which we did that anticipate. on isrking group we work taking comments and considerations and letters from all parties to better a dress a better model for states to adopt and implement. >> the issues are complex and there are trade-offs. i hope we let the states be the laboratories of democracy and experiment. look at the different states and what they are doing. i would be wary of a premature federal intervention that would limit the kind of experimentation when he to have on these issues. >> i think finding ways to report on quality and cost across the spectrum are going to be key. that means consumers and

physicians, both sides have access to the information they need. >> this concludes our session. thank you to all the reporters for joining us today. >> retired marine lieutenant ben connable.

en harry holzer. and then a reporter with the associated press. your phone calls, facebook comments, and tweets. washington journal is live every morning at 7:00 eastern on c-span. tonight, retired professor and activists-vietnam war d'souza.inesh >> we started out as a outlutionary -- you started

in bin laden mode. you sounded totally different today. he talked about teaching, you talked about socratic doubt. what happened to that old revolutionary? >> i feel i still a revolutionary if you mean -- if what you mean by revolutionary is having a fully worked out program in which we can overthrow government and move forward, no, i am not that. but if you mean someone who is willing to dive into contradictions and fight for more stability and balance. i see the need for a fundamental change. to me, the struggle against

white supremacy is a struggle that still goes on. it is not over. it is a struggle that still goes on and takes different forms. it is not slavery and it is not jim crow. debate covers were, civil rights, economics, and other topics. you can watch it tonight at 8:00 eastern. >> all week, watch the tv in prime time. arrangeeatures a wide of topics -- book tv features a wide range of topics.

let us know what you think about the programs you are watching. , or you can e-mail us. conversation,n like this on facebook and follow us on twitter. next, q&a with pullets are prize-winning author edmund morris.

>> edmund morris, in your book, "this living hand and other essays," i notice you are writing a book about edison. >> that's right. >> why edison? >> it's this mysterious attraction of subject to biography which i've never been able to explain, but it happens. after i finished my last book, which was the third of a trilogy on theodore roosevelt, i was looking around for another subject. my agent said to me, what about edison? about time somebody did a book on him. i said i don't think i want to do another enormous biography, so i said no to the idea. but a few months later,

mysterious how these things happen, i was at an airport in florida, fort myers, which is near where edison used to have his winter plantation, next to henry ford's and i was running to catch a plane and came across this airport lobby display of a huge cutout, life-size cutout of thomas edison. thun of these photographic silhouettes. i literally barged into it. it was posed next to his electrified model-t that henry ford had given him. so here am i looking into thomas edison's eyes and i suddenly became overwhelmed with curiosity.

this guy is fascinating, i have to write about him! and all the way back to new york on the plane after that encounter, i felt this lust to write. so that's how it started, as simply as that. >> when did you start the book? >> well, immediately i began the research. >> how long ago is that now? >> like i said, i guess that was two years ago, three years ago if not more. i got a contract almost immediately. it's a huge subject as you can imagine particularly for someone who spent his life writing about presidents and composers to write about this polymath of a scientist, something new. but that's part of the attraction. i love the challenge of writing about something quite different than i wrote about before. >> where are you on the timeline to get this done? >> that's the kind of question any nonfiction writer wants to shoot himself. i don't know, brian. you can never tell how long a biographer is going to take. i thought i could finish reagan in four or five years. it took 14. i spent years writing about theodore roosevelt. it's less than sounds because i wrote other books in the meantime but each of my books spent about five years.

