to take part in that marketplace. so what's all think about it. i think it's been a healthy and a good hearing our point of view we aired some of these issues and get a sense of it. leave the record open until the end of the week for any submissions by additional colleagues and and again, we appreciate everybody and mr. uva, thanks for not feeling well hanging in with us. >> today on "washington journal". the struggle for survival inside the white houston inner workings of the obama administration. critiquing of nato's commitment to the promise of defending spending target of 2% of g.d.p and federal aviation deputy

administrator discusses how new ffa technology keep up with increase of airline travel and reduce in delays. "washington journal" at 7 am eastern live on c-span. . .

i have been trying for months to get the book started. i knew i was going to start with 1907 because it found that quite by accident browsing the guinness book of world records that on january 1, 1997, president theodore roosevelt ship more hands than any other person in history. i could see the book growing out of that reception when he received the american people on that day. for months, i researched the day, discovering to my amazement how dense and detailed newspaper records were in those days. people did not have televisions so they needed details, all sorts of atmospheric stuff.

i absorb all this mass of material and write a prologue in which the reader, as it were, meets a the president. i never wanted to take t stylistic liberty of saying that you are there. i wanted to be straight historical biography. in developing the technique of writing a prologue in the third person which gives the impression of being in the first person, when i wrote that first line, did not think i could finish. it took about one year to read the prologue. >> that was in 1979. this is 2010, here are the last words he wrote in your final book, one of the three

paying tribute to the last colonel," he was a full feller of good intentions" >> thank you just gave away my last line. >> you told me years ago that you had already written that last line. >> yes, it was written in my head more or less when i wrote the first draft of the first book. i was doing research in theodore roosevelt proposed in bill york which in those days was a disused library. i came across this yellow manila envelope from schoolboy essays written shortly after his death. some class exercise, children were disposed of right about the great man and i came across this one essay that he was the fulfuller of good intentions.

no matter how long it took to write three volumes, that was going to be the last one of the last book. when did you actually physically write that last line? >> i eroded in january of this year, 2010 -- i wrote it in january of this year, 2010. i called my wife and have her take a look at it. as i read it, she stood over me and i typed it up and that was the end of 30 years of work. >> this is a very broad question but what has this experience been like? caller: >> it has been enriching, life enhancing, educational because i am not an american. i am not american-born but i can american citizen who came here in 1968 wanting to learn about

my country of adoption. i could not think of a better way to learn all about america, its character and history and its essential principles than by studying the life of the or roosevelt. >> back in 1999, i think maybe the last time we talked, it was your reagan book. we have -- i ask you about the early introduction to theodore roosevelt, let's watch. there was a preliminary the apprehension of him one of the small y in kenya. >> at the age of 10 i looked in the civil history of nairobi. it had the historic photograph of president theodore roosevelt coming to nairobi, kenya in 1909 on his great safari. i remember identified as a small boy with that picture, the

smile, the sennar, the spectacles and something about him that attracted me. the quarter of a century later, i ended up writing his biography. >> when is your second edition of the three parts coming out? >> it will have to come out on september 14, 2001. that will be the center an array of his emergency inauguration as mckinley's successor. >> are you on time this time also with the third book? >> i was just thinking, thank god it did not come out on september 14, 2001 because that would have been three days after. after wrote a think anybody book in the next few months. it came out slightly after thanksgiving when people were in the middle of reading something about a positive presidential force. the book did very well. it would of been a disaster had

come out what was planned to come out. >> is this one on schedule, the new one? >> yes. >> how have you changed your mind about the a roosevelt in the last 30 + years? >> i have been increasingly impressed by the quality of his intellect. it was obvious to me right from the start that he was a superbly bright man but i thought his smarts were primarily political. indeed they worked for most of his middle years but after he left the white house in march of 1909 began a life of journalism and book writing, the quality of his mind deepened and broadened to an astonishing degree. some of the essays that he wrote about the conflict between science and religion and imagery medieval literature and

