. what if you had just read

jefferson's letter, you would think this was a non-episode but when you read the granddaughters letter to their mom, they depict a man who is almost undone. everything is under statement from him. that was the goal, the presentation. -- mark: she was talking about how she selects the subjects that she takes on. she says -- i think about the person i want to live with for the next seven years. particularly, when you are looking back in time, you have to immerse yourself in their time. it is -- is it important that you like the subject that you are tackling or that you at least relate to the subject? i think so.

i would not want to spend seven or eight years with someone that i disliked, despite several relationships i have had in the last few years. [laughter] there are biographers, particularly multivolume biographers, who have an advantage in the multivolume world where you can disapprove, but then redeem the care and. i will not mention who that is but you work closely with them. [laughter] just to pick an example at random. trying toot think -- be honest. what i find, is i have a good check towards -- gut check towards the end of each project where i ask -- is this as true as i can make it?

oral obligation, not to get to the weight of it, but a moral obligation to say -- despite what critics may say, do i believe this? and -- i just went through this with president bush senior who i believe honestly, most political figures are kind of 60-40 light versus dark. it is the nature of the game. george h w isieve 80-20. that is my view. years, inking about doing the book, six years of interviewing reviewing a diary that he kept. he was not perfect. he will admit that. but taken all in all, there was more light than dark.

significantly more like then dark. that was as true as i could make it. sometimes, if you are writing with the critic on your the way, that is madness lies. i really do think that. about are always worried what the worst that's what the toughest critic is going to say, i don't know how you finish. annette: what are the impulses for doing this? there are people in the family that you will like more than others. at some point, there are things they are doing or not doing that you could get exasperated with but i had a great amount of sympathy for the family, the totality of the family and the circumstances they were in. been a big- this has part of my life. looking at jefferson.

atding about it and slavery monticello and his life as a political figure. i like him very much as a subject. i don't think he was a malicious person. i think he was a very interesting person. and a life worth studying. impetus of doing tired ofwe have gotten reading about jefferson. him how much better i am then he is and he doesn't understand. the book is really about what jefferson thought he was doing in the world, and not what we thought he should be doing in the world. if it is ahat -- running catalog of -- i know this and you do not. what did you think you were doing?

there was a person injecting himself on the public stage and had the confidence or arrogance to think he could be a leader. and had some conflicts about that. and didn't like controversy. didn't like conflict but nevertheless, entered a very confrontational and conflict ridden profession. what was this about? who was this person? if you keep that in mind instead that you will wreak havoc on this person because you think you are better than he or she is then that is a problem. i did do a tiny biography of andrew johnson. i did not like him. [laughter] schlesingerhur do theasked me to american president series. a short thing. i thought i could venture into that but i did not like him. i would not want to spend seven

minutes with him let alone seven years. jon: good thing it was a short book. ron: a short presidency. annette: he was a pivotal president though. you have to step back from the like or dislike and think about why every american should know about him. era of this was an missed opportunities. a lot of things we are dealing with now, we may not be dealing with if he had been a different man. -- itnot about your bff is who and how did they affect the progress of the american nation. there is no question that he did. he wasn't worried about being a pleasant person or not. spent more time thinking about who will be the subject of the book than any other

question. to writingspeak students about this, i always say that writing a biography is a lot like marriage. to pick the right person, and nothing can go wrong. if you picked the wrong person, nothing can go right. you are trapped with this person for many years. [laughter] writes a biography, and this often happens, you run the risk of it being a valentine which is not good. also, someone might write a viscount -- a biography because they want to get someone and you can and up with an ugly tone. one should start out with the will be an that this favorable book. it is unfair to start out with the presumption that this will a hostile portrait of the person.

