he anticipated what we would call today as the third world that would reassess the capitalist mission. he spent a lifetime pursuing that, among all sorts of other interests. >> we need some basics. he died in what year of what age? >> he died in 1979 at the age of 70 after two rather dispiriting years as gerald ford's vice president, and 15 dominant years as the governor of new york. governor of new york. >> how many times was elected governor? >> he was elected four times,

that is a modern record. and you have to remember when he was elected in 1959, when he first took office, it was to be regarded as a potential president. all the more so in his case, because of the resources that he brought to the office and because of the personality. one of the hardest things for any historian or biographer to do is to capture, convincingly, on paper something as ethereal as charisma. it is a relative term. and different generations define it differently. >> how many times was he married? >> twice. it certainly affected his chances to be president.

i would argue that he would was probably in the wrong party. he never had been nominated by the republican party after 1960. but there is no doubt in a way that today we would find very difficult to understand. >> how long was he married to his first wife? >> over 30 years. they were married a week after he graduated from dartmouth, and they divorced in 1961. >> how long was he married to his second wife? >> 15 years, or so. >> how many children did he have? >> he had five children, two children by happy. >> how many brothers and sisters did he have? >> one sister, abby, and he had four brothers, one of them was

arguably his -- certainly his closest friend. there were some who would argue maybe his only true friend. >> and his brother david is a 99 and still alive? >> yes, that is a book in and of itself. he wrote with considerable candor in memoirs -- i was speaking with a quintessential rockefeller republican, and he had been told that the hardest part was writing honestly about nelson. they had a difficult relationship, particularly towards the end. >> who was nelson rockefeller's father? >> john d rockefeller, junior. he was the oil baron.

john d. rockefeller, jr. was the most complicated of all the rockefellers, i mean, none of us may be totally honest with ourselves, i'm not sure he may have recognize or was willing to acknowledge the degree to which his own philanthropic activities, which took a lifetime, he decided early on he was not going to go into business, he was not going to follow in his father's footsteps, except in philanthropic footsteps. he was never in any way redemptive. he never was trying to make up for some of the criminal activities that had been alleged against his father and the making of standard oil, which

>> how long did it take you to write this book? 14 years? >> 14 years. >> what were the origins of the book? >> the origins of the book was traced back to a day in 1989, i was 14 years old in august of 1968, and had earned money and had managed to get tickets as a guest of the massachusetts delegation to the republican convention in miami where i was on the floor during a rockefeller demonstration. i can go back four years before the book opens, and there was an extraordinary confrontation on

the second night of the 90's it before convention at the cal palace, where rockefeller is almost booed off the stage by a newly triumphant conservative force led by barry goldwater of arizona. it is a extraordinary and rare moment in history where you can see the page be interned. i mean, the next morning, it was a different republican party. you could not know for sure where he was going to go. but you know you could never go back to the old eastern establishment of the party of dewey and eisenhower. >> we want our folks who are watching that i have known you since 1953.

>> no no no, not 1963! >> 1923. >> 1863. [video clip] >> 2006 nelson rockefeller book. >> the book is due to publishers in two years, but above all, i'm going to finish that biography of nelson rockefeller, and it should just take six years of my life. >> it will take about two or

three years. >> i am up early working on a book that will take just a couple more years. i would like to finish by 2008, which would be the 100th anniversary of nelson rockefeller's birth. >> i have been for the last 10 years working on a biography of nelson rockefeller. >> still working on the nelson rockefeller biography. >> so here it is. [laughter] was it worth the time? >> oh yes. it was an intellectual adventure of a lifetime. i often say that you start off writing a biography and you and -- end up writing an autobiography. one of the reason it took 14 years was because you obviously have an obligation to your readers to be as objective, to

-- you want to be passionate about what you do and dispassionate about how you do it -- so it literally took a while to outgrow that mindset that a 14-year-old took on the convention floor in 1968, but then again, you don't want to go to the other extreme and get rid of some kind of objectivity, however you define that. that takes a while. there was the best of reasons why it took as long as it did. that is because i was writing this at the same time that the rockefeller archives in particular were opening paper. him there were millions and millions of paper at the rockefeller archives. in the course of those 14 years, extraordinary things became available for the first time. i lost a year, you could see --

lost a year, the archive open something called "family and friends." hundreds and hundreds of boxes of paper that was pure gold. after reading those, i tour up the first 75,000 words of my paper. it included 100 or more letters from the first wife of nelson rockefeller, known as "todd," to nelson. todd was extraordinarily private. i am not sure now that she would appreciate this invasion of her privacy, as she has been gone close to a decade now, i believe. on the other hand, it is the first time that she has been able to speak for herself. the letters are just remarkable. they are funny. they are wise. and sometimes they are painful.

