>> usually they -- >> -- do they resist? >> a little bit but, you know, we tend to go more to like dino parks and things like this. but i'm -- i mean we were just in waco, texas and i took them on a tour of the dr. pepper factory. or if we go to, you know, houston we try to go to the history museum as well as some of the natural history ones so i'm -- it's in my blood, and i'm planning on taking them to all these places because they mean so much to me. >> yes. >> this weekend or coming up right now in washington we're doing a outdoors festival with the white house where they're trying to look for new historic sites to save, like ronald reagan's birth place -- >> yes. >> -- and illinois is abandoned, or cesar chavez's trail out in california nobody's addressed from the national park service. so there's always a need to put new sites in the system. >> let's go back to february of 1993 and i'm going to use the second cut on richard norton smith because it kind of connects in with what was just said here. let's listen to what you had to say.

>> that's not a rumor. somebody here told me that they thought you had visited every grave of every former president? >> yes, i have. yes, i'm one of those rare americans who can say that. it was -- it was a hobby as a child, a rather unusual hobby admittedly and sometimes an embarrassing hobby. i contracted heat stroke one day while visiting james k. polk on the grounds of the tennessee state capital in the middle of august. i would not advise viewers to do this. and i almost got arrested one night about 7:00 at night trying to find grover cleveland in a cemetery in princeton, new jersey. >> you know, when doug brinkley was talking about the bus and the students, you've almost transferred to being a yearly bus user for other reasons. >> that's true. by the way, grover cleveland is not worth getting arrested for. i would just point that out. yes, i've always said that the difference -- democrats demonstrate, republicans incorporate. and so while doug really pioneered in the educational use of what's being now called

history travel, for a number of years i've been leading tours of my own, basically presidential tours. and we're doing another one this fall in october in new york in the hudson valley and new england, fall foliage time. eleven presidents in nine days, and it's great fun. >> who goes on these? >> you know, it's almost become a travel club. we've got half the bus full already and they're mostly the people who've been on previous trips. it's -- well, you know what it's like. you bring a bunch of people together who have an interest in or passion for the subject and there's really nothing like it. and they form bonds and it's almost a club. >> i was reading norman mailer's "armies of the night" just for fun on an airplane the other day, and mailer gets arrested at the pentagon and they're all finally get released in the 60s and he's on a bus.

and he writes a beautiful couple pages about nothing like the hum of the bus at night with the road, when you're with fellow people that creates a kind of ethereal cast. it's a very american feel of kind of moving for long distances to go somewhere. and i've always felt that it wasn't just the sights of doing the bus but it was that shared time with people, kind of a community you develop as you move around and talk about history or literature. >> i hate to say this. i was standing right there when norman mailer was arrested. >> really? >> i was in the military and i can remember him being carried off to the van, which shows me how old i am, but yes -- >> what were they -- what was your job there? you were just -- >> i was a public affairs officer in the navy, in the pentagon and they were -- the troops were lined up out there and the -- >> was he being cooperative -- was mailer cooperative? >> he was not being cooperative. >> not being cooperative -- >> and there were -- >> was he sober? >> i think there was some question about that. let's move on. i want to ask you -- this is -- i want to ask you a general question about what's going on today.

put this president right now in the context of history, not whether you like him or hate him or whatever, but in the context of history, richard norton smith, where is this president? it's early, i know. >> yes, it is early. well, first of all i would point out that he exists in a unique political culture. four of the last five american presidents have been polarizing figures, which i think tells you more about us and the culture that has evolved than it does about them per se, which is another way of saying it's -- the founders created a system that makes it difficult to do big things, especially fast. there's a -- there are reasons why we haven't had health care reform of this magnitude for a hundred years since teddy roosevelt first introduced the subject. so for this president to achieve that -- whatever you think of the bill itself -- in this culture is a historic accomplishment.

even more so, i think we all got caught up in the euphoria surrounding obama's election, the symbolic meaning of that. the inauguration day, no one who is here will ever forget that. and i think we forgot that there is still -- the notion that we had overnight become a center left country, rather than a center right country, i think has been tested and i think in some ways disproved, which makes obama's achievement even greater. >> i agree with what richard said. i would simply say that barack obama's an incredible american figure. i mean, my son, johnny, looks at the placemat of the american presidents and all those white faces, i have him memorizing them, and then you get to barack obama. it jumps out at you. the inauguration is going to be a moment talked about forever. i recommend to everybody reads david remnick's, "the bridge." where he covers president obama's life up to becoming president, a brilliant book by the editor of "the new yorker." and jonathan alter of "newsweek" has a book coming out

on the first year of president obama. but i think it's been very historical. he sputtered a lot in some ways out of the gate. he did the big bailout that general motors, i mean, the federal government owning 61 percent of general motors, that's fascinating stuff. we're not sure where that's going to end up. but with the health care, having a year of a slugfest like he had, if he had not passed that health care bill, i think his presidency may have been one term. >> but you know, one thing -- >> but he did pass it and i think now he seems to be on quite a roll and he's unflappable. he's zen-like. he's in this -- everybody pulling at him and he never seems to lose his cool. >> let me -- let me interject, though, that if you listen to talk radio, and i listen to all of it, visceral dislike, daily, minute-to-minute anti-obama constantly. what's that -- how's that fit into history? >> some of that i think is this evolution of the political culture. stop and think.