the single most frequently asked , and in why readers is can do grant -- do you like grant? i can honestly say that i am not thinking day after day whether i would like to have a beer with grant. that would've been an interesting experience and it would have told me a lot. [laughter] be for me, i always love to -- to have portraits of the old masters. when i look at a portrait by rembrandt of a king or a queen -- they were not inking -- do i like this person? they were trying to capture the person as vividly as they can and try to bring that person to life. would haveer

feelings evoke in them. the same thing in real life, we do not have one view of a friend or a family member, we have many different views. the portrait of a presidential biography is similar. complicated. annette: may i ask a question? in a sense different -- i wrote a biography of johnson as i said as a one off but i am not interested in writing about anyone else other than jefferson or monticello related things. what is it like writing about wildly different people in different eras? i am fairly sure i will never write a biography about anyone

else that is not related to jefferson or hemmings. you guys play around. [laughter] you are promiscuous biographers. jon: i protest. it is fun. monogamy is great. [laughter] is this taped? [laughter] me, it is what is fascinating. what draws me to subjects is their complexity. i am not trying to write books statues --ill build it is so they will bring them down. think that to me, the

perennial human drama is -- the people i write about our flawed powerbeings that sought over the lives of others. what drove them to seek that power and how did they wield it and to what affect? ron: it is an excellent question. the most difficult aspect of jumping around -- it is fun to jump around to different time frames than just different personalities. i am now doing grant so i have had to master the mexican war, civil war, and reconstruction. the literature is so vast, i feel like i am out on the north atlantic on a stormy day in a tiny robo. that is the difficulty. you are re-creating the knowledge from the ground up.

indescribably difficult. what it is fun. you are in away new country and your senses come alive. in a way, suddenly being in a new timeframe with new characters, you are very responsive. i think if i spent my entire buter not just with grant with sherman, sheridan, abraham lincoln, and all of these different characters, i think my reactions would not be as strong as they are. not because i was unfamiliar with these people before but i anlearning about them at entirely different level writing a biography about grant. some people will say -- how many years are you spending? find that asay -- i lot of my best insights into the character come in the first year or so.

and then there is a certain familiarity that comes into play and so there is a point of diminishing returns. the longest i have spent was on washington. six years. you do reach this point of diminishing returns. is that because you are in and exploratory phase and you are open to new interpretations about it -- about the individual? like meeting a new friend. you have a strong reaction. samuel beckett said habit is the great dead iener. you get fresh insights about jefferson. but i do not know that i could do that -- it is something to think about. playing the field has its advantages. mark: you played the field --

jon: i think we should drop the metaphor. mark: roosevelt, jackson, jefferson -- you have covered presidents that have passed through the ages. and your biography of president bush. figuree covered a living but one who is very much alive. not just alive but someone we have come to know. n briefly onh jo newsweek and he had a bust of bush in his office. and then you came to know him as you dig your biography. what are your challenges of doing a portrait of a living person? jon: distance. the kind of critical distance we are talking about. ,o me, the most fascinating overall lesson of doing it was i

wondered how much i missed in books that i have written where i have not known the person because i have never had dinner with thomas jefferson or andrew jackson. having had dinner with george bush, i would try to write what he was like as a literary matter and i would know what i was missing. barthat raised the literary rather higher than i would have expected. if he -- it seems to me, if you spend time with someone, you are able to judge what you have written and your conclusions by different -- by a different standard than what you have gotten out of the papers or the archives. and so, to me that was a surprise. i expected it to be somewhat easier frankly as a literary matter. go have lunch. write it down. it turns out that is pretty hard. -- if you're at

literary skills are not firing on all pistons at that particular moment, you are not capturing what he was really like. he was a particular challenge. he is a man i believe who became president of the united states because of a quiet, persistent not ama but charisma is word often associated with the 41st president. and so trying to explain how through a very unconventional path, came to hold ultimate authority in a nuclear age was tricky. the other tricky thing is he is so encrusted with all of the images aboutral him. sometimes, it was like writing a biography of dana carvey. [laughter] i asked dana how he did that

impression and he said it was mr. rogers trying to be john wayne. [laughter] absolutely hilarious. past that, to get past the supermarket scanner and the wimp factor. i was out talking for a couple of months and it is interesting that people are at once very may inic -- we have if i 25 years moved from a republican president who could not talk about himself to -- [laughter] it is like what henry adams said about the movement from washington to grant, it disapproved darwin. it andhave lived through they think they know what they think about him. so i had to fight against that

