after that, national security so-called lone wolf terrorist attacks. and later, a look back at the decision to leave the european union and other decisions in parliament over the last few months. ♪ announcer: this week on "q&a," journalist and author joshua kendall. mr. kendall discusses his book "first dads." parenting and politics from george washington to barack obama. brian: joshua kendall. "first dads." what is this book about and where did you get the idea? mr. kendall: my last book was called "america's obsessives."

it featured profiles of seven american icons were control freaks, from thomas jefferson to steve jobs. these were people with character disorders that had difficulty relating to other people but were amazing movers and shakers. and i wrote a chapter on jefferson. and jefferson, of course, is america's most articulate proponent of freedom and most articulate enemy of tyranny. but with his own daughters, he was a control freak. he told them what to do, what to wear. so here he is, and jefferson also was an amazing politician. we all know how brilliant he was. but in the election of 1804 he 74% of theed by vote. it brought up the question of how one leads a nation and how one leads a family. jefferson was a great visionary thinker and a great leader, but as a dad, so-so. he also neglected his daughters a little bit. when he goes to paris, he sticks

them at a convent school. one of his daughters famously had to be shepherded from london when she comes to visit him in paris. and so this question of how one leads a nation and how one leads a family -- sometimes there is a big disconnect between the public and the private man. another example would be franklin roosevelt, who was a great communicator. whatever one's politics, he was one of the great presidents of the 20th century. he got us through the great depression, the nazis. the gives us through most of the war with japan. -- he gets us through most of the war with japan. most americans feel when he dies in april 1945, as if they have lost a father. but with his own kids, he is kind of distant. his own kids literally hold him up. remember, fdr gets polio in 1921 and his comeback in 1924, he is leaning on his son, james.

and whereas fdr as president kind of holds up the nation, his relationship with his kids is topsy-turvy and his kids take care of him at various points in his life. so his kids kind of hold him so he can hold the nation. another president of the same mold, perhaps the 20th century's republican president, ronald reagan. like fdr, great communicator, great, inspiring leader. got americans to feel great at about themselves. but with his own children he was also very distant and this came out when nancy reagan died repu, earlier this year. a lot of the commentary was about their terrific marriage. and they had this amazing bond. but the bond often left their children feeling excluded. that was sort of the governing thesis of the book. it was -- i wanted to look at how one leads the nation and how one leads a family. and sometimes, the president is

the same in public and in private. john adams was an authoritarian president, he gave us the alien and sedition acts in 1798. if they spoke about his administration he wanted to go after them. he was also what i called a tiger-dad. borrowing that with amy from jail who came up with tiger mom. yale came up with tiger mom. he really was very tough with his kids in very authoritarian. he tells john quincy, his eldest, you will either be president or be a failure. john quincy lives up to the challenge, but his two brothers do not do so well. the struggle with alcoholism. adams would be an authoritarian president, an authoritarian dad. truman was a connector as both a president and a dad in the same way that obama i think as a -- is a connector as a president and a dad. i describe both obama and truman as nurturing dads.

margaret truman once described herself as a total daddy's girl. and obama, whatever everyone thinks about his politics, most americans are very proud that he has read all seven volumes of "harry potter" to malia. and he is a connector. and obama and truman both of the -- get the same kind of criticism, that they are too soft. republicans have been criticizing obama for giving away the store to the iranians. herman have that same criticism, -- for men had that same truman had- that same criticism, that he was too soft in his decisions. but his public self was very similar to his private self. i think that is also true with obama. brian: 43 men have been president. 153 children?

mr. kendall: that the legitimate children. brian: i'm not. five presidents had no children. he most children born to anyone -- legitimate -- 15. what about the five that did not have any children? what impact did it have on them and the presidency? mr. kendall: the first, george washington, that was very significant in our history. because washington writes in his first draft of his first inaugural, he never actually says it, but he says something to the effect of -- you can trust me, americans, because i don't have any biological children and is therefore there is no danger i will pass on the reins of power to a child. the last thing we wanted in the because 1780's was a monarch. americans seem to the dynasties, -- to hate dynasties, to this day. i wrote an op-ed a year ago when jeb bush announced -- and i

think some of jeb bush's problems had to do with his hatred of dynasty. washington was one. washington actually was a very sweet dad. and washington is an interesting case because he had a very critical mother. this comes out -- the argument that runs sure now -- ron churnow lays out his terrific biography, that washington had a very difficult mother. he developed a sense of control as a child. that became his sense of control and decorum as a leader. he said to himself, i will not be the lousy parent i had. his father died when he was about 14 and he decided to be very sweet. and really makes an effort with martha's children. he is a nurturing dad. not quite as gifted as a parent because it did not come naturally to him, he kind of worked at it. but nothing truman and obama, naturally. because they had a lot of support as children, they were very nurturing.