>> you wrote on the train the picture you have in your book where she is on the far right of the picture and she is on the far left, and one thing you notice right away when you see it is the height rid her height compared to his height. what was the difference in height? >> she was -- i mean, she -- i found her passport, and it lists her height at six foot one inch -- six foot one inch, and her weight as 105 pounds. you can find it offensive. there are edited versions of some of nelson's correspondences with his parents. for example, this was the unedited version. so nelson, a few weeks before their wedding, is reeling off to

his mother all of the reasons why he is in love with todd. and it is very sort of clinical, and then he says on the negative side, it is just the fact that she is slightly taller than me. and she is a year older than me, and is -- and she isn't particularly good-looking, which strikes me as a strange thing for a young bridegroom on the verge of his wedding to say to anyone, including his mother. but that suggest that they were both ambivalent, i think it is fair to say, more than most young couples on the verge of betrothal. and she writes this extraordinary letter in which she says, "i don't know if i am in love or not, i just know that i don't want to be hurt. if you come to me within a year of our marriage and says that

you are in love with another woman, it implicitly someone who is better looking than i, it would break my heart." i have this analogy, and if you are watching a hitchcock movie, and you were in the audience and you were shouting at the screen, don't go in that room, that is how it is like. but they were married. they had five children. twins, unplanned. that was in 1938. and when the twins were born, there were five children, nelson commissioned a his friend to build a guesthouse on the estate, 500 feet from the house the family lived in. >> where is that? >> 30 miles north of new york city on the hazard river. the point is, in 1938, nelson moves into the guesthouse. he took his meals with his

family, but he slept in the guesthouse. a permanent guest, if you will, at his own home. in the very real sense, in the fullest sense of the word, came to an end. that was in the late 1930's. now, of course, the public had no idea of this. when the divorce was announced in 1961, a generation later, it really came as a shock to most people. >> what was he doing in 1961? >> he was governor. he was governor of new york. and he was a very successful governor. it was assumed that he was the front runner for the 1964 republican presidential nomination.

>> how many times did he run for president? [laughter] >> depends on how you define "run." certainly in 1960, he flirted with the idea and in 1964 he went all out, in 1968 he said he

would not run and he ran, and there is very little doubt that he hoped to run in 1976 before he was picked by gerald ford to be his vice president. >> if you had to name the one thing he did as governor or as vice president that benefited the nation, not new york, but the nation, what would that be? just one thing.

set. it is particularly valuable, not only in the context of then, even more today. he used to say, "the primary function of government is to convert problems into opportunities." now stop and think. he did not have an ideology. he really didn't. the great jack lemond said that

nelson rockefeller was not a liberal, he was a baptist. he was raised in a very baptist household and he had his conscience about giving back. he saw the united states as the rich and powerful rockefeller family, rich and powerful. the united states had an obligation to the rest of mankind. he said that, in his view, "if you don't have good health or good education, i feel that society has let you down." him now imagine that transposed to our own politics.

