tell me about ann brinkley your mother.

oh, my mom meant everything to me and she died a few years back of a massive heart attack and she'd always tell me she kind of was old school chuckle souvakian her mother came from you know, it was we were slovakia and goblets on my mother's side and she would always say you're gonna miss me when i'm dead. you're gonna miss me when i'm dead and i kind of like a lot of kids like yeah. okay mom. okay, and boy if i mister it's just like a whole in my life because she was a real believer in education. she grew up very poor and perth amboy, new jersey, i mean dirt poor and she worked at a howard johnson's waiting tables and got money to then go to clarion's teachers college, which is today clarion state college and pennsylvania and western. sylvania and she wanted she'd gotten in a carnegie but didn't have the money to go. but anyway, she became a teacher

and she was deeply driven person and kind of had an immigrant's view of love of america and that her kids were going to go anywhere. so my whole life growing up was my mom telling me you couldn't be president someday. you can go eat with the queen of england, you know, so she was always pushing manners and politeness, but she taught british literature and american literature, but her great love was shakespeare and so i became anti-shakespeare because my mom was like forcing, you know these midwest shakespeare revival plays down and i'd have to go sit and watch him. amid summer nights dream or you know merchant in venice or whatever and so you know, she got me reading books books books and always wanted us to communicate. well my are one awards for the state of ohio for original composition and oratory. she always made me speak clearly

and properly my sister leslie my only sibling works for kgo tv and abc san francisco. she did anchor work and now she's sort of their main roving correspondent out there. so both of us got into communications realm in some ways because of my mom. i didn't realize that brian that it made a difference until i met other history professors who don't like talk talking or have a hard time before classroom. i just can't wait to get in front of the classroom and story tell because i just, you know, it's just part of my innate personality, but i recognize my mom is the one who instilled in me that ability to talk in front of people. how did she get to be the teacher of the year? oh my mom taught at perrysburg high school. i was born in atlanta on december 14 1960. and since i remember, my mom was

a teacher she taught in schools in atlanta, then we moved up to perrysburg, ohio and she was in our little town of perrysburg on the maumee river the head of the english department and she was a great teacher now i hear now from all of her students. they write me they call me. i'm in touch with all of them some students didn't like her she was tough. but if you worked hard it was the most rewarding class because she put everything into it and and i guess i i'm kind of followed in her footsteps in a way. i didn't think of it at the time because i was going to do a doctorate in history and be a professor, but i still get the most entered our most energized when i'm able to teach in front of a group of students or convey what i know about american history to people but she's a great they loved her in the town of perrysburg. your sister was born in 1958 you in 1960. did you get along with her?

very close to my sister leslie where we are kind of inseparable. i talked to her maybe four times a week. she as i said lives in the bay area she had two children alexa and brielle and they both went to ucla and then alexa my niece just graduated from stanford law school, and she's doing incredibly well and brielle went to new york city and she's doing very well with the tech company and they're just the nicest girl. so i'm proud that my sister and jeff her husband were able to raise two great kids, and we're very close. we trying to do a summer vacation with my sister every year. usually lake tahoe we go, but sometimes it'll be elsewhere this summer. we're gonna meet in the north dakota badlands, but we we make sure we stay in touching when my mom died they were living in laguna, niguel, california, and

now my father's an assisted living a place called byron park in walnut creek, california. my sister's a mile away. so she's quite saintly in the in the way. she's caretaking my father. i feel a little delinquent. i'm living in austin, texas. i don't see him that often but my sisters the kind of person that if i've ever had an illness or was forlorn she would do anything. she's just a really good person. so what's the difference between your mom and dad? my dad's old stock american. brinkley name that i have is from the french and indian wars. i mean where they lived in pennsylvania they moved to western, pennsylvania. he also went to clarion where he met my mother at the university, but they have a lot of military background when i looked at my family chart, you know, you could see involvement and the american revolution and war of

