free speech or truth and falsehood. crucial as these issues were to both orwell's political age and to our own time, he was equally outspoken about the ways in which dishonest politics agents and politics unconsciously but inevitably corrupts political and language more broadly. yes. and one of his best essays, politic in the english language, goes into idea the way that the types of illusions and intentional misrepresentation ends that political language is invariably deploys. so example collateral damage, right? i mean, collateral damage. what do you think about it actually means the loss of significant innocent civilian usually life. right. but it becomes a word that is that in political speak used to say, oh, the mission was achieved. there was some collateral damage and there's an erasure or oftentimes in terms of social programs, the way we talk about welfare queens to diminish the humanity of people who are

receiving welfare. right. and to sort of impute something sinister in them that elides the the nuance of that situation in those lives. and orwell was very conscious of how in his own political time and of course, he's writing when nazi germany, when britain is fighting a war against nazi germany, he's writing during stalin's reign in the soviet union and he's very conscious of how political is manipulated in those regimes, but also how it's manipulated at his own home in britain, the context of the british empire. i mean, he worked in the british empire. he served in the imperial, and he felt that there that censorship, you know, in the british empire was astringent, stringent as it was in many ways in the soviet union. how would you describe his politics? as we understand politics, politics today? well, he termed himself democratic socialist throughout his life. he was identified strongly in his time. the political left, though, ironically, once he passed away because his novels became iconic text of the war, he was

reappropriated frequently by the political right in a cold war context and continues to seen by many on the right, a kind of icon of free speech and an opponent of censorship. but his own politics were very firmly leftist. two more passages from your book it's 150 page, 150 and 153 two sentences. once you start, look for signs of misogyny and in orwell's writing, they become hard to escape. orwell's views on reproductive rights, demeaning manner and writing about women and his seeming casual acceptance of sexual violence cannot simply be dismissed as products of his time. that's a fair statement. i stand by it. i mean orwell's orwell's political writing i have a lot of sympathy for and his, you know, critiques of, you know, of doublethink, of thought policing of, you know, the problems with political discourse. our modern era, i think, continue to have salience and value. but the way that he wrote about

women and gender relations does not stand the test of time. well. i mean, he was despite the fact that he married not one, but two, very accomplished women, both of whom, unlike him, had gone on and had a university education. he stopped schooling after leaving eton is one of the top prep schools in britain. and then joined the the indian police service. but despite the fact that he was married to these accomplished women, he clearly respected and they respected him. he had a default kind of assumption that patriarchy was the natural order society. and you see that in his domestic relations, both of his wives themselves over to furthering his career, but also particularly in his writing where female characters are marginalized as they're not offered a kind of full sense of agency and humanity. one of the most famous lines from, orwell's 1984, is his smith the hero's dismissal of his lover, julia, as only a rebel. the waist down and feminist, you know, have read that against the

grain and said, well, this is actually a recognition of the power of sexual politics and the that the personal is political but. i don't think orwell intended it that way. i mean, the body evidence really suggests that he wasn't someone who accorded women the agency that he to men. i know you teach a class on this but animal farm is a book that's often taught in a middle school in 1984 and in high school. do you think that the misogyny in, his writing gets the attention in how it's taught in america today and in recent decades? well, i mean, as someone i, i went to an all girls high school, which i read 1984. i can tell you that is there is a passage in that book of such startling sexual where winston smith, before he begins his relationship with julia imagines raping and murdering in this kind of violent fantasy during the ritualized two minute hate that takes place every day in oceania. and that was not a passage that we discussed reading it in high school.

i we talked about this idea of what it meant to culturally rebel from the waist down. but we didn't get into all these other. you know, he also fantasize as winston smith about killing his first wife and pushing her off a cliff to her death. that's again, not something we really unpacked and i think it's an awkward i mean for i went to an all girls high school with a male teacher. i mean, there was that inherently problematic dynamic. but i think even when that is not the situation at play kind of unpacking this extent of the misogyny in some of orwell's works. and it's very even in animal farm. i mean, molly, the show pony is kind of the villain of the piece in many ways an animal farm in that she's vain, narcissistic and willing to sell out the revolution from the get go for her own personal gain. but it's it was not something i remember being discussed when i was at school and in terms of my conversations with my students coming into my university level classes. it's not really an angle on orwell's writing. that's that's being approached today either. one more line from orwell's ghost. you write orwell's novels never

end happily ever after. why do you think that is? i think orwell himself know he didn't end happily ever after. died at age 46 of tuberculosis as he has moments of optimism in his writing and his personal life. but i think he was someone who fundamentally was quite pessimistic about society. and i think he had there's a real tension. you see all of orwell's work between a for a kind of better social revolution and social change will improve society and real pessimism about whether human beings are really capable of the type of self-sacrifice and abdication of the will to power that's necessary, secure that kind of social change. i mean you see that writ large throughout 84. and i think that his general pessimism about, human nature sort of shows through in all these novels where the heroine always a kind of gangly, awkward male like himself comes to a bad end, may come back to the students that you teach george

orwell to what's their biggest missing understanding of george orwell when they walk into your classroom? i think there the biggest misunderstanding is very people come in believing they're studying a writer of the political left right. however, orwell is taught today, he's not taught as a socialist writer, but he very much saw himself as a committed socialist revolutionary. and his obituaries, particularly in the united kingdom when he died know talked about his social conscience, talks about and he was described as the wintry of a generation as, someone who was really committed and had integrity, his belief in the need for social. and that's something i think that's been embraced largely from the narrative about orwell in the 21st century. do you have a favorite orwell novel writing or nonfiction wrote nonfiction as well, correct? well, i mean, based on i had to count up all of my quotation from orwell for the publishers and based just on that back of

the envelope, i clearly have a soft spot for the to wigan pier, which is more than anything else. and what's that about the road to wigan pier is a book that he writes. he researches in 1936 when he travels up to the northwest of england to look at coal mining communities and also the lives of the long term unemployed. and the economy in britain and to slump even before the great depression in 1929. so you had people 1936 who'd been out of a job for over years. and he's writing the corrosive impact of lack of opportunity, social inequality on english society, and arguing for the need for dramatic social. and it's just a very moving piece of social investigation and very different from orwell's other writing. you mentioned he died young eric arthur blair is george orwell what appears on his tombstone. david don't know. i mean, it says it says eric blair on his tombstone. but i there's a there was a time

when i knew the epithet and i can't remember it he did have he was atheist but he was an atheist who had a christian. he was he had a fondness for the church of england and for the king james bible. he was a lover of the english language and a lover of the forms of, you know, the social of the church. despite his his own kind of atheist and socialist politics. eric arthur blair is george. the book is orwell's ghost wisdom and for the 21st century. laura beres is the author. thanks to the time on book. thanks for having me on. and we'll return to our live of the national book festival just a moment. but first, here's a look at last night's opening ceremony held at the library of congress. yes, my pants are unreasonably long. that is the title of my next

book. i, i used that bit of humor to stall to. be honest with you. i've done. 900 episodes of my talk show and i am more in this moment than i've ever been in my life. thank you for this honor. thank for this opportunity, dr. hayden. thank you clay. thank you for that green suit and and dr. hayden, you for sharing your mother with me. when i came in earlier, you said my mother in her nineties. and that is a lie. told me that i wants to meet you. i immediately called my own mom and mom. turn it on c-span on tv, as if i'm not on tv. day.

but having our parents celebrate our work and celebrate what we do and look at us and say, i'm proud i saw your mother when we gave you the ovation, she clapped. you said, mom, stop. i'm an investigator. i see everything. it brought me to this moment. my novel watch where they hide is a character manning inspired by my 30 years of being a journalist. and when i went into the publisher and said, i want to write this character, inspired also by the dusty nancy drew books under my bed as a kid, the box set that my 20 year old single mom gave me to build my confidence and to develop my unreasonable curiosity that had all of the nuns at my catholic ready to have me exit the building like elvis. it was an escape.

so when i created jordan manning and i went to publishers and they said, listen, there is not a black female protagonist written by a black female journalist. that's been published. i said, oh, she exists, but sometimes we're not led in the room. so jordan gets to come in this room via me, and she is afforded this opportunity to inspire young women and young people, young journalists. curiosity wins day. that curiosity will take you to places you never imagined. which brings me to my current book a confident cook. in 2008, the man who became my dad. the dad god meant for me to have left this planet. i knew that i would miss so many things about master sergeant clarence senior, but his sweet potato pie.

because it was the last that we talked about before he, became ill. i just started at msnbc. doris and i was the lone person. you might say, and i couldn't go home for holidays. and my dad and i talked over his sweet potato pie. he said, do a dash of this and a little of that. and i'm going, i'm trying for some reason, whatever i pulled out, the oven did not look like anything he'd ever created. when i went to temple university, they i told people i didn't know women could cook. all of my meals were prepared by my military dad. my dad would scurry often to my school to bring me lunch because i said that this doesn't look like what we eat at home. and he would rush in. he retired from the army after nearly 30 years, so i. i would miss his courage. i knew i would miss his fortitude, knew i would miss his encouraging words. i could do anything and i could be anything in this world.

but i never imagined walking into a and saying, dad, where are you? i need you right now. i've never shared this story publicly. after we lost my dad, i came back to visit my mom in burleson, texas and i walked in the kitchen and i prayed that if it was possible for us to see someone after they'd gone that he would stand next to me in the kitchen. that didn't happen. i returned back to new york, where i, the host of the today show, and do the magic an amazing curious journey that we are all able to if we allow ourselves. i said, wait a minute, my dressing room is next. the kitchen at the today show. there's food and there must be people there can cook. so i walked into the at the

today show and i met this lovely woman. she had a radish tattooed on one arm and a carrot on another. and said, dad, are you kidding? because a person with a radish and a carrot means business. these are root vegetables, you understand? most people would you know if hot for sunday. that's what i pick. and so began this incredible journey we detail in a confident cook. i met my friend list styling from wisconsin and she not tamron hall from the today she met tamron and we quickly became like sisters and we currently are only cookbook with a black woman and a white woman on the cover. the only cookbook for the woman who's lgbt and her ally to the very end. so while we have 79 amazing

recipes that will make anyone fall in love with you. we have the incredible journeys. in fact, our book list grew up in wisconsin. as i said, i grew up in texas. i'm a tad bit older than her. and now that i'm approaching 54, we have the exact same haircut and stand up. we have the exact same haircut. now. so through lish, i found my confidence in the kitchen. i found the ability to walk in and smell and discover flavors. and while this is a journey to become more, it is about finding. it's about expressing grief. but finding new friends. friends who are like family. food is our common thread.

we look at our history and we wonder and we discuss the divisiveness. until you take a nice slice of someone's delicious as pie and suddenly you say, that was your grandma mom's recipe. tell about her. food is a common thread. my trip to mexico. the common thread of food and family changed my life as a 12 year old. food is a universal language and through our book i'm so proud that we were able. meet one another and share journey. my hands are shaking, but my is full. i am grateful for the journey of food, of confidence of family and i hope that as books build

us, we recognize that sitting at the table and looking someone in the eye and saying a prayer. a thank you. grace whatever it is, absorbing that moment it brought a kid from wisconsin and a kid from texas together. underdogs. it can change, transform so many. books build us up. food brings us together. lastly will tell you my grandfather was born in 1901. he could not. he was a sharecropper in luling, texas. and now his granddaughter is making her living with words. he could read. and i am so grateful and love you all. and thank you.

and we'll return to our live of the national book festival just a moment. but first, here's a look at last night's opening ceremony held at the library of congress. i trying to look up a word that would describe or best describe my presence on the stage this evening. and i generously found the word implausible. i watched this event last and the computer and david used so beautifully. you love to ask questions in the beginning when you're speaking to the audience and last year. david looked at the audience and he said, who here has read five books in the year and most everybody raised their hand. and then he said, well, who here has read ten books in the year? at which point i said, oh, no,

he's counting up. david dr. hayden, thank you so much from the bottom of my for inviting me here this week. and i'm clearly you did no. don't panic. look, it's not that i don't love books. i do. i very much. i love i love them more than anything. inspire me. i just it's i have such the process of reading them. i have found to be very. more specifically these types of challenges were that i had wish that had been and defied much earlier my life. but that's a different story. one that i'm working on on my own. and that's not. it's not what tonight is about. i do love books, though i love books because they can tell any

story they can be about anything. they can tell anyone story. they can be about anything, even not always wanting to read them. my three picture books appropriately titled i don't want to read this. this book is not a present and i don't want to read this book. all center. the fears attached to reading, the fears of learning differently, the fears of reading a book aloud. you know, are the books that i wish that i had, when i was a kid. and look, if you take them at face value, you might react to them in the same way one gentleman did when i was a reading. and afterwards he said to me, it seems like books are about not wanting read. to which i said, maybe you should read it again.

clearly this man did not get the joke. but to be fair, he looked like the kind of guy that doesn't get any jokes. but that's again that's not what tonight's about. what he failed to recognize, though, is that a picture book is just meant to be read a good picture book. my opinion is to be a bridge to a conversation. thank you. i think about think about who just reacted to what. i just said. this is my audience and who understand me. speaking of those conversations, my son is nine. that's not him. the this is how most of our conversation go. how was your day? i don't know.

