>> the latest poll published wednesday showed governor beshear with a 25 point lead. as reported, both per turnout is expected to be low. >> this week on kila and a discusses her latest book, "cleopatra" >> what is the best training to become a biographer? >> probably a career as a private investigator.

if there is anything i sadly lament it is the fact that putting together the pieces in any logical way. the way a police detective would put them together. >> who is the first person you thought about writing a biography about? >> this is the first person. the author of "the little prince." i had the idea. that is how it began. i was coming off a series on books about flying. he is sixth grade or eight great french class and you never think about it again except for "the little prince." the writing was brilliant and held up. i look at the life a little bit and discovered this man who we

thought of as a bidder was a lousy aviator. his engineers were constantly clearing out the cockpit. there had not been a life in a long time. nobody had dove into all of the pieces. there are unexplored corners of the story. i was the editor of a publishing house, i meant to hand the idea on to a biographer. i could not seem to let go of it. i left publishing to write a book. >> simon and schuster, how many years? >> only a couple of years. doing fiction and nonfiction before that. i was fortunate in terms of that book. i was starting it at the point where people -- the beginning of his life, french aviators were still alive.

those at the end of his life were still around. his girlfriends were still around. hitting a product at the right moment, i was lucky to be on the scene. >> was there a biography you had edited that made an impact on you? >> i had spent a lot of time on an orson welles biography which i adore. i adored her, the project. the book had been too long, i helped to shape it a little bit. the week with a month or some wells died, a publisher's greatest dream. honing of the people's works had been a terrific education for me in terms of how to shape a book proposal and think about writing a life. for the fledgling writer there is something reassuring. it has an obvious structure. it has a beginning, middle, and end.

it is gratifying. it was an easier product to undertake than a straight history. >> it is not a household name, is it? >> my publisher thought i would only write about people with unpronounceable french names. it was an uphill battle. the rest of the work, he was a best-selling writer at his time during the war, his work had largely been forgotten or relegated to eighth grade at french class. "the little prince," he was branded, unable to fly, deeply unhappy, but most of the night.

he was amusing himself. it became the book that most obviously survives. >> go back to the beginning, your first right thing. have you written much before you became an editor? >> i had written a tremendous amount of catalog copy, and editorial memos, nothing of any length. the new york post used to run book civilizations. one woman handed me her job -- cut a biography down to the five most embarrassing parts. frank sinatra beating his children. >> what would you say the public wants?

>> something streamlined. looking over the shoulder of the subject. you do not want to lose sight of your subject. you do not want to be at the center of the biography. you want the pages to turn, no matter what you are writing about, whether it is wartime or something more domestic. there has to be narrative. people are always hungry for another book on thomas chairperson. you are mystifying a name. it was the case with cleopatra. a name that is recognizable but you stop to think, i do not know that much. i could not go on for more than three sentences on this subject. >> what year?

>> 1994. the next book was about vera nabokov, the wife of the writer. that was a portion of a marriage. the third book was about ben franklin, which was a pleasure to be difficult to research, but a pleasure. and then cleopatra. >> there is one trend. all these people come from outside of united states. >> it could be my part. i was very aware. >> you wrote about his time in paris. >> when you take a person out of context you see them better. i became most aware of that with the nabokov. it is russian exiles leave for

germany, france, and the u.s. he recast himself as an american. there is this unknown piece of himself -- of ben franklin. in paris, during the american revolution. this is a man speaking a language he does not speak well of a diplomatic reason. i thought it was as if i were playing with a more regional version of franklin in some way. i'm not sure what the other answer to that with the. cleopatra could be anywhere. the documents are anywhere. i am from massachusetts. >> when will that come out? >> many years from now i am afraid. i have just started. it normally takes me four years to write a book. this is someone in the future. >> be used to live between canada and new york?