thirty years ago we were a water cooler nation. it was a consensus nation. a cold -- maybe part of that consensus was artificial because of the cold war. we were, quite frankly, a more civil society. we were a, you know -- you look at the 60s in this town when you had demonstrations in the streets and you had assassinations going on and yet you had -- you had republicans and democrats working together to pass civil rights bills and other major -- >> well, haven't there been periods where's there's been this -- >> there has been in the past, but think what's different about this. you have the internet, which affords character assassins a cloak of anonymity. you have a general coarsening of the culture which is both reflected in, and i think exacerbated by, much of cable tv and much of talk radio. it's all about conflict, about stoking conflict and it's not surprising that people are incited -- >> well, let me -- let me turn to fighter coughlin, who had a

huge sunday afternoon audience of 30 million people, when we had very few people compared to what we have now. didn't he play the same role that talk radio does today? >> absolutely, and there were a lot of extreme right people that the very name of franklin roosevelt, they thought he was a communist, a socialist, a jew lover. i mean there are all sorts of things were thrown at him. but i do think what richard's saying -- i believe we had a watershed mark in the 60s. more with the great -- once the new deal happened roosevelt controlled the democratic party so fully when he passed his social security as somebody like hamilton fish, a republican along with an fdr. in the 60s, as richard says, with the great society you had a senator dirksen and types, mark hatfield types that would vote bipartisan. we don't have that now. i think it's a -- was ronald reagan said in his diaries, it is a "we're trying to rollback the great society." and really from 1980, when conservatism got serious with ronald reagan and really had control of the white house and had eight years of good presidency, reagan, they felt very empowered and

meanwhile, we've had some difficult elections. look at 2000. democrats never believed that george w. bush won. they thought al gore won. and then you have the -- kerry getting beat by w the second time, but there was the swift boat thing and -- so it's become now -- how -- a rip and tear atmosphere. i don't think it's unique to american history, but i do think we're experiencing in a -- in a very visceral way right now. >> forty years ago, and again, i mean nostalgic for the 60s, but the fact of the matter is the fringe was clearly understood. there was a consensus about what the fringe was, on the right and on the left. today you have television networks that are not only covering the fringe, but sponsoring it, bringing it into the mainstream. so that in many ways, you know, the sideshow is crowding out the main tent. and i think one of the real dangers is the media moderates find it very difficult.

watch cable tv -- >> i do. >> ok. and see how many -- how many people are on there voicing the need for consensus, for finding the ways to bridge our differences rather than exploiting our differences. that doesn't sell dog food. >> well, let me just throw this in. there are 309 million people in the united states and 3-1/2 million people watch the top- rated cable news show, bill o'reilly. that's less than 1 percent. >> well, look. i think we're ripe for a third party run right now. i mean, if ross perot can get -- what did he get -- 12 percent, or was it 18? >> the first time running he got 19. >> nineteen percent. so i mean, you're dealing with perot -- and who was not a very substantial candidate, really. i think it's wide open. people are tired of the democratic, republican party, the lobbying, the food fight as richard's explaining it. having a credible third party's another question. i see now somebody like ron paul might do it, but he's kind of an odd duck himself and who

could come in there and do it. but theodore roosevelt did it in 1912 with the bull moose party and split the republican party in two. and we're ripe for a new bull moose era. >> the third party presumably would have to be like perot. something like perot put the budget deficit on the map. perot actually made it impossible for bill clinton not to address that issue with historical significance. the one person out there who presumably is in a position to do that and the resources to do it would be mayor bloomberg of new york. >> yes. >> all right. we're going to switch subjects. this is a stream of consciousness hour so -- >> yes. >> -- question to both of you, what's the best historical book, book of history you've read recently? >> i would say i've reread david halberstam's "the best and the brightest." and i read it not just to look at the kennedy administration and vietnam in the 60s, but stylistically.

i think halberstam was the best writer of history in the united states since 1945. i've also read his book "the powers that be" about the media climate and halberstam's ability to use a -- be a journalist, a historian and have a bit of a novelist flair in the seamless fashion seems to me that we -- he's a well-known person, halberstam. but i think he's better and i'm sad that he's gone. i was friends with him somewhat, but he was a genius at the sort of creative nonfiction narrative about america. you read halberstam you get a real slice of the country. >> killed out in california by a young man in a car, what, two years ago, three years? >> yes. a car just swiped him when he was getting picked up at the airport to go give a speech and a car ran him off the side and he was killed. >> you're best? >> i would say a wonderful new biography of commodore vanderbilt, which just won the pulitzer prize, i think

deservedly, for best biography of the year by a young extraordinary author named t.j. stiles who i believe did a book on jesse james, which i have not read. but the vanderbilt book is a classic. it is -- you know what a great movie does or a great play does, which is for a while it ushers you into another world with complete credibility. in this case it's a perfect blend of biography. i mean vanderbilt is a fascinating larger than life deservedly controversial figure, but it also is a history -- it's not just a life and times. you understand the transportation revolution in this country first through steamboats and then through the railroads. you understand the growth of capitalism in this country, the intersection of capitalism and politics. i mean vanderbilt's life spans basically the 19th century and it's an incredible life and i cannot imagine anyone telling it better.