things like that, these essays are truly impressive. they reflect reading in three languages, english, german, french, and some italian. enormous catholic in tariffs -- intelligence and very edition free to think this man was also a superbly successful president of the united states is to realize that he was a polygon, a man of many, many dimensions. >> in manila all this, your book "dutch" came out. what is the difference about writing about a man who has been dead for years verses that man who was a lot of tax were the two experiences like? >> i was asked that question after i made the commitment to the reagan biography. is it easier to read about a

live person or a dead person? i had not thought of it and i was struggling to think of what to said and my wife was in the next room and she shouted at," dead is easier." she got a t-shirt a couple of days later which she wears when she gives lectures. however, i think they both have difficulties. to write about a dead person is to be a prisoner of the existing. existing material. if the material happens to evaporate or was never sat down, one cannot chronicle that the event. if you are writing about a live person, you have to deal alive sensibilities, not of that person, but of his family and contemporaries and friends.

in reagan's case, i was writing about a living president of the united states. i had to deal not too much with his sensibility because he was so sure of themselves he did not care what people road or thought about him but of his wife, his children, and the american people. there was those problems, too. >> good to get close to in the theodore roosevelt family? how many of his family were you able to talk to? >> i interviewed his youngest son, his second youngest son are cheap shortly before he died and also ellis roosevelts longworth when she was pretty ancient. descendants, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, who were helpful to a certain extent. the most useful was archibald roosevelt, jr.. he is a fixture in washington in

the 1980's and 1990's. because of all the descendants, he was the one with the best month. he spoke 16 or 17 languages. his intellect was enormous. it was very much like his grandfather. when i published my first book about t.r., he called megan and said he read my book and he was staggered by the number of mannerisms that you described that i thought were my own mannerisms that turned out to be my grandfather's. >> when we talked in 1999, you mentioned the people who were a lot and a family and friends and we talked about nancy reagan. i want to run this clip and get your reaction to what you said back then. >> throughout her life, she has always been very insecure, very suspicious and totally besotted with her husband. if she had any inkling or any

suspicion, should i say, that i was going to write a book that would make him seem less than perfect, it would have caused obvious problems of access. i preserved a friendship with her which was quite genuine on a superficial level. we used to lunch regularly with ever went to los angeles and she gives good lunch. she is found to be wet. -- she is fond to be with. >> looking backed since the book came out, and a thoughts about anything that book brought up, relationship to that? have you talked to nancy reagan since then? >> no, i would not present to the first copy before it was published with that letter saying that i know this was not going to be what you're hoping for but i hope as the years go by you will realize from what

other people are saying that this book shows that your husband was a genuinely great president whatever his private failings and i hope that gives you some consolation for the fact that i have written very honest about him. and looking back at "dutch" it is 11 years now, i looked back and it was the happiest period of my letter that had an enormous sense of accomplishment with the book. in many quarters of washington is perceived as a failure. i heard last week saying during your interview with a couple of historians, i know it was widely criticized at the time, but it also got at the same time the kind of reviews that many authors would die for. it sold over 300,000 copies and is still selling. i would not change a word of it now. i regarded as my best book.

i am enormously happy i had that privilege, that unique privilege of being able to see a sitting president in power and ride up what i saw and experience. >> why did you consider that the happiest time of your life? >> because i had done something original which is what all riders want. i thought i came up with a new form of biography and over the years since other books have come out that use some of the techniques, i cannot with something new. there was a poet that eroded book a couple of years after my book, he used the same device of an imaginary narrator and questioning back-and-forth between the narrator and other points of view. these techniques were more and more part of a new nonfiction which i have been watching with

great instance -- interest them a couple of years ago, the other book you wrote was about beethoven, why? >> i have always loved music. i like literary challenges. to write about ronald reagan was the literary challenge because he was a very difficult man to penetrate. t.r. is a challenge because he is so enormous and multifaceted. to portray the hall of him as a superhuman challenge, to read about a composer is to read about music which is a language almost beyond the power of ordinary language to describe. as mendelson once remarked, music is a superior language to ordinary speech. the challenge in the case was to write a short book about beethoven which used language to communicate the essence of music. i've found that a delightful challenge. >> why beethoven among all the