how long edison will take, i can't tell. >> what's one thing you learned about edison that you didn't know? >> how profoundly imagine native he was. one thinks of scientists as someone who works with process, experimentation and theories. but the fact that he has 1,092 patented inventions of edison that poured out of him from the age of 14 onward, the fact of that prodigal outpouring of inventiveness derived from imagination is what fascinates me. he really was an inspirational person. i'll give you an example. his talking to a science fiction writer in the 1880's who was explicating the new current

theory of atomic composition of matter. even in the 1880's it was known that all matter could be reduced to atoms. edison was talking about this subject and he said if this theory is indeed correct and all matter consists of atoms, i suppose it would be possible for me to take a few atoms of myself and transfer those atoms to a rose, and then i could retrieve those atoms and put them back into myself and thereby acquire some of the sensibility of a rose. that's what i mean about his profoundly imaginative nature. that's a poetic perception. that's not scientific, it's

poetic. nowadays, most of the 20th century and the 21st, scientific inventions come out of theory. first the theory, then the invention. but edison, the invention came out of nowhere, spontaneously. >> so when a biographer has a subject they want to write about, where do you start? what's that first day like? >> one always has this desire to get to know the person, if he's dead of course. reagan was alive when i wrote about him so that was easy but i had to get to know theodore roosevelt, had to get to able to see him, feel him, even smell him. i researched what kind of cologne he wore. it was the same with edison for me. a lot of the process of analyzing comes from looking at the writings. i love the look of handwriting and i can sort of deduce the movement of the hand that wrote those words. photographs are immensely important to me. it's very important we know exactly what they looked like

and the things around them. so the first curiosity manifests itself visibly, audiblely in terms of sensations. once i feel i have the person in my field of knowledge then i can begin to tell the story of the life, analyze the mind. >> speak of biography, i wanted to talk with you about presidents. obviously you know two very with. i wanted to round out a video clip we did with robert dallek, talking about a series of meetings with obama. before we show this have you met with president obama? >> yes. >> in one of these meetings? >> i went to a meeting there. >> we talked about a great variety of things in those interviews or those dinners.

of course there were roughly 12 historians. i wasn't the only one there and some of his principal aides, including one of his principal speech writers. so for me it was a fascinating experience to be able to at one point sit right next to the president at dinner and have this kind of exchange with him. in many ways it felt like an academic seminar because after all, he is someone who has been a professor of law. it was like being in a seminar with a bunch of colleagues is the way i would characterize it. >> when did you meet with president obama? was mr. dallek there? >> yes, he was. it was just after the gulf spill, in the gulf of mexico, which made me realize what a cool customer he was. this catastrophic thing had just happened in the gulf. douglas brinkley was there and

he personally witnessed a lot of the ecological damage. obama was completely unmoved. he took it as a procedural issue, something that could be solved by discussion, process, and meetings. it was an issue. a political phenomenon. it was not an environmental catastrophe. he was very, very cool. >> in one of your essays in the book that i mentioned, you write, "barack obama" -- this is april 2009 -- >> have you changed your mind at all since? it was five years ago. >> oh, absolutely not. i love to hear him think aloud. the clarity of the sequences and the thought.

do i think he's in love with the sound of his own voice. he expresses himself so well that he indulges himself rhetorically. >> what are some of the differences in the way he was and when president reagan was around? what was the difference in the way people treated them? >> people always tend to be obsequious in the presence of the president. there is a lot of laughter that's not really laughter. the strange smile that spreads over the faces of people. it's half joy and half fear. and the president loves to talk, so we all sat there and listened and listened and listened.

the difference between him and reagan was with reagan he was much more aloof than obama was. obama is such an intelligent person that he focused directly upon you although he's not particularly interested in you. he does focus and he does listen. reagan you could die in front of him and he wouldn't have noticed. he would continue with his stories. reagan was always living somewhere slightly apart from the room he was in. >> how many different occasions were you in the room with reagan? >> oh, countless times, in the sense that i was a fixture at the white house during his second term. i could come and go as often as i liked. i interviewed him every month. i spent a lot of time with him

after the presidency. and i was table to go to meetings and go on trips with him so i had plenty of time to observe him. that's when i noticed following in his wake the strange universal expression that crowds have as the president approaches and walks through them. the strange smile on every face. >> you tell this story, and you tell it in this book but i don't remember whether i have heard you tell this. we're going to run the video first of his farewell address. you were in the room, if i remember correctly, when he gave his farewell address. let's run a little bit of this and get you to tell the story. >> my fellow americans, this is the 34th time i'll speak to you from the oval office and the last. we've been together eight years now and soon it will be time for me to go. but before i do, i wanted to share some thoughts, some of