we started our our summer as our conversations go. how was your day? i don't know. what do you mean? you know? no. well, what did you do. good. are you now answering the first question? i would say, how can we expect a child articulate their fears around? learning and around reading that same child can't recall the events of the day that just happened. and furthermore, how we expect them to open up to and talk about the anxieties or the anxieties that they may have that exists beyond, reading the thoughts that keep them up at night. this is the conversation we are trying to initiate with night thoughts. my new book that is so beautifully illustrated by james serafino, the inspiration for this book from my dear friend jordo ma of you may

remember, he wrote, thank. leslie was on this stage not too long ago at this festival, his own book. and he was a dear friend, and the two of us would often talk about our fears and we would list them. and leslie as lists were always far more entertaining than mine. he would say bumblebees, electrical tape, straight man man. maybe this book just got banned. florida. i sure hope so. you, leslie, would love that. but we would openly discuss our fears only to realize that very few of them were things that we were faced with in that moment. you know, leslie didn't count as a straight man, which i always

took as a compliment. but here is an excerpt from book. but then i closed eyes again. i that my brain can be noisy and my thoughts are sometimes. and then i that all that noise and all those thoughts are just in my head. i'm not being eaten by. a robot shark. my toilet isn't overflowing with. and thank goodness there isn't a dentist in sight as far as i can tell, the world hasn't popped into a piece. popcorn. my friend is still here and i'm not falling from cloud right now. everything is okay. and so am i. good night. thoughts? good night. what are the fears that our children carry around them? what? the thoughts that keep them up

at night. it's the books that we as parents as educators as librarians read to them, that initiate these essential conversations. i'm so to be here this weekend, celebrate the possibility those conversations and to celebrate the incredible work of so many and to celebrate all of it with all you. thank you so much for having me. and book tv's of the 2024 national book festival continues. good afternoon and welcome to the 24th annual library of congress national festival, a

place where books build us up. i am beatriz haspel, head of logistics of the library of national library services for the blind and disabled. it is a pleasure to welcome all of you here today. and at this time, we ask you that you turn off or silence your devices and cell phones if you need to leave the premises before the end of the session. the right the door on the right is the exit. so are the nearest restrooms. we want also to notify you that this event will be recorded and. your entry in presence at program constitutes consent to be filmed, otherwise recorded. there will be time at the end for questions and the microphones are here upfront. and then let's move on to our program. it is a pleasure and i'm very happy to introduce max both a

historian, bestselling author and foreign policy analyst. he's the jean j. kirkpatrick senior fellow for national security studies at the council on foreign relations and a weekly columnist at the washington post. his new biography is titled reagan his life and legend. he will be in conversation with david rubenstein, who is the of the national book festival and an original signer, the giving pledge. is also a recipient of carnegie medal of philanthropy and the museum of modern david rockefeller award. his latest book, the highest calling conversate on the american presidency, is featured at this year's festival. i hope you enjoyed the festival and let us welcome them to. our stage.

so i enjoyed reading your book. how long did it take you to write the book? ten years. the reagan administration? eight years. so it took you two years longer to write the book than the reagan administration? alas, as i write, it was not a fly by night project. i think you can say that for sure. so it was it was family cooperating with you in any way. yeah. i mean, primarily patty and ron, two of the kids were very cooperative and very helpful. and actually read the book already and and gave it a thumbs up. i was very happy to see. really. okay. so ronald reagan is somebody that was very worried, his own legacy in some respects, or maybe his family was. and so had a biographer, edmund, who for the last year and a half or so was embedded into the reagan white house and administration. right. most to write a biography of reagan, whatever happened to that. why did that not work? well, edmund morris had on had

access to reagan administration. and i think you can say he basically blew it and produced a volume that was had some interesting research in it and was well written in. but it was basically to the word of the hour, it was kind of weird because he inserted into reagan's life as a fictional and that kind of compromised historical integrity of the entire project. so what is the biggest surprise to you about ronald that you learned as a result of doing all the research? i think the biggest surprise was that reagan was actually more pragmatic than people and it was his reputation as being that of a conservative firebrand, an ideologue. and he was very ideological. and i show in the book that in some ways he was actually probably more ideological than lot of people realized, repeating conspiracy theories and some outlandish rhetoric, especially in the early sixties. but the surprise about reagan

that he didn't act on that sometimes extreme campaign when he became governor of california in 1967 or when he became president of the united states in 1981, he actually veered to the center, as you know, signing more tax increases and tax cuts. governor of california, he signed most liberal abortion law in the country, one of the toughest gun control bills, the country. and as he was able work with democrats whether it was jesse unruh, the powerful speaker, the california assembly or tip o'neill the powerful speaker of the house, and then at the end of his, he was able to work with mikhail, which in some ways was the biggest surprise of all, because here was ronald reagan, who had spent his entire political as a staunch anti-communist as a critic of detente, calling out the, quote, evil empire. and yet he decided that gorbachev was somebody he could do business with and became very friendly with.

and together they worked together to end the cold war. that is not something i think anybody ought to expected of a hard line conservative like ronald reagan. now, many people who come to power in washington are obsessed with it as young men or women. he doesn't seem to be particularly obsessed with washington political life. how did he go from being a radio announcer in iowa to, an actor, and why was he considered b actor? why wasn't he an actor or in some ways, the key event of ronald reagan's life occurred in 1932, when a new ward was opening up in dixon, illinois, his home town, and they were for somebody to run their sporting goods for 1250 a week and, you know, 1250 a week at the height of the depression, ronald had just graduated from eureka college, didn't have job prospects. so he actually for that job and as a former school athlete, he might have gotten it. and if he gotten that job in 1932, that's probably the last anybody would ever heard of ronald reagan. he probably was when his whole life in dixon. but look, you know, unluckily

for him or luckily for he didn't get that job some another guy got it. and so ronald reagan had to look elsewhere for a job in the midst of the great depression. and he got into radio and probably in davenport, iowa, and in des moines. and he became. a very successful sportscaster, well known throughout the midwest for calling chicago cubs games among. and then in 1930. but you know he always had that desire at the back of his mind to get into acting because he had been an actor in high school and in college. it was something enjoyed. it was he was with that love of acting by his mother who was kind of a failed and frustrated. and so in 1937, he convinced his bosses at the radio station in moines to send him off the cubs on spring training to catalina island, off the coast of southern california. and while he was at, you know, he did one of his stands with the cubs doing spring training. he went to to hollywood and got a screen with warner brothers and. then he thought nothing was

going to come of it. and, you know, they didn't say that we were going to hire you. and so he went back to des moines, assuming that nothing would ever happen. and then he got telegram saying, you're hired. and so 1937, he picks up and moves from the midwest to the hollywood and he becomes, you know, fairly star top as a b-movie actor. one of many minor. you know role players on the warner stable. but by the eve of world war one, he world war two, rather, he was becoming, you know, a pretty, pretty good star for them, you know, only, you know, a notch two below earl flynn. and he in those days, he became the head of the screen guild and he was known as a fdr liberal democrat. what converted him from being an fdr liberal democrat to being a conservative republican? well, that's a great question. and that's another one of these myths that i think the book punctures the myth, which he created himself he often said this a million times, i didn't desert my party my party deserted me to suggest the democratic party had gone far

off to the left. and so he had to become a republican. but the reality is he became he went to the right in the 1950s and early sixties when the democratic party was pretty centrist. there was the party of sam rayburn, lyndon johnson, john f kennedy. guys were not some crazy left wingers. they were, you know, standing up to the soviets in the cuban missile crisis, troops to vietnam. they were actually pretty hawkish, pretty centrist. so it wasn't the democratic party. it was really ronald reagan. and moving to the right. and there a variety of reasons for that, including, you know, his battles with what he thought was a in resisting what he thought was a communist takeover of hollywood in the late forties, which i think was vastly exaggerated. but that's what his fbi contacts others were telling him. he was also aggrieved because he had to pay such high during world war two. and, you know top rates are up to 90% or something. and was making a lot of money. he didn't like that. he didn't like he didn't like that the federal government filed an antitrust decree which broke up the studio system so

studios no longer own movie theaters. and as a result of that, became an unemployed actor. he was out of warner brothers and then finally, i think the final piece of the puzzle was that he went to for general electric, and that was really he revived his career as pitchman for general electric in the 1950s. and ge, actually a very right wing corporation. its executives compared it to theology to that of the john birch society, and they actively proselytize their employees. and so as an employee of ge, he got this conservative literature to read and he had a lot of to read it because he hated to fly. so he would take the cross-country train from l.a. to new york, and he would be reading these right wing books and periodicals. and he basically converted himself through that, through that process. and so his career kind of came a dormant phase. he wasn't really getting that acting roles. and i think his agent him a job in as a emcee or less in las vegas to introduce some acts and so forth. but what led to run for governor

of of california? where did he get that idea of. well, he was developing ambitions as he became more political and as his acting career waned. and then he assumed a pretty high profile role in 1964 as a leading spokesman for barry goldwater. and in fact towards the end of the campaign, he gave this speech that was televised nationally, a time for choosing speech, which was this electrifying debut, the national stage. and a lot of republican ends when they were listening to ronald and barry goldwater speak on the same platform and they said, gosh, i wish goldwater spoke as well as because, you know, goldwater was, as i'm sure you remember, was very hard edged. he was not warm and cuddly guy. he knew what he believed. and he was going to shove it down your throat, whereas reagan, as a journalist said in the mid 1960s, his personality was like warm bath water. it was soothing. he could repeat the same as goldwater, but could deliver

with a smile. he can make people like him and not feel threatened by him. and so after, you know, the goldwater campaign he started, you know, at running himself and he thought that in 1966, pat brown, father of jerry brown, who was the two term governor of california, thought pat brown's popularity was waning and that pat brown would be vulnerable to a challenge. and in fact, that turned to be very accurate because he beat pat brown by a million votes. so he won 1966. and in 68, he makes a short campaign for president trying to beat the presumed nominee, richard nixon. was he really was that a half hearted effort? did he really think he could be president after two years as governor? it was somewhat halfhearted, for sure. but he did declare himself. he did try to he he did go around the country trying to stump up votes. but then when he and he didn't even come close, he basically pretended it had never happened he kind of went down the memory hole and he ever having really run for president in 1968 and said it was just like a few over

fervent supporters. and i talked to one of his aides and he said i was shocked i mean, reagan and i were on the campaign together with going around the country to get votes. how could you forget that this happened? but he tended to rewrite history the way he it to be, not the way it actually happened. so he serves two terms as governor and then he decides to run president again in 1976 against the incumbent republican, gerald ford. and he came very to beating him. that he expected he would actually have a chance to beat. ford and how come he didn't actually the nomination, though he came close, he did expect to beat ford. i mean, what was what was really in reagan's mind was he thought that in 1976, richard nixon would be completing a second term of office and leaving office. and he thought that he, ronald reagan, would be the natural to -- nixon and. so he didn't he was a staunch supporter, never imagined that nixon would be forced to resign because watergate.

and so he was shocked ford became president. and he did not have a lot of respect for jerry ford. he viewed as kind of an accidental president. he thought the job should really be his. and of course jerry ford didn't have a lot of respect for ronald reagan either. and so that set up this bruising primary battle which went on almost the way to the convention. and reagan came pretty close. but you know, he also came close to a very humiliating defeat. and he if he had lost the carolina primary, he probably have been out of the race early on and may have been able to run again in 1980. but he was and in the south carolina primary, jesse helms and his political north carolina north carolina sorry, by jesse helms and, his political machine and so as a result of that, he did very well in the south and came very close to ford. so he said the ford at the convention in 1976. i support you i'm going to campaign for you in ford a lot of support from reagan in that campaign he got some i say a lot

ford was kind of aggrieved afterwards that he thought that reagan didn't do enough for him. right. so carter's president and reagan, he deciding he's going to run for president again regardless of how carter performs or he he didn't like how carter was doing any energized his campaign and a 78, 80, 79, i think he he was looking to run. i don't, i probably had not made a decision right away. that was kind of surprising because know, he was getting into his seventies at that point. not a lot of you know, not a lot of people thought that he would be running, you know, at an advanced age. but he was convinced could do it. and then, of course, once carter, you know, ran into all of his problems with the iran hostage crisis, with the economic woes that created a massive opening. and so a lot of republicans were lining up to run against reagan was 69 when he was running an age that was then considered old. now be young to be president. right. he'd be heavyweight young to be president. he's going to be president. so when he was running 1980

against carter, it was widely thought that reagan was a nice guy, not that substantive. and was thought that maybe if he had ford as, vice president ford could give him some experience. and whose idea was that? and was that ford pushing that idea? was it reagan's idea, and why did it not actually happen? i think it was a lot of republicans pushing that idea who were kind of nervous reagan and didn't think that he was really up to job. and so it was really people like henry kissinger and alan greenspan who were close to ford, who i think are the primary movers and shakers behind that. and it actually came pretty close to happening. but then it kind of fell at the last minute. one on the floor of the convention walter cronkite was interviewing gerald ford. and cronkite said, well, so if you're the running, this would be kind of a co-presidency, right and ford sort of agreed with that. and reagan was watching us in his in his hotel suite. he was shocked because he wasn't signing for a co-presidency. and so that pretty much the end of that. then why did he call george herbert walker bush, who called

his economic program voodoo economics? why didn't he offer him the vice presidency? well, because reagan was the ultimate pragmatist and he wanted to do what was necessary to successful. and his aides were telling him that after ford, bush was by far the best choice to unify the party and reassure people about reagan, bush had, you know, washington that reagan liked. so he was he was you know, he was willing to put ideology and litmus tests aside and do what he thought made, give him the best of winning. and that was it. so runs against he gets the nomination he brings bush in as his vice president has one debate for carter with carter, the week before the election. and he is seen as having won that debate. there you go again. now, the famous. there you go again. what he was saying, as i recall, was something carter had said. but what carter had said, it turns out, was actually factually accurate. that's not it was i mean, i write about this in the book was it's it's kind of amazing. there you go again. was one of these killer lines because it fed into this popular

conception at the time that the media was feeding that carter was kind of mean because carter had this reputation for being kind of a goody goody. but the media was trying to get across that. no, he was actually others mean streak and reagan was kind of playing off of that because on the debate stage, carter said, you know, governor opposed medicare, which was he did oppose medicare. not only did he medicare and medicaid, he said that were socialized medicine and and passing medicare and medicaid would lead to the total loss of all freedom in, the united states. i mean that is a documented that he said all of that but what you know reagan's killer reply was there you go again then he denied that he had opposed medicaid, saying that he had supported an alternative bill that was just as good, which was not true because the bill would have covered about one or 2% of seniors in this country. not all of them. so it was completely false. and yet he got away with it. it was a it was a great line. it was a killer line that that is a remember today. so reagan won overwhelmingly overwhelming election and why

did he pick jim baker who had not been part of his club close supporters in? california was not really that well known to reagan. did he pick reagan? why did he pick jim to be his chief of staff? well, in some ways picking jim baker, i would argue, was the most important decision his entire presidency. and it was a sign again, why picking baker's best friend, george bush as vice again, it was a sign of how reagan was, because as you said, baker had no relationship. reagan and far from having a relationship with them, he had worked against reagan twice in 76 and 80 to try to deny him the nomination. and normally presidents do not. their opponents campaign manager as white house chief of staff. and so the assumption was he was going to appoint ed, who was his chief of staff in sacramento. but mike deaver and stu spencer, to reagan aides realize that meese was not organized enough, didn't understand enough, was not effective enough to be effective. white house chief of staff and

they went to nancy reagan and. they went to ronald reagan and said, no, you know, i think you really should pick, see, see how you like this jim baker guy. and reagan got along with baker and the world by creating this troika of officials with baker as white house chief of staff. very quickly, he became by the most powerful official and in some ways the prime minister of the united states. and he was really responsible for a lot of the success of the first term. i would argue what was the nature of the ronald reagan nancy reagan relationship? an intense early close marriage and she did he rely on her for personnel advice and things like that? it was a wonderful love story. and, you know, sitting at the reagan library could go through box after of of of letters and of holiday cards that that ronald reagan sent to reagan. you know, every every valentine's day, every birthday, every thanksgiving, every christmas, every new year. how much loved her. very, very sweet to read.