and make a historical case for him. the line between journalism and history. it took that long i think to get a view of him which i happen to think is the truest view that i can write. he is an underestimated enormous who had political faults, failed in the fundamental political test of a presidency which is being reelected. but i do believe that he did a lot of things wrong on the way to power but once he had power, he did the right thing at his own political cost. he opposed the 1964 civil rights act when he ran for the senate in 1964 but in 1968 he voted for open housing. he runs a not particularly gentle campaign in 1988 but he became the last great compromise

lips."nt and "read my for which he paid a norm asleep. we are still living with the impact of that split within the republican party at that time. mark: is it more difficult to critically assess someone you know, someone whose family you know and someone who you can call a friend? jon: absolutely. view, you call them as you see them. he made that possible in many ways. -- this appreciate this does not happen very often. i cannot think of another presidential family that would hand over the presidential diary, the vice presidential diary, and mrs. bush's diary. she kept a diary from 1948 forward.

is he gone? are being taped. just so you know. jon: i know he will not walk in so it is ok. [laughter] when president bush 43 found out his mother had given me her diary, he said --she gave you what? that is not good for me. [laughter] it was totally fine. there was a great deal of trust and i tried to be worthy of it. ranlied i think about i contra. i think his fundamental political failure was that he what you saybout on the campaign trail and what you do in governance. that was a mistake. in china up a line

about firing the empty canons of rhetoric. he was like the admiral in mary poppins. he did not expect it to carry over. that the tank with him for -- am i in the tank with him for that? i don't think so. annette: with the hemmings, you have descendents of the family. many of whom i am friendly with and so forth but you really do have to call it as you see it and families have their understandings about their family motivations. historian, you really do have to keep your distance in that way and call it as you see it. mark: you have the luminous letters -- voluminous letters from thomas jefferson's that

give you a glimpse into his mind. you have no letters from sally hemming. where do you start? annette: we have letters from her brothers. we have the memory of her son. -- when you are piecing together the life of someone who did not write anything, you have to work around it. you have to be transparent with the audience. withng as you are clear your readers about what you have and what you do not have, people, along with you but you cannot make stuff up. it is much harder. it was easier to write about the hemmings of monticello then about sally hemming. you could actually create a portrait of the family but not regarding the individual. jon: and the power of annette's possibly ups --

sources she still achieved so much. annette: you try to evoke the time frame as much as you camp there are some things that we know about her but no letters which are the lifeblood of history. if you remember, the call that letters are not always correct. if you think you have this informationmount of about jefferson, he is still mysterious. there is still a job to be done with interpretation. it is still much better to have it than not. ron: it is a real problem. words.s a tyranny of when you are writing a history, you tend to follow the paper trail.

particularly, for me the greatest frustration in writing about the 18th century -- in the 19th century, if there are holes in the story, you can fill them. that in the 18th century, there are black holes. i think of hamilton's boyhood or even washington's boyhood. george washington's father died when he was 11 and there is exactly one sentence devoted to his papers to his father. first oneon, the third of his life is played out in the caribbean where there is scarcely a paper trail. there is a temptation to do less about those places because as you found with sally hemmings, the paper trail is so thin. but then it becomes especially

incumbent on you to use whatever sources you have to build the context and the circle ansys for what happened. so it is a little bit of smoke and mirrors because you are doing a particular timeframe in a person's life. but otherwise, you get a situation where particularly, and this is a big problem with hitsdential biography that all of us, as soon as you hit the presidency, you get the mother lode of paperwork. mark was telling me before, how many documents there were in the lbj library, how many pieces of paper? and he said 45 million. with georgeack washington, in the most recent --, you get some sense of how abundant it -- of how abundantly

documented the presidency is. they have now published 70 .olumes now, doing grant. there are a quarter of a million documents. with 100 35,000 with washington, i feel like i am swimming in washington but i really do not know what i would do if i had the resources of a modern presidential library. bob.friends with when he was working as a newspaper reporter in the early , and editor told him to turn the next page. he has been turning the next page for 40 years and it is never ending. i think that is a real problem.