1812 and civil war and quite dramatic fashions. my mother's brother died in world war two at guam. he was a marine killed by a sniper and that had a big influence on my mom. his name was john and i subsequently named one of my children john or we call him johnny, but the the you know, the the so the brinkley's an old style american original sort of american family and he fell in love with my mom and goblets who was a newcomer generation from what is today's slovakia, but what used to be chuckle slovakia? what would we have seen if we saw you in the classroom and high school? class clown goofing around i always had to be funny. you know that one my rebellion against my mom was i discovered comedians like lenny bruce and red fox and george carlin and you know, i'd get those albums

and listen to them and my mother were sort of banned by my mom that made it them all the more this sort of contraband comedy that i would listen to i always felt being funny, you know having a good time. it was a big priority with that said, i just loved history since i was a child i collected postage stamps and had quite a collection. i collected then plates and those snow globes and statues of everywhere in america. i would raid souvenir shops to get the collectibles to see all of america and i never was bored visiting a historic house or battlefield or museum that had to do it the american history. it just was part of my mom and dad teaching me that but my sister we didn't take to it. she liked other things and i just got very fascinated in it. so i started reading on my own biographies and american history

one after the other and so i did well in school, but i goofed off, you know a fair amount i by the time you know, i start i graduated from high school. i was 17 and i went to the ohio state university at 17. that's pretty young. you're just getting to know who you are, but point i had read all sorts of novels of history and so english in history classes are always easy for me in math almost impossible for me. i don't know that i can ever remember you talking about this not fair to you because i'm sure you have this the history of the state of ohio. and the eight presidents that touched that state. and the tasks and rather for behaves and warren harding and mckinley and all these people if you ever spending time on it. i want to write a book about ohio history if god willing and i can but for me i so i got into

going to all those places and i have photographs at them. i recently we found during covid doing a little cleaning some photo albums of some of those ohio places with me as a boy, perrysburg, ohio where i grew up on the mom me that is where william henry harrison found out that he was president. he was there in my town and it's has fort meigs there, which is this amazing battle, you know in fort during the war of 1812 and that's why william henry harrison used to be stationed in perrysburg. well, that was a big deal for me. i became even though he was only president for a month. i knew everything about william henry harrison because we would play perrysburg. we play like an anthony wayne high school and you know the william henry harrison and you know, it was the names all over that part of ohio were from the war of 1812. i particularly liked. i know i've mentioned this too

before william or oliver hazard perry and perrysburg was named after perry and what he's an amazing story because of the battle of lake erie and his ability to build a homebrew american armada in erie pennsylvania build ships that the british didn't know he had and then perry hid them in the around putin bay in the lake erie islands chain, and and so the british came just by and they they got attacked from the island chain and perry became a big hero at that wasn't for winning of the battle of lake erie. we may be a very different country today theodore roosevelt looked up to oliver hazard perry a lot he is it as a genuine almost a demagogue at the naval academy in annapolis or the work, you know war college of credible figure of the war of 1812 president wise down the road for me.

brian was rather for b hayes and we would take field trips down a little country road and we'd be at at haces incredible home and it's interesting that he had his papers there too. so there was a reading room with actual original documents of haze there. they weren't shipped off to the library of congress or national archives. and so that whole experience i couldn't believe right there was the president of the united states was just down the road from me gerald ford was a from michigan in the first politician of stature i ever met was my mom took me to meet gerald ford who was speaking in bowling green and i got a photo with him and got him to aut a book for me like a little autograph book i had and then we would go visit all these other places. i had been to ulysses grants, you know birthplace. i've been to william mckinley's

tomb, you know, i would go to warren harding's house. you know, we would do things like that and most of us were run by the state of ohio not national park sites, but i was amazed and proud that so many presidents we call ohio the mother of all presidents and we'd be in a competition with virginia of who it produced the most and it's just the way you want to do them math because william henry here, so it's actually born in virginia but lived, you know, you know, indiana, ohio so he gets he came to the presidency from ohio. so if you want to count them, then you know, we have these seven presidents. why did you pickle her state? it was a inexpensive we didn't have a lot of money. we were we were fine a middle-class family, but my dad doing my dad was still working

for own solenoy a glass company and my sister got into notre dame and that just not too far in indiana. i applied to other schools that i got in but in the end, ohio state was the state school where i lived and you didn't have to pay that much. i i think the big attraction was i went down there with four of my high school buddies. so we roomed dorm together. so i was in a set of having to suddenly meet new people as with my high school friends through my four years. i know how state and retrospect that may not have been the the way to go. i'm trying to now that i have kids in my own. i'm trying to get them stop being so peer-driven but back you know, my friend scott. o' island birch kobe, you know, we we all we wanted to live together dorm together and we did and we had a great time in ohio state but the big thing that changed me there wasn't the classes it was i started going