and you know what? he was a wife. she was away for even a few days. he would be writing in his diary how desperately he missed her. and so had a very close bond. but it wasn't. and and, of course, their marriage was primarily about love. and in a way that almost made even their kids like they were left out because she really his top priority but she was also a very effective political partner for him although she did not and want to again this is another myth. some suggest that she pushed him to the or she pushed him into politics. neither of that is true, as far as i can tell. nancy didn't really have any political belief. she didn't really have much political ambition. but what she wanted was whatever was the best for her, ronnie, and she understood that her husband wanted to be in politics. so she was going to be make that as successful as possible. and she was you know, she was kind of one of his aides described her to me as of the chief personnel officer of reagan inc. she would hire and fire. she very suspicious. she would look out for interest where he was so optimistic sunny, almost pollyannish that he never imagined anybody could be doing anything wrong.

she always assumed that somebody was doing wrong and would ferret out. so what would you say is the biggest accomplishment he had in his first four years as president? well, i think the accomplishment in his first four years was probably, you know, reviving the economy, although and the armed forces, although on economy side, i think you have to say that paul volcker probably deserved more credit than reagan because. it was volcker who, you know, took inflation out of the economy and that the economic rebound in 1984. but, you know, i think that reagan did play an important role in kind of reviving people's spirit and reviving their faith in america after all the turmoil and troubles of the 1970s. so reagan was going to run for reelection. he's running for reelection at the age of i guess he was 73 or four when he running for reelection. so he's running against mondale. he thought he was going to run against mondale mondale, got the nomination after beating off gary hart. why did that election turn to be such a landslide?

well because reagan could plausibly proclaim it was morning in america because he got very lucky that the very severe recession hit the country from 81 to 83 was over and we were entering a very strong period of economic recovery. i think the economic growth rate in 84 was something like 7%. and of course it declined in the next few years. but it hit this post-recession and he was basically able to advantage of that. and, you know, he pulled u.s. troops out of lebanon after disastrous bombing in the marine in beirut. and in 1983. so we weren't involved in any wars anywhere. and he could plausibly argue that he had brought back peace and prosperity. and he has a debate with mondale in that campaign where he has another famous line which also you could say is a little disingenuous us in some respects. and what was that famous line? well, there were two you know, he had these debates with mondale on the first one. he really screwed up not as badly as, you know, biden up, but he screwed up. and there was a lot talk that he was too old and he out of it and

he couldn't be president. and all that kind of stuff. and so that was in the second debate. he got a question age where the baltimore sun correspondent tried to ask they tried to approach the age issue delicately by saying, you know, during the cuban missile crisis, president had to go without sleep for 20 hours at a time. could you that at your age, mr. president. and, you know, reagan got a little smile on his face and said, you know, i will not use for political purposes my opponent's age and inexperience against him. and that was brought down the house. and even walter mondale to laugh. and he was later admitted that, even as he was laughing, he was understanding that the was over and that very instant, so many second terms have problems. the principal problem in the second term of reagan was iran-contra what was that and how did reagan manage escape that problem? well, i think the real problem in the second term began when jim baker, the white house chief of staff, and don regan, the treasury, decided it would be a good idea for them to switch jobs. and they presented as almost a fait accompli to reagan, a half

an hour oval office meeting. he said, okay, sure, whatever. and so they did. and this turned out to be a disaster. don regan was, a horrible white house chief of staff, as jim baker said to me, you know, don, like chief part of the title, but he didn't understand he was staff. you wanted to be the ceo of the united states because he had been ceo of merrill lynch before. so and he didn't have good political instincts. and as a result of things kind of went haywire in the iran-contra affair, which was an initiative started by reagan's national security advisor, bud mcfarlane, and to try to get hostages held by the iranians free. and this something the hostages, their fate of the hostages was something that really anguished reagan. he really was desperately worried. he wanted them home. and so but mcfarlane got, this bright idea of selling weapons, iran to get the hostages released and it worked for little bit, but then the iranians kept taking more hostages. so at the end of the day, it wasn't actually working. but then mcfarlane successor as his national security adviser,

john poindexter and his aide, all of our north got another bright idea, which was to divert the profits from the sale of arms to iran to support the nicaraguan contras. the the guerrilla fighters, even congress had forbidden the government from supporting the contras. and so this was inviolate of what was known as the boland amendment. and that is something that cut potentially gotten reagan impeached, except that poindexter said he never reagan. and so that was basically what saved reagan's presidency, because could plead ignorance of the diversion funds to the contras. when reagan was generally thought not to be paying as much attention to details. so you can credibly say, i didn't really exactly. you know, you could argue that he got into the iran-contra. i mean, think big picture. ronald reagan, great leader, but a poor manager, hands off manager, often didn't know what his aides doing. and so you could argue that the reason he got into the iran-contra affair in the first place was because he was a very poor, hands off manager. but the reason he survived the

iran-contra affair was also because he was a very poor, hands off manager, because, you know, if -- nixon had said, i had no idea about the diversion nobody would have believed him. but when ronald reagan said it, it was plausible so towards the end of the administration, there's a decision about who's going to be the next president. and his vice president, george herbert walker bush, is running for the nomination. it wasn't given to him. and why did reagan not endorse him right away? he has been serving loyally for years. why did he not endorse him? he had some reservations. well, first off, i would say that they they were not particularly close. you know, the bushes were never invited to the family quarters and eight years of the reagan presidency. barbara bush and nancy reagan really loads another, you know, george and ron got along better, but they were not certainly close personal friends. and i think, you know, reagan harbored some doubts as to whether bush was a skillful enough politician, whether he was tough enough to actually win the presidency. and so he was not going to short

circuit the primary process. he did not endorse bush until it was apparent he was going to be the nominee. it is said that when they first got together and were going to run in the 1980 convention, that mrs. reagan said to mrs. bush, you know, you should lose some weight and dye your hair. any truth to that. it's it's i don't know, but it's plausible they they didn't they sent to not get along. okay. it was kind of interesting because again, nancy was was a very different personality type from her husband. and her husband got along with pretty much everybody, including george bush, including mikhail gorbachev. and nancy had these famous feuds with bush as well as with rice, gorbachev. so was there any evidence that there was that reagan had alzheimer's was towards the end of his administration or that come subsequent? well, the diagnosis certainly came subsequently. the hard question to answer is, did he have alzheimer's when he was already in office? and i actually asked one of his alzheimer's doctors that very question. and the answer i got was that he

certainly the precursors of of alzheimer's, the plaques in the walls that cause alzheimer's, those were certainly present in his brain when he was president. but that doesn't mean that he had dementia. i would say he the the evidence suggests he did not. i mean if you look at the handwriting, for example, in his diary, it was pretty clear and legible from the beginning to the end of his presidency. but there was you know, you could tell there was a natural slowing down in the second term as he was getting up well into his seventies and his aides noticed that he was not as involved in his second term and doing things like rewriting speeches, other things that he had done much more of in his first term. he was slowing down, but it's it's almost impossible to distinguish the impact of that at a very early of the impact of alzheimer's from, just the normal aging process of somebody who's in their late seventies, who almost died in 1981, was shot, lost a lot of blood. so he'd been through a lot of talk or i to go through that and march of his first year in office, he's shot by john hinckley. and at the time people said, well, he wasn't coming close to

death. it okay, not a big problem. but now we know he came very close to death. is that right? he but it was really i titled chapter on the shooting finest hour because was really his finest hour. and that was when he really cemented his bond with the american people because he showed unbelievable grace in the most adverse as he was literally at death's door. he was joking around, he was telling nancy reagan. honey, i forgot to duck. he telling his doctors as they were about to operate on him. i hope you're all republicans. you know, when when when people heard that, i think it established kind of a personal bond between the president and the public that had not been there before. now, when he left office was criticized for making too much money, some speeches and so forth. but we were million dollars in speeches in japan, which seemed like a lot of money at the time, was a lot today. what would you say is the main thing he post president was to get his library off the ground and now the popular presidential library. what would you say he

accomplished, if anything, post president? well, he didn't have a lot of time post-presidency because he left the presidency in 1989. he was diagnosed with alzheimer's in 1994. and i think, you know, his real accomplishment post-presidency, anything he did, it was what happened in the world? because, you know, the berlin fell, the soviet union collapsed. then a lot of people gave him a lot of credit for that. so his historical record, you know, went up dramatically. he left office. so he considered very conservative when he came on the political scene. but today in the republican, would he be considered a moderate or a centrist or not conservative enough? i think today he would probably be considered a rino. republican name only. i mean, remember, this was guy who, you know, in 1986 signed the simpson-mazzoli act which legalized millions of undocumented immigrants there was what would today be called an amnesty bill. and that was something he signed. he also advocate hated eliminating the border between the us and mexico and creating what became as the north american free trade agreement.

these are all things that are anathema, i think to most republicans today. reagan had four children with his first wife, jane wyman. he had a daughter, then he had an adopted son with jane wyman, and then he had two children with nancy. right. what was his relationship with those four children? it pretty distant because he really had a distant relationship with almost everybody except for nancy. i mean. i talked to his kids about that and their view is he was they liked him and they still like him. he was a very genial, likable guy, just he was on the campaign trail, but they didn't see a lot of him because, you know, a lot of the time, the fifties and early sixties, he was out touring the country on behalf of ge. so then he would come home for a weekend. they would go out to his ranch, which in those days was located in malibu, and they would really enjoy hanging out with their dad. but then he leave again. it would really be nancy, who was them. and he was also, by the way, very conflict averse. he didn't want to dig deep into into personality conflicts.

he wanted to avoid them as much as possible. and so he often didn't know what was really going on with. and he kind of wanted to avoid hard conversations. i guess i would say. so he often didn't really know what was going on with his kids, even when, you know, maureen had, an abusive first husband or patty was struggling with some addiction issues or. you know, michael, as he later revealed, had been as a as a boy. these are all things that ronald reagan didn't learn until many decades after the fact. so reagan had, a better situation than you or i with respect to hair. he had a lot of dark hair was that dark hair that was that died or was that just natural? well, always denied a dye job. but i think there was some suspicion that he wasn't being entirely forthcoming there that could. kitty kelley certainly argued that nancy reagan's stylist had been secretly touching up his his hair. but i think he did have pretty naturally, you know, dark hair. so what would you like most people to remember about ronald

reagan? well, i think that i would like them to remember he was a complicated personality that, you know, he was often accused of simplistic views, but he certainly was not a simple man. and was there was a lot more to him than it appeared to be on the surface, including things like i just pointed out, the fact that he was so conflict averse and person which you would not expect from somebody who said, mr. gorbachev tear down this wall so he could be very confrontational politically, but not very confrontational at all in his personal. and that's you know, he was actually in many ways kind of a shy introvert, a person who his of a good time was sitting in front of the tv watching bonanza. he didn't want to hobnob with people. he wanted to read. he wanted to be by himself as as stu spencer, his long time political consultant, said he would have made pretty good hermit, which you would not expect somebody who was seemingly so gregarious and outgoing. so the bottom line, i think there was a lot more to ronald than meets the eye. so we've just your entire book in 30 minutes.

amazing achievement. you are you are a great interview. i should want to buy and read this book, having heard is i assume there's a good reason why somebody buy it. why don't you give us that reason before we have questions from our audience? well, i think although you have done an amazing job covering a lot of ground and 30 minutes, i can just i, i can attest that there's a lot in this 800 page book, and i think it's a pretty good and pretty interesting story book. i read the book force and i, i read i think every major reagan biography. i enjoyed it. you had a lot of things in there. i didn't know and i highly recommend for anybody that wants to know more about that president. so who has questions? stand up here and ask a question. hopefully not a statement. no matter he pointed sandra day o'connor as first female on the supreme court was that to cement a legacy, set a history or what was that thinking, that whole process, the thinking was that in 1980 he had a gender gap. he was doing much better with men than with women.