we have done such an extraordinary job of preserving these presidencies that we threaten to overwhelm rather futurespire all biographers. it becomes more difficult to make sense of it. i think what has happened, because in the earlier years, when you had gigantic editions of papers that could be anywhere to 90 volumes -- and then with the modern biographies, you get millions or tens of millions of documents. i think what has happened is that it has had a reverse affect. the biographers become less ambitious. to do an old-fashioned cradle-to-grave biography, he will look at the already 70 volumes of george washington. authoritative review

of washington. it is a problem that we have not resolved. may i ask you a question even though you are the moderator? what should biographers do when there is such an immensity of material and well classified material available? the challenges you have with the modern presidency is the freedom of information act where people can file request. after reagan, to have libraries processing records reactively. it is difficult sometimes to get the material you really want as a biographer. sometimes, that is not a problem. i am at the johnson library. you have so many aspects of that presidency that are still germane today. researchersently

delve into papers relating to civil rights or education and most of those are available but johnson is so hard to put your arms around because his legacy is so vast. more and more specialization of johnson with the exception of devotedrapher who has more of his life writing about johnson then johnson spent living it. [laughter] people ought to do a moment in the life or a theme or an episode. and that is fine because the resources are tremendous but there is also something about seeing an entire life between two covers in terms of rendering an assessment about a person that is kind of lovely to read

if not to write. jon: i would also argue that current events may suggest that history may have a great deal to say to us about how to move forward. least as a gps, at diagnostic guide. i would argue that the enterprise itself has rarely been more important. questions in take just a moment so if you would start queuing up at the microphones. the phenomenal success of hamilton, has it made you approach biography any differently? writing in rhymed couplet. -- couplets. perform justto once the opening number and for some reason, he has not taken me up on that. tonight was my chance. the pulitzer team could have

asked me to do that. jon: there is still time. ron: it has been very interesting working with lin. ,hen i started to work with him he came to my house a few months after i met him. he sat down on my living room couch and he started snapping his fingers. in the middle of a forgotten spot of the caribbean. and he did the whole first song. it changed my image and changed my life. [laughter] but when he finished singing the song, he said to me --what do you think? 20 have condensed the first pages of my book accurately in a two-minute song. but i was thinking that i either should write tighter or longer.

but it has been interesting because his powers of compression are absolutely fantastic. there is an epilogue in the show which is similar to my epilogue in the book where you jump forward in time and you have allies that as a widow. lin did not do that until the scenend -- he wrote that and i wondered how he had fast -- how he had moved fast forward. and sheurt coming out has a beautiful couplet. her come out and she has a beautiful couplet. attitudeishes her about the passage of time. i learned a lot by watching him. an uncanny ability to pluck the essence of a character or a relationship or a situation. sometimes, when i am writing, i

think -- what would lin pull out of this? it was a very useful exercise to work with someone who is a master of distillation in that way. mark: one final question. a quick question for each of you. carveve someone ready to another portrait on mount rushmore. who should it be? annette. mark: it means, you will have to leave monticello. annette: that is a tough one. i don't know about carving people on mount rushmore. jon: good point. annette: i would put fdr and eleanor. jon: a two-fer.

annette: that makes sense. jackson? about ron: i am tempted to say grant. prepublication of the book, that will seem like a big stretch for most people in the audience. but i must say this -- americans, possibly the most single written about timeframe in history is the civil war. shockinglyns are ignorant of reconstruction and what happened during reconstruction and you cannot understand the civil war without understanding the years of reconstruction. you cannot understand modern american politics without understanding what happened with reconstruction. figureas the figure, the , after lincoln died, who

worlds --those two the civil war and reconstruction. i remember when i started the book. -- betweend said abraham lincoln and lyndon johnson, the most important figure in the african-american community was grant. as i have been doing the research, that has been -- that insight has been overwhelmingly vindicated. ok.: >> it seems like presidential biographies are so much more important than other americans. the people on mount rushmore and thosewell covered on our money, franklin roosevelt and interjected. as you think about your next book, and ron, you have thought about grant -- is there a