>> i live mostly in new york. and hoping to spend a lot of time -- the salem archives are in massachusetts. >> married a canadian. >> i did. he mostly lives in canada. 22 years ago. >> do you have children? >> i have three children, 20, 18, and 11. >> what did they think of the mother being a writer? >> they think i type for a living. i do not think anyone has read a book. maybe if they see a show they will. it is a good question. i think they think i spent a lot of time at the office. maybe that is a good thing. they are grateful i am a negligent parent. >> you said your father had an impact on you. >> my father never read my first book. he died around publication. it was a huge disappointment for me.

i think of him often. that first moment i had changed careers, the book was splendidly reviewed the week he died. it was a poignant moment. i was not able to share that with him. if we were to look into this there is some -- studying people out of context and working in different locales has something to do with where i grew up. you want to spend your time examining some also life. >> what did he do? >> he owns a clothing business in western massachusetts. the population was 13,000. now it is smaller. my mother was an academic and a great reader. >> issue alive? >> she is alive. she taught comparative literature and french. she was a voracious reader. more into british fiction an

american fiction. >> if you look at the fact your mother was an academic -- you got your three kids, they have not read a book, what is going on? what is your -- what are your own rules? >> i think my kids are all voracious readers. they have read everything. they have not read my book. there is a certain backlash. books were forced upon me. although they have been at a future of my kid's life, a happy one, i think i have been more recess about pushing those books along the way. they are all for reaches readers. some of the better read than their mother. >> what impact did it have going to williams college?

>> it is in western massachusetts. it is a big liberal arts school where i did a lot of philosophy and history more than any literature courses. you have a great university library, a fabulous faculty, a lovely teacher to student ratio. you feel taken care of. the open mind is cultivated. it has a dramatically -- tremendously good education in terms of writing and opening to do research. >> what was the best biography you had read at that point? >> i was not sure i had read a biography. i read a lot of fiction. i wrote on the biographies that every kid, the red, white, and blue, the ones about women were all about women who had died.

it was joan of arc, sylvia plath, women in distress. i loved those little books. there were not very many women in that series. those books were formative. >> which book has sold the best? >> "cleopatra" has sold more than the others combined. i never had a book that sold in any way before. >> y do you think? >> it has a beautiful jacket? i do not know. it is one of those interesting things. you do not have any idea what people are going to find in your work. you sit in a room for years. you hope somebody might read what you have written and understand or enjoy it. i was interested in the lives of women in power, the

resonance between east and west. i think those two teams have hit home. i think there has been a lot of interest in terms of female empowerment. i was touched by the men who have come to buy the book for their daughters. it is not a book about a role model. it is not something you want to encourage. there has been a sense of a smart. shrewd woman who does the improbable. the unveiling of mysteries. the human mind and loves to embrace that idea. this is a book that says, are conceptions are wrong. we have so many ideas that are misplaced. very basic ideas about her. she is not the egyptian, she is rich, and she is not beautiful.

the unveiling peace has been alluring. >> you do speaking for a living. >> i would not say that. i have spoken publicly. >> you write books for a living. you write articles from time to time. you are on a book tour. it is a long book tour. the research, the writing, the speaking, what do you like the most, the least? >> nothing compares with a land to the library. i spend a lot of time in libraries. you find that one document -- it restores you, it keeps you going. it helps to solve a mystery. it brings for two pieces of narrative together. it puts the keystone on a theme.

with nabokov there was a bag of correspondent. it was postcards' she received over a lifetime. they had never been gone through. in that bag was a postcard she had received in 70's from a woman she had known in the 20's. the woman reminded her of a conversation. she had talked about a book to be written on the importance a woman provides inspiration for her husband. it was what i was writing about. that one little postcard kept me going for the next three years. it might be an interview. when i was working on a book, i walked in and he said i am glad to see you. i was apologizing. he said you can write a book

about -- you could never write about him without writing about her. i felt validated. it is that moment where you reading through plutarch and you read a wonderful line where he says something like murdering your siblings happened in the best of families. you realize, cleopatra's entire family history. those eliminations, those moments in the library or the thrillers. >> on the nabokov book, how many books did he write? >> a lot. each is dedicated to vera. >> but on the same when you saw the book dedicated to her that led the doing the book on her. is that true? >> i had always loved nabokov's work. i was wondering if you could

write a joint biography. he was difficult in terms of interviewers. he was hard to get to. people had been scared off. i thought this would be an interesting way to get into his life. i knew little about her. she was jewish. she went to every one of his classes. no one understood why. she had a gun. those were the odd facts i have to blend together. >> how did you find out she had gone to every class? did the students know? >> she came to class every day. you remember a class where the