and, you know, through spencer suggested to him that one way to rectify that would be to promise to appoint a woman to the supreme court, which he did and then there was, you know, some right wing opposition to sandra day o'connor. there were, you know, some some hard core anti-abortion activists that were opposed to her nomination because they thought and rightly, as it turned out, that she would not overturn roe v, but reagan didn't really care that wasn't really his obsession. and so he mainly just cared about having a a justice who would be tough on crime and would not release criminals. and so was you know, he was he met, you know, sandra day o'connor love talking with her about her time on growing up on a ranch and riding. those were his passions. and so, you know, it was a done deal once once he met sandra day o'connor. thank you. i'm so reagan as a communicator. he had those radio speeches before he got to office time for choosing the challenger speech, part of his success was probably

his and his presence, but also maybe the ideas. so how much of that was and how much of that was his speech writers? well, he certainly had very skillful speechwriters, but i would point out to you that ronald reagan was an very expert speech giver long before he had any speechwriters back. in the fifties and sixties when he was writing own speeches. and he would you know, he these index cards and he was always writing these index cards. and basically his school of politics was working for general electric because went from plant to plant all across the country. and he had to basically give a stump speech. he would often speak about not just company issues, but also about political issues. and he was always reading, always down facts or things that he thought were facts or quotes. and he would shuffle his cards around and give his speeches and, you know, against lou spencer, who i keep citing because he was of my best interviews and somebody who knew reagan better than just about anybody going to the 1960s. and stu, one of the great political consultants in history, even though, you know, he's not on tv, hasn't written a lot. he hasn't written a book, but

stu said to me, you know, reagan was, the best speechwriter he ever, not just the best speech cover, but also the best speechwriter because having grown up working in radio in in his twenties, he understood how to write for the way that people hear not for the way that they read, but for the way that they hear. and so he was brilliant at communicating orally, whether, you know, speeches, radio, television. he was he was -- good at. all of that. thanks. okay. so what lessons from reagan's presidency should america pay attention to today? gosh, well, there's a lot them. i mean, i think one big lesson is the need for, you know, inspirational and optimistic leadership, because that was essentially who ronald reagan was. that was a large part of his success was the way that, you know, he he saw america a shining city on a hill and kind of inspired americans after some of the disaster and defeats of the 1970s. and so i think he why it's so important for the to be an effective and inspiration

communicator, but also as we were discussing, i think the reagan presidency offers a cautionary tale. what happens if the president is too hands in his management style and doesn't actually know what's going on throughout the government? there were a lot of scandals, including, for example, at hud and other departments that he was completely unaware of. and there were, you know, foreign i mean, he got the big things right, especially relations of the soviet union. but there were also a lot of other disasters, like we mentioned, and lebanon and things that did not work out so well because he was not really attuned to those issues. he was not really involved in the nitty. and there was also an awful lot of personality conflicts in his administration and often especially between secretary of defense caspar weinberger and secretary state george shultz. those guys couldn't stand one another and they were constantly going at it and he would not sort out their disagreements. and so the result was often kind of a policy muddle. i didn't satisfy anybody. so i think, you know, the positive lesson from the reagan presidency is, is how important it is to have this president who communicate so clearly, effectively and inspirationally

again, the cautionary tale is that the president also needs to be able to to manage the government. thank you. you're great. thank you. at the risk of just going over stuff that you've already gone over a lot, i would like to dig back into the kind of that the rightward drift of ronald reagan through the fifties and sixties from a person who know was not only a democrat but a union person. and he have had some fairly strong democratic leaning beliefs in those years. and so he had to get rid of them somehow. and you mentioned the, of course, huge influence of the g time, but he was also somewhat beholden, i guess, to the given in work. so, i mean, is that are there any other sort of sources of information or influence that would help that?

and did he get mostly any sort of economic view of conservatism from g versus a social political view or both? probably some both were more on the economic side, i would say he became a staunch anti communist in the years after world war two, when he was at the screen actors guild. and again, he battled what he thought was this communist takeover of hollywood, in fact, was was really just a standard labor dispute. one union that was mobbed up and in bed with the studios and another one that was more radical and an odd you know, was was smeared as a as a quote unquote red union. and he he believed that that was something the fbi was telling him and others were telling him. so he became an ardent anti-communist in the late forties, early fifties in hollywood. but i think he became more of an economic conservative in 1950s as a result of work for ge, where he was reading human events, he was reading national, he was reading all these, you

know, hayek and all these other authors recommended by g. and so he by the early 1960s, he was pretty far to the right for somebody who had described himself in the 1930s as an ardent new dealer who's whose hero was franklin delano roosevelt. many thanks thanks. on the nixon tapes, reagan was caught in conversation with president nixon using some very derogatory slurs, bigoted language. he also correct me, if i'm wrong, opposed the 1964 civil rights act. what insights do you have about ronald reagan's views on race and race relations? well, reagan always said i am just plain and capable of prejudice. and he always cited the fact that his parents taught not to be bigoted. and i think there is a lot of truth that. but i think the and it's certainly true that you know when talk to his kids they will tell you that he raised to avoid bigotry. but i think it's also true that he had a long political record

of utilizing white backlash politics for his own political advantage. i mean, he became governor in 66, in part by on this backlash against the watts riots, which terrified people and, you know, also opposing the rumford fair housing act, which was law in california, prohibiting discrimination on the sale or rental of housing and as you rightly said, he opposed the 1964 civil rights act. he opposed the 1965 voting rights act. he regularly played to white backlash politics with coded appeals talking about law and order, about welfare queens. in 1980, he infamously went to a state fair in mississippi and talked about states rights. and you're site where in 1964 three civil rights workers had been slain. so he did have and the slur that referred to on the on the nixon library tape i think was was probably an aberration. i certainly ask people who knew him very well and i think are pretty honest that used those

kind of terrible language in private and they said no, they never heard him talk like that possible he was just playing up to richard nixon. but it was certainly very disturbing to hear that. and i think it's an indication that he was not as colorblind as he claimed to be. and but certainly, you know, whatever he said in in private, he certainly had a political record of catering to white fears of civil, which i think is is certainly one of the things that has to be weighed the balance on assessing his his presidency. okay. time for one more question, i think, or maybe more here and there. and then we're forgotten. okay. or your next and then your next. okay. max, you spent a decade writing this book, it's been published two months before we go to the polls. how do you want this book to speak into the current moment that we're in? well, i mean, it wasn't you know, it wasn't it wasn't written to be to be released a political season? i mean, i get i started it more than ten years ago when, you know, the only thing anybody

about donald trump was that he hosted this show, the apprentice. so it wasn't to have any kind of political impact. and it's not i mean, it was really just designed to provide a a balanced and objective overview, ronald reagan's life. but i think it's certainly something can inform the current moment, because obviously, ronald reagan was a very different republican president from. donald trump. and i the differences are are pretty evident and apparent. and i think it's a reminder of how the republican party has changed in our lifetimes. and it's maybe perhaps a an idea of how it could, again, in the future. i mean, the the fascinating thing is that, you know, when ronald reagan came along, people said that reagan was moving the republican party to the right. but today, if the republican party adopted, they would be moving to the left. that's how things have changed over the course of the last 40 years. i final question. okay. young british. so i'm still catching with american history, but it right

that reagan played a role in persuading evangelical christians to vote republican and he certainly yes he he certainly to evangelical christians he worked with the moral majority and other groups that were just a political force in the us in the late seventies, early eighties i mean, reagan himself was although he was certainly religious personally, he was not ostentatious, ostentatiously. he didn't wear his religion his sleeve. he didn't go to church very often as president. but he certainly made a very active outreach to white evangelicals. and those formed a big part of his. and so he you know, he was he came out after having signed a very liberal abortion law in california. he had regrets about that and came out as an opponent of abortion. but, you know, it was always kind of his support for social issues, was always carved, kind of carefully balanced. then i talked to one of his aides who said, you know, to present to to to reagan when

they were walking out to the marine 111 day, he said, you know, mr. president, how come you know, i know you feel very strongly about abortion. you know, how come you don't do more about that? how come you don't highlight that more as an issue and reagan's reply was, well, you know, a president has to pick and choose as battles. and that's, you know, there are other issues that i'm more focused on. and that was so he never prioritized social issues, but that was certainly part of his. well, let me give you one reagan story to conclude. so ronald reagan, as you know, was actor, but not a leading actor, maybe a actor, they would call him. and at the toward the end of his acting career, they were trying to get other things for him to do a las vegas act. i mentioned earlier. so anyway, he kind of got into politics and so forth when he became of united states, there was an issue that all the hollywood studios were against. there was something called the fincen rule. and so the studios were upset. what the reagan communications federal commission chairman mark

fowler was trying to do and is to reverse a rule that was very favorable to the studios. so day reagan is out doing some meetings and the studio heads had organized meeting and they came in at the oval office and they were waiting for reagan to come back. and so we had, i think, eight studio heads all the most important people in hollywood are there. and then reagan comes in the oval office, coming back from his meeting, and he sees them all and he says, wow, if i could have gotten a meeting with any of you, i'd still be in the motion picture business. okay. he was he was one of the wittiest presidents that for sure, and spontaneously. woody, thank you very much for this book and thank you for being and thank you all. thank you for this great conversation. something. i never never, ever, ever

remember. ha ha ha ha ha ha. uh. well, earlier today at the national book festival, we sat down with author katherine ruth bucolic to talk about her book hannah's children. here's that interview. we welcome now to book tv. katherine ruth bucolic professor, a catholic university of america, author of the book hannah's children the women quietly defying the birth dearth. what is the birth dearth? the birth dearth is that people aren't having enough children for the population to sustain itself. and you and your research colleagues for this book interviewed, 55 different women.

who were they? these are women over the country, mostly religious, but they belonged to, you know, churches it's the rocky mountains utah provo valley, texas south carolina, women who've five or more children and and did so because they thought it was a great way to live. five or more children. how did you find these women? we did so following the normal procedures for qualitative research. we basically posted fliers in places where families go, and we said we're looking people who had large families and want to like to tell us why you did so, what it means for you and what was the goal the goal was to figure out who's still having kids and why. right. because all around the country birth rates are falling. so we'd like to know, is that something that is, you know, just the future or are there pockets of immunity and why are people immune? is this a scientific study 55 participants. right right? absolutely. it's a scientific study. it's not a representative study.

right. so in statistical terms, we mean is it's not useful for describing the kind of people in a statistically precise sense. but we already know a lot about the kind of people who have many children statistically. we know that they're more likely to be religious. we know that they're more likely to come from communities that support families. but we really wanted to dive into was what are the types of motives people can have? what does it look like for women to make those kinds trade offs, given the costs reputationally educationally? so we didn't want do is describe we wanted to do is understand like get a sense of what's going on so what was the motive. what i have eight 910 children there is one person that you interviewed they 1010 children. yeah so it really came down to a story of a fixed belief in the goodness of children and the goodness of children and a intrinsic sense that each child is worth having, even if

conditions change or it's harder, more difficult. typically speaking in my sample that looks a kind of maybe an old fashioned biblical belief that children are a blessing. yeah, you right on page 291, the mothers in my sample reasoning from their experiences believe that the character of the nation has suffered from this birth dearth dearth of dearth of children. yeah yeah that was not part the the goal of the study was to find out but something that came out time after interviewing women that i spoke, they reflected on a life that was completely devoted to having children. right? if you have five or six or ten children, you've in it for ten or 15 or 20 years. and they had all kinds of stories how their children were affected by having lots siblings. and so they easily to talk about those things like what does it mean to always share a bedroom right and always share your

things and always share the meal? so thought, well, you know, we think our children find easier to share the again hannah's children the women quietly the birth dearth there's a couple hannah's that you refer to in this book who is the hannah from the title of the book? this is the biblical hannah. so after talking with, you know, almost 60 women and really searching for kind of model, a lot of people suggested we title this book, you know, having, you know, having large families or women with women who choose more. but what emerged from that data, much more of a picture of women who viewed children as blessings. so they didn't demand children like a consumer good. these sort people kind of collecting kids. you that way. and so i thought, what's the right what's the right phrase that honors what i heard, but really calls to mind the sense children being a blessing. and so the biblical hannah, who was infertile, barren and prayed at the temple, a child. and of course, we know her story

today. so she prayed for samuel and she samuel, so samuel and many and many more after that, which i did not remember until i went back and read the story. and i thought, oh, well, she's a great image for this. but by the title of this book, a biblical figure. yeah. are you saying is the key factor in, deciding whether to have zero or two or eight or ten children? yeah. so i think it's really important factor. i mean, we know it correlates, but if you look around the world today and you where are there, where a country that still has a stable population, it's not shrinking, you'd want to look modern israel. it's a place where you have a greater percentage in modern is a secular state, but you have a greater percentage of living. religious communities in israel, their birth rate is just about three three per woman. so yeah, am i saying it's the only thing that can the birth rate going forward kind of looks like that? um, yeah. how the women that you interviewed feel about birth

control. yeah. and also ivf and other procedures that help have a child right. this was a really interesting feature of the of the of the data. so i expected to find i think many people would that you found in these traditional religious communities a lot of people who rejected birth control in general in fact i that the majority of women i interviewed didn't reject birth control in fact they use birth control space. their children when they needed their choice to have lots of children, was much more of an intentional decision to have lots of children rather than to not use modern reproductive technology. what sort of questions these women get when they let other people know how many children they have eight children or nine or ten? this is an amazing thing. it turns out that a lot of times you get kind of shocked, shocked questions. so one of the most memorable ones that i tell in the book, the woman who was in the grocery

store, a stranger, came up to her seeing her family and said, you know, to her husband, you should be spayed. you know, you should be spayed. most of the time, women told stories of a quizzical questions. you know, why would you do that? are these all yours that's probably the number one cause. are these all yours? and then why why would you do this? because that is so rare today. so fewer than 5% of american women. so they get these kind of questions. why would you do it? sometimes people say, don't you know where babies come from? it's indiana children. you also tell your own story about questions that you've gotten explaining. yeah, that's right. in fact, that was the origin of this book was riding on a commuter rail outside of washington, dc. and i had my sixth child with me. he was he was in my chest. he was newborn and a group of commuters with me. it was just unusual to see a baby on a train. they looked and they said, is it your first baby? that's another common. when people always ask, is it your first? i'm not sure why.