so washington is one case. another, james polk did not have any biological children. another case is james buchanan. james buchanan is our only bachelor president. this new biography i read about in the works that is going to argue that buchanan was gay, and that seems to check out. but buchanan adopted his niece. harriet lane. so, the five who did not have biological children all adopted children. so you can see from those relationships, as with washington, you can get a sense of what they were like as family leaders. and i guess what is so interesting about children as opposed to wives, his obvious -- because obviously you can tell something about character, a -- in how way man

interacts with his wife. but the children are really powerless. women, it is certainly -- is more of an equal relationship. maybe not so equal in the 18th century. but children just have -- they are really at the mercy of their parents. what can they do? you get a sense of how a president treats someone who is powerless. a really interesting example was james garfield. you know, president in 1880. end of the book starts, the prologue starts with garfield -- the book starts, the prologue starts with garfield -- andi was so moved by how sensitive he was to his boys. the book starts in july of 1881, garfield is about to go to the 25th reunion at williams college with his two sons were about to start at williams college. he is jumping around the bed with them and singing gilbert and sullivan songs with them. and you just have a sense he is attuned to what his children were feeling. and garfield also had tremendous empathy to african-americans. and he really in his inaugural, he wanted to make that a

centerpiece of his administration. and then sadly, that day he goes to union station a few blocks from here and gets shot. he dies a couple months later. and of course, jim crow stetson -- sets in and race relations are horrible for the next 80 years. and if you have been watching the news this summer, race relations are still in not great shape. had nowarren harding children. but tell the warren harding story. mr. kendall: his wife had a child and he also had some grandchildren. and he never was seen with those grandchildren. so, he had some grandchildren through his wife like washington. washington was very proud of taking care of his grandchildren. harding, no one knew about it. harding, i have a chapter in the book called double dealing dads , dads with illegitimate

children. and harding is one of the well-known examples. he had a mistress, a young woman -- he was in his 50's when he was president. he had a young woman from ohio in her early 20's and they were having a sexual relationship. no one knew about it and the first inkling came in 1928, five years after his death, when she writes a memoir. no one believes her. she said the president father add -- fathered her daughter. no one believes her. a joe manchin. -- menkin. the rest of the mainstream press says, no way. in the 1960's, a harding biographer stumbles upon love letters that harding wrote to another woman. those letters were recently released by the library of congress. then people say, if he could carry on with this other woman,

nann britton, maybe there was something to her allegations. then last summer, ancestry.com performed a testing and she was telling the truth. brian: how long do they all live and how long did kerry phillips live? mr. kendall: kerry phillips lived about 20 years after harding's death. nann britton- lived until pretty recently. brian: how close to the oval office to the harding love affair get? mr. kendall: if you want to go for details, i think it was sex in the coat closet. brian: of the oval office? mr. kendall: yes. and he does not leave the daughter any money in his will, and that is why she writes the book. and then the harding family says she is a money grab her. grabber. but the evidence does seem to check out now especially with the dna. brian: how many interviews did

you do with ancestors or people who knew something about these presidents? mr. kendall: right, so i do 18 of the presidents in depth. i have six chapters. four illegitimate children -- -- children, eache chapter i focus on three presidents with illegitimate children. i focus on harding, grover cleveland, 1884. then tyler. john tyler who apparently had lots of slave children. i do 18 presidents in depth. and before the -- in many of those cases i spoke to descendents. for instance, john tyler, he is born in 1790 and i spoke to his grandson, which is amazing. so his grandson was born in 1928. brian: did you say his grandson now has alzheimer's? --