composers? >> he is probably the most complex character of the great composers. bach is a composer of equal stature but his character is amorphous a difficult to get that. beethoven is so human and so complex that it was a delight to read about him that you came to the united states in 1968 and lived in london some time before that, born in kenya. when you last talked, you have an apartment or house on capitol hill and a place to live up in new york. what has happened since? >> i left washington shortly after the publication of theodore rex and moved to connecticut. i have an apartment in new york city which has always been there. i'd divide my time between kent, connecticut and new york. >> three books -- the first what about theodore roosevelt which

was which era? >> that was his pre-presidential life and events with a cliffhanger the moment he hears that president mckinley has been assassinated and that he is vice president is now president of united states. >> where did you read that? >> in my apartment in new york. >> the second book in that in 2001. rex, what is that era? >> that describes his presidential years, 1901-1909. >> the third one which is out right now is call "colonel roosevelt," is from what. ? >> that is the final period of his life, 1909-1919. >> given what is going on in the country right now in the united states, what can we learn from this final book about what happens in a country where

people are unhappy or, in his case, he was the third party candidate. what can we learn about third parties and when did he run and why? >> iran as a third-party candidate in 1912. exactly one century ago in 1910, shortly after he had come back for the country after abingdon away one year, he became the spokesman, the oracle of this new force are rising in america called progressiveism it was largely middle-class movement whose common denominator apart from passion was a mounting dissatisfaction with government, the federal government. it was a feeling of exclusion of the tight relationship between congress and corporations and capitalistic privilege.

this all white, middle-class, insionate movement developed the later years of his presidency largely inspired by his gradual swing to the left. it more or less drafted him back into politics as its spokesman in the summer of 1910 the midterm elections subsequently took place exactly 100 years ago and they marked the emergence of this new progressive party per it was not quite apart yet. it did not have a capital "p" but it was a formidable moment. in two short years after the election, it mutated into a real party, the third party bullmoose party of 1912 and fought the most successful third-party candidacy in history. >> why did he not run in 1908?

>> he was at the end of his very successful presidency. he was full of smarts and young and not yet 50. he sort of new and his heart of hearts that if he had another term which he could have had on a silver platter, if they serve another four years, he would begin to be corrupt, began to beat to self righteous, domineering, he would never have a financial or political corruption but he's thought he had too much too long and deeply believed that an american president should serve only a finite time and follow the example of george washington and retire after two terms briefly go through how he became president. >> who picked him to be vice president and why? >> he was picked by william

mckinley in 1900 largely to keep him out of the way because he was already destined to be president in his own right. mckinley took him as vice- president and that second term of mckinley only last a few days because he was shot in the fall of 1900 one, precipitating 42- year-old theodore roosevelt into the presidency, the youngest president we ever had. >> is served out almost three years of the mckinley term and then voted in again. >> he was elected in his own right in 1904 by a huge margin. i think it was the biggest presidential victory up to that time. he would of had a similar majority had he run again in 19008 which constitutional he could have.

>> when did it start? after he left in 1908 and was getting ready for 1912, when did he think about doing it again? >> he went to africa and a gigantic so far which lasted almost one year. mel would reach him mail -- mail would reach him from france and america and realize that president taft turned out to be an ineffective successor. the desire fort.r. to come back and articulate the hopes of progress as was getting stronger. it was not until he actually returned in the spring of 1910 and discovered that he had been missed during his year brought and how urgent the political parties were that he reluctantly

allowed himself to be coaxed back into politics. >> who was pushing him? >> at first it was governor hughes of new york who was a progressive government to needed political help them. i will go into the details t.r. reluctantly agreed to do him a favor and campaign for election reform. by making that fateful decision to help the struggling governor, he found himself sucked back into party politics. by the fall of that year, he was articulating all the new principles of progressism. >> when did he signal he was ready to go? >> to run for the presidency? >> yes. >> the signal that in january of 1912. by then, the pressure for him to run was so enormous that i really could not resist. to be honest, he had in his

heart, ambition which began to dominate him. like all man of great gifts, when they give up power, even though they may give up for principle reasons, they begin to hacker for the moment they give it up. he hankered for the president's. to such an extent that he agreed to run again in 1912. >> you said he was not yet 51 left the white house and utility died when he was 60. the only had 10 years. how sick was he altered his life? >> his health seemed to be excellent. he was a strong, florid, enormously energetic man but privately he had medical problems. i think he always had a fluttery heart. this health problems began to be