anyways, lady asked, is it your first? and i said, no, he's my sixth. and there was a kind of noise and she shot back and she said, well, i guess your still wants you. and i didn't know what to make of that. i thought it was. was this a tragic sort of comment or was it a a compliment of sorts? i wasn't sure, but it really got me thinking. what does it mean and what's relationship between children and marital quality? what do you make of that comment now after going through this study and talking to 55 other women? yeah, well, i would say at least what i make of it is that we probably need to be asking the question about children relate to marital quality. you can open fox in atlantic and you can find so many articles that say, you know, having kids is going to be the death knell of your marriage. right. of course, not all marriages are going to work out well. but what i learned from mean, i intentionally asked everybody, you know, does having kids ruin your marriage is the spark still

there? and what i heard was a lot of hopefulness, i think. what about families don't have children. women who don't have children. what was your reaction to j.d. vance by speaking candidates comments? yeah, some prominent democratic women calling, them childless yet. ladies, i that was really unfortunate. yeah. yeah. and laura, back to the titling this book the biblical hannah. i think the difficulty is to describe a mindset in which children are wanted and desired but not not sought like a consumer good. we know that children they don't come at our bidding. and so you know many people can't have children. but the biblical hannah was both infertile and then blessed with children. so i think that that's the job here what i what i discover talking to women with such different faith backgrounds. no faith at all. some of them was that.

it's to describe a a mindset in which children are treasured and as a as a as a goal, as a as a as a good rather than to denigrate not having children. right. so for everybody that i talked to this is this is a kind of a positive of a way of life. right. and i think the furthest thing from anybody's would be to be the one to denigrate people who've made a different right now saying on the travis cat lady comment in the wake of that, npr did a story calling it a centuries old trope that really took off during the victorian victorian era. why do you think that trope has had such a long history? the trope about childless cat ladies and i think that the i think that sort of.

i think we might want to think about the of how we think about the norm of human life and for a long time we've thought about the norm of human life as being one in which as adults were oriented to form families to meet, partner up and form families. this was certainly true in early america that was so much true. i've learned that andrew cherlin, a sociologist at, johns hopkins, explains that in early america there were sometimes against living alone, particularly particularly single men weren't supposed to live alone. it was kind of considered something wrong with you were a little suspicious. living alone. you didn't set up shop as a as independent adult. but we know today that that's not the norm. so we looking at a society in which i think we're teetering about half of adults married with children as opposed to certainly when i was a kid, it would have been much more like 70 or 80%. so we're leaving that ideal and i think maybe, maybe of what's

going on there. jd vance is tapping into this sort of fear that people have that society won't be structured around good of human life for forming families. tom on the flip side of that, of childless coming back to the women that you interviewed, especially women in this country who have more than two children, what did angela mean when? you interviewed her and she said children are the scapegoat of this culture. we put all of our anxiety and, evil on something and how twisted is it that the scapegoat of our culture that we have chosen is an innocent child? mm hmm. what does she mean by that? well, she is. maybe i reach back a little bit as an economist and say, well, look, we've got this constant concern as economists have for a long, long time about. the concern about overpopulation. when people look and they say, well, what about all these kids? i mean, you're going to ruin the planet. you're in society, thomas

malthus. there's going to be waves of famine and destruction. our fears are often placed on those that are not yet born, in part because it's easier don't they don't have a human face in reality, we haven't. we haven't come to a stage of perilous overpopulation. and i think that that is angela's point. angela's point is new children coming into the world been the harbinger of destruction? a matter of fact, whatever our fears, children are a source of hope and, a blessing. um, i think that's what she's getting. but it's easy to worry. it's easy to worry about another mouth to feed on that. yeah, that exact topic much. did these women worry women and men that the families? yeah, whatever. families. yeah. you talked to. yeah. how much did they worry about the cost of children the mouths to feed and how much it's going to cost for seven, eight, nine, ten children. yeah. so i talked to people at all

levels of that income distribution. right. when we think about a biblical outlook. right. so people are thinking about children as a blessing. what i heard they think about it but i'm not going to say they don't think about it. i heard stories of thrifting buying buying second hand things, talking about reusing goods. right. so a lot of women, you know, people don't remember that you don't buy everything new for each child, right? so the marginal cost in terms of the expenses goes down with additional children, right. your house already set up to receive children. so they think about it. they talked about it. they're adjustments that they made. on the other hand, generally speaking, they had an outlook. using old fashioned language. god will provide not a reckless sense, but kind of unexpected blessings for the old east child arrives with a loaf of bread under the arm and in a sense, if you were to if you were to push somebody, say, how do you really

know there's not any to that question, you don't really know it's an act of faith. and i think an act of faith in the same way starting a business is an act of faith. right? who hasn't said, oh, no, like this going to work? but but in fact, i think there's a little bit of an attitude towards so it's not that it isn't risky to have a third child. you really risky but i think what what rationalized that risk for the women i talked to was this sort of firm sense of faith. who is terry in your book terry? terry is one of the women i interviewed. she living in the denver area. and she had at the time that met her, she's expecting her 10th child. she grew up a big family, knew she wanted a lot children. and not everybody that i interviewed grew up in a big family. some of them grew up in small families. she wanted a big family so much that she married her husband because. he also wanted a big family, even though they didn't share the same faith. and when i when i talked with her, she's really about to have

her 10th baby and she had gotten a place where she memorably she said after my ninth baby, i looked at my husband and. i said, how many more can we have? and she really highlighted. and what was she asking that? was that a permission or was that it was like an expression? joy. it was. she said the moment this baby born. and i was, i think, a girl, i held her in my arms and i looked at my husband, i said, you know, how many more can we have. she described something i heard from a lot of the women who had that many children, which was a sense that. when you've pushed through to eight or nine kids, the the fears and anxieties aren't there. i mean, let's just be clear. if you're still having kids after six or seven, you know, it's it's working okay for you. right. and that in fact, the adjustments to, your lifestyle, they disappear and all that's left is the joy. like just the joy.

i know when i had my first, i was worried about everything when i have my second, i still worried about everything. and by the time i had my third, it was like, i'm not as worried. and for her it was. it's at this point. it wasn't just her and her husband that were going to enjoy this next baby. it was all of other children. it was this whole community that was expecting this baby. and she was so overwhelmed with the gift of that nine child. so it's a bit a paradox, right, that you'd think the ninth baby's got to be harder to have harder on your body. your older but that she felt that was the most joyful thing she'd ever experienced and that after nine she went to run right out and have ten of these 55 women you said some came from families, some came from larger families. was there anything demographically that that you found as a researcher that sort of. yeah, united all of them, yeah. demographically thing that united them was really belonging

what i'm calling living religious communities that i'm using that for lack a better word. they weren't necessarily traditional list some of these women had full time jobs one was one worked full time and her husband stayed home. but these are communities were very full of families and not one specific type of religion. not one specific type. no lds presbyterian, evangelical catholic or jewish baptist. i mean, i looked for muslim women. i didn't them for this study. but hopefully next time. so but they all belong to churches that were growing, churches that very active, many of them went to church more than once a week right that was demographically thing that most that united them there's an important job to be done given falling birthrates and one of those one of those things that we need to do is actually we need to launch big sort of representative surveys looking at precisely this like this this question of who's still having children. to my knowledge there is no good

large scale of people above. the two child norm. in fact two child norm is, you know, is turning to a one child norm that did you end up figuring out the answers to those questions that you set out to solve? yeah, back to that moment on the train when you were asked about your your sixth child, was it. yeah do you feel like it after hannah's trauma? did you solve those, those questions you had. yeah, well, i think i took a first pass. yeah i do. i have a friend who has? seven kids, and he's been. he kept asking me, well, what did you learn? i mean, you already have kids, so you didn't learn anything, right? i said, well, gosh, that's crazy. i think i learned everything in this book, i didn't know any of this stuff. and, you know, you can do a thing. you believe it's good and, but you don't have words for it, right? i didn't have words for i thought it was great. if you ask me, do i have my sixth? i would have said it's just the best thing i can think of doing next. you know? but what did i learn?

what i learned that these are the at least in this population, it's possible to imagine a lifestyle in which you have more than a number of children because believe that children are expressions of divine. i didn't have words for that. but children are blessing. i didn't have words for that. not the way that i heard it. so that was i that's very powerfully what i learned. so i was very grateful to put into and i've heard that from so many people, people who said, yeah, i've got four or five kids and i never what to say when people ask me why i do that so. so yeah, i did. i think i did take a first pass of it. the book is children the women quietly defying the birth dearth. the author is katherine ruth mcculloch. she's a professor at the catholic university of america. thanks for your time. my book, tv. welcome. and we'll return to our live coverage of the national book festival just a moment.

but first, here's a look at last night's opening ceremony held at the library of congress congress. good evening, everyone. how joyful it is to. be together at this national book festival. we're going to celebrate the power of books, to stir the imagination, to foster empathy, to propel action and, to carry us lands away. and having been in love with libraries, i was a little girl. it is simply awesome to be in this building. the most magnificent building of libraries that i have ever seen. my affair. really? yeah. my my love affair with libraries began when my mother took me to the small public library in my hometown of rockville, new york, a place that she told me be a place that she could go to, go to lands that she could reach rheumatic fever. a child had left her with a severely damaged heart. her illness bound her our house as an invalid. but though she had only an

eighth grade education, she read books in every spare moment she could find in the middle of the night when she had trouble in the mornings after her household were done in the afternoons, she waited for my father to come home from work through her books, her interior world was enriched even as her physical life continued to contract out. and every night she would read to me as long as i could stay awake. the only that surpassed listening to her read a book me was hearing stories about her childhood. i somehow became obsessed, the idea that if i could keep her talking the days when she was young and healthy, her mind would control her body and her premature aging would be stopped in its tracks. through her stories. i could imagine her a young girl once more, playing hopscotch, taking the stairs two at a time. so i'd constantly say to her mom, tell me a story about you. you're my age, not realizing how peculiar. that was until i had my own three sons who never once have said to me, mom, tell us a story about when you are age. when i was 14, my mother

suffered a stroke after much rehabilitation, regained the use of her arm and leg but her speech remained slurred. the doctor said it would help if she read aloud. finally, there was something i could do. i got david copperfield from the library. one of the favorite books she had read to me as a child. and i suggested we read alternating paragraphs. she hesitated at first, embarrassed by her slurring, but gradually she looked forward to the routine as we settled down to read aloud for a few hours every day after school, drawing us closer together than ever before. the toll of her proved too much. however, the year she suffered a massive heart attack and died in her sleep, it is hard to realize that she was part of my life for less than a decade, a half. and yet the love of and the love of libraries that she in me has become the anchor of my life in the years that followed as i found my vocation as a presidential historian, i spent countless hours around the country to all sorts of libraries in a quest to bring to

life the four presidents that i've studied most closely abraham lincoln, teddy roosevelt, franklin roosevelt and lbj. i've spent so many years with them waking with them in the morning, thinking about them. when i go to bed at night that i fondly refer to them as my guys. they're my pals. they're my guys. now, it may seem an odd profession to spend days and nights with presidents who are no longer alive, but i wouldn't change these into the past for anything in the world. my only fear is that in afterlife, there's going to be a panel of all the presidents that i've studied and everyone will tell me everything i missed them and the first person to speak up will be lyndon johnson. how come that -- book on the roosevelt? it was twice as long as the book he wrote about me, but of all the adventures that i have taken with my presidents, none compare with the great adventure i shared with my late husband, -- goodwin. when he finally decided to open the three boxes he had schlepped around with us for 40 years. boxes that proved to be a spectacular time capsule of the 1960s, a decade -- seemed to be

a zelig like figure present at defining moments with all the major characters jfk, jack and kennedy, lbj, senator eugene mccarthy and robert kennedy. for 40 years, -- had been wary opening these boxes because the violence at the end of the decade had cast a dark curtain on the era. he wanted only to look not to go backward, but when he turned 80, he finally realized, he said, coming down the steps one day that if i had any wisdom to dispense, i better start dispensing quickly. so we resolved to spend every weekend together going through the boxes in chronological order, reliving the sixties week by week, year by year, suspending knowledge of what was coming next, knowing only what the people at the time knew something the historian barbara tuchman taught me when i was a young historian. and as we relived the heady days of jfk his 1960 campaign, the inauguration, the birth of the peace corps, the civil rights movement and the march on washington before jfk

assassination, and then the explosion of great legislation under lbj, civil rights, voting rights, fair housing, medicare, medicaid, aid to education, npr, pbs, and much, much more. before the escalation of the vietnam war, -- finally began to realize that the defin mark of the decade was not the violence and the assassinations, but rather the power of the citizens and having the conviction that they did, they could make a difference. this was the belief that inspired tens of thousands to join the peace corps, to participate sit ins, freedom rides, marches against segregation and the denial of the vote to launch the women's movement and the gay rights movement movements that fired conscience of the country and brought longest systems of discrimination. tumbling down in the middle of our project. -- was diagnosed with the cancer that would take his life a year later. one day, as he looked wistfully at the train of boxes that were still left. he asked, who would you bet on me or the boxes? who will be finished?

but throughout that final year, the prospect of a book based on the boxes gave him a sense of purpose. it made him excited to wake up every day and work as long as he could. i realize now that we were both in the grip of a fantasy, maintaining the enchanting thought that so long as we were still working on the project, learning, laughing and, exploring the boxes. his life, my life, our lives together would continue. if a talisman is an object thought to have magical powers and to bring luck or potential book was our talisman. and so it has remained for even after -- died. as i started once more the project we had together. i found myself talking with him every day, asking him questions, even though he no longer answered. and here i am at 81 years old, having just completed a three month book tour in 30 cities where i talked about him for hours. every single day. oh, how happy that would have him. and happy this made me for it

has kept him alive. that is the power of history. that is the power of books. and how inspired -- would feel as i do today, that there is in the air right now a renewed optimism reminiscent of the 1960s. the spirit ignited the conscience of our country for if the conscience of our people can be ignited once more than, a better future, a more compassionate, a more just future for our troubled country, will once be within our grasp. i am so glad i was having the chance. give these thoughts to you tonight. thank you. thank you. and we'll return to our live coverage of the national book festival in just moment. but first, here's a look at last night's opening ceremony held the library of congress. i want to make sure i stay in my

5 minutes i brought my own little clock okay and. there was some lovely. thank you so much, doris. i want to begin by saying two names. jose elio, dario cordero and maria romulo. philippa anguiano and such emotional trip for me to here a trajectory that goes back. these two individuals who were pushed of mexico during mexican civil war. they were farm workers that were land that wasn't theirs, and they had to leave because of the violence that was happening. and one of what, though, a state where i now live 100 kilometers from the hamlet they fled and never returned to. but every time i come into this library, i think of jose cordero and felipe anguiano, my ancestor who could not read or write.