>> i happen to have the pulitzer winners here that were just announced and in that category of biography or autobiography, t.j. stiles won, as you said. number two was "cheever: a life" by blake bailey and number three was "woodrow wilson: a biography" by john milton cooper. >> blake bailey is a friend of mine and he is a really fine -- he'd written a biography of richard yates, the novelist before cheever. he had great access to the cheever archives and john cheever has probably influenced more of our recent great novelists, anne holmes or david gates and many others. so we needed a cheever biography, and this book really delivers on it. it has won, i think, a circles book award. it could have won the pulitzer, brilliant literary biography. and john milton cooper in my -- has sort of replaced in many ways arthur link who used to do all these multiple binds of woodrow wilson at princeton. john milton cooper is a

professor of history at university of wisconsin madison. he is superb. his book "the warrior and the priest" comparing theodore roosevelt and woodrow wilson is a classic, and this is the best single volume biography of woodrow wilson, so great choices. >> have either one you ever won a pulitzer? >> no. >> you ever tried? >> well, you don't try. beginners luck, i was actually one of three finalists for the dewey book. but again, that was -- my god that was 27 years ago and no one suggested it since. >> well, we started out with doug brinkley talking about elvis presley and i know some of your interest so i'm going to -- the drama winner this year of the pulitzer, which has nothing to do with history, but it was something called "next to normal" by -- music by tom kitt and lyrics by brian yorkey. >> extraordinary show, in fact i'm seeing it tomorrow night for the second time in new york. it is -- it reinvents the broadway musical, which i know you hear from time to time. but it does so in a way that is both thought provoking in the extreme and entertaining.

it is about a family that is struggling desperately to stay together while the mother is coming apart at the seams. it's a story of her mental illness and her coming to terms or inability to come to terms with the death 17 years ago of her son, who by the way is a character in the show. you learn as the evening goes on that in fact this boy is dead and has been for a long time. it doesn't sound like a subject for musical but -- >> yes, but where does broadway fit in the culture scheme? are you a broadway fan? >> i am. not probably as much as richard but i am. >> have there been many historical type broadway shows? >> well, i like off-off- broadway. i liked -- i was a big fan, and still am, of the original early plays of sam shepard that he did there. they still blow me away, sam shepard. he's one of the people that we're talking about that lives in our myths now and writes plays, but i think he's of the caliber of a eugene o'neill, one of the really seminal. and because he mixes western folklore, shepard, with science

fiction with domestic angst with a kind of a sparse american poor white people landscape, and they're just phenomenal plays. and so any time i see any -- even any of the shepard plays being presented somewhere, i go to whether it's in new york or elsewhere. >> there was a special award given to hank williams. >> oh, i was thrilled. >> yes. >> he's my cowboy. >> where does he fit in history? are you -- i can't imagine you listen to hank williams. >> i'm huge on hank. you've got to turn to me on this. >> yes, it's all his. >> but i want to first start with richard norton smith. >> does stephen sondheim count? well, it's his 80th birthday, you know, if he hasn't won a pulitzer i think -- no, in fact he has won a pulitzer. >> but he did a broadway show called the "assassins," which was about assassination of a lot -- >> extraordinary. >> talk about reinventing, you know, pushing the envelope. sondheim's been doing that for 50 years. and in fact he won a pulitzer for "sunday in the park with george," which was all about georges seurat the french pointillist painter who created

sunday in the -- you know, it's a show about the artist, the animation of the artist, what is unique about the artist, why are some different from the rest of us. >> but what impact has broadway or at least pulitzers have on the society and the way it views history? >> very quickly, well, broadway is much less important to the culture today than it was 40 or 50 years ago when you had tennessee williams and you had marlon brando appearing on broadway, and it's a different culture. ironically it's more profitable than ever. it's arguably more homogenized, which may be one reason why you're drawn to off-broadway. >> and i think you're starting to get hollywood stars getting ready to do their big moment on broadway. i think broadway has been revitalized in the sense that it's doing well at box office. it's -- the theater district in new york has been kind of cleaned up. it has a kind of a family entertainment feel to it, and a lot of our best actors and actresses are now starring in plays. >> fifty years ago the sound

track from "my fair lady," for example, would set records. it was on the top seller list for over a year. fifty years ago people -- the music on the radio was coming from broadway. that's no longer the case. >> you mentioned elvis earlier. there is a broadway play called "million dollar quartet," which is about elvis and a few others at sun records back in 1956, before your time. but hank williams, where does he fit in historically? >> well, hank is -- there is -- well, you know, there's a whole genre of music based on hank williams, which is outlaw country. if you put on satellite radio you can listen to that network. where i live, austin, texas, it's all -- we're all sons and daughters of hank williams. he was just an incredible songwriter, had a life of a lot of pathos, died freezing on a new year's day in the back of a car in ohio, but just wrote so many great songs, you know, they're kind of endless. but if you go to alabama,

they're really taking him quite seriously. there's a hank williams museum, a home he lived in is being saved. there are statues of him and the same with jimmie rodgers in meridian, mississippi. country music, hank williams, jimmie rodgers, johnny cash, are so much part of the american grain that i can't think of the 20th century without the voice of hank williams. so it was great the pulitzer -- >> i think what i'm saying is you would have two sides of this here because it's often said that the broadway musical was america's unique contribution to the world, but in fact county music is at least as, if not more, distinctly american. >> switching subjects again, i want to play for you an audio tape. you'll recognize the voice and you'll understand that this has never been played before. it's been released just recently. this is from october of 1968. you have to keep that in mind. let's run it. >> it's lyndon johnson. >> oh, yes, mr. president, how are you?