to use book sales church sales used bookstores why i just loved reading i would get i'm not kidding a box load of paper. i couldn't believe you can get you know the autobiography of malcolm x for a quarter or you know graham green novel for 10 cents. and so, you know, you grab a box of these and i would you know, it was like a collection a little bit like stamps. i started collecting books there and then i delivered pizzas through college for a place called mario's the biggest trauma of that is mario's started getting delivering its pizzas to a wider range including a neighborhood that was crime ridden and one evening. i went. i was walking in delivering the pizza and there was just nobody there in this hallway and a strange place and suddenly a guy came out with the gun and took my money belt and took the my pizza. that's that all these pizzas

that i was delivering and disappeared and you know, it's scary. i was you know young i went back to see old man mario had his pizza place and he really was there and he couldn't have been nicer. he was like you did the right thing. i feel bad that i gave up the money like i was like he you know, he fed me a bowl of pasta and you take the night off and all of that and then we would get to see in columbus a lot of shows. i i got interested in the blues music early and i got to go to see sit as close as i am to you to people like muddy waters, you know bo diddly plant performing it just tiny little places in columbus where nobody was there. i mean, just said it'd be like a coffee clatch with these blues grates right in front of you and that always that had a lot of meaning to me, but then also i remember at ohio state i was excited to see little richard

and and i would go so i saw him at play at the columbus zoo. and it was raining kind of misty rain and nobody showed up to see little richard now. i thought he was like god like little richard's in town boy. that's a big event. and this is now the late 70s and they're just weren't the crowds they're form. so i started working also at a place called singing dog records. used records and the guy there that ran it was named moose. and moose was really into reggae music kind of rastafarian and also punk music but he was self-trained and encyclopedic on any kind of album. you know, he'd look to make sure there weren't scratches and you know, you'd get trained how to buy people's record collections that they wanted to sell for money. so i did that and i learned a lot of great artists because then you got to be like the dj up today, you know in the little little record store i could pick whatever record i wanted if i

wanted to play ornette coleman and jazz i could put it on, you know, if i wanted to play a old neil young album, i could put it on and i kind of could control the mood of the establishment to me. that was a great job a coffee plan the music i like and so i learned a lot about popular music in in that job, so i was not only taking classes by his working all the time, which i did when i was in high school. i used to work at a holiday inn work work was my motor. love working. did you need the money? i did i went to live been able to live without it. my parents helped me pay tuition, but everything else my when i moved out to an apartment my car insurance, you know, eating out money. i all had to earn it. so i worked these these jobs you remember what your tuition was at. i was like $2,000 a year. i mean, it was very inexpensive back then so when you think back at ohio state or for that matter

that high school who were the teachers? especially in history that made an impact on you. at ohio state there was a labor historian named warren van tyne. who had written a biography of john lewis the minor the the miners union john l lewis john l lewis and in he wrote quite a bit, and he was really interesting his labor history class because he liked a paper i did and he worked with me to get it published. i had to published on the brotherhood of carpenters and joiners of, ohio. um, and i went into the original union papers of the carpenters and joiners union and it got published as an undergraduate in a journal and that was like a big deal to me because you know, i was first time i had a byline first time i had an article and actually helped me get a

fellowship to go money to go to georgetown because the priest there was running the department was impressed. they even though i maybe had not such great. states and math and science that i was getting a's in history and got an article published in a respectable journal and that was warren van tyne who pushed me in that direction? warren i've been in touch with the course since over the years he was quiet. he didn't have a he was but he would do little things that impressed me like he would invite you or some students for dinner at his house. i know you do that today, but we would go to his house and eat and continue talking about what was going on in class. i thought he was kind of a smart hip cool guy. yeah, it was young. yes at the time and had a little bit of longer hair. and and so i thought he was like cutting edge explaining to me what i didn't know about the

union movement soon. he talking about the knights of columbus and terrence powderly or the industrial workers of the world and wild bill haywood. other jones and you know, all these like characters out of the union world that i learned about the first time out of your college history courses you say that you got the opportunity to go to georgetown was that in your mind when you're at or ohio state? did you want to go to georgetown? um, not necessarily but i always had that as a reach school, you know, my game plan was to do undergrad at ohio state and then perhaps get a law degree or go into a doctorate in history, and i was constantly weighing those for brief amount of time. i wanted to be a folklorist. i loved folk history and folk music. i learned how to play the guitar when i was, you know learning these old songs and stuff from like the carl sandburg songbook

type of thing and the also had a professor named gary rashard who went on to be an administrator at in a great american historian who just taught america since 1945, and i just loved that class. i mean it was right, you know so up. eight and i learned that sort of where with those or my principal people. i've got into french history a fair amount and i just decided my big breakthrough. i guess what you're asking is the rise of somebody from ohio. i went to europe i went and spent a semester at oxford a semester abroad in england. how did you get to do that? they had a program that all these universities have these semester abroad programs and i thought wow i could go to oxford for semester went in it was incredible. i stayed in the dorm. there we go to stonehedge and you know, were you attached to london one of the colleges? um, i was at new college it was