and if i had stayed mexico, if they had not braved that journey that took them across texas to arizona, kansas and eventually settling in chicago, i would not be here today. so i went begin by thanking them. i in mexico, and i know that girls from the countryside and the state of one of puerto it when, they get to be my age. this is their library. they embroider little cloths to wrap the tortillas in. that would my library, if they hadn't had the courage, as many immigrants during violent times to arrive and to not learn how to read in any until they were elders. so it's very emotional for to be here. libraries are sacred churches to me. they're places for worshiping thought and the imagination.

and this morning i met a hard working uber driver who delivered me safely to logan airport so i could get here. and we talked about the difficulty our times, especially for immigrants today. but he was filled with hope, and his hope inspires me. his name is bernardo, and he said most when someone smiles, when ask some ask the good outnumber the bad. i met christina at the wolfgang puck pizza counter at airport who treated me with kindness and care and convinced me that what's your amanda preaches is los bueno somos us. i want to libraries and librarians for being good their courage especially now in this year of fear when so many books are being asked to be from libraries, including my own house on mango street because of citizens who are afraid to hear

voices unlike their own. i was once an 11 year old girl who never spoke in class. i never my hand. i am still that year old girl underneath the 69 years i am today. i wonder about other little girls who are not given permission to speak because they imagine anyone would want to hear from them because they don't see their in a book, because they can't imagine. their lives count house on street is now in its 40th year publication. this summer i worked on the premiere, the opera adaptation with composer sir derek bromell and what that taught me is this whatever we create with on behalf of those we love, conor moore. paul parramore whatever we create with no personal agenda on behalf of those we love simply sally whitney it will always turn out well.

this is a law of the universe i'm convinced of. so tonight want to thank people that allowed to make that journey from, my ancestors to be here today with. so much emotion. it makes me feel like when i come in here. so i thank carla hayden. i thank david m rubenstein. i thank clay smith. i thank. alveda cordero, senior, my mother, who loved libraries and taught her children to love them, to by taking us to the library. library every saturday where she took up opera. and that instilled me a love of opera. and also my father, alfredo cisneros that more an immigrant, honest labor and world war two event. dr. norma alarcon, my publisher and literary mentor. back when no one knew who i was, the great gwendolyn, the great

eleanor poniatowski, my literary and my literary susan burke and stuart bernstein. and again with josette and dario go the. maria bartiromo. philippa anguiano for the journey that has brought me here today. i believe human beings are capable of atrocities beyond imagination, but they are also equally capable of extraordinary god as well. i believe there is enough misery in the world, but also humanity. just a bit more. i believe. i believe in the power of a thought, a word to change the world. i believe in libraries. i believe in human beings. when as someone has the good, outnumber the bad. thank you so much. and book tv's of the 2024

national book festival continues and book tv is. so good evening and welcome to the 24th annual library of congress national book festival. and thank for being here. and so wonderful author. this is a place where books i am passed for adults of the library of congress library services for the blind and print disabled. it is a pleasure to welcome all of you here today. at this time, we ask that you turn off or silence your susan. so once she leave the premises before the session, the door on the right so then the years.

we also want to notify you that this event was recorded in your presence. this program constitutes your consent to be filmed or otherwise recorded. there will be time for questions near the end of this. so the microphones are here in the house and because is the last session, i'm going to go here a little bit and ask to join me to thank our time for our years here and here, and also c-span. now they have a wonderful team. our program, our last event of the evening is words matter politicians on, the page. jeff broten and lozano from is the president and ceo of the

constitution center and a professor of law at george washington university law school. previous include the seller conversation, rpg, justice ruth bader ginsburg on life law library and law. and today we'll talk about his new book, the pursuit of happiness how classical writers on virtue the lives of poets and find america. other an opinion columnist at the new york times has won pulitzer prize and the national critics circle citation excellence and reviewing his new book is the washington book how to politics and politicians. maureen, discussion is not sotomayor who covered the joe

biden 2020 campaign and congress for abc news and is currently covering the u.s. of representatives for the washington post. i hope a session and let's walk them them or stage. good evening. thank you so much for being here this a great turnout to talk about such an topic. i mean i can't even begin to explain how grateful i am to be sitting here writing this. your know your work for a long time and reading these books together. i recommend doing so because you just learn so much from the earliest days. i to the politician that we have come to learn a lot about. i want to to ask both of you, what inspired you to write this, jack? there are many words in the constitution and you chose the

pursuit of happiness. what made you want to know what those words honor to be? first of all, what an inspiring event. and be here with. honor. so was a series of unexpected synchronicities led me to try to read the classical moral philosophy that inspired the founders when they wrote that famous phrase, the pursuit of happiness. it was during covid, and i noticed both benjamin franklin and thomas jefferson had chosen as the core of happiness a book by cicero i'd never heard of called the tuscan disputation. and when jefferson was old and people ask him, what's the meaning of happiness, he would offer this book and the definition from cicero that he offered of happiness had to do with virtue. cicero said he has achieved a tranquility of mind who's

neither unduly exuberant or unusually despondent. he is achieve the virtue and the calm tranquility of soul of which we are in quest. he's the happy, man. and then i saw that franklin also when he came up with a list of 13 virtues for daily also chose the cicero book and a motto that said without happiness cannot be. so i thought, i've got to read the cicero. what else to read? then i found this golden list that jefferson would send to who asked him when he was old how to an educated person and others. it's a marvelous list. it includes literature and political philosophy and history law. jefferson includes only what you have to read, but the time of day you have to read it and you have to get up early before sunrise and read moral philosophy for 2 hours. and then you can read some political, then have lunch, then and astronomy, then dinner. then you're allowed some shakespeare and poetry, then bed up the next morning before. dawn seven days a week, 12 hours

a day. okay, so then i saw the list of the moral philosophy books and there was cicero's tuscola in disputation and also marcus aurelius meditations. seneca's letters. and then these enlightenment philosophers, locke, hutcheson, bolingbroke. basically i felt i've got to read these books because it's a gap in my education. i've had this marvelous liberal arts education. i'm so grateful every day to the incredible who inspired me to learn political philosophy and history and law but i'd miss these books of moral philosophy. so it was covid. we had more time. i don't know what over me, but i got up every morning before dawn. i read 2 hours. i watched the sun rise, which is the most beautiful thing that anyone can experience. whenever you are lucky enough to do it. then i found myself these weird writing these sonnets to kind of sum up the wisdom that i had learned. and i know it does sound incredibly weird, but it turns out all sorts people in the founding era wrote sonnets after reading this great literature, including phillis wheatley,

great black poet, and also john quincy adams, who as president would wake up the white house, read cicero in particular the toscanini's, which he loved above all, walk along the potomac and write these sonnets of virtue and abolitionism, which are so. so i did that for a year. the whole project changed my life. it changed what i thought about, how to be a good person, how to be a good citizen, and how to be a lifelong learner. and what i discovered is that for the founders happiness meant not feeling good, but being good, not the pursuit of immediate pleasure, but the pursuit of long term virtue. you're nodding. we talked about this online. you read the book and it's just so clarifying to see your task every day not as just doing feels good in the moment, but self-improvement and character improvement being your best self, being a lifelong learner. and that's what happiness meant for. all of these great wisdom authorities from, the east and from the west. and then to cut to the chase and sum up the takeaway, if there

and there is one of this amazing project it changed way i read i'd gotten out of the habit of being of reading of the immediate deadline or the project that i had to do. and i'm not always catching the sunrise. i have to confess. but i do have a rule which is that i'm not allowed to browse or surf until i've done my reading every day. and that leaves. it's just amazing it's it'll change your life. it really has changed mine even a half hour of reading books every, day you learn and grow and it's a journey of discovery and takes discipline. because every morning i want to swipe left to the browsing, you know, and newspapers and and jefferson. i've given up newspapers for and i feel much better. newspapers don't count. they're important they're necessary for democracy we'll talk about them but you have to read books before you do the newspapers a half hour or an hour i'd become evangelist for the transformative power of deep

reading. and it's so meaningful to be here at the national book festival at our event here is to a life reading that's just thank you for newspapers are important but crucial for democracy or reading online. yes, exactly. carlos, you have read i don't even know how many pages, memoirs, biographies. you've definitely read way more congressional investigation reports. i admit it. as a reporter, you've digested them probably way more than i have. what you to write this book and i am sure you have published so much. why did you choose columns that you've written in that book? sure. i should say first that any sonnets in my book are completely accidental. they yeah. that was so inspiring. i've this has been such a wonderful day. i've run into college friends here, former students here, even a former swim of mine here and

and they're all here right now so thank you and thank you to the book festival and we've been coming for years. it's my first time as an author you know the if i were to get sort of meta about it i say that this book because of two things that happened to me about a decade ago right at the same time. first, it became an american citizen. i lived here for a long time as a green card holder. yeah, and but but i finally took the plunge to to sort of go all in and join this this, this crazy crew and and also almost exactly the same time i became nonfiction book critic at the washington post. this happened just a couple of months apart and didn't think of it in this way at the time. but these two identities kind of melded together for me, and i began to hold the imperatives of citizenship and the imperatives of reading and of criticism

together. and i used my new job to read and write the kind of about the kind of works that would help me understand my new homeland a little better. jeff so eloquently described his his of, you know, exploring the the works of philosophy and ethics that influenced the founders i write about the books that are recent and current and even future leaders write about themselves. so the the 50 essays in this book are sort of views and perspectives on political memoir and political biography and manifest and congressional investigations and special counsel reports, of which there are many lately. and even supreme court opinions right. it's funny when people this is how i make a living reading these kinds of books and documents. they look at me and they say thank you for reading those

books. so we don't have to read those books. right. and of course, the implication of that response is that these books are bad. these books are self-serving, they're ghostwritten, they're propaganda, and they're at worst deceitful. and so why would you bother them? and and i think the the purpose of this book is to push against that that view. first of all, there are wonderful works, even written by politicians. you can get into later. you know, if we if we want to talk about who the politicians are that seem to be best writers but also even when they are self-serving, deceitful, even when politicians sanitize their lives and curate their records and present themselves in the most conform and electable in a favorable light, they always end up revealing themselves. let something slip. they can't help it, right? it's rarely sort of sexy newsy stuff that a lot of our colleagues in media pour over the moment like nancy pelosi's

memoirs out or barack obama's memoirs out. you get like the five takeaways from the memoir. you know, and that stuff is great. it's useful, but not how i enjoy reading. i try to find sort of the little moments and little details that tell you something, not just about their politics, but about their character. it might be something that barack said to a low level aide on a campaign flight long ago that tells you how he sees. right. it could be something that mike pence omits when he about the events of january 6th. right. it might be a phrase that kamala harris just turns to a little too often, too. you start wondering what she really means by it. all right. i also cover some some foreign leaders. it might be a phrase that vladimir putin in an interview in the year 2000 when he was first coming to power, but then he repeats. more than two decades later, on the eve of the war in ukraine, that explains motivations. all right. it's in there somewhere.

and just like my colleagues in at the new york times and at the washington post, you know, very correctly, to hold leaders accountable for their actions. i try to hold them accountable for writing for their words, for the evolution, their thinking and. to me, that's just as revealing. so that's the project of this book. it's also, in a sense, my my response to everyone who's ever said, you read this book, so we don't to cover. jeff i to ask you, and we're going to break down all of this are so many things. i'm like, which question do i ask? because there's so many pathways we can go. but i wanted to ask you about the meaning of it to happen. we started to say this at the end of your answer, where the founding fathers had a completely different definition of what that meant or means to us today. and i remember reading at a point it has changed obviously over time, even frederick douglass added a little bit of an extra definition, saying that there's an equal opportunity to

education. that's what it meant to him. the pursuit of happiness. can you take us through that story arc of just the definition changing over time? absolutely. so the greek word for happiness is which means good daemon or good spirits. and in aristotle, is nick a mark in ethics? famously defines happiness, an activity of the soul, conformity with excellence or virtue. now, those terms self-defining so what do they mean, a virtue? is this again the latin word is virtuous, which can courage or manliness. but the of the definition of virtue in classical moral philosophy was using your powers of reason to moderate or modulate your unreasonable passions or emotions. reason is logos passion is

pathos. that doesn't mean should lack emotions, but that we should moderate, unproductive emotions like anger, jealousy and fear. so we can achieve the classical of temperance, prudence, courage and justice. it comes from pythagoras. who would have thought that pythagoras is in addition to inventing the triangle and the harmonic system, if that wasn't enough, it was pythagoras said that we have certain faculties or powers. pasha in the heart, desire in the stomach and reason the head. and we have to use our reason to achieve a golden mean so that we're not exuberant, despondent, but have that calm tranquility plato popularized is that in the metaphor of the charioteer representing reason with two horses, one noble and the other repetitive. and reason has to ensure that they're all pulling in the same direction. and it's pythagoras who comes up with the simple to apply self accounting system.

every night before bed. you're supposed to put an x mark next to the virtue where you've fallen short. you haven't achieved that moderation. and franklin turns that into his famous virtus project every night where he falls short of the virtue he is trying to achieve. he puts an x mark. he finds this incredibly depressing. so he gives it up after a while, but he thinks he's better for having tried. and it comes from pythagoras. so that's the basic classical definition, which absolutely persists through most of western history. and history because in the eastern authorities, like the bhagavad gita and dharma pada, we find the injunction when we are what we think life shaped by mind and the theory. bhagavad gita says, in the phrase quoted by gandhi, renounce and enjoy, renounce attachment to external events and actions and enjoy bliss and john adams, who's an incredible

deep reader, notices the connection between the bhagavad gita and pythagoras and he becomes very excited when he finds that pythagoras may have traveled among the east and he's so excited to learn that. joseph priestley's translation of the bhagavad gita has been that priestley lived long enough to complete it, and he thinks that this will show that east and the west all converge in this basic definition of happiness as tranquility of soul, self, self-improvement, character improvement, all rooted in the stoic dichotomy of control, renounce attachment to, external events and, enjoy eternal bliss. so that's it's not a western monopoly and it's also not rooted only in the stoics, the literature shows it whig literature, the civic republican literature. most extraordinary thing about living today is that all these documents are online and sitting on my couch.