which i've been saving for a long time. it's been the honor of my life to be your president. so many of you have written the past few weeks to say thanks, but i could say as much to you. nancy and i are grateful for the opportunity you gave us to serve. one of the things with the presidency is that you are always somewhat apart. you spend a lot of time going by too fast in a car someone else is driving and seeing the people through tinted glass, parents holding up a child and of a wave you saw too late and couldn't return, and so many times i wanted to stop and reach out from behind the glass and connect. >> do you believe that, that he wanted to reach out behind the glass and connect? or is that words from somebody else? >> no, i don't believe it. he was always happy behind the screen of glass. even when he ways young actor writing about his emotions when he stepped on the set, the stage set, in hollywood in 1937, he said, "i felt myself stepping behind a wall of light." reagan loved to feel -- and he said the wall of light

enshrouded me and i began to act. reagan loved that feeling that he was screened off from the rest of humanity by that wall of light, which was transparent and through which he was being watched. but he never wanted to step out of it. when he did step out of it, for example, after the republican convention of 1976 when ronald reagan very nearly unseated president gerald ford for the nomination, it was spectacular television. ford made the mistake in his acceptance speech of saying, "ronnie, would you like to come down and say a few words to the convention delegates?" if you ever get a clip of this, brian, you should show it because it's political theater at its best. down from this high room, taking his time, comes ronald reagan. on stage comes this magnificent person ambling along, looking like a million bucks and

proceeds to say a few words, which as you heard them you realized this is the acceptance speech he would have delivered if he had been nominated. meanwhile, behind him gerald ford is standing with the blood draining from his face, and the delegates out there are all thinking, "god, we nominated the wrong guy." he gives a spectacular speech. but he then had to step offstage, get in the helicopter, and fly back to los angeles to private life. a few days later, a neighbor in pacific palisades saw ronnie reagan coming down the driveway to put out the trash and he said he looked terrible. he was stooped, he was lined, pale-faced, all his charisma evaporated. he had stepped outside at that wall of light. he was back in the real world and he didn't feel comfortable. >> you were in that room for that farewell address. where were you sitting? >> i was sitting just a few yards away to his right with peggy noonan and a few other white house aides and that same transformation i'm talking about took place in that room.

i arrived about 10 minutes before 9:00 and found the oval office looking strangely denuded with these cables across the floor and the ornaments off the desk, which is how it's always done when the president makes a speech. it just looks better that way on television, but in situ it looks bleak. in steps the president looking

strangely subdued. i couldn't figure out why he was subdued. he was holding a glass of hot water wrapped in a white towel. he went, sat down at the desk. drank the hot water, which is what he always did before a speech to soothe his vocal cords and make his voice husky. again he still seemed ill at ease. then i noticed his eyes kept flickering toward a dead monitor to the left of his desk, the monitor on which his image was about to appear before the televising began. when the image popped up on the screen of himself, he said, "ah, there he is," and instantly he became happy. he had seen himself on the screen and knew he was about to perform.

the transformation occurred and they counted down, five, four, three, two, and he became ronald reagan looking like a million bucks and doing what he did best. >> did he know you were in the room? >> i suppose he did. reagan was not particularly interested who was in a room as long as there were people in the room. >> and over the times that you met with him, did he know every time when you met with him who you were? >> yeah. yes. i used to think sometimes that he was out to lunch, but you know, one very telling incident. long after he left the white house he came back in the last month of george h.w. bush's presidency to receive the medal of honor, and he was significantly older then. this would have been january of 1994. so i was there with a bunch of the old reagan white house people, and we filed by. 500 of us shaking hands with the old guy. and when i finally shook hands with him, he seemed very distant. his eyes were opaque.