called there at and at oxford in i found out the room. i would send chris christopherson had stayed there before and that meant a lot to me what i got into william blake then very heavily the poet william blake and went to his grave and read all this poetry and then i started reading all of george. well, just just straight through not not, you know not has, you know animal farm and and you know, and but just all of them, you know, how much to catalonia down and out in london and paris and coming up prayers saying go back to the oxford thing for somebody that has never been to oxford has no idea what it looks like. why is that so important? i mean, what is it? what did it look? what's it like there? well first off there was the scam element of it. i mean oxford was marketeering its name to rubes like myself in the midwest, you know come you get to do a oxford somebody the buckeyes now at oxford

university. it's a way for them to generate revenue. i was smart enough street smart enough to pick that up the the that's what was really going on, but it worked for me because i met people from italy and spain that were my age and i realized that they were fluent in languages and i wasn't but i did have an edge that i've had somehow developed an ability to speed read. so i could read whip through novels like you, you know faster than people that spoke four languages and i started what realizing oxford that my ability to read was a skill set that i didn't realize i had but then just seeing historic sites and the churches. storied history and going to blenheim of winston churchill or going, you know, you know even recently i got moved being in the underground london where churchill spent the war years. i really got into reading about winston churchill a great amount

and also mahatma gandhi at that period you know, these are figures in world history, and i wanted to know about but i came back a little changed. i left oxford i got back to columbus and i realized that whole semester all my friends were still eat ordinary pizza hanging around, you know in a frat like environment and i i my mind was a blaze from my my trip to europe because after i was at oxford, i didn't crossed over and spent time in france and the netherlands and brussels did your buddies at ohio state sense you were changed no, because i kept my humor as a consistent, you know trying to be humorous, but i got a little more serious my one roommate bart. jacoby was a great football player and and high school he was extraordinary athlete and he would run every night a long ways and they used to keep the lights on at the ohio state

buckeye stadium, so i kind of got back and wanted to get more in shape physically to not not just drink beer and you know being a beer be a slug and so i started running at night with him. i have a great memories that we would go he would run more than me. i was he was fast, but we would go out there and do miles i'd do, you know, three miles four miles in the evening but something about the empty stadium at night even like if it's like snow coming down but the lights are on and nobody's on the track and night and you're just, you know, a few people and you're just jogging around there. you can't come back so energized and study late into the night and i would go to a the i found that they kept the law library open late. so if i was a night owl, i could study from like midnight to three in the morning at the law library, which was open and i got to my mostest most prominent memory of that is a night.

janitor who african american gentleman who was a born again christian and he would try to talk to me about the new testament, you know, and and things and i'd befriended him into her stories about his life and things like that and then i try to sleep in a little bit, but you know meaning i go back to bed not get up till 10:00 you ever get state. i've never got trouble in any big way, you know, i mean let's now, you know, i was always pretty good. i was always like pushing the edge, but i always knew where the edge was you go to class. i did i there were pros and cons though the classes some of them were so big if you don't show up. nobody knows you're there you it's not like that, you know, so you're kind of on your own and i tended to have certain classes. i couldn't wait to and some of the ones like my physics class. i would conveniently miss and

that's not if you're gonna go to big school. you got to really be self-motivated. it's not like a small school where people are noticing your absence. what class at ohio state left the biggest impression on you? um, gary richard's class us history since 1945 because i said i could do that i go back you were in school in 1978-79. so i started with my we started in the fall of 78, and so we're dealing with with you know, the big election. well i was well, we graduate 78 the big for me was 1980. you know at college when reagan beat carter and i remember very clearly reagan being shot while i was in college at ohio state and what a big deal and following all of that later every action. can you remember? oh, it was just awful the thought that were you gonna president down. and again, i i like the way

reagan used humor, you know, i forgot to duck and the way they handled himself through all of that was deeply admirable. but yeah, i was quite patriotic throughout, you know, we kept every morning my mom and dad made me put a if i didn't my dad would but we put an american flag up on our lawn and that was just part of our mind growing up and my parents by that point had turned from being kennedy lyndon johnson and even a humphrey in 68 by 72 they were for nixon and they stayed republican ever since that 70 to election turned them and they loved ronald what changed their mind? they didn't like the unrest in the streets the protesting but particularly by 72 the anti-war