mr. kendall: yes. i spoke to him about three years ago. the reason for that huge age discrepancy has to do with the theme of that chapter, that tyler was a lusty fellow and he was having children when he was about 70. one of tyler's sons was having children when he was 70, and that was when harrison was born. brian: let me quote something you used from a professor. at the university of richmond, darrell. a professor of english. you say that tyler often boasted about having fathered a staggering total of 52 children with black women over the course of his life. did you happen to talk to darrell? mr. kendall: i interviewed darrell dans and she has written a book quoting a lot of present-day tyler's -- present-day people who claim to be tyler's. based on oral histories. in that chapter i lay out the the and, i think, circumstantial evidence which is pretty compelling.

i also have a photo of one of the black tyler's who looks a lot like tyler. so i think the tyler allegations are kind of where the jefferson allegations were a generation ago. now, there is some dna evidence, but until annette gordon reed -- the harvard professor, started writing her terrific books about sally hemmings, most journalists and historians poo-pooed that. about jefferson having illegitimate children. and i think there was compelling circumstantial evidence about jefferson. so i make the argument that the tyler case meets the same -- there's a lot of circumstantial and that there may one day be dna evidence. it seems like of all of the chapters, his life was extraordinary. 15 children. how did that divide up between wives? -- and those were illegitimate

children. mr. kendall: i make a joke that that was the most fetile election in history. because you have 15 children. allegations that he, and i just report, there are allegations that he was from -- he may have had four black children. 10 from harrison and 15 from tyler from two marriages. eight from his first wife, 7 from his second wife. his first wife, but t-shirt, ins in 18 -- letisha, dies 1842. then he marries a beautiful woman 30 years younger with an hourglass figure in 1844, julia tyler. and then he goes on to have seven more children with her. and the allegations about public children go back 30 -- about the black children go back 30 years.

because tyler was already in his 50's. brian: how much of these former presidents having children by black slaves, in most cases, is new information? mr. kendall: like i said, the jefferson is well-known but the other presidents, it is not well-known. what i found was so interesting, is that martin van buren's vice president -- and this is not well-known -- martin van buren is president and his vice president richard johnson had black children, and that was known in the 1830's. and johnson was eventually kicked off the ticket in 1840 because of opposition. but, so i think, as i quote one of tyler's alleged slave children who told a newspaper in the 1840's, such things happen on plantations, referring to the birth of the slave master --

slave masters having children with black women. and i think, you know, it was not as rare as we think today. brian: from your book, in 1845, administration -- an administration critic accused the president of staging wild sex parties with his two would build sons, robert and john junior, both of whom worked as presidential aides. again you are talking about john tyler. what kind of a person was he? mr. kendall: john tyler was a very tempestuous person. and i argue that -- i guess, so this is the chapter on i --e billing dad, and double dealing dads, and i focus on harding, tyler, and grover cleveland. an argument that runs through that is that these were all compartmentalized men, and often men who have affairs are that way.

in fact, both cleveland and harding had dual personalities. cleveland refers to himself as having two personalities -- grover the good, who was the politician -- and cleveland is considered a decent president, in the top half of a lot of presidential polls. he had grover the good, and big steve. he was known in buffalo as a womanizer and a drinker. harding had dual personalities. he even had a name for his member, he called it jerry. jerry was the kind of sexual side of harding that had the affair with kerry phillips. brian: did he use that word in his relations? mr. kendall: he would use that word privately. jerry, he would use that name. tyler, i did not come up with evidence of a second name, but very compartmentalized. be the a southern

gentleman but he also had an aggressive side. when he was in grade school, he bound and gagged a teacher. i wrote a piece comparing it to donald trump. donald trump punched out his third grade music teacher. and that donald trump, you may remember, that he went to military school and had behavioral problems. tyler was a little like that. so tyler was very compartmentalized. he could be a southern gentleman. and with his children it was, do as i say, not as i do. and i -- brian: and those were his children we are talking about? mr. kendall: yes. and i try to relate the parenting to the politics. for instance, grover cleveland had an illegitimate child that he really had nothing to do with, and i argued that he kind of betrayed that child. but grover cleveland had grover the good and was