i thought, well, he's losing it. but then i heard from fred ryan, his chief of staff, that on the plane back to california reagan said to fred, "you know, i saw edmund in the line today and you know, i think he's waiting for me to die before he writes his book." in other words, this spaced-out former executive had noticed me, seen something in my face that i hardly wanted to acknowledge myself. so that was the mystery of reagan. you never quite knew just how acute he was. he seemed to be play-acting, not particularly curious but, but he registered. >> are there moments that you've never written about, having been around him over the years, that you have just not the occasion to talk about? >> sure. but any biographer has to select his material. >> can you give us an example of something you've never used? >> i haven't thought about it for long.

i just had these images that stay in my head. one night before he made an appearance in the presidential library, long after the presidency, when he was beginning to be strange. the dementia was beginning to be noticeable. he was standing with his back to the sunset, the pacific behind him through the windows in a silhouette and that pompadour hair of his was sticking up and he looked as though he was on fire. i wish i could put that image in words but you can't. it haunts me. >> have you spent time around other presidents? >> yes, jimmy carter, gerald ford, obama, both bushes. >> any of those people you mentioned that comes to mind when you talk about observing something we don't normally see? >> they all like to talk. undivided attention. that goes with the territory.

in carter's case, but they're all human beings and psychologically different in fundamental matters. for example, carter. i met him twice after the presidency. once was when he wanted some advice from presidential historians on how to write his memoirs, his "me-mores," as he pronounced it. he when my turn came, i said, well, mr. president, when you begin your book, and beginnings are always crucially important, i would suggest that you begin with that miraculous moment just after you were inaugurated. when you decided to get out of the presidential limo coming down constitution avenue and walked, hand in hand, with your

wife in the sunshine. and i said after all the claustrophobia and paranoia of the nixon and ford years, here was a president of the united states, walking in the sunshine with his wife, hand in hand. i said that would be a great moment for you to describe and then perhaps from that flashback to the beginnings of your career and tell your story of how you came to that moment. so he said no, i'm going to start with when i triumphed over scoop jackson in the florida primary. his eyes flashed blue fire and i realized that was the most important moment of his life, when he won that primary and i sensed this immense aggression. carter ways killer campaigner and that triumph was the most

important thing that ever happened to him. >> here's george will recently on this program talking about his relationship with george w. bush. how'd that work? did you pick up the phone and say, "mr. president, come to my house?" >> well, i got to know ronald reagan before he was president and he liked to get out of the bubble of the white house. george w. bush i knew was interested in this, and i suggested it. barack obama i think hadn't even been nominated yet, i called someone on his staff and i said, it would be sort of nice to have a dinner if he wins. of conservative columnists if he wins to try and rekindle something that was characteristic of an older washington you and i can remember, back in the 1970's. a more amicable one.

>> actually in addition to that he talked about having a dinner every year at the white house for baseball players. again, going back to your experience, when somebody calls up and says the president wants to visit with you and there are 10 or 11 people sitting around, what's your real attitude about that. do you say this is exciting, i have to go there? or i have to go, my president's called. >> well, i think it's your duty when the president wants you to show up and one exults in the most powerful man in the world, feeling you're an epicenter apart. there is something egglike about

the oval office. it's an egg-shaped room and you feel the whole world swirls around this we go, and here is this golden egglike shape and in the middle of it is the most powerful man in the world. intoxicating. >> you did the book on beethoven. what do you run into with academics and the world of historians that say you're not a historian? >> oh, i repeat it myself. i'm not a historian. >> why not? >> i'm a different species of cat. historians deal with more than the individual. a biographer deals with the individual. a biography is the story of

writing of life, biography. i'm interested in character, the narrative of character. the strangeness of events. the strangeness of reality. i'm interested in literary matters. history or yaps have to concern themselves with the abstracts -- economics, great social movements, consensus, ideology. these things don't particularly interest me. i like to write about living human beings who live in extraordinary times and whose characters are extraordinary. the factd that i've written about two presidents is not through any particular interest in politics or governmenting, it's fascination with the personalities of these men and the really unique lives they led. >> why a biography on beethoven. >> i've always loved music very much, and to speak in literary terms the challenge of quig will music is extreme. it's trying to use language to express the inexpressibleness of music.