movement and the way i think the law and order. aspect of what nixon was doing appealed to them and the government seemed too far to the left and you know, what, did you think of mcgovern when you were ohio state? um, i liked him, but i was looking, you know, i was good at talking or she was actually i didn't mean to write you wouldn't have been around a state. i was high school. yeah, i you know, we try to stay out of politics someone in the high schools because the teacher did i just was stunned that my parents made that kind of change like, how do you go from because we're catholic john f. kennedy was a big deal. i think when i write about kennedy, i do deeply remember simply that my parents would cut him and bobby kennedy a lot of slack because they were catholic. that like we got a guy in the game and and i do so i don't think was a exaggerated that kennedy inspired catholics that the same way brock obama did for

african americans and so how cath your parents we would go to church every sunday a saint rose. i had to go, you know, i deeply avoided doing classes at the church. i did but i didn't like, you know, i thought i did enough by just doing you know going to mass. doing going in doing going to confession it seemed to me enough on my billet, you know, they pushed it a little bit more but rosary beads and the hail mary and our father and it stayed with me all my life and the it may have ended up by my sister went to notre dame catholic school and i ended up coming to georgetown catholic school and in so anyway, we incidentally one other interesting thing at ohio state so when i'm telling you i'm working. i liked working. i like making money.

i like putting i had the energy to work and i got a great job. senior year as a waiter in the faculty club well at two o'clock we stop serving lunch and at about 158. every day woody hayes the football coach would come. and he'd eat by himself and i may coach hayes and i got to talk to him very directly and individually a lot and he was a big nixon supporter and i we talked to him about politics and one day i he saw me reading in a norman mailers book armies of the night about protest at the pentagon and i was a rain again and he like me over and he just said what the hell are you reading that for? i said it's in being a sign in a class. they're assigning norman mailer what class and i told him he was

like writing down. it's like oh god. am i getting this professor in trouble or something he acted like i was reading the worst piece of subversive literature. that's ever been written. and and i said, why are you really think he said no, you finished it if it's assigned i'm not you have to but i'm just questioning it not i'm not questioning you reading it because if you're assigned read it, but i'm going to look into who's assigning this and i love there like god he's a but coach chase was actually a wonderful character to talk to about football about life. he was very into the rotc at ohio state at that point and was deeply involved with military history. so i would talk to him about war related matters and you consider going in the military. i wish i did. but that's only in retrospect. i mean you missed the 72 after that. you didn't have to go to the draft. i mean and it became kind of you know, the people that would that generation a lot that went in

and my class where people that were going to couldn't get into college or something and i had college educated parents and they were directing us to college all along but i could have used some of that discipline back then or a couple years of public service. i don't want to romanticize with that would have been like, but i find it a great career for young people when i meet them and i encourage people who go into army and navy air force marines they come out. better people from that experience in in it's a really, you know, i know and be a recruitment officer for the military, but it's i do feel i may be missed out. um something what i get gained was the understanding of all these sort of intellectual currents because of working these books stores and doing other things where i would you know, start reading kierkegaard or you know, you know, all of kafka and i had time to kind of be an intellectual where i'm not

sure i would have been able to do that in the military. how much do you retain on kierkegaard and kafka and all those philosophers? do you remember what they really do? but i would i tend to do is i extract a few things from them that i can use in my life most of these writers beyond being great writers and you know, there's something that they're saying that will come into mind and in be important. i mentioned norman mailer who's ego was so large and i got to know norman later in life. i wrote a profile about him for rolling stone called the last buck. and then there was the great african-american novelist ralph ellison. and they were at iowa writers workshop ellison who wrote invisible man and naylor and ellison said norman the problem with you is that you don't realize we're all dispensable.

simple line by ralph ellison, but i think about it a lot like wherever i'm at. i know i'm dispensable like this. i you know every job but you know like this is not if i left tomorrow somebody else fills the place and it's just hard when you want to you know, it's important to keep that in mind because he keeps you grounded a little bit not to get too high on your horse the growing up in the midwest the one sin brian i found the thing that i can't tolerate i have one intolerance of human behavior, obviously more than one but the one i just don't like people that are conceited. like that have the disease of conceit that they feel there's so much better than the next person and when i came east i encountered that a lot. i didn't encounter that in the midwest. can you remember? i know this might be hard somebody that is conceited that