professor's wife was in class every day? there was a greek chorus for that book with the cornell students. they remembered her vividly. they had a theory as to what she was doing. that is where i began to play with that. we did not know what she was doing. i let those students be with their own theory. she was there because he was blind. there were great theories. i included them all. the answer was, he wanted her approval over what he did. what was important was not educating these of the

graduates, it was his wife being there to be as good as ever. >> this book you dedicate this way. "finally, for matt, milly, and jo." >> those would be my three children. they have not read my books. i have never dedicated a book to them. this was finally the moment. you could also read it as finally, i do not intend to write another book. i had not realized when i wrote the line. my children played it out to me. does this mean you are never writing another book? those would be the three neglected children. >> go back to have you got into this. how did you get into franklin? what took you that way? >> i had always been enchanted by franklin. his writing, i came to it for literary reasons, it is the most lucid, porches - gorgeous

writing. it is crystal and people prose. it holds up. i'm not a great fan of the autobiography. i remember how he sails off to france to enlist the french in our revolution. it is a seminal chapter in our history. very little have explored it. the documentation is abroad. i realized, it is something people have not touched because the documentation is difficult. this was a different franklin from the one we knew. i did not realize until a year in that while i was in paris, franklin was in court every week. every other ambassador was at court every week. every one of those ambassadors

was also writing home about franklin. one of the great things about that product was in the portuguese archives and venice reports lines and quotes from franklin. there was new material. there were new lines we had never heard. franklin and john adams, they were at tremendous of. it was a drama. it was the moment america gained its independence. >> let me ask you, you make a comment but of a biography. you are not a big fan. >> i'm a fan of reading memoirs.

i am trying to think if i ever edited one. i am sure i did. i cannot think of writing one. >> because you have seen both sides, what is the difference? >> the thing about biography is you do not have to reveal or understand anything about yourself. the thing i noticed with the cleopatra book, i'm sure others have noticed this, you have no choice but to step on the page more. there is more of me in that book. there is more of me in that book than in any of the others. i am much more neutral, objective and i am in that last book. i had no model. the other books i had some touchstone. with the clip after book, i did

not know anything that had the tone or stand i wanted to take. i thought about other subjects that were difficult. subjects were there was little documentation. there is nothing that took the approach of wanted to take. it was very frightening. i was not sure where i wanted to start this book in terms of her. >> what was the magic moment in the cleopatra book the first time you discover something you thought was unique? >> there are two. one was reading when marc anthony and cleopatra are out fishing. he cannot catch a fish. cleopatra catches him in the act.

in that scene, plutarch gives us dialogue. he has told us she has a caressing voice. here she is really resisting this military commander, teasing him in but of an audience. it sets up the entire scene. maybe you could not do a narrative history. there are so many blanks. if you had actual dialogue, even though it is 100 years later, you could craft some kind of narrative. the other was going to egypt. there is a wonderful old fortress. it is being excavated. it is extraordinary.

standing there in the desert, which looks a little different than in cleopatra's day, it is so evocative. you could imagine cleopatra camped in the desert with the army she has raised. that is where she is when she gets word caesar has arrived. she has to make her way back, past her enemies, into the barricaded palace. this is a cleopatra we do not normally think of, a young woman who has the mind and to raise an army. that is when i realized that is where a book started. >> i want to talk about something you did in 2006. you wrote an article for "the new yorker" about wikipedia.

it is about truth and how often you fight that when you are trying to find information. what is the story of you taking on wikipedia? >> i had mocked the idea that an encyclopedia could be built from the ground up. i got an e-mail from the founder of wikipedia sang i would like you to come down and see what we are doing. i forgot about it. i was writing the franklin book. in those years, it began to take off. at the time, it was a fledgling thing. having finished the book and realized people were increasingly consulting wikipedia, i decided it was a fascinating project it spoke to all our ideas of where does