arguably, nelson rockefeller was to the left of barack obama's presidency. he operated in a different climate, but imagine a republican among other things, who believed in society, and secondly, believe we should collectively together as a family should have an obligation to provide universally the best possible health care, and the best possible education. >> where are the archives? >> the archives are at -- great story -- they are just outside the main estate gates at a house that was built for nelson's stepmother. his mother, whom i hope we can talk about because she is such a pivotal part of the story, abby rockefeller, died in 1948. to the muffled horror of his children, he remarried. uncle martha, as nelson referred to her, and whom he was quick to court, would eventually contribute over $10 million to nelson's political campaign. uncle martha conditioned e-house -- commissioned a house located on the highest point of the

estate overlooking the hudson, and it was the place were junior built a house for his father. the original advancement was $50,000. but now, you have to remember, random house gave me something much more valuable than money. they give me time. no one -- no one ever pressured me, too, can we hurry this along, we are blank years behind schedule. i cannot tell you how critical that was to the final product. i am grateful for that. i put in a quarter of a million

dollars of my own money. that was for travel -- first of all, new york city is an expensive place to do research, and new york was my base as i went up to the property. i did 150 interviews which entailed a great deal of travel, i took about 60,000 pages of primary source and historical material, diaries, letters, memos, you name it, most of which, again, have not been available in the past. so, i mean, i consider myself fortunate. i am not complaining. most of the $250,000 was raising the question, which is out there anyway, but it made me think about -- i consider myself to have been very lucky. one, that random house was interested in the project at all, and two, you have to remember the first six of those

14 years i was working full-time. first at the gerald ford library museum in michigan, and then starting two startups. the dole institute at the university of kansas and the abraham lincoln library and museum in springfield.

i believe passionately that authors should stay out of their texts. let the reader form their own opinion. i guess you could say i let down my guard and wrote rather personally in these acknowledgments. in november of 2010, i had been invited by a number of folks very kindly to various homes for thanksgiving and no one heard from me for several days after that.

it was sheer luck. i was told at the time that i had lost a spleen and a kidney and could expect to use -- lose the use of my lag. the last thing we need in washington is anymore spleen.

i came out of the experience well aware of how lucky i was. and how grateful i was. my first conscious thought that night in the hospital was i can't die because i have to finish this book. i wondered if there was a death biographerskefeller . i have a very distinguished predecessor in this field who spent years of his own working i am multivolume -- working on a multivolume rockefeller. a great continuing resource for rockefeller students. tragically: at the age

of 48 or 49, he was diagnosed two years later with pancreatic cancer and died a few weeks later. i can be forgiven for wondering if there was a curse on this project. you still have not asked chapter. last we will do that in a moment. 1960, here is video from the gop convention in 1960. >> as the gop convenes in chicago, governor nelson rockefeller dominates the scene in the early hours. proposal for the republican platform touched off a storm of controversy.

as a woman position was unshaken was unshaken.n remarkable act as late as 1960, richard nixon, the overwhelming favorite in unchallenged for the nomination nonetheless -- nevertheless felt it was his in his political interest in the middle of the night to fly to new york for a meeting at nelson rockefeller's apartment. first, he tried to convince rockefeller to get on the ticket as vice president, and when that failed, he tried to meet rockefeller's objections on the platform, which involved -- revolved overwhelmingly around two issues, seemingly opposing

one, a stronger civil rights plank. that was an issue that always mattered to his family and to nelson. we will hopefully talk about that later. but secondly, he wanted a stronger military defense plank. he wanted the party, in effect, to repudiate the policy of fiscal restraint on the budget, including the military budget. it put nixon in a terribly awkward position, yet it was believed that nelson rockefeller and the wing of the party he represented, the old english establishment, had the clout to require this, but at least to be taken seriously. we now know that by 1960, that was probably not the case, it was a matter of perception.

it was fed by what we would call today is the mainstream media. >> what did richard nixon and nelson rockefeller think of each other? >> it is a complex -- they respected each other as rivals. there were certainly any number of occasions when i think each man tried the patience of the other. oddly enough, during the eisenhower administration, they were allies. when eisenhower was overwhelmingly reelected, rockefeller writes to nixon, saying "thanks to you and the president, the republican party is emerging as the great liberal party of the future."

in 1956, people forget that it was not very goldwater the broke the solid south, it was dwight eisenhower. in 1956, dwight eisenhower carried almost 46% of the african-american vote and the majority of southern electors, so because the party turned to goldwater and then in effect on to nixon and reagan and gingrich, because the party took that turn in 1964, it does not mean that that had to be history. it could have been a very different history. >> where did you get the title of the book? >> in 35 years of writing books, i have got a title that i wanted.