>> i hope i'm not interrupting your dinner. >> no, no, we finished some time ago. >> gordon, we -- i just learned tonight our folks have been out looking at these libraries, and is there no way in the world that we could reconstitute as nearly as possible in the president's office at the library, the president's office here? >> well, we haven't thought of it but it's possible. >> i hate to build me a little one out to the side and say, this is the way the president's office looked and here's his desk and here's his chair and here's his fdr picture. here's where all these people sat. now that is the most attractive thing they tell me to the people who go and hear it is truman discussing where he sat in this office.

>> yes, i've seen the one at -- in kansas of mr. -- president truman. >> lady bird said well, we have a trouble. she said it just ought to be. we just should have thought of it. we just played hell not doing it, and now we've got a bunch of can't do velocity. she says that the ceiling is not high enough. well, maybe we don't have to have the same height ceiling, but maybe -- and maybe we can't have the same oval room, maybe it's got different dimensions. but it seems to me that if we could -- >> that was october 10, 1968 and he was -- lyndon johnson talking to gordon bunshaft who was a famous architect, and this is right before he leaves office. you've been involved in a lot of libraries and you've been to a lot of libraries, how important is something like the oval office or, for that matter, presidential libraries? >> presidential libraries are essential. they become -- because it gets

people out of just washington to do research, they're all very busy. i just recently spoke in the kennedy library, the reagan library. when you go to the reagan library, for example, you get to see the view of the hills that ronald reagan so loved and would horseback ride in. you get to see air force one, which they have there, people queue up for it. carter library, they have an oval office the way it looked when carter was there, as many of them are redoing it. it helps people have a sense of pride that a president came from their particular state. >> what about -- what library -- which is your favorite library in the country and you've run three or four of them. >> that's like asking, which is your favorite child? i mean -- >> well, maybe i'll ask you this way, what makes -- >> i'll tell you the model. i wish -- i wish there was a way that we could go back to the original model, where the libraries relatively modest in size, were put in the middle of a cornfield in iowa or down the street from harry truman's home

on delaware street in independence or above all at franklin roosevelt's estate in hyde park. the idea being that these organically grew out of the surroundings that produced the presidents, their characters, their world outlook, you know, and so that hyde park is part of the exhibit, independence is part of the exhibit. beginning with the kennedy library the decision was made, understandably and i think in part for financial reasons, to align these institutions with universities. and that is in some ways a faustian bargain as the library directors discover subsequently and the former presidents discover. >> what's the george w. bush library going to look like? >> you know i have to tell you it's -- i'm impressed. they got robert a.m. stern, a great architect, and i thought ok here we go, we're going to -- we're going to try

to out-clinton clinton, you know, which is a remarkable building. and in fact what they've done is exactly the opposite. they've created a building that absolutely fits into the existing smu campus that doesn't call attention to itself, that is not monumental in a pejorative way. and my sense is, apart from the folks who were working on it, that that carries on inside. that it's a museum about the presidency and what it's like to be president and the decision making process that goes on, as opposed to a very sort of time-specific, personalized biographical treatment. >> do you have a favorite? >> i like probably the reagan library for its dramatic scene. it's very friendly to do research at the reagan library, but i like all of them. in austin we have the lyndon johnson library and i go down to a lot and that has the advantage of being right in the

middle of a campus. >> have you seen the oval office he's talking about wanting to build? >> i have and i've seen where he has a shower and he has furniture. it is almost like going to graceland. elvis wanted all this sort of objects around that people could practically study his toenails he was that deep into it. but one thing about george w. bush -- now that library is going to be at smu. they're doing a great job. north dallas knows how to do it. they have some history in that area. but it's really the ranch in crawford that people associate with the bush presidency. i asked the question, what's happening to the ranch? is that going to become -- given to the national park service? today you look at president barack obama, some day -- i mean some people have to worry about the irs in their lives. he's going to have to worry about interior department coming saying, "we want your chicago home. we want your hawaii home." and this happens all the time. the most extreme example of all of this kind of presidential site mania is jimmy carter's plains. the whole town's a historic district. and there's a house there that

you could stay at, a bed and breakfast where there's a plaque that says jimmy carter was conceived in this house. so people go crazy for these presidential experiences down to what, you know, what kind of food the president ate, where did they go to church? so johnson's not that farfetched in that tape when he's saying people are going to want to know where somebody sat and this -- >> what about the people -- how many -- the number of people that go there, i mean the numbers aren't great in many cases and how about the number of people that are researching there? >> the numbers are down. you find in many of these institutions their peak years were the bicentennial year in '76. that's in part, i think, because as a culture families don't get in a station wagon and set off for two weeks in the summer to visit all of these sites the way they used to. also i think, frankly, there's a formula that i think has gotten rather stale. i mean how many times can you visit the oval office? and so i think it's incumbent

on planners of future presidential libraries to find ways to reinvent -- >> how many people go to more than one presidential library? >> well, there's a number you'd be surprised. there are a number -- i mean there are some people who go to all the president's graves. >> yes there are. >> but there are a number of people -- i would say obviously the numbers are up in the aggregate because there's been a proliferation of libraries. but what happens, and this happens at any biographical site, as the generation passes away that had a vivid emotional connection with someone, it's not surprising that the number should decline. and that's the case with the presidential libraries. >> schools go to them. i mean you get bus -- it's wonderful to see busloads of young people that live in an area of a presidential library going. it's almost a mandatory field trip and it helps them think about what the presidency is. and the films they use in these libraries are fantastic, too. >> you both are teaching. you both are writing books. let's catch up on all that. what are you teaching and where?