manifest about 1911-1912. he began to put on weight seriously. he began to have dramatic problems and arteriosclerosis. he had chronic malaria in his system from his years, from his service in cuba in 1898 in the spanish-american war. gradually, as the last 10 years progressed, he began to be more and more subject to illness. he went to the amazon in 1914 and explored the river and very nearly died of a tropical fever. >> when you set out to get to know him, what year was it? > your first book was in 1979 but when did you start the process? >> it was, oddly enough, it was after richard nixon resigned the white house.

nixon, as you may recall in his farewell speech to the white house staff, suddenly started to "be a resident. -- started to do a quote from teddy roosevelt. i think nixon was talking about his mother but i was curious as to what circumstance had prompted the a roosevelt to write these words. i did little research and found that it was the death of his beautiful young wife at the beginning of his political career and i was interested in this real-life drama and began to write a screenplay about it in 1975, i think it was. i hope i could sell it to television. as i wrote the screenplay, i got more interested in him as a character and a book grew out of

the screened. the book grew out a book and here i am, 3 volumes later. >> as you look back on the process of getting to know theodore roosevelt, where did you go? where did you start to see what he was all about? what places did you rummage through? >> i began to get a physical feel for him which is important for a biographer. one must have the ability to imagine this person in the room or within visible distance. one must have a palpable feeling of the subject or it is impossible to read about them. i began to get that feeling after about two years of research, after i had been out of the badlands of dakota where he was a young ranch man in the 19 -- 18 80s and after i was out at sagamore hill and i held my hand a lock of his hair from

the head of his dead young wife al,ice lee, after i'd read his diaries at harvard and turned over the pages that his aunt had turned over. i remember coming across one page describing his honeymoon night with his beautiful palace leak. qali --ce alice lee and i was interested to see and he said," airsick could happen as cannot be written about." i had the distinct feeling that i, future biographer, being cut adrift by him. this is private, stay out of my life. that is when the consciousness of him began. >> how long was he mad ali twoce? >> four years. >> was to die of? >> she died of the same disease

that took woodrow wilson's wife them up. >> what is brightens the disease? a kidney disease? >> they had one child. what happens? she was around in my lifetime. i remember seeing her. what would she like and to his marriage to a former speaker of the house from ohio. is there any connection there? >> at first, he traded her way to his sister to look after. the cable with a little girl like a sack of salt and went west to recover from the alice lee./ when he came back to marry his second wife who happens to be his childhood sweetheart, she insisted on taking the child back as the first child in their

own family. little alice lee roosevelt became the first of six children and grew up to be in extremely interesting woman whose portrait i painted in detail in the book. i made a point in this book of describing all of his children, making them real character. by the time he came back from africa, there were all on the edge of adulthood and becoming more and more interesting in their own right. >> what can you tell us about the other five kids? monday he married his second wife? >> in 1886 which was only two years after the death ofalice lee. it was an extremely happy marriage, and extremely successful. she lasted as long as the of

ministration of harry truman. the children they produced, theodore roosevelt jr., and a ke wasrmiot and and another girl, apple, and then there was quinton, and archy. they had four sons and two daughters. >> added each of them die? >> -- how did each of them die? >>ellis the first to the board was the last to die in 1980. ted turned out to be a magnificent soldier in world war one and came back to world war two to be a general winter sure ond-day with the third army and died of a heart attack a few days after winning the medal of honor. he was one of the most highly decorated soldiers of both world wars. archie was very similar.