pull a harry or an or david mcculloch coolidge and try to elevate them and become their advocate to give them more significance and prove there are all kinds of reasons why they belong of their? is there that temptation? mark: talk about your next book. jon: there is a temptation to find if there is someone in the conversation that is not there that should be is the way i would put it. it is not my job -- i don't think it is part of my task to get people on rushmore or get them memorialized. if i write about you, you tend to get thrown off the currency. [laughter] it may not be good news that i am writing about them. pretty close to deciding to write about dolly and james madison. ist of it is that madison

one of the most important americans of the early republic who honestly -- i still have a hard time imagining what it would be like to sit down and have dinner with him. purposes of biography is to bring a life back into being. mrs. madison helps enormously there but -- because you can imagine that. to me, it is an interesting mountain to climb because he had to, i believe this coming even in the democratic politics of to early republic, you had be able to impress your personality on and of people in a significant enough way, that james madison had to do that. and to be a two-term president, to have been secretary of state, to have been such a critical figure at the constitutional convention, if you read condensed -- contemporary

descriptions of someone like madison, you do not come away thinking -- that is the guy i want to go fishing with. but i think part of the mission if i do this is going to be figuring out what was it about him -- this is true in the bush look, what was it about him that put him in ultimate authority. and then what did he do with it. someone do want to find -- i think i am not being presumptuous, grant has not had -- lincoln and fdr had a lot of folks and kennedy. so that is part of my thinking. less to figure out a way to celebrate them. but i do believe in recovering them. you put it so well. mark: yes?

the george washington book. i know how much research you did on that. i was reading henry cap at large biography -- cabot lodge biography about washington. and how he was honored in france and england. was that true? -- george interesting washington has really had a tremendous worldwide reputation. , it was interesting to me that when the book was published in england, i did not know what the reception was. expressed the reviews extraordinary admiration that to theve for washington

fact that they had terribly mismanaged the relationship. washington was a raging anglophile with a coveted commission in the regular army. easily beene so co-opted in the global military machine that the british had and they did not. ,nd i think george washington like abraham lincoln, is a figure that has become kind of universal. i think that is true. you guys write biographies for presidents. the presidents themselves sometimes right there own autobiography. these days, the presidential candidates tend to write their own biographies. my question is -- how would you -- are your work to the [laughter]

let me say one thing, at least on the candidates looks, we are pretty sure that they have not written them and we are not even sure that they have read them in some cases. [laughter] when i started working on grant, grant published very famous memoirs. after i of months started writing, i ran into someone on the street who asked me -- how do you write a great biography about someone who has written a great autobiography the question stopped me dead in the -- in my tracks. there are some small omissions in his memoirs for example, there is no mention of his two-term presidency. small things like that were omitted. [laughter] it is good to go back to his memoirs and breathe them differently because i realized

that what my job was as a biographer was to talk about everything he did not want to talk about. at one1850's, he failed business venture after another to the point that he was reduced to selling firewood on the street corners of st. louis. yourkind of miserable for timeframe of his life is skipped over in his memoirs in two sentences. it was useful to go back and realize that when people write their own memoirs, no matter how candid they appear to be, they kind of cover over the failure and misery and emphasizing what they want history to remember them for. that is quite different from the job of a presumably more objective viagra for studying their life. started aefferson

biography and ends it when he returns from france and then he says he is lord talking about himself. it was strictly a statement about his public life. he did not think people should talk about their private life. someone asked him to give the names of his grandchildren. and he thought they would be bored about that. aboutnt to tell the story what people did not want to say. we don't see ourselves -- our vision of ourselves is not the only thing. the terse rendition of the story of beryl. we don't see ourselves in the same light as the people around us. that is what biographers bring to the mix -- everything. about out of time. we have heard about ron's next

book about grant, and jon's next book about the madisons. what is your next project? i am going back to the having family and working on another volume of that and then i will do a two volume biography of jefferson. he says three. jon: it will be three. mark: we look forward to those. i want to thank you all for being here tonight. thank you so much. [applause] well done, as always. annette: thank you. annette.l done, nicely done. [applause] thank you very much. >>