knowledge come from. is this a viable way of i will begin knowledge? i went down. what was interesting is at the time its headquarters was four people. it is not a centralized organization. what was fascinating was where was this material coming from. >> the fellow that you outed, who was representing himself as an editor and that he had a college degree from a religious school. >> no such thing. >> wikipedia has a tremendous audience. did you ever meet him? >> i did not meet him. i spoke to him on the phone. he was doing a massive amount of editing. what is interesting is -- i do not know if it still works this

way -- anyone at any peace. certain people have certain territories. it may be a person who monitors the hockey paid. if you make a change, that person will notice it in two minutes. this was someone who was actively bad thing. he seemed to be a good person to profile. he was super active. he did a lot of the editing. there are many people who do changes here and there. then there are lawyers who battle for the pages which of the most contested pages. >> his name was ryan jordan. he was 24 years old. >> he reported to be a professor

of theology. >> you found out he had attended colleges in kentucky. >> it does not mean he did not know what he was talking about. >> the reason i bring that up is have you tried to bring into context the world we live in. you have watched it change. what you make of all of this? you are writing books people are reading on kindles and nooks, wikipedia exists. if i wanted to find out

men. who is writing because he hated women? that is not different from what you are talking about. who contributes to an encyclopedia? history is always written that way. legend always prevails over history. no matter how much you try to keep history on a diet, it gets out of shape easily. it is like birth control and cleopatra's day, some of it was effective, you had to know which one. use it with care. check it elsewhere.

>> as you go around the country, talking about cleopatra, what is the first question you are asked? what is the most-asked question? >> people want to know what she looked like. it is hard to answer. other than going, there is no accurate representation. the coins would have been the image she wanted to project. as much as they are indicative, they are her at her most authoritative. wanting to look as if she were a sovereign. i get asked if she was in love. a question which i see dimly. i see it as political alliance. i get asked about how she died. i get asked about how a woman could have been so powerful.

that may go to the heart of it. it is astonishing to us today that a woman could have accomplished so much at a time that was so male and militaristic. >> why do you believe plutarch is writing 100 years after the event? >> he is our only unbiased source. he is closer to the event than most chroniclers. the others reckon closer are a poet and a sensationalist. he wanted to send shivers down the spine. i discounted him. plutarch is writing a straight up biography. he is writing lives. he is getting by with eye witness stories. he was getting stories from the scene.

everyone else is later. >> we have a dinner party. saint-exupery, vera, franklin, and cleopatra, what of the personal characteristics we would see? >> saint-exupery would be the amusing one. he dies at 44. the perpetual child. his letters are delicious the amusing. i said i would never write

about anyone who wrote a bad letter. >> did you meet people who knew saint-exupery? >> a lot of people. a lot of people who knew him were still alive. some had never talked to anyone else before. i did not get the recycle memories. i got the first hand. there was a woman who had been someone's wife who had met him when she was young. they used to walk their dogs together. he had drawn little princes for her. i was incredibly lucky. >> what would vera have been like?

>> she tended to be very protective of her husband, very competitive, very beers. had anyone said anything politically incorrect, she was rather severe in her views, very much of the politics of someone who had escaped russia during the revolution. she was a mccarthy supporter. there would have been a black and white building with her. you could easily have crossed her. people tell stories of her saying something hostile. saint-exupery's english and franklin's french would have been an interesting combination. adams was shocked by franklin's french. franklin says he pays no

attention to grammar. adams is appalled by this. he said he cannot get over how that franklin's french is. the frenchman replies, yes, it is difficult to understand him, but yours is not better. it crushes adams. he is there for eight years. he comes back when he is 80. >> what would he have been like? >> franklin is a verbal gymnast. he is incredibly wordy on the page. my sense of him in those years is that he is taciturn. interestingly, in person, he is not forthcoming.

he observes everything that is going on, says little, and then has a perfectly formed of a gram. that strikes me as more how he would have operated. >> how would he have gotten along with vera? >> the politics were so different. it is hard to translate. franklin had an attitude that vera would have been susceptible to. >> what would cleopatra have been like? >> it would be interesting to seek franklin and cleopatra. >> she died when she was 39. >> but put her at the table at the age of 25 when she is most productive. she is married in name to two brothers. i think it is nothing more than a trip of nomenclature. they are king and queen together.