he was a much decorated soldier who died of old age in the late just a house was for most of her life but she dedicated most of her life to preserving the memory of her father and preserving sagamore hill, his home on long island. alice became the famous princess alice. quentin, the youngest and brightest and most promising of all the children was very tragically killed as a fighter pilot in world war one. i make a great deal of that tragedy in the book on his last years because i think that single tragedy destroyed theodore roosevelt himself and was the cause of his death a few months later at the age of 60. the risevie can't go of theodore roosevelt," what is

it coming out? >> it has been under option for 30 years but now it has been taken over by a producer who is interested, taylor hackford. i believe they are talking to hbo. >> above the other two books? any interest in doing movies about them? no >>,. >> i have a hard cover of your first book issue. are they real issue in all your books this year? >> yes, "the rise of theodore roosevelt" is coming out in a new hardcover edition. the complete trilogy will be available this season as an irresistible gift. >> i want to go to an episode -- so many people don't know

about this -- you have as much detail as i have seen and that is the assassination attempt of the a roosevelt in october of 1912 in milwaukee. you say at the end of your book that that may have been part of what killed him in the end, that it was still left in his system. would you go back to the beginning and talk about how the assassination came about? , the attempt rather. >> "in theodore rex, on the day -- i an unemployed worker in new york reacted to the death of mckinley and the ascension of theodore roosevelt by having a vision in which the dead president, president mckinley, he emerged from his coffin and point to m that dateonk -- and

point it at a monk who was manifested as theodore roosevelt and said to avenge his death until this man. i drop dead into the book as something that did occur in 1901. that same little man makes his appearance in september of 1912 tracking t.r. are around the country as he is campaigning for the progressive party hoping to shoot him. there were several opportunities to assassinate him but finally caught up with him in milwaukee and october of 1912. in circumstances uncannily similar to those which happened when ronald reagan was nearly killed in 1981, shott.r. in the chest outside a hotel when he was coming to make a speech. t.r. collapsed into his limo not

realizing at first as seriously he had been shot. john shrenk was taken off by security guards and instead of allowing him to be taken to the hospital, teddy roosevelt insisted on going through with his speech. he marched on stage in the milwaukee auditorium and threw open his jacket and spoke with blood and they said it takes more than that to bu kill all moose and spoke for almost two hours. at times he nearly fell off the stage. the audience was mesmerized. somehow he got through the speech and then allowed them to take him to the hospital. he survived, of course, but as i know from watching ronald reagan

recover from his lawn, to be had in the chest with a bullet that stops within an inch or two of your heart, it clarifies the mind wonderfully and affects one condition. >> did they remove the bullet that n >>o, it would of been dangerous to remove it. he walked around with a slug in his chest. >> i remember at the american history museum of glass tasting and the 51-page speech or part of the and i remember seeing a short in north dakota near his ranch, a white shirt that had a hole in a battle that's right and the blood stain them where they keep all that now? >> i think the shirt and a perforated speech with the bullet hole going through it both belong to the theodore

roosevelt birthplace in new york. that is where i last saw them. it is pretty creepy to go there and look at them. >> what ever happened to the assassin? >> he was found mentally incompetent, a paranoid schizophrenic and spent the rest of his life in jail, and dying in the 1940's. >> you talk about how roosevelt went to him and grabbed him with his sense. it was that all about? >> yes, the security men around him or wrestling him to the and onen a friend's renzy security guard was trying to break his neck. t.r. told enough to kill him and they brought this little man to him and he was oddly gentle and held his face and looked at him and said," why did you do it?"

,ooking into this guy's face you can see this in photographs, you can see straight away his expression. he said to take him away. he was taken away to be interrogated and went to jail. >> what happened from the moment forward until the end of the campaign with the lender can't predict other candidates and who were that and how long was he in the hospital? >> he was in the hospital for 10 or 12 days. it took several weeks before he began to recover. by which time the campaign was practically over. he made one final speech in madison square garden a couple of nights before the election of november, 1912. the other two candidates for president after running for reelection and governor woodrow

wilson of new jersey. both these men had been gentleman and said they would stop campaigning for as long as he was incapacitated. >> how did the election come out? >> the election came out ast.r. knew it would come out with woodrow wilson winning because the third party candidacy oft.r. and his candidacy split the republican party and elected woodrow wilson. >> i wrote down the totals on a vote but my memory is that he got 27% of the votes. he got the most of the other than a third party candidate. what did you learn in writing about this third party candidacy that would be of value in 2012 if there is a third-party candidate? >> the parties candidacy did