hit you. life and you said i don't like that. oh so many and i don't want to i may not be fair to single out one, but i caught it a lot when i got to georgetown and more when i was in new york there became a feeling that if you didn't go to an ivy league school. that you were lesser. i did not realize that that would be something when i'm i was so proud of going to ohio state, but there would be people that i would meet that. all i would do is say well i got into princeton. i went to princeton. i'm the princeton, you know, and i i they would it was an attitude. and i thought boy. is this the best and the brightest of the ivy league that they somewhere through all that education. they didn't learn to not be conceited in and so did it make a difference that they had gone to princeton yale or harvard or any of these schools? i think they i grew up slower in

the midwest and i may have been paying for it ever since. but you know, so they were maybe who got to go to good private schools. i went to public schools. they got the advantage of a great prep school of trinity in new york, and then they go to yale or something. so yeah, they have a big leg up because after i did my doctorate at georgetown even georgetown wasn't good enough when you apply for jobs in history, they want to hire the people that did a phd from harvard yale princeton, you know, sometimes a berkeley stanford slips and but so i've been all that as to say, i've been a big booster of the land grant schools like ohio state, i think they're great places purdue where you went, you know university of michigan minnesota, you know, i like a lot of those all of them. i was recently at university of arkansas fayetteville. great. because families can afford it. and you don't people grow at a

different age. i mean, i was 17 when i was going to college growing up in rural, ohio. i didn't really have the tools to prepare for, you know to go to yale. you've got to like be driven for that or have contacts or you know, have you ever seen since you may come a professional on your in public forums and all that somebody discriminate against you because of ohio state georgetown versus the ivy leagues i think so on any. oh, yes anytime you do a job at a top market school. they look a little bit down even at georgetown compared to princeton harvard and yale, you know, it's just the way it is. i mean, it's there there is an eliteism you compensate in any way for that. work i outwork people. and i have a work ethic and and by the time i just keep a kind of put my head down and go straight ahead.

i've you know, it's in in you compensate for it in just different ways. my first book i wrote on dean acheson and i got published by yo university press so, you know, you're like now connected because you did a book with that particular press but i first came to dc it startled me that the encounter elitism writ large not at georgetown, but just in the mill you of the east coast back to the dean atchison book. how did you get yailed to publish your book? i well that's a good story. so i came to georgetown and i started doing my masters and i got a fellowship. so the i then worked the used bookstores of dc. i was the night manager of second story books on peace street in georgetown then i would moonlight at the second story at dupont circle and then later i be night manager at idle

times books in adams morgan all of these have great stories to him because i got to become friends with christopher hitchens. who would i know you knew very well and he would come in bringing books that i would buy from home. i got to talk to him. we were bonded for life by the youth book stores here james foreman one of the great civil rights leaders. i became friendly with he would come and and clean out our africa and black sections in the bookstore. up, i'd ring them up and i'd talk to him about the books and all and were you working them that was working them. i would ask them all just like you're asking me i would ask him everything about their life ralph nader coming in or very commoner people i knew and heard about or something in the bookstore because there's an intimacy at a bookstore at night that you know, you're coming in at like nine at night on a snowy night and they're only like there's a the cat we're feeding in the store jazz music and two people, you know, one of them is

somebody like james foreman i would i would talk to them and not in a way that they was in a way that was engaging for them. you know, i'm smiling because the producer of this show nick ravel i worked in a bookstore here in this town and had some of the same experiences. i'm sure we should get him out here and make him have to talk about it. well larry mcmurtry the great novelist had booked up in there is a used rare book community and i was part of it at georgetown, but my professor was dr. jules davids and david's helped write john f. kennedy's profiles and courage with ted sorensen. how did he help um research chapter drafting if you read like herbert parmette's biographies of kennedy some people think dave jules. david's actually wrote hunks of it of the book jared talk to him about it. i did he was from he did. he told me how much he helped. he was proud of it and jackie kennedy came to take a class of

history with him and he was a very very wonderful man, but i found out then he had alzheimer's and they asked me he needed to do tests and have a semester off. and i was a pretty young graduate student. they asked me to take over his course. he did. so here i was let's say twenty two three, maybe a year with that. i'm probably around 84 i did this 85. i'm trying to remember but it i took over its course and i taught us diplomatic history at georgetown that young because they were he got ill right before the classes started and they were either gonna have to hire an adjunct and change it around or let me be like the teachers assisted and even though i would then he would supervise me kind of thing through jules david. i got he gave me an introduction