she walks into a room and the temperature changes. franklin is charming. she is able to adapt yourself to any audience. if anyone could have conquered those different personalities, i suspect would have been cheap. >> how long is it going to last, the dinner party? >> what are we serving? we should serve one of cleopatra's feasts. those would have been the most extravagant. a lot of remarkable things would have been served. >> in 2010, he wrote for "the new york times," "cleopatra's guide to governance." some of your personality comes

through in this. maybe some of your politics. there are a number of things. under the heading of, don't confuse business with pleasure, the two have a chronic tendency to invade -- what does that say about you? there is not that much politics. >> if politicians are going to misbehave, why don't they do it with some degree of discretion? she has affairs with only two men. both of them for political reason. let's try to separate it as far as we can. >> it appears --

>> is it a bipartisan crowd i put together? >> i think you have it. why is it that men seem to always do this more than women? it is the men that seem to be the ones to initiate it. >> i do not have an answer. my only guess would be it has something to do with the power tenement. until now, men have been the ones to wield power. >> will it change as women continue to get more power? what will they philander more? >> president obama has learned and unlearned -- i did not say that already.

>> you said that the conflict. >> there is a lot in that paragraph. >> cleopatra's is an age of images. we see our images on television. people came out to see her. the flag penh, why don't you wear the flag pin? it is one of those easy concessions. i did feel she had handled -- did handle better than anyone in history was this ability to appear before people, cater to the greatest needs, she changes her title repeatedly to enter to her constituents.

she pushes herself off as a god. she chooses a god who is going to unite the different ethnicities. she is very, very good at controlling the narrative through imagery. an advertisement to the riches of her country and to her people of her close ally and. her very tight, internment alliance with a roman. it is proof of her diplomacy. >> if you get on amazon.com and you read the reviews of your book, it seems there is a wide group -- different views on it. a whole bunch of people cannot stand this book.

they think it is boring. do you read that stuff? >> i have been told that. i have not done to amazon.com except to order a book. i have not read it. what did i do wrong? >> it is people pose a perception. some people think it is a boring book. others, you get a tremendous review. what you always do when you are writing a book that makes it interesting that you have certain rules? >> keeping your subject at the center of the narrative is always helpful. you want to answer the question, what is he or she thinking? it is a tall order. i do not know what she is thinking.

within a franklin either. difficult to know what he is thinking. keeping the narrative going is important. she goes to rome to visit a caesar. she is in rome when he is murdered. as the civil wars continue and the battle goes on, she is off the radar screen. what to do with those years? how to fill in those years in terms of the narrative about keeping the reader interested? those of the years i chose to insert what cleopatra has done

as a rule. how she has survived the intellectual tradition. what an intellectual she is. what a science she is. what has been attributed to her. talk about those things out of chronological order. give us a sense of what she is doing well on the throne. >> another guidance you give on good governance is, it pays to start -- to sweat the details. most of this is about cleopatra. you've got that needle in their. >> it is interesting how small minded many of us are. cleopatra goes down in history in a bad book. cicero is a republican. he had hated her father.

he did not like women. he likes to be the richest person in the room. cleopatra as a better library than he does. she promises him a book. we do not know if it is from her library. she does not deliver. he is serious about this. she has not come through. he is a vain man. this is a point of honor. it damns her for 2,000 years. it was the small mindedness i was getting at. with the historian is coming from. if it becomes something, you'd better deliver it. >> where did you learn how to learn? >> what a good question. i think i am still learning how to learn.

my mother was always very good at editing my stuff and teaching me how to write a clear sentence. that was always a huge education. >> when did you start that? >> i do not know. fairly early on i think. all of my kids are pretty good writers. there is a certain amount of any piece of writing can be edited again and again. that is the beauty and the frustration. i can take that book and make it better if i were to take a pencil to it right now. >> where do you write? >> i rented an office in new york city. it has a view of the scud. those are the only two

criterion, a view of the sky and a large desk. the biographer assembled a lot of paper. what you are doing is synthetic. you want the paper to land on the cutting room floor. i can only work by having it in front of me and being able to weave things from it. wikipedia and the internet have not changed the way i researched. i still go back to the of original document. the archival research has not changed. >> what do you write on? >> i write with a pencil, a mechanical pencil. i type faster than i write. when i write on the computer, it is longer always.