>> i'm a professor of history at rice university. i also work with the baker institute at rice. i'm teaching -- >> that's james a. baker, iii? >> yes. and i do three classes. i do history of the cold war, history of the presidency and conservation history. rice is one of the best schools in america. i love teaching there. we're one of the top 20 universities by "us news." we haven't been hit as badly as some places by the great recession, so i think things are going well. >> what are you writing? >> right now i'm working on two books. one comes out this year called "the quiet world: saving alaska's wilderness kingdom from 1909 to 2010." at the end of it it's about the arctic refuge anwr, but it's really a fight to save wild alaska following up on my theodore roosevelt book. so i'm looking at charles sheldon's efforts to save mount mckinley, bob marshall who created the wilderness society's efforts to save what's today gates of the arctic national park. the whole group of people that lived with wolves and things up in the arctic that ended up

getting this great arctic refuge where the coastal plain is where our polar bear den, the great caribou herd of america is. the arctic is our serengeti for wildlife. and then the whole aleutian island chain where they tested two nuclear weapons on the aleutians. they were going to test another one in alaska but it's been preserved and saved and it's probably our single most wildlife-rich state is alaska. then i'm doing a biography of walter cronkite. >> and when is that going to come out? >> the following year. i've been working on the cronkite book for a long time. his papers are at university of texas austin. they're voluminous. and i'm the historian for cbs news so i've had some access in those ways, too. >> can you tell us something about walter cronkite we don't know? >> that he couldn't stand edward r. murrow and murrow couldn't stand him. and when cronkite took over to be the anchor it was over murrow's dead body, and murrow, of course, went into the kennedy administration then. but he thought walter wasn't an intellectual. that the intellectuals were charles collingwood whoagc had

received a rhodes and went to cornell and eric sevareid the philosopher from minnesota, where cronkite was kind of the gumshoe up reporter and didn't have this kind of book learning that murrow thought needed to be his successor. so it's a fascinating chapter. >> what are you teaching? >> i teach an undergraduate course on the american presidency and in the process of developing -- >> where? >> -- a graduate course at george mason here in suburban washington, which is a wonderful and in many way very unusual university in that it is very collegial and very entrepreneurial. and those are not traits that one universally associates with the academy. >> and what are you writing? >> i am still writing, as i have been for the last 10 years, a biography suitably epic of nelson rockefeller. >> you back in 1993, doug brinkley, talked about communicating with parents in the "booknotes" interview and the reason i want to run this

is it shows the difference between then and now. let's watch. >> how did you stay in contact as you moved around? >> payphones. that wasn't -- one of the things is, these are -- these are adults. i mean, they might be young people but when somebody's, you know, to me 21 years old, they're an adult. and that they wanted to -- they have to call home, they call their parents, their parents had an itinerary and they knew where to reach us and that was it. i mean, people would make their own phone calls. i wasn't responsible for calls home or to, you know, they'd have to pay for themselves and do them themselves. >> what has technology done? >> i miss the payphone era, brian. >> it's hard to find them. >> i'm more old-fashioned. i am. i used to live by -- i used to get those little cards, pockets full of quarters, and i used to jam them in. i'm not sure i'd want to do a magic bus with technology today. i can't stand facebook. i loathe it. i don't like anything that is sort of a new communication form because it makes -- everybody starts being about themselves and not about the history. everybody's their own facebook star.

it's very self-referential. it leads to a kind of youth narcissism and i think we haven't yet caught up to the downsides to kind of technology. i'm about books, an antiquarian books, used books, something tangible that you can touch. i can't stand the whole -- >> something like "who's buried in grant's tomb?" >> yes, i'm giving you a cut-in to the -- no, i'm not big on kindle. i know a lot of my friends in their 20s are. i don't want to read a book on a computer screen. >> this book, by the way, is a book that we've had out for a long time. >> it's the book that will not die, i would say. >> this is -- this is about the fourth edition that douglas brinkley and richard norton smith have been involved in and it's called "who's buried in grant's tomb: a tour of presidential gravesites." we have a clip of you talking about your life before 1993 when you wrote the book on george washington. let's watch that. >> i went to harvard. i graduated '75 with a government degree which, with all due respect to the government department, was more or less worthless. >> what did you do then? >> i kicked around for a couple

of years as a freelance writer. actually i was an intern at the white house in the summer of 1975 and -- >> during what administration? >> it was during the ford administration and i'm ashamed to say i wrote a piece about the experience for the "washington post" which later terminated the program. it was intended to be a humorous piece but it was interpreted as something of an expose. >> about what it was like to be inside the white house? >> well, and to be an intern. i mean, they were all -- i mean, here we were. all these kids who were there because we knew people who knew people and there wasn't a whole lot of substance to do and it was a somewhat comical situation. >> the white house internship is back. >> well, i often said, you know, if -- if bill clinton had only read my article, history might have been very different because the intern program was in fact killed as a result of that article. and you're right, subsequent presidents brought it back and the rest, as they say, is history. >> should there be internships at the white house?