produce the progress of minority in the senate. they had a good deal of power as a swing unit. what i think is more relevant to today's situation is when a large minority as a country believes itself to be disenfranchised, and excluded from power, excluded by a combination of shared privilege between lawmakers and corporate executives and professional politicians, when this large constituency begins to feel they are excluded, they become extremely angry, very passionate, and very. unify ied. the tea party unit which in no way matches the sophistication of the progressive party as

there is unifying feeling. these people feel excluded from power and want to show that they can get power back. the fact that the progressive party eventually dissolve the way it is perhaps some encouragement to the leaders of the two main parties right now. at the moment, the third-party threat is quite real for the presidential election of 2012. >> what did they do wrong in 1912 that prevented him from getting elected? >> ift.r. had been nominated by the republican party in the spring of 1912, he would have brought the progresses with him because there were mostly republicans and they would of had that huge vote and he would without question have been elected president in 1912. >> i found much interesting stuff in your notes in the back.

one thing you do in the third edition -- the first book did not do the same way -- you have these biographical notes, historical notes and the chronological notes in the back. it is full of interesting stuff where did you get that idea? i have not seen that before. >> i wrote it for footnotes fetishistic like you, brian. >> why were you doing that? >> one comes up with really interesting stuff when it was -- one does deep research which does not fit into the narrative. for example, i have a very long biographical footnote about his memory. it gives the sorts of great examples of his phenomenal memory. if i did that in the course of the book, it would help the story up. i thought that was the most appropriate place. >> when did you read those

footnotes? >> as i was doing the book and as you along? you stopped and put them in? >> that is the joy of the computer. what i wrote my first book on enormous sheets of manuscript paper, 11 "x 22", i would do the footnotes of the bottom of each page and if a paragraph moved to another chapter, i would have to cut out the footnotes and attach them to the latest pages. working on a computer now one can attach the footnotes directly to the text and they just follow and find their place like tadpoles wherever you move your text later on. >> what was your first book that you wrote on a computer? >> i began to write on a computer at way through"dutch." >> had you already done a significant part of the second

roosevelt book? >> yes, i had done about seven chapters. a complete -- a completely rewrote them 15 years later when i went back. i changed as a writer by then. " theodorerex was more less a new book. >> how have you changed as a writer? >> i think i was that much older and wiser. when i started a r theodoreex, was theh not very hip as a student of presidential politics. therefore, i found it difficult to write a book out up -- about his presidency because i did not understand the white house. having spent those years in the reagan white house and saying the presence in operation, i could go back " theodorerex" and reread it from the perspective of someone who has seen how politics. works >> we talked about you being a

ran ronald reagan. did you ever told the number of days that you were in the white house during the last turn of his? >> no, i didn't but i came and went quite freely. it was through most of 1985-1989 plus all the time i spent with him after he left office. >> when we visited you in your home many years ago, you showed us your card system on how you are"writingdutch." digit do the same thing with theodore roosevelt? >> yes, that's not what you do with the old cards? >> that is a question. i suppose one day that i will archive them in some fashion. at the moment, they are stashed in steel cabinets in my house inkent. >>

why was that important moment in his life? >> he had always had a special relationship with booker t. washington. he was the most eminent black man in america in those days. in fact, a whent.r. became president, booker t. washington was the first person he telegraphed to come to washington and consult with them. him. as everybody knows, he entertained booker t. washington in the white house a few weeks after he was elected and created a national scandal by sitting down to dinner with a black man. that had never been done before in the white house. their relationsp became complicated later on but when booker t. washington died in 1915 , t.r. was enormously moved and went to tuskegee to

give him his props. >> this is a biographical note -- when did he warned him to do that? >> back in '80 and '81 and graduated. the doctor said to him, "mr. roosevelt, you have this problem with your heart and i advise you to lead a sedentary life and do nothing to physical. ." >> he said he would do everything he was told not to do. you will believe -- lead a

vigorous life and he will die at the age of 60 which is exactly what he did then what did he die of? >> a pulmonary embolism is the conclusion but i put together a compendium of all his medical information and i showed it to a former chairman of sloan- kettering and his doctor-son, dr. marx, and they both had the feeling that it was primarily a heart problem, not a long problem. >> the year he died? >> he died on the feast of the epiphany, january 5, 1919. >> here is a biological no -- ote ---