to pamela harriman who was married to the great governor averal harriman and lived in georgetown and they wanted me to read to governor herriman. so i would go he because he had gotten near death, but wasn't death if they had a machine for hearing. you know, he had a lot of money here man. so it was the best. hearing device money could buy at that time, but i had a pretty clear voice in spoke directly. so i would you know, the the task was to read like hi governor. this is in the op-ed. ace of the new york times today written by russell baker and then i would read out loud an article like that and he would hear it and it was it was interesting. he was you know, and again at when i got a moment to ask him about. stalin and russia and all i did

how long did you do this? well, i did it for a spell and then he got went to i believe it was bermuda and broke both of his legs in the ocean a wave hit him. and he then got you know, he was in in decline and then at that point but through this world of herriman was alice acheson the widow of dean atchison, and i found out she had me meet david atchison the son of dean atchison and they were opening atchison's papers at yale. and atchison was a great writer. he secretary of state for harry s. truman most famously, but was a brilliant legal mind and writer and had wit and and so his papers openings were a big deal. i arrived the day they opened the papers and there was only one other person in line and two of us started looking at them, so i had great material from my first book because then whatever

i did. anything i was quoting was the first time somebody ever heard atchison on brandeis or atchison. i felix frankfurter atchison on archibald macleish. at the very least it was fresh material who carried at the time. that i was doing that not that you were doing it so much that that your people were gonna get to hear what atchison thought how hunter how much interest was he was getting there was interest because truman had already hit his renaissance. i mean people once truman did plain a man donovan wrote a two volume biography of truman truman was starting when i at that arab, let's say called the early 80s had gone through a full bore the america loved harry truman and atchison was now starting to be seen as the architect of the cold war atchison's won the pulitzer prize for his memoir present at

the creation. so george canon and dean atchison were in the mix later while i was working on my book walter isaacson and evan thomas wrote their book the wise men which was the and was the joint story of abrahaman atchison robert. love it john jay mccoy chip bowlen and george cannon. and it's a group portrait and i was worried like oh, maybe they got into my you know, they and they hadn't so it was actually a useful tool and quince's life. my dean atchison book got reviewed by evan thomas for the new york times. very favorably. was that a dissertation you were doing my phd dissertation at georgetown on two volumes. i did it was very long and and then i got i there was a professor at yale named gaddis smith. and he had written a volume on

ash in a book once and i talked to him and he said why don't you submit your work to yale university press so on my own i wrote a letter sent them and they do peary view get collect letters and yield decided to publish it and i was just ecstatic and and then getting reviewed by evan thomas and the new republic in new york review of books and all of that was heady stuff and i thought i did the right thing. i tell students today do your dissertation. i can get published. do something. you know, this is your shot to get a job. i mean, so make sure you getting a book, you know and biography which is frowned upon by some scholars. it's actually university presses like it a lot if you do a life and times go back to the fact that you wrote your dissertation, but how did you physically get yailed to say we'll publish it.

did you talk to somebody just send them the manuscript but it had a recommendation from a yale professor gaddis smith recommended to yale, press that they look at he didn't have the power to say published it but he was a pretty big professor in my field. do you remember how many copies they printed? i i would guess. i don't know but let's say 10,000 and that money no. not much. i mean the new york times got any time you get a very i was a glowing review in the new york times people buy off of that so it for a university pressbook it got distributed meaning in you know in those days the borders of the world, you know, they were it was so it got out there. i would see it in bookstores and was thrilled. can you remember how you felt that time as you're getting published by yayo and you're getting reviewed in the new york times? how big a deal was that? unbelievable? and i now i was hooked. i'm just gonna keep going

because i realized through the the epiphany i had i was doing research on atchison is the i was staying in a, you know, running a flat in new haven and i went to see the grateful dead in bob dylan in concert while i was researching and it was so hot and i got so bored and i had been waiting for a month for this concert. and my friends are people i went with were just drinking and partying and i just realized i'm a new haven. i've been slacking. i'm not working hard enough on my book. so i next day. i just got into a kind of i became a monk i all i did was focus on i got to get this done that this is it and i learned that it's a trade book writing. it's like being a bricklayer or a plumber like a historian is tradesperson and you have to learn your trade how properly

use footnotes how to how to you know pivot keep chronology going some of it simple, but you've got to learn how to frame it. and so that book was hard, but i framed it it did well and now i realize wow with that i can do more and better books. and so i started in barking on the driven patriot the life in times of james forst who was our secretary of navy and world war two in america's first secretary of defense? you could see i'm working in the realm of atchison forrestal the kind of foreign policy makers that's what i was interested in us diplomatic history. i got to know paul h nitsa pretty well. i'm terry navy. yeah, i i he was super kind to me. i'd go to the cosmos club and things we talk i did a conference on dean atchison and he would write the introduction for the book for me and he would