>> i suspect there should if it's very different from what this program was. this was really, you know, as i said, it was a bunch of sort of politically well-connected kids who were -- who were given make work. that certainly was the case with me. >> what's the best training, and let's make it short because we have so more to talk about but what's the best training for someone who thinks they want to be, like either one of you, a historian? >> get your college degree, major in history, go do perhaps a master's or maybe a doctorate, but write all the time. journal, diaries, read newspapers, read how good people write. you can learn more about how to write good history from reading tom wolfe or truman capote or joan didion as much as you can reading an academic dissertation-like book. >> is that thomas wolfe or tom wolfe? >> tom wolfe of today who's -- write "the right stuff" and "electric kool-aid acid test," just a tremendous so-called new journalist but just a gifted american writer. >> what would you do? what would you recommend? >> i would agree with all that but with one dissent. i would -- i would side with the late great barbara tuchman who said the best thing that ever happened to her was not getting a ph.d.

in history, precisely because she wanted to write history as literature. she didn't want to write exclusively for other historians. >> who is the best, in your opinion, the best writer of history, not in the history that you know of? who would you say wrote the best? >> ever or today? >> ever, you know, somebody that you -- >> francis parkman wrote beautifully. barbara tuchman, unbelievable, and i think david mccullough writes with such grace of our -- today's historians. >> now, i would certainly agree with all of those names. i think i would add an academic, distinguished academic, alan nevins who wrote eight volumes about the coming of the civil war and the war which is still unmatched for both academic rigor and sheer readability. >> next subject, oral histories, here is an excerpt from an oral history you'd done with -- and it's bob dole talking about george mcgovern. it's only -- it's less than a

minute and we can get you both to talk about what role they play. >> he had a very compassionate attitude towards people with whom he disagreed. how else can you explain mcgovern and dole being such good friends? i mean, i used to rail against george mcgovern. today i can't do that anymore because i have such enormous respect for george mcgovern and the genuine -- i'm going to say love and respect between bob and george mcgovern. it's a beautiful friendship and i sat down after the dole announcement in lawrence when they had that big dinner and my wife and i were having a late night snack and george mcgovern came in. and we sat down with him and talked for about an hour-and-a- half. and i just came to see that bob had more influence on him than he had on bob. >> where did you do it and when did you do this? he's now deceased. >> that's right, we did it about three years ago and boy, jack kemp -- we miss jack kemp.

jack kemp was a happy warrior. jack kemp was a man all about ideas, principles. you didn't have to agree with him but the fact is he respected those who disagreed with him, and he believed that politics, in fact, were supposed to be about ideas and not, you know, character assassination or trivial, you know, tactics of the moment. we could use more people like that. >> what is this project about, though, how -- the sense -- >> it was -- the dole institute undertook an oral history project and did about 80 interviews primarily with senatorial colleagues at his insistence. he didn't want it to be a truly biographical project. he wanted it to be about congress. he wanted to go to the practitioners and get them to explain because, notwithstanding c-span, i think there's a huge lack of knowledge about how this town works, how congress works. and one of the things that the dole institute and many other congressional study centers developed themselves is trying to address that. >> what are the rules? in other words, when you go into

an interview -- and you're also doing some work for the gerald r. ford foundation? >> yes, we're doing close to 200 interviews with people who have known president and mrs. ford. >> how do you do it? i mean, how is it set up and what kind of rules are there about people that talk? can they -- i mean, do you release it right away? >> no, you -- no, again, everyone has their own approach to this. you want people to be candid. you want people to feel comfortable. and particularly there is a debate about whether you should use a camera or not. and there are those who will say well, people will be less candid if they know they're being videotaped. my experience is exactly the opposite if they're comfortable with the interviewer and the subject. and so basically, for example, the ford project, all of these are being videotaped. they will be held initially by the foundation which is the private organization sponsoring this. none of them will be released before 2013 which is the ford centenary. they may be held for a biography. they may wind up on the web. they may find their way into new museum exhibits.

eventually they'll be in the -- in the library where anyone can have access to them. >> tell us something you've learned in this process that we don't know. >> oh gosh, i've learned lots of things. >> just one thing. >> gerald ford is a much more complicated figure than anyone knew. we talked to lee hamilton just a week ago and had a wonderful conversation with lee hamilton who had a very interesting perspective. he said, you know, gerry ford was very ambitious but he hid it. he concealed it. this town is full of ambitious people who don't conceal it. and one of the secrets of his success, why he was so liked, and he told a number of stories and this is from the perspective of a fairly liberal democrat who disagreed with him on most of the issues but who liked him immensely was, in fact, this shrewd attempt on ford's part not to come across as typically ambitious in washington. >> i remember you doing something like eight hours with neil armstrong. >> i did and we did a long interview with mr. armstrong at johnson space center right after 9/11. he flew his own plane in from

cincinnati where he has a farm, and he was turning 70 and agreed to do one nasa oral history interview. and the late steve ambrose and i got to do it, and we had at him. and it was a marvelous opportunity to talk to him. i grew up in perrysburg, ohio not far from wapakoneta, so neil armstrong and john glenn -- i love john glenn. they were both great boyhood heroes of mine. but i've been -- done a lot when i particularly ran the eisenhower center we would do world war ii oral history interviews. and i liked talking to soldiers a lot because it's hard to understand battle from a perspective, one general's perspective. but if you can get a sampling of 50 people -- i, for example, just got back from haiti and i went around with general ken keen, the head of our southern command, and he's a first battalion army ranger. and then looking at the job that our humanitarian army has done in haiti and hearing the stories of different soldiers of what they encountered after the