i could first of all, access them. it just i have to say, you know, here we were last night in the library of congress in the thomas jefferson building, i think we both think is the most beautiful, sacred building in washington. and when i was a kid, i was so of wonder with my winter, with my mom at the thought that all the books in the world were in that beautiful space and. now they're on my phone. it just blows my mind that any moment of the day i can access all books in the world. all i need is the to read them. but then with words, as i was able to see the phrase the pursuit of happiness occurs in all the documents that i just mentioned, this not some esoteric thing that thomas plucked out of nowhere. it's all of these ancient eastern and wisdom and western sources. so how does it evolve the basic idea of happiness, self-mastery, or self-improvement or lifelong learning persists, but it evolves in american history from

its first appears in the declaration, then the federalist papers are a manual for public happiness and madison's definition of faction is using our powers of reason to overcome unreasonable passions and emotion. john quincy adams resurrects it as soon improvement. a phrase picked up by henry clay and then by lincoln, frederick douglass. after the civil war, insists on the urgent importance education as being crucial to self-improvement. that's why he says that equal access to education is necessary, the pursuit of happiness. and then emerson defines the american as so self mastery and intellectual liberation. so it's just this extraordinary throughline throughout, ancient history all the way up through american history. and it persists in america, the 1950s, and then it just drops of the literature and this was news

to me. i never read these books when i was in college, despite my, you know, the great teachers that i had. and something happened in the sixties, happiness changed from being good to feeling good. let it all hang out. you do you, you know, and and now we have a different meaning. and that's why it was so to recover the classical definition of the pursuit happiness. carlos i. i wanted to tell you that at some times and i was reading your book, i felt like you had predictive and i know you're about to say secret to that is you have to read about these people and what they themselves written because you understand them better. i mean, i was struck when, you know, reading that you wrote in 2015 after devouring, i think it was like over 2000 pages of of trump's there's a lot in there that have we read those books we would have a lot of his personality then there was

something that you wrote about hillary clinton and how she was likely going to say in 2016 during her convention speech, a methodist, something that she had mentioned often. and then i think there was like a little asterisk saying said it, it's like beating my chest. and we've got it right, nailed it. did. so now we have a different cast of characters, politicians. obviously, trump is one of them who is running again for office. harris is someone that even as reporter, having covered her here and there, we're starting to learn about her more. what makes her tick? how does she make decisions? i'm curious. what do you think about? harris and i recently wrote about her in her books, but also someone like j.d. vance. he has his own book there that has been very read by many people. what are some of the takeaways that weren't obvious to, you know, any reader reading his book that are now kind of personified you?

these people on the trail all the time now. so. kamala harris has two books, one she wrote in 2009 and one in 2019. so they're a decade apart, but they're also just worlds apart. her first book is called smart on crime, and it focuses on her years as a prosecutor she was a courtroom. she was d.a. in san francisco and then attorney general of california. and that first book has a very kind of, you know, no nonsense, nonpartisan, tough on crime, but understanding kind of approach. and the timing of it is interesting it came out a year before michelle alexander's new jim crow book came out five years before bryan stevenson's just mercy, and it preceded the sort of huge, you know, racial reckoning, whatever you want to call the experience of the past decade in, which a lot of her original views on the role, sort

of very, very noble vision of the role of the prosecutor in the role of law enforcement came to be looked less favorably. certainly, the democratic party and somewhat across across the nation. so then when she's running for in 2019, this book was it was a campaign. the new book was called the truths we hold. all the campaign books have these very generic rah rah america titles. american, you know, like standing, whatever. this was called the truth. we hold. and and you see how her vision of the role of the prosecutor really shifted. now, she was calling herself a progressive prosecutor, which not something she had embraced in the first book, whereas in the first book, she said that, you know, the most important reforms for law enforcement are entirely nonpartisan. you know, democrats, republicans, independents all crave safety. and her views were not, you know, ideological you know, that really shifts my book to now,

i'm not saying there's anything duplicitous about it. you know, people should be allowed to change their minds in the face of new information and and new thinking. but to me, it's interesting that now in this campaign, she's kind of moving a little bit back now. her campaign is calling her a pragmatic prosecutor. progressive prosecutor is no longer, you know, in the in the in her discourse. so, you know, to me, that is that is a fascinating way just, just using their books to sort of see how adapts to new, you know, old positions. and but it also makes me wonder where she will end up, because she's clearly using her experience as a prosecutor, as a central message of this campaign. if you watched any of the democratic convention there was a lot of talk about how she can prosecute case against trump. the prosecutor versus the felon. so you know, that to me has been fascinating. one more thing on harris is that there's a phrase she uses all the time in in her books and

it's it's called false choices. she resists false choices. right. so she says, you know, people say, you to be either supporting the police or supporting accountability for the police. that's a false choice. i'm for both. right people say that i care too much about undocumented immigrants versus america citizens. that's a false choice. and she may be right. you know, and it sounds very sage say that things are false choices, but politics is all about making choices in the face of competing priorities. and i wonder if this resistance to being pinned down, this kind of wanting to to embrace, you know, all sides of a certain issue have if that's contributed to some the difficulties she had in carving out a very defined role as the vice president, at least before the dobbs decision kind of propelled her as a as the administration's voice for

for the abortion rights cause. now, her books are as central to her politic persona as hillbilly elegy is to j.d. vance. there is no j.d. vance vp nomination without, hillbilly elegy, just like there's no trump presidency without the apprentice right. it's sort of what what presented him the world and. what's fascinating to me about, the sort of looking at hillbilly elegy, which i read at the time and by the way, if you want to have some watch his library congress or national book festival event from 2017 which is sort of a whole different side of j.d. vance. and by the way, he was the in this building at the. but what's interesting is that in that first book, he's very critical of the community from which she comes he says it's a culture in right and he says

look you got to stop trying to other people to blame for your problems. you've got to work harder. you got go to school. and it's it's a very kind, tough love view of of of middletown, ohio of of the of the the place he came from when he talks that now it's you know it's a far sharper turn than i've identified even in the harris books because now he is looking for people to blame it's elites it's globalization it's the left and i think there's a greater tension between the the worldview of j.d. vance in hillbilly elegy and the worldview that he's espousing the great about trump is that there's no tension at all. he has always been sort of as he as he presents in those books, even if those books are largely ghostwritten accounts in a way, he he has sort of become the

persona that is presented in the art of the deal and surviving at top and the art of the comeback and how to get rich. i've read all these trump books. there's a of trump books, but you know his willingness to sort of denigrate his opponents, right? he's sort of i'm not like tea leaves here. he sort of brags about and in these earlier books, he doesn't say that he's a liar, says he engages in truthful hyperbole, which is a line in in in the art of the deal. and so, you know, ironically trump is the most consistent between the person of his writings and the political figure we've come to. what do you do if you are someone like, governor tim walz, who does not a memoir i know a book about her husband and i even went on amazon in case there was like any biographer and i think there might be one who wrote somewhat of like a pdf about his life. so what do you do in that case?

i stu you're just waiting and i wait right? you know, so it's funny. i am the moment that the day the biden debate debacle, i guess, is the only appropriate word i'd be to sort of thinking about. like, who might you if they if they ditch the biden campaign, who might it be and who has books. right. so i immediately bought gretchen whitmer's new book, true gretch, it's a weird title, but in fact she in the book that she hates the nickname gretch. but it's the title of the book true --. and and you know and i read her book right away. i started looking at like, you know, we already had people to judges book, but i got the other one, and i was just getting ready to see who it might be. and i started and i called my editor. i'm like, who should i start reading? you know, he's like, hold on, you know, let's wait. let's see what happens. and and so what i often do is, trust me, there will now be

biographies up there will not be collections of. tim walz's like locker room speeches to his football team, right? like like all of that is going to come right and so and so that'll happen i'm sure there's publishers who are circling around him like vultures trying to get you know trying to get him to sign a book deal. now that he's had such an auspicious beginning rollout to his campaign. but often i wait like i've long wanted to write about nancy pelosi and were many, many biographies of her. but now that she has her own book out, it seems like like a good moment to do that. for instance, i often will wait till a politician passes the first essay in this book looks at the four books written by george h.w. bush. i'm reading jimmy carter's books for the same reason, and, you know, life is long. i sort of feel like i'm i'm civil service and they're the appointees like, i'll be here after they're gone and i can still weigh in. maybe there's no schedule f for me. but i'm sorry.

deep cut inside, joe. but, you know, in the case of wars was frustrating because i was i was hoping it would be someone who had a book. last thing i'll say about it, when biden was waiting to see when we were waiting to find out who biden was going to pick as his v.p. people, were thinking it was going to come down to either kamala harris or susan rice. and so i got their books right away. and i had them. i was they were on my desk. i was waiting to see if he was going to pick and i was rooting for harris, susan rice, his book is like this. and it would have taken me forever. i was able to read kamala book a little a little quicker, but again, this is not this is not the only way i mean, this is my way to try to understand our political james poniewozik, because some of you may know he's the television critic for the new york times, terrific writer. he wrote a book called of one trying to understand donald trump in the trump presidency through television right, not to books, to tv and. it was a wonderful book. it's just a different lens. this just happens to be the lens that that that i use, that i'm

comfortable. i'm glad to hear you're also very intimidated by very thick books. of jeff. speaking of predictive abilities, the founding fathers to have had some and lot of lessons for us nowadays. you know, so many people about how if the founding fathers were here, they would tell us this about this policy or this about this person, i'm sure if they came down, they would have i told you so, especially when it comes to this definition, pursuit of happiness. you write in the book about how james madison in particular we are now living in james madison's nightmare. what do you mean by that? how do we get out of it, especially in this day and age of social media? so the it's so wonderful to be here with you and carlos because we're both looking at how what people read their lives and their worldview.

and that is the wisdom of the dharma part of we are what we think is shaped by the mind and. it's so striking how madison, like all the founders, was so centrally shaped by books. jefferson sent over a trunk full of books from paris on the failed democracies of greece and rome that madison read in preparation for the constitutional convention and. he took careful notes about what have to the downfall of greece rome, and he concluded his reading that democ forces were liable to being taken over by demagogue dogs and the mob, and he wrote in federalist 55 in all large assemblies of any character composed passion never fails to wrest the scepter. reason even if every athenian had been socrates, athens would still have been a mob. he's convinced that in the large assembly of 6000 people,

demagogues, cleon could offer cheap luxuries to the people like bread and circuses, persuade them to surround their liberty in exchange for security. so he resolves to establish a constitution that, will allow us to achieve the same harmony in the constitution of the state that we have to achieve in the constitution of own mind. and it's remarkable to read the federalist papers as an act of political psychology. adams applying the books that he read in college believes that just as we have reason in the head, passion in the heart and desire in the stomach, so the constitution of the state can have reason in an executive and passion and desire mirrored and matched in the various houses of the legislature and the executive and thinks that the goal of the constitution is to slow down deliberation so that citizens aren't liable to demagogues and they don't engage

in the riots as in shay's rebellion, western massachusetts, where debtors are mobbing the federal courthouses because they don't want to pay their debts. i found after the book was published this astonishing that jefferson wrote madison right when he received a draft of the constitution and he said, i have two concerns. first, there's no bill of rights. and second, the president is eligible for reelection. and i'm concerned that in distant future, a president might lose an election by a few votes, cry foul, refuse to leave office and install himself as a dictator for life. i never gave your it's in madison's letter jefferson's letter to madison and hamilton to fears a demagogue, a caesar on horseback will come. and by seducing the people establish a subvert the constitution and establish himself as a dictator. jefferson's solution is a one year term limit. so the president can't run again. hamilton's is a president for life so that the president can't

attempted to subvert an election. but both are centrally concerned about demagogues. now, madison solution first is the large size america because it's so big, it'll be hard for mobs to find each, and by the time they do, they'll get tired. go home. and then he has one other solution, which is a new media. the broadside press, that will allow a class of enlightened. he calls the literati. basically, it's carlos. and you, arianna, are supposed to have arguments like the federalist papers which citizens will read in newspapers which slowly diffuse across land. they'll discuss it in coffeehouses, but they will never communicate directly. the president because the idea of a tweeting president is madison's nightmare you that that might lead to demagogues. but by slowly allowing reason to diffuse over time and space will be guided by reason than passion by the public good rather than

self-interest and will avoid factions. so that's madison's hope. obviously, as i say, this it's clear that we're living in madison's nightmare. first, the large size of america's undermined by this social media technology where posts based on passion, travel further and faster than those based on reason and in real time, rather than slowly and this enrage to engage model ensures that it's the angriest post rather than the most temperate ones that get an audience and the polarization of america is more intense than at any time since civil war. according to studies, is the opposite of. the government without party that the founders envisioned. you ask the solution, and i'm not going to solve it at the with in this answer, which i'm going to do. but if it's really striking how that not the founders are kind of pessimistic at the end of their lives about whether the experiment will survive washington gravely fears and the rise of parties.