blurb my books. that just didn't die atchison died. 69. oh, no, i'm sorry at justin died. 71 i believe so you didn't know no he was left. no, i didn't know him. i might have that date wrong. he meant nixon in that period though and the nixon years go back to as long as you've walked into the the writing thing. what have you developed as the way you go about writing? want to know. the atmosphere you set up in do you go long hand computer? speed who do you have read it all that kind of thing. give us that background. it's all evolved some i would just say with one of the misnomers that sort of surfaces online is that i'm noticed that steven ambrose was my mentor. he was not i did not know steven ambrose when i did my undergrad

master's doctorate jewels. david's was the person to help me at georgetown and then a man named townsend hoops who was under secretary of the air force for lyndon. johnson was a marine who fall that he will jima. who were he won the bankrupt prize for history for writing the devil and john foster dulles. he wrote a vietnam book called the limits of innervention that one every ward you can imagine he lived here in chevy chase and we embarked as a team together to write the biography of forrestal and i learned a lot from townsend hoops. he was duluth minnesota and was quarterback at yale football team and he knew everybody he later became ahead of the american publishers association, and we worked on forest a lot and he knew for still story very well because he had been in air force, you know under secretary of the air force and he understood how the pentagon worked and i didn't but i got

introduced to all sorts of people his best friend hoops was zignap brzezinski and so i would go over for dinner with brazinsky and chief halibee and you know, we would, you know, talk about world affairs and all it was really like a tutorial and i think got a job and taught for year at the us naval academy in annapolis. talk for a year five five. i had to do 10 classes and i did western civilization five. just five ten total class. yeah. and in teaching early morning, they just used me as young you know to help but that was hard because i had to then learn zola and and you know proust and things to put into these classes that i was doing on western said and let me go back though that you do teach every day, or did you just teach a total of 10 classes? oh, no. no, i would teach all week long

regular. i think now i'm down to two with classes this semester, but this would be five classes that well they missed some days. yeah, but five semester go back to your habits of writing the atmosphere and what you were writing. where do you write? i've written i am unusual that i like music when i'm writing particularly jazz, but i convention other things i motivates me hearing the music gets me going coffee music. i tend to be a little restless. so if i have a you know a writing day, i will write it three different locations. give me an example my desk. psalm in austin at your desk in your house. that's my starting point long hand or computer. um mainly long hand. for first drafting so let's say long can but then i will go to a

coffee shop. that's not busy and sit and wear diner and sit and work for three hours. just hog a booth and give it leave a big tip and then i'll exercise and take some time off and then in the evenings, i'll do another two or three hours. so in the end, it's i try to no matter. what work eight nine hours a day on a book. where do you bring in your material all of your your stuff? you've research each book's different, but i carry it in bags with me when i go to the diner. i miss i'm a cartoon character caring like 10 books into a diner flipping them, you know all around carrying, you know, even on airplanes. it's like bags of bricks. i'm still bringing. books, i don't like kindle. i like the original books. and also i'm often having to find really obscure books. i used to get them from the you

know, libraries and rare bookstores, but nowadays i get some from amazon because you can pick up anything quickly and it's i guess brian what you're asking to me. my attitude is no pages equals a bad day. if i don't have some pages written. i and so yesterday flying into washington. i wrote on the airplane the whole way i got into my hotel room and i did another two pages there who translates that to to computer. well this i i do once it's on the computer, but once i do my original handwritten either ann or i had is my wife or somebody. i have like an assistant right now a woman named anna whose dad's a friend of mine who runs the brisco center for american history at texas. she's helping me through covid, you know, and you know, so i usually have somebody that can

help me actually now look things up on the internet that sometimes i can't find i mean, i'm only basic but there are ways i once had a young guy work for me named mark davidson who now runs bob dylan's archive and mark would wear a hoodie and was like an it specialist mark could find anything. any it's unreal the skill set. he had of locating if i said i need to find albert schweitzer gave us speech that's not recorded anywhere and you know gabon africa. he suddenly will find it. where's he live? he lives now in tulsa, oklahoma and is he did his doctorate in musicology at university of california at santa cruz and he got hired by bob dylan's people to run bob's archive and catalog

and he's sort of has the skills of a curator at a major, you know, like he could be states.

this is about an hour and 20 minutes. >> good morning thank you for tuning in. i am a state policy reporter out of lid echo -- politico. i am joined by a governor who is serving his first term.