it is softer somehow. the pencil and the paper slows me down. i will enter it into the computer and then edit subsequent drafts. >> how long did you research? >> i spent three years on the research and a year and a half on the right thing. i thought this would be a fast book to research. there was no one to enter the. there was little travel. the materials were endless and helpful. it was easy to greet what she had read. you could be on the subject for a long time.

there were bits and pieces in odd places. there were things on egypt and the layout of the palace that i used. i kept going off on different tangents. that took quite awhile. >> how long the right at a time? >> i try to do all of my research before i start writing. it is only at the point where i fear i see the book taking place, i begin to see the themes emerge that i start writing. there is usually a deadline at the back of my mind. that should be happening sooner

rather than later. once i and launched, ideally, i do not stop. i can still be researching in the afternoon. there is always something you forgot to research. i had written a chunk of it before i realized there were things about the american revolution in america i needed to know. i went back and did those in the afternoons while i was riding in the morning. i want to be at it every day if possible. i cannot let it go. i am on an uninterrupted course. >> six days a week, what time of the day do you start? >> as early as i can push the children out the door. i can get a good three or four hours of riding in. that used to mean three or four pages. the last book was a page or pages and a half a day. i was carefully using the little material and have.

it was tiny fragment. what do you work in silence? >> i listen to classical music. with franklin i listened to upper. -- to opera. it seemed like an operatic story. everything about it seemed as if it lent itself to opera. >> used to be an editor. how many books do you think you edited? >> that is a good question. maybe 50, 10 a year. >> you have done four books. >> they have all had a different editor. i have never published with the same editor twice. >> is it harder or easier to have been an editor? >> harder because you wish you could do it for yourself. you know it needs to be done.

you cannot see anything. i know where the editor should is that in. -- sholuld step in. my resentment of the editor is no less than it would be. there is always that tussle about what needs to be in the manuscript. it is hard to publish something you spent a lot of time tracking it down. sometimes i think the biographer calls and to the travails of research. >> the thing he would ever want to do -- do you think you would ever want to do it on a person who is alive in politics? if you had to choose someone right now, who would it be? >> i do not think i have been tempted to do a living person. i feel you need the distant. you need the dust to settle.

archives lie and distort but people in interviews are worse. i am shy by nature. has your biography been done recently? >> do you have a favorite biographer who is alive today? whose writing may be about politicians? >> lots. i love robert carroll. it is a book i go back to. for politicians, patricia o'toole. i tend to go back to odd things. there are different books in each case. the alex james book was a huge inspiration to me.

joe ellis, his jefferson book is again a perfect biography. >> go back to young people. what would you tell them if they wanted to do what you have done? what is the best way to train, to start, the experiences to have? >> the reading, reading, and reading. the re-reading is crucial. i think you see things on the second reading. every time i go back to "the great gatsby" it is a different book. the reading is interesting. you begin to see things. you have come to it as a different person. reading the right books is helpful.

reading the wrong books can be an education as well. it is like saying a bad movie. it is good to see what can be done wrong. i think every young writer should remember that publishers are desperate for a good, new book published. there should be helped for what is yet to be done. -- there should be an amount of hope for what has yet to be done. i think biography is changing shape. there are fewer birth to that biographies. there are new interesting, exciting things with it the way to look at a life. >> on your next book, the salem witch trials, where will you spend most of your time? >> i hope to spend a lot of time in salem. i hope to spend some time in boston in the library there.

everything else has been published. i like to think there is material in england. it is telling me this could have been going on in massachusetts in 1692 when most people had family in the u.k. and there were not a lot of letters written home about the unpleasantness, about what was happening. i assume there have to be family letters. >> stacy schiff author of four biographies. "vera," "ben franklin," and "cleopatra." thank you for joining us. 877->> for a dvd copy, call 1- 662-7726.

to give us your comments, visit us at q-and-a.org. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011] >> upcoming guests include karl marlantes, lawrence lessig, and simon winchester. >> tomorrow, a discussion on the gop primary race. after that, a look at manufacturing in the u