not really possible since music is the superior language of -- to that of writing but to we who love music so much to be -- to have the challenge of being able to communicate or try to communicate the essence of beethoven's music was something i rose to. quite apart from that, beethoven himself was a rich and complex, craggy character of the sort that any biographer would love to write. i couldn't writing about that about bruckner, for example, because his character was simplistic compared to beethoven. >> could you have been a concert pianist? >> no. i had the point that i might one day.

when i was young. when i married my wife or at least started taking her out as a young man in london. she said enough about this concert pianist stuff already. if you really are serious about going to the royal college of music, why don't you go, sign up, study and i'll support you? she had a teacher's salary. i was in my early 20's, which was already ridiculously late but i said i will, i'll do that. so i went to the royal college of music and to sign up and found i could not walk you up the steps. something told me that was not my scene. so i went back home and told her i can't do it. she said, i knew you'd come back. how? i notice that whenever you play the piano and people criticize your playing it doesn't seem to bother you, but whenever people criticize your writing, you it go crazy. you're a writer, not a musician. so the problem was fixed in that moment. >> you write about other

composers, haydn and others. did those people in the 1700's, 1800's, play a role in politics in your opinion? >> they had to be politicians in the sense they had to play the politics of the court. haydn and mozart were treated as servants, were servants in fact, who had to learn how to deport themselves in court. beethoven was a court of the elector of cologne but he was the first composer in history to emancipate himself when he settled in vienna and to such an extent that the princes and dukes and earls sued him to come to their palaces and perform for them. but throughout his career even when he became the most famous composer in the world and he was sensationally be successful all throughout his career he always had to consider the vanity of the princes and learn how to play the vanities of one otch

the other. >> so how much of the piano do you play today? >> i play every day, an hour or two, sometimes three hours a day. >> who is the composer you are most likely to play? >> it goes through phases. i'm on a brahms kick at the moment. quite coincidentally, i don't know if you are aware of allen rustwich, the editor of the "guardian" newspaper in britain. the guy who leaked the whole snowden story. he is a middle aged pianist and he wrote a book recently called "play it again, sam," the story of him deciding to master chopin's ballad in d minor number one.

he just wanted to see if he could physically and mentally do it. that coincided with the edward snowden wikileaks story. this book was a fascinating parallel story of an editor of a major newspaper breaking one of the greatest scoops in publishing history and trying to master this difficult piano piece. decidedknowing this, i braum's variations on if in myust to see late middle age i could master it physically. as the brain ages

it is capable of improving its ability to memorize. i found it easier and easier. the body can be trained. at the moment i am in a braum's phase. next written maybe something else. >> do you have a view of the classical music as it is called in this country right now and whether it is gaining or losing? >> it's losing. youtube has been extraordinary resource for music of all kinds. you can get anything on youtube. if you would see josef hoffman playing the piano, just type in his name. there is probably a market out there that we are not aware of. they discover the complexities and beauties of classical music through the internet. are full of grain

audiences. the audiencesll in their 60's and 70's. it is not taught in schools. >> when we have talked about your writing habits, there was a time when you are writing longhand. are you still? >> not as much as when i was juncker. writing,aphical computers are ideal. shifting footnotes are one chapter to the next, name change a namecan instantly. it to compose sentences initially longhand. a >> here is some video from a conversation we had some years ago when you were here for

"in-depth." >> that is my study. it faces the capital. i have a desk that was built for me to cousins i have always worked with cards. i have two projecting drawers that come out on either side of me. each carries a yard of cards. there are four of these drawers. i have four yards of cards that i can get at. they reconstruct what i am writing day by day. i write by hand. i do use a computer later on. i do like to see the words coming out of the pen. a physicalould have relationship with the manuscript. it is a product of your hands as well is your heart and head.