compartmentalized. but as a president, he was quite solid. whereas tyler, he kind of betrayed the black children, and any since the betrayed the country. -- and in a sense he betrayed the country. when the civil war starts, we have five ex-president's and tyler is the only one who signs up for the confederacy. he is going to be in the legislature of the confederate house of representatives. and lincoln can't stand tyler come even though lincoln was a whig in the 1840's. tyler is the only president whose death was not mourned. lincoln refused to have a day of mourning. some of his kids were out of the well. mr. kendall: kids were out of the will. family,all: his first letisha, he left them out of his will. i argue he kind of betrayed his

country and had this penchant for betraying his kids. at the same time, what is so interesting about tyler's he was kind of a wheeler and dealer and got some things done. his biggest economic was getting us texas. he was kind of a trickster. so i guess what i'm really interested in looking at fathering is trying to capture the complexity of human beings, and fathering is kind of a way into character. we tend to think that this is a bad guy or this is a good guy, but you see that a lot of these men who had been president had different parts. they were compartmentalized and some can be very laudable and some could be disappointing and horrified us. brian: we will come back to it in a moment, but where you live? mr. kendall: boston. brian: what do you do? mr. kendall: author. brian: full-time? mr. kendall: yes. brian: when did that start? mr. kendall: this is my fourth. biography. i have been writing one every two years. brian: what did you do before that? mr. kendall: journalists.

i wrote on health care for "business week." i freelanced, a lot of health and science. brian: did you grew up in boston? mr. kendall: manhattan. brian: where did you go to college? mr. kendall: yale. brian: and i think i see a reference to you doing some lecturing at yale. mr. kendall: i have a small affiliation with my college i spent a lot of time researching at yale. that kind of reconnected me with my alma matter. because to research webster i had to spend time in new haven and find out what it was like in the 1770's. brian: what led you into writing in the first place? mr. kendall: i guess maybe, just to say a little bit more about my biography as a way into it, this book is dedicated to my own father. my own father was kind of a tiger-dad. and i really -- relate to john eisenhower, ike's kid.

and my father was -- i recently wrote a piece in slate about my father because his history was amazing. my father was a secret nazi jew. my father was born in romania in 1925. and in the night scenes -- my grandfather was a soldier in world war i and austria, saw some anti-semitism and decided to convert. the nazis marched in, and he served in the nazi army as a jew. that was kind of the safest place for him to survive the holocaust. brian: did they know it at the time? mr. kendall: so they did not know he was a jew. and i didn't -- my father then moves to the new york in the 50's. and i did not know until i was about 12. when i was a kid, my father was

a secret nazi jew. i thought he was catholic. brian: did they raise you catholic? mr. kendall: they raised me without religion. i think some -- my father went to jesuit school and he spoke and would recite latin. i loved words and writing as a kid. and i have this very complicated relationship with him. on the one level, very inspiring, another level, very tough. dwight eisenhower, he was very tough. john eisenhower died a couple years ago, he wrote military histories and was very inspired by his father. but he also found his father talked to take at times. -- tough to take at times. brian: what does it mean to be a tiger-dad? mr. kendall: ike is a tiger-dad. john eisenhower graduates from west point on june 6, 1944. that was tough to turn down. i have a scene in the book where he graduates -- right after he

graduates he visits ike at the front. talked to take at times. ike is a nervous wreck, he has no idea how d-day is going. he is in full tiger-dad mode. he criticizes john. they play bridge with a few of his aides. he is all over john's bidding. john gets a speck of dust in his uniform and is horrified. how could you do that? ike would forget -- we can to -- because we tend to remember ike from 1950's footage -- but he is a great physical specimen. he played tackle football for cemy and he wants -- on tackled jim thorpe in a game. john said that ike never hit him, but if he had he would have killed him. john said he was born standing at attention. he was just terrified of his father. at the same time, he admired him. that is kind of what tiger-dad