hamilton you know thinks the government should have been stronger like adams jefferson both trembling for his country when he perceives that god is just and recognizing that he and his fellow enslavers will find divine justice for the slavery they know is wrong, but refuse to abandon fears and accurately anticipates the civil war. only madison is a little more hopeful because he expects of government, but all of them and this is the hopeful point and this is why it's good to be remembering it here at national book fair. all of them think the salvation is is education, is civic, education is citizens taking. go ahead. it is citizens taking the time to educate yourself to, learn about the principles of so you will defend them when they are under siege and will not allow caesar on horseback to persuade you to abandon the urgently important constitutional structures on which republic depends and also through

thoughtful, deep reading and learning from different perspectives, you'll learn the habits of civil and reflection. we'll learn think before we tweet. we'll learn to listen to different points of view. we'll learn the lesson of franklin, who at the end of his extraordinary life, where he's the most acclaimed person in the world, along with voltaire, famous for taming the gulfstream and and bringing lightning from the heavens the part that he's most grateful for is his virtuous of temper. the fact he doesn't assert my or the highway. i know this to be so, but it may be said or i think perhaps just it's the opposite of our current civil, you know, deeply polarized environs. and then finally, washington is very hopeful about the idea of a new national universe. and he thinks it will actually be gw we're here in town, so we'll acknowledge that. and but the point is not who administer it, but the idea of people from across the country

coming to d.c., setting their sectional differences and, their local prejudices so they can study the science of government and learn the habits of deliberation. that's his hope. and if there's any, i want to end on this hopeful note. the marvelous thing about this new age is all these glorious document are online and with great tools. the books that we can read and national constitution centers incredible, interactive constitution that want to recommend to you. it's got 90 million hits since we launched this. and now the most googled constitution in the world because people around the country are eager for nonpartisan, accurate information, the constitution. and then because i'm doing my plug the weekly podcast, we the people that brings together liberals and conservative gives to model civil dialog and the incredible constitution one of one course unlike against the knife salesmen, there's but this is that which is now online but this fall on september 17th constitution they were launching khan academy the great online

you know you'd learn your math and science from them and this is their first civics class. now, everyone free from around the country will be able to learn constitution from the greatest constitutional scholars in america from all perspectives. it's all free and online. all we need to do is learn about it, and we can keep the republic together. thank you for that. so as i was reading of your books, my question always was how did you all take notes? how did you both take notes? i mean, i know reporters do it differently, whether you are a tv reporter and you're prepping all of this information in. and how do you jotted down or if your print like myself, you talked to a zillion people and then you're like, oh my gosh, i have so many. what do i do with that? how do i put it together? we all have like our a rhythm. ah formulas. so i wanted to ask both of you how how did you just keep everything together? i know you had lot of time, but how did you go through these

very dense readings? stay focused and put this book together. it's just so exciting. i you know, i am a kindle reader. it's so easy to take notes and you just highlight and cut paste. it's just incredible. it's so to do and all the primary sources are online and i'm such an evangelist for the transformative power of primary sources. the founders online has in it the complete papers. all the people that i wrote. and you can just go and and word searches are so wonderful reason passion you know virtue you find everything that everyone ever wrote on the subject looking for and then just read it go letter letter and read the sources and then you can cut and paste them onto word document. it's like a marvel, an excavation or an excavation or a kind adventure, a hunt, a

treasure hunt through american intellectual history. and then the fact that you can read the books that they all read by looking at their reading lists is just so exciting. and i share carlos's mission to resurrect peoples through reading the books they read. we are what we think life shaped by the mind, and it's so new, and then you feel like you're learning and reading along with them and all the are there. what do you know? you can lament social media, all you like, but what a glorious time. how fortunate we are to be living in this incredible age where all the all the books are online. and i just read them and take notes and cut and paste and you write and you've written a book. it's just wonderful. carlos, about you or are your books just marked up? i read very differently i, i have difficulty on any kind of device. like i need a physical book and

i started doing it this way that i'm going to describe. and i think it's probably a bad way to do it. i do not recommend to anyone, but it's kind of the way that i read now and i can't stop, i've just been doing it for too long and this is the way it goes. so if i'm going to be reading, if i'm going to be writing a particular book, i know that i'm reading it in order to about it. i feel like i really have to know it. i really have to absorb it. and so i read it three times and the first read is the deepest read. you know, it's with a pen, lots of notes, extensive, you know, marginalia going to footnotes sometimes other books to prepare me to read book. when david garrels knew about my biography he came out, i had to read david maraniss book and remnick's book and, some others, just to sort of figure out what was new and. this one, for instance. right. but so that first read is the deepest read, and it's just lot of writing, a lot of notes, lot

of, you know, rabbit holes. then i, i set it aside at least for a day, and i pick it up again. this is way in the weeds. pick it to begin with, with a highlighter instead of a pen and i read it again a little faster kind of lingering on the portions based on my notes. i can that really struck me the most the first time, i think like, why did this strike me? what's interesting here, what's the context around it? how did these things start to come together and and so then i finished that one and then i go through it a third time, this time with my computer open, you know, open a file and. i start looking at the highlighted material from the second round and, and i can't just cut and paste it. i actually rewrite material because then even just writing the words kind really cements them in my head a little bit more. and i end up with, you know, thousands words of notes from each book. it works out to maybe like a thousand words per 100 pages of a book.

so it's a 400 page book. i might have 4 to 5000 words of notes, and it's quotes it's questions. it's ideas, it's contradictions i've identified. and then that my raw material for i'm going to write about and then i just sit with that and i read through those notes and and that becomes the way that that i can i can write a review, or an essay about one book or about multiple books. it takes forever. it takes forever. and like, my editor gets so frustrated, know, i mean, actually he's he's great, but but, you know, i say like, done reading. so he's like, okay, so you going to write? i'm like not yet. i've got to type up my notes which takes forever right. but you know it it's a it's a method that works for me i feel that at the end an author may not always like what i have to say about that person's book, but they can't say i haven't taken it seriously because. i've really delved into as much as i can. i recently read a book, a called trust by hernan diaz, which i

recommend to you, and without saying too much, it's the kind of book you need to experience. i really explain it. it's it's a memoir. it's it's it's a novel about a memoir and it's a memoir told different vantage points and the deeper end you get to the story the actually the less you really know about the true story at the heart of it and it's it's a little bit disorienting, but it's also just mesmerizing. i'll never read memoir again in the same way after reading book and i sometimes think of that when i think of all the reading that i do because, you know, there's there's a benefit to to to read deeply in a subject. but the deeper read on any subject, the more you just conclude how little actually know about it. right and you know, if you want to feel like you know a lot about a subject or read one book. if you want to feel like you know nothing about, read five

books on that subject and you realize there's just many different different avenues to explore. and that is, again, like and there's this novel that is both disorienting but also just exhilarating because, you know, you can always keep going, you know, jeff is an evangelist for, you know, reading the primary documents, going deeper and and for me, you know, whenever i want to learn about a subject i that the deeper i go the more i realize how much more there is to learn how much more is to read and i mean, i'm preaching to the choir here at the national festival that's that's why you're here, because that's something that you understand very deeply. so for me, i know it's just never going to end. you know, you never gain mastery of of of a subject. you just you just keep learning how much more there is to learn. so now it's your turn to ask questions. there's a microphone. and here if you guys to line up we only have about 10 minutes maybe maybe we can go a little

longer don't know so there's there's still people who may or may not have the interest in politics what is one main thing that you would want them to understand like if they were to be exposed to a political idea as political books. so learning more about the political theory or the politic political news of the day. yeah. i, i guess what i hope people would understand from from the happiness book is not how to form a government, but how to live, how to be a good person, how to spend the day. and this this is what it taught me and to spend the day productively which would have to involve learning every day and some reading every day. well, you know when it comes to politics, i think it's very

helpful to think about the structures of government not the latest policy debates or, who's up or who's down, although it's deeply important to learn about american history from the beginning to the present, including reading about what people read, but just why the constitution set up the way it is. and just for a quick take away the basic principles of the american idea of liberty, democracy, equality federalism embodied in the declaration and, the constitution, and understand their philosophical sources are, and then how they were applied over time and how people them. and then you're often running all i would say all i would add to that is that whatever this person you're talking this hypothetical person who's not into politics, whatever that person cares about science, sports. you know, civil rights, any, any subject that you're that you're into, literature or there are political dimensions, all of that.

and so i think that that whatever your particular interest is, you don't have to think of politics as this kind of dirty thing off to the side that you want to look at. it can be woven in to to to all the issues that you might be concerned about. and it doesn't have to be dirty. it can it can it can be it can be uplifting, but it can but it is always necessary. look over here as an outsider, not actually american. i'm english. i'm still here. you've spoken a lot about certain words in the constitution, be it pursuit of happiness or like well-regulated militia. do you not feel it's a little bit most looking back and i'm looking forward that these men nearly 30 days ago now who wrote these words have such influence on what we think today. they back then they were going to vote. if you were a landowning man, why are we listening to them? why you guys listen to them so much, not choosing your own

path? a crucial question because they articulate it. the shining ideals of the american idea which future generations have to become more embracing, to use justice ginsburg's term, the left out people not just grudgingly, but with opening arms and every single underarm in minority in american history fighting for their rights have invoked the declaration it's so inspiring to see first white men arguing for the expansion of the franchise, then the great abolitionists david walker and frederick douglass, denouncing slavery in the name of the declaration. women at seneca falls, immigrants, and then lgbtq people and onward and onward. it is this glorious that we've always fallen short, but always striving to become more perfect. that's why america is about an idea. it is not about blood or, about where you're born or your

inherited status in britain. that's why for all the glories of britain and its law and its tradition, liberty. it's the american constitution that has proved to be the most impressive and expansive because it is always open to reinvention and to becoming more extensive in its reach. we are the only country, the world that remains defined by an idea in these polarized times when people are worried about whether or not the country is falling apart, it's so inspiring to see that people of all backgrounds still embrace the american idea, although they disagree about its meaning and. that's why i am optimistic that we will survive and flourish. political memoirs. so these books have so many hands on them, whether they're ghostwritten or not political

advisers, editors, etc. so how does a book i know was 20 news cycles ago, but how does a book christine holmes miss the mark so badly, how on earth did clear a charming story about killing a dog? and i'm curious, are there any examples that come to mind for of how someone so badly misunderstood, how their words would shape their public persona? people often ask sort of for the for the best examples, most uplifting examples of political memoir. i love how this is like who screwed up the most? yeah. so wasn't intending to read christine holmes book. i was going to do the thing i'd done before. i was like, well, she's on these lists of potential trump vp's, if she becomes the vp, i'll her book and of course the book comes out, crickett, the dog becomes like a household name, and suddenly my colleagues are like, are you going to read christine i was working rhetoric. christine knows what.

so i picked it up. what i what i learned about process of how that even came to be she written an earlier book where she had wanted to tell the cricket story and her editors wisely pulled her back from doing so. this time. different publisher, a different right. it may that someone who in her case was probably attempting to look you know, tough for trump. remember, remember trump says, you know, so-and-so died like a dog right like i always do. i thought of that when i thought of holmes book and the so for those of you who don't know in the story, she talks about how many years ago in the book talks, how many years ago she was having this hunt, some friends on her land and this dog cricket was poorly trained and got way up ahead of the other hunting dogs and scared away all the birds they were trying shoot. and then later on the way home, cricket jumps out of the car and massacres some chickens.

so she decides crickets and trainable drags into a gravel pit, shoots them, then sees a goat. like i never like that goat either. i'm going to drag that goat over and kill the goat. the story dominated news cycles right? but when you read the book right, don't just listen to the stories about, the anecdote you see that that story of cricket in the goat was in her chapter on, her thinking about policy and national security. and she's trying to explain how she makes decisions on issues of life and death. and, you know, and so it was was this effort to project a kind of trumpian toughness that backfired horribly. but you can almost see how in a certain and a certain way of thinking in a season where everyone is trying to sort of, you know, talk as tough as possible to appeal to a certain wing of the transformed republican party, like you might convince yourself that story shows that i'm tough and it came

up against the sort of, you know, dog lovers of america. and and it became it sort of torpedoed her career any any ambition she had for the vice presidency. but, you know, it's contextual. she's trying to explain how she's tough. she will be tough in the world, right. she doesn't mind, you know, you know, doing the dirty that she needs to do. but at the same time, she's trying to appeal to a certain constituency and in this case did so in a way that really backfired her. jeffrey, you've mentioned how i think the madison quote athens would be a mob even if every citizen was a socrates. and i think we're here at the national book festival. we all wanted some sense to be socrates. carlos is described in detail how reading one has to do just to become a specialist in one

particular political figure. so i'm wondering how might as readers engage in places where where attaining specialization tractable and engage with our communities in places that more light than heat? oh, it's so beautiful. and by definition, this is the of a mob, a community, lifelong learners and readers. it's so beautiful to gaze out at you to. this is the republic of reason because you are all the reason you're here is because you think before you speak, want to grow in wisdom. before you tweet, you, you have the humility to recognize what carlos said, which is the more we read, the less we realize that we know and the more realize that the path is in the pursuit. it's just the daily growing that define a republic of reason.

so your job is to take light of this room and the that you experience every day in your lifelong learning and reading and inspire others to join us in this project of lifelong learning. and the most important thing to do. and it's a radical act nowadays, the great threat to our democracy is that people are not reading and it's not just people who don't have access to books. the most privileged among us both, you know, at every it's adults as well as kids so start and this a serious thing you ask what can you do do your daily reading and if tempted as i am every day to it and to start with the washington post, which i'd much rather do because i want to know what happened, you know, yesterday just just keep and develop that habit and then for goodness sakes, teach it to your kids as all of you were doing it. how wonderful to hear kids here in this room and to see them, their parents. and just let's and just carry

the light across america. i just came yesterday from the chautauqua institute, which was founded in the 19th century as a national movement for self-improvement through lifelong. and it had a spiritual component and had an evangelical component, and it still does. and i subscribe to it. so let's all be part that community and do it by modeling it for ourselves and for our kids and our friends. and in the process, we can transform the world. i'll make two very practical point that i'm very briefly. one is we're talking about the of reading. i would emphasize power of rereading. go back to books that you think you know, back to novels that you think you know, that you read long ago. you will find different. it'll be a different book to you because are a different person. you live in a different time. i would rather get to know one book better and get to know a second book superficially. and the other thing i'll say reading community, i one of the great joys of my life is reading

with my family or sitting over here, we read together, we read at dinner, we read at breakfast, we sneak in 15 minutes. when we can. i'm reading all the king's men, robert and warren with with my oldest son, we're reading, read like five pages to each other at night. and we're slowly reading it. we're like 100 something pages in and so rereading, but also reading together, reading not just in your book club, but actually reading together the process of reading community to me, been just of the great joys of my life. so thank you to everyone who is standing in line. unfortunately we are out of time. but thank you so much for coming. i mean what a great conversation i've learned much talking you both thank you so much thank you so much. so you so much i wrote. yeah. i'm glad