think the reasons i craft of writing is deteriorating is the disconnect between the hand and the page. >> you hear all the time that cursiveople don't use at all. it is all computerized. what are we losing? itdirect contact between the creator and the created thing. it goes into a machine and it comes out the other end. there is this screen enter posing. buildings design through the computer. they don't draw any more. a friend of mine in new york says it is difficult to hire young architects who can even draw. there has been a decline in special skills in young americans.

it is been measured. it is quite catastrophic. young americans don't understand volumetric things. understand and airplanes fuselage. the don't understand how the floors of a house need to be balanced. they don't think three dimensionally. they think in terms of screen. it is beginning to freak me out. i just can't adjust to this new type of thinking. deprived.are me.e was a moment for this was a number of years back. i went with some graduate high school students to alcatraz in san francisco for a dinner in the prison. all of these bright young people came out from the prison through

the lobby of the park, the induction center. it was now night. -- counter was this image of the bay of san francisco. the kids were photographing it on their cameras. they then stepped out into the is sannd across the bay francisco. --was 20 lane and tremble twinkling and trembling. they did not look at it. they could only relate to an image that was synthetic and was framed. when they saw the thing they didn't realize they had seen the real thing. this inability to comprehend something that is not behind a screen worries me a lot.

semester teaching narrative nonfiction to some very bright students. and passivelyty while i was talking began to freak me out. i began to realize that they weren't listening to me so much as watching me. they had grown up watching heads talking on screens. i was just another talking head. it was an eerie experience. when i mentioned this to lance said he has the same impression. he is being watched. >> what do you think the impact will be? >> virtual reality is becoming reality. what is behind a screen israel. real.

aat is why reagan was such precursor to modern sensibility. image. existed as an that's not fair. he was a real person. a lot of his power was ability to project himself in terms of images. have you still not talked to nancy reagan? >> not since i published. i did not expect to. >> anything new about the way you use the fictional character? >> if i did that book again i would do exactly the same way. it might surprise you that when occasions when i meet people in the streets or at book festivals, that is the book they talk about the most.

what i didn't was honest and something of an advance in biographical technique that suited the subject. inthe book i have was done 2012. was it originally a hardback? what is in your? >> essays i have written over 40 years. some are on music and summer on presidential biography. travel. humor. >> how does it work? do you call them or do they call you? when one is young and struggling to pay the rent you hustle for whatever assignment you can get. i used to hustle for newspaper pieces and travel articles. when you publish books and become better known, the commissions come spontaneously.

i would say that half of those essays were commissioned and the others i had to hustle for. >> this is about your wife. were asked to produce a series of chapters for a history of x duration -- exploration. when we you closest to not be able to make it financially in this writing world? >> in the beginning we were very poor. in the mid-1970's. we were desperate. we were so desperate that we took any kind of work we could take. one of the things about living in new york city is nobody should come to new york unless they are prepared to be lucky. i found that when we were desperate the phone would ring.

when i did not have enough money to pay the rent for next month, the phone rang and asked if i wanted to go across the atlantic and write a brochure about first-class life on the ss france? nothing, but for they paid us for. we had money flooding in. that is the life of a freelancer. one hopes to be lucky and one usually is. >> going back to teaching at chicago. what will you teach a class if they say they want to be another edmund morris? i want to live that life. when you look at how the world is changing and communication is changing, will somebody be able to do the same thing that you

have done in the last 40 years? are by nature a writer, there is nothing that can stop you doing it. encourage -- never try to encourage. is i would say to them is it extremely difficult and likely to be more and more so unless you adapt to new technologies. those of think they can earn a living writing print in the future are going to be disillusioned. it has always been difficult, but it is impossible. young people should adapt to the screen or audio or these new techniques. of thatiting in terms technology. incorporate more images and more sound effects. i have tried to do it myself. what i did the audio for