earthquake, the death and the devastation and the famine and the amputations and the tailgate medicine. to just start talking to all these soldiers, my mind said there's only one way to do this, an oral history project on talking to all these guys, making tapes to capture what it was like when the 82nd airborne first arrived and saw this devastation, you know, over 200,000 people killed. >> but where does it go? i mean, where does all this material go and who listens to it and is there a chance that no one does? >> the presidential libraries in their early days had on staff fulltime paid oral historians who would go out and collect, you know, all these -- all these memories. so if you go to the johnson library, the kennedy library, the hoover library, you will find very large collections supplementing the written record. because let's face it, we all know, you know, a lot of history doesn't get put on paper so it becomes available to scholars and now, because of technology, it's available to the general public. >> it's a sense of permanence

with oral history. in many ways it's journalism. it's interviewing somebody except like you do longer form interviews and you get a transcript of that that becomes invaluable to history. the c-span archive is essentially a great oral history project. people are going to be able to look up the name later. if it's neil armstrong, we'll see every time he ever was on and somebody will be footnoting those in a paper. so oral histories just add to it. there's a book coming out right now by arthur schlesinger, jr.'s oral history of jackie kennedy which he did for the kennedy library but it's so long, voluminous and personal because she trusted him to talk, that it's becoming a book in its own right. i wrote a book called "the boys of pointe du hoc," where it was long interviews, almost biographies of all these guys because i was taking them. the point is they started forming books, these oral histories. >> i'm going to show you some videotape, something that you participated in in 2009. this is -- will be painful but it -- i want to do it for a couple reasons.

i think you know what i'm talking about here. this is about a minute and 11 seconds. let's run it. >> stone, for the last couple of years worked for me at rice university in houston and he was my dartmouth and yale combined. he would -- got so engaged in history and current events that he was literally a -- kind of ablaze about life. he enjoyed books and learning. together we really discovered birds for the first time. we were doing research on the audubon society a hundred years ago and that very minute mind stone had, he got into the difference between each kind of warbler. we would walk together across from rice to the zoo in houston and look at the animals and talk because we needed to understand it for the work that we were doing.

we went through the presidential campaign together and i try to be a historian who's judicial and stone would constantly wear in all of my classes his obama t-shirt ratting me out to everybody. >> now, that was at the national cathedral and it was a memorial service for a young man named stone weeks. just give us -- i know -- i ran it for a couple reasons. one, to have you tell us the background but also about people that work for both of you as historians. >> stone weeks was my personal assistant. he was in his early twenties, had graduated from the university of delaware. his father, linton weeks, was a long-time "washington post" writer running the web site for national public radio. he introduced me to his son. i hired him when i was working on my book "the wilderness warrior: theodore roosevelt," a book on conservation. he was my right and left hand. we became great friends.

my wife, ann, and i were friends with stone. we -- our whole lives became interspersed. and then tragically, on the way to a book party of mine but also to come see his parents here in d.c., a truck hit stone and his brother and it crunched them like an accordion on a virginia highway and both stone and his brother, holt, just got burned and died, and so it was quite tragic. and we had a memorial service at washington cathedral for him and that clip you ran was part of the eulogy. i'm dedicating my book i'm working on right now, "the quiet world," about alaska, to stone. >> do you use assistants when you research? >> no, and that may be a weakness but i don't know -- i wouldn't know how to use assistants. i think you obviously want to be as objective as possible in laying out your information but i think there's a healthy subjectivity in the research process in terms of instinctively knowing which

anecdote is going to really shed light, on which quote is worth using. i don't know how you subcontract that. >> how do you protect yourself, doug? >> well, it isn't -- that wasn't what stone's job was. it was mainly to get library books, to help me, you know, type up things, to go look on the internet for things, which i'm not very good at. and also he was running my -- i've got a -- i have a busy operation in the sense of people wanting mail and blurbs and recommendations and things like that so he was sort of, you know, managing that kind of stuff. but i agree with richard, when you're doing the actually research work, you just have to do that yourself because nobody else is going to -- if you go look at a paper collection, i'm going to spot something that nobody else can see. >> you mentioned earlier, and i have the document here, that this tour you're going to take october 9th to the 17th, a nine-day, eight-night tour of 11 presidential sites? >> yes, 11 presidents. there are some multiple sites. >> and it's $3,695 a person.

>> yes, well we're going, you know, this is a five-star tour. this is not -- this is not the bus tour with students. you know, a couple nights at the waldorf and the parker house. >> you have room left and we'll have that on the screen. if somebody wants to participate, what do they do? just -- >> they can -- actually there's a web site. they can go -- they can google presidentsandpatriots, all one word, presidentsandpatriots.com or they can call 202-621-7250. >> ok, we'll have it on the screen but before we shut this down, give us an example of a place in history that you think is special, that -- and, you know, one of your favorite places to go back to. >> well, i guess i like quite a bit of where i was born, atlanta, because i've seen that city grow so much. i was born there at crawford long hospital. we used to live out towards