how did you discover that? >> it is member was a brilliant but what free to me at researching this book was i came across a letter he wrote a to his son kermit. he was asked if he was remembered a palm about living south of the border. he said yes. he quoted it. they rode out the entire two- stanza poem. by an obscure public. i checked this out and looked at the powhatan found when it was published and he wrote the letter in 1914 and the poem was published in 1898 in the

atlantic monthly. i looked up the issue of the magazine and a found that t.r. had an article in that same issue. in other words, in 1898, looking at is an article, he had come across this poem in the magazine, registered it is head. i compared the written word with what he had written in 1914 and i could see that they were not copied from the magazine because there were several minor mistakes. otherwise, it was word for word what he had written, what he had read and memorize the 14, 15 years before. that is very creepy. >> this is an historian graphical notes --

how much humor did he use? i assume it was not in the text. how did you find out? >> he was one of the funniest man who ever lived. his humor was like mark twain. it came pouring out all the time. unfortunately, a transcription of his speeches tend to be from the actual typescript that he would and to reporters. his improvisations, his witticisms, the jokes he would tell are not there in the transcripts. but there is so much testimony from people who knew him that he was hilariously funny. when he wanted to be funny on paper as in the long letters he wrote describing his tour of europe in 1909 and is participation in king edward's

funeral, his letters are so funny that they could have been written by charles dickens or mark twain. that have been published as a book. one of the delights about working on this all these years has been to read about someone who was so funny. >> of the three roosevelts boats, which wanted to enjoy the most and which one was the hardest to right? >>"theodore rex" was the hardest because it was a political story. i have to memorize writing about politics, because my nature is to read about political events and action and character. i'm not happy with abstract issues of policy and such. that was hard to read but the one i enjoyed mugging most has been the last book, "colonel roosevelt." the story is a narrative the fashion editor is constantly changing. he runs for the presidency one

moment, he is exploring the longest river of the amazon in 1914, an apostle of american participation in world war one and writing these essays. the subject matter is constantly changing. and there is a very tragic death scene at the end of all writers love to ride death scenes. >> another footnote -- this is a biographical note -- >> there was an american novelist called winston churchill and he said was a gentleman. winston churchill the english politician was someone i do not care to meet. when he was in england for

edward vii funeral, he refused to meet him. i became intrigued as to why he should have this animosity against winston churchill. i went through it and i think they were two prima donnas. churchill admired roosevelt very much but t.r. was the older men and regarded churchill as a vulgarian, a political turncoat. i think he was jealous of churchill's literary abilities. churchill was a better writer when he was young then roosevelt. it was primarily a conflict of personality. >> how many books did your editor added at random house for you? >> i worked with them on three books. >> he still active? >> yes, absolutely.

>> in his mid-'80s? >> he is 85 i believe. >> what do you want to do next? >> i haven't decided. i know it will be short. i wouldn't mind writing about another musician or for that matter about a writer but no more presidents. >> why not? >> there are no more presidents more interesting to me than theodore roosevelt. >> where would you put ronald reagan next to theodore roosevelt in your interest? >> pretty well on the same level. i found reagan quite fascinating. but for a different reason. he fascinated me because of his room of this and because of his son consciousness of who and what he was. t.r. knew exactly what he was and what he was about. he had an up front personality. >> are you glad this is over? >> yes, i am. it is about time >> three books

on three or roosevelt. -- on theodore roosevelt. our guest was edmund morris and we thank you for being here ♪ >> for a dvd copy of this program, called a number on your screen. for free transcripts or to give us your comments about this program, visit us at nanda.org. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] >> the book notes website

contains hundreds of nonfiction authors. you can review the programs, review the programs, and use the database to find the author is blogs and web sites. booknotes.org is a great research tool. >> in yaupon "washington journal" a preview of an upcoming support -- supreme court case that could be a prelude to the amazon -- arizona immigration law. this morning on "washington journal" author richard wolfe talks about the obama white house in his latest book. also a discussion on nato and the demilitarization of europe with the american enterprise director. we will chat with the deputy administrator of the faa on