"dutch," i wanted to incorporate sound effects of many of his great public appearances. he had been an actor and the president. hised technologies like speech. i told the story of how the speech came to be written by his writer and how he came to deliver it on that climactic day. someone to record the sentences. i segued into reagan's voice delivering the real speech on the real day. this was in the audio book. audio books can be extraordinarily dramatic. people are getting into nonfiction and they should use these techniques to keep the

formalized. >> of all the things you have done, which has been the most remember it if? >> i got a lot of money for the reagan, but it took 14 years to write. amazon and found that the most reviewed book of is your firstoks book in 1979. the least reviewed is the one i have in my hand. the ronald reagan book was second. amazon bookstores, where are the books being sold where are your books being sold? are they on amazon? >> electronic bookselling seems

like the way the world is going to go. i was at barnes & noble the other day. i think amazon does 30% if not a lot more. i am all for it. one can by so quickly and spontaneously. you can instantly by the latest book on the subject. you can have it the following day. >> do you have a facebook account? do you listen to podcasts? >> no. i go on youtube a lot. i am very fond of classical music. paradise for musical performance. an oldssay in your book, man ought to be sad.

what was that about? it was a biography. >> what do your member about justice holmes? >> he is one of the great prose stylists. he was a supreme court justice. marvelous prose stylist. are of his great opinions american prose at its finest. he could combine acute intellectualism with the macular speech-- for neck killer -- vernacular speech.

that was an introduction to the new edition. >> why henry adams? >> he was one of our great letter writers. he was a marvelous prose stylist. becauseterested in him i was writing about theodore roosevelt. adams was one of the sharpest and funniest commentators on the roosevelt presidency. narcissism was unpleasant. he wanted power handed to him on a silver platter. you would know, he had an eye on being president hidden -- himself. he ran a salon.

every sunday, all of the best people in town came. presidents would have breakfast with henry adams. on thewrote a piece library of congress. what is your memory of the library of congress? >> i used to live there practically. i wrote most of my two first roosevelt biographies in the library of congress. that i was surrounded by the works of thomas jefferson. doma -- dome, i felt i was working in jefferson's syllabary am -- eribellum.am --c

what is your take on gorbachev? >> is a singer most impressive i have ever met. 1985 through 1990, he was overwhelmingly charismatic and forceful and his quickness was spellbinding. he understood everything. so attractive and the chemistry between him and reagan was marvelous to watch. enough, reagan was a stronger man. gorbachev had an acute intelligence. he was a tragic figure. what wasansform

happening to the soviet union. he presided over it. he was despised as a result. this is the fate of all transitional figures. why those two things? >> reagan had a genuinely fundamental feeling about to follow terry and is him and the holocaust in particular. ii,last year of world war intelligence officer. he had to process all of the raw color footage that was coming back from the opening of the

camps. if these terrific images which i it made meyself, sick for days, that affected him permanently. after the war when he heard an anti-somatic joke at a party, he slugged the guy. reagan wasnown that so traumatized by his prep -- holocaust,e of the the three young children when they turned 14 had to watch that footage that reagan had taken out of the army with him. they had to watch it. at the age of puberty. he wanted them to see with the nature of anti-semitism was. >> what about the spiro agnew thing? >> michael deaver made a

sarcastic remark about spiro agnew. when you traveled on any of ronald reagan's sentimental notions, if you get very upset. he did not like his allusions destroyed. >> they had been governors together. >> i guess they were in the 70's. you talking about winning the pulitzer prize. >> is very kind of you to apply the fact that i won the pulitzer prize. in new york city, it is theicult to walk around corner without bumping into another pulitzer prize winner. i was amazed at the ward was.

it was just a certificate that came in the mail. for $1000. check that was it. our building in new york city had always treated me with contempt. which is what writers have to get used to. suddenly he became very obsequious. if only for this, it is worth getting the pulitzer prize. >> what you think of the idea of prizes? >> they are a crapshoot. if you get one, it is a combination of luck and timing. essays, theook of first three were never

published? what were they about? the bum stitch was the first case of writing. this is never been published. fruit for the school friend of mine shared with me when i was about 10 years old. it is a complex story. thee it in retrospect as fruit of the knowledge of the tree of good and evil. from my past. i wrote a whimsical essay about it. , myr the book was published nephew researched it. he wanted to see if i was just imagining this f.