stone mountain in decatur and just to see that city just grow and grow. and i get very moved by the whole civil rights story of martin luther king, of daddy king's church, of auburn avenue, of going to some of the southern restaurants that are still around from that -- the movement era. and there's nothing to me like going to these sites like oxford, mississippi and selma, montgomery and birmingham and memphis where dr. king was killed and visiting the civil rights museum there. >> mr. smith, what about you? >> i would say one of my -- my first president -- go to plymouth notch, vermont. plymouth notch is a little town. there are six homes there now. there were six homes there in july 1872 when calvin coolidge was born there. the whole village is a museum. thank god, apparently through the coolidge family, it's been preserved. it's a wonderful way to step back in time and experience a very different america. you know, coolidge is a much more interesting character than

he has often been portrayed and in fact one of the interesting things is i think post-reagan we're rediscovering the fact that there is an alternative to the new deal model of the presidency. >> you're a boston native, harvard graduate. >> nearby -- nearby boston. >> leominster? >> no, townsend, little town. >> oh, excuse me. >> four thousand people. >> harvard graduate, undergraduate degree, no doctorate degree. >> absolutely. >> and ph.d. from georgetown. >> yes. >> born in atlanta but grew up in ohio. >> grew up in rural ohio near or outside -- >> and your alaska book will publish what? >> harper collins is bringing out this december 6th which is the 50th anniversary of so- called anwr, the arctic reserve. >> and your book on nelson rockefeller? i've asked you that for years. >> yes, you have. i get emails from people, the annual -- the annual inquiry. i'm about a year-and-a-half from finishing it. >> richard norton smith, doug brinkley, as always thank you both for joining me. >> thanks.

>> for a ddt copy of this program, call1-877-662-7726. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] this year's cspan thiscam contest -- this year's cspan student cam and one of the winners. >> i hope there is that diversity and culture is completely what all of america

is. >> i am creek indian. >> one-sided my family is from france and the other from mexico. >> my background is different. i am chinese, jewish, greek, and russian. the majority is chinese and the other biggest majority is jewish. >> we years the term culture, i don't think it is color or religious ethnicity. i think it is a whole social structure. the statue of liberty says bring me you're hungry, you're tired, your port. >> people from asia and europe and south america and just all these places. we'll come together here in america theme there is no

american -- one american culture. is a melting pot of different cultures. if it was the same as other countries like one culture, america would lose its originality. >> so many different cultures have different ideals and have different beliefs. there are different great things about different cultures. what america can bring them together, everyone learns something no. they might learn a new type of inner peace or universal contact. everybody is bringing different ideas. there is no country, in my opinion, that their government works exactly the same theme. >> in america, you can get someone from another country who understands cultures and understands how the business will feel and how you consult a

common situation. >> the pound and fathers, -- the founding fathers, like a constituency, their original definition was kind of narrow in diversity but they wanted diversity. we have that now. >> what kind of people come to the united states? people looking for work. like a microphone. on a microphone, you get one person speaking at a time and you may have an extreme left or right or white or black in this big into the microphone, and it sounds like you do not have diversity but when you listen to all the conversation, you really do. we had about 104% employment. >> your parents come from different cultures and that allows you to keep more of an open mind the more you learn, the more rigid you're like this. >> i have had students in classrooms from myanmar,

pakistan, africa, it makes them a better person for it makes them more appreciative where they are. >> my grandmother grew up where it was not like there was no such thing and she broke in and not so great part of town. she taught me the lessons she learned. >> the diversity enters the called. >> do not classify it race of people. you have to look deep into their culture at the individual persons. do not classify as what you see. classified as what you know. >> i do not know america is better off with diversity but the fact that it is diverse is what makes it unique. you do not get a melting pot of culture like that. there is a disadvantage of ignorant people in this country. >> you are on the air.

>> my comment is about -- when they come up here, they are here for one purpose and that is to make money. when we go to their country, we do not. when you are an immigrant and an illegal immigrant and you cannot speak english, is your fault that you are ignorant. i don't think when you're a false says he should have the right to the constitution that this is not about debate over legal verses illegal but it is about economic contributions that these folks in, and never were adults are making. >> what about the money that immigrants make and send back home? >> that is an important point. the biggest international aid program in the world happens every day in the western. union western individual people send money home. >> i believe there are two

things where people can come together. one is athletic like the olympics and food. one thing i like about cooking is that you can tell so much about the country's people and background and what has been through. if the country would learn to accept it more and submit to the cultural diversity, there could be great things to this. >> personally, i think american society is very self-centered. a diverse culture brings a sense of community to the melting pot. when a bride in america gets married, it is the brides big day. is all about the bride. in a ugandan culture is about a family coming together and excepting another member to bring to their community and bring to their family. in america, you go to the bride and introduced them and in a

ugandan culture, the bride and groom come to you and where you are standing and greet you and thank you for coming and thank you for accepting them into your family. >> growing up in a culturally diverse kennedy has strengthened my family. a sister has taught me more about cultural diversity. america's background introduces new perspectives, ideas, and creates a field for differences. america's strength is in the diversity of its people. >> this gives me a place for always belong. >> i guess people will say that as kind of difference. no one ever heard of a jewish- chinese guy.

>> when a person comes to the united states and they are not a native-born american, they bring a lot more than just the color of their skin. they bring a completely different outlook and a completely different way of celebrating. >> it doesn't matter what culture you come from. if you are an american, you are what makes america. it does not matter where you are from. you don't have to be born in america to make up america. you have people in america from different cultures. without that, america would be lifeless. >> to see all the winning entries in the competition, the visit studentscam.org. this morning, we will talk with the president of the federation of the immigration reform and a founder and executive director of america's voice about the new immigration law and arizona and the implications.