's do. they push the kids really hard. and leave the kids with conflicting feelings. brian: when do you remember your own father push you the hardest? mr. kendall: when i was in high school and he was telling me to be in the military. i guess he was thinking when i was 16, i was fighting for hitler. and pushing me to get into college and to study. i could relate -- john adams was very tough on john quincy. and i think in a weird way, that was my inspiration to be a writer. and i've always want to be a writer. since i was a kid. brian: how much of being in hitler's military impacted the way he was as a father? do you think? mr. kendall: it is very , very complicated because on the one hand, he knew that hitler was a nut, a mass murderer. on the other hand, there is some kind of weird admiration for hitler. my father, as i mentioned in the sing singy, used to

vessel in the shower. horse vessel was a nazi martyr. the nazi national anthem. if you sing it berlin today, you will get arrested. there is serious business. i was exposed to that. i say in the slate piece, there are not too many jews for whom these chilling lyrics bring out memories of a frolicking father. and he has this weird tied to the nazis. remember " the rise and fall of the third reich," the book, in the 1970's my father's copy was framed. he takes the dust jacket off and clips out the swastikas and saves them neatly. he says, i do not want the swastikas to go to waste. and at the same time he would sittler was a mass murderer and it was horrible. i would say, my mother was

jewish and i would say, dad, i consider myself jewish. even though i was raised jewish. he would say, josh, you are just like hitler. hitler considered judaism a race. what he is talking about is a very interesting argument and i wish i could have had it with him in terms of fleshing out the intellectual side of what judaism is. is it a race, is it a culture, is it a religion? but he just got so adamant. when i talk about in the slate piece is the terror that he must have felt. it must never have left him. because at age 16, if it had been discovered that he was jewish, he could have been shot. brian: when did he die? mr. kendall: he died about three, two years ago and the book is dedicated to him. obviously i was thinking about him a lot, especially after he died. brian: back to tyler in cleveland. -- and cleveland for a while. because we really have not talked about how john tyler became president. mr. kendall: yeah.

yeah. william henry harrison, 68 years old, has a cold on inauguration day after giving a speech for a couple hours. tyler, his vice president. under harrison. harrison dies a month into histr harrison. harrison dies a month into his administration. then he is considered the accidental president. he is the first vice president to become president. tyler gave a very strong stand. there was some question about whether he was really in acting president or if he was actually the president. tyler took a strong stance and said i'm the real deal. that was part of his personality. tyler liked to the control. he would say that no matter what the constitution said. he had a strong constitutional argument that was eventually fleshed out in the 27th amendment that the vice president takes office. that is part of tyler's doing

and he set the pathway for all the other vice presidents. going to gerald ford, people who are not elected president. brian: the story about how he married his second wife and the story of the vote? mr. kendall: his second wife, tyler's first wife dies in he is quite flirtatious with every eligible woman who comes his way. brian: you said he chases them around the white house. mr. kendall: he chases julia, the belle of long island. she's on a boat with the ship of his father, his next and and her father dies and tyler literally -- she literally jumps into tyler's arms and that becomes the basis for the courtship.

i argue that tyler, he ends up becoming a father to his own wife. he is 30 years older than her and he ends up becoming a father figure to his wife just like harding was a father figure to his 20-year-old. brian: the story, it is on the potomac. was it a navy ship? mr. kendall: there was an explosion on board and several people, including her father and i think his secretary of state also dies, there were some prominent people. brian: you call this chapter the doubledealing dad. he would also emerge as a surrogate father for his own wife. mr. kendall: she's not interested in dating tyler at first and want to loses her father, the loss is so severe that tyler is kind of, he kinds

-- he kind of plugs the hole. he becomes the husband and father figure. julia becomes very influenced by everything that tyler says and she is from the north from long island and immediately, i think the saddest paragraph in the chapter, she immediately sort of starts parroting everything that tyler says and they go away for a couple months and they go back to the house in sherwood forest. brian: down in southern virginia. metkendall: that is where i harrison, the grandson. he gave me a tour. while they were away, about a 10-year-old slave boy ate some dirt and dies.

julia writes a letter to sibling and says there goes $300. it just seems like she has totally bought into, you would think someone from the north would accept it. she buys into his mindset and it seems like her, she is not a fully formed person when she marries him and that's where he is a father figure to her. brian: and all the presidents that you covered, did you find out anything that no one knew? mr. kendall: i interviewed chip carter and i say some new things about jimmy carter. people forget, most of us only think of amy and we forget that jimmy had three sons and as jimmy has acknowledged in books, without those three sons, he probably never would have been president.

he is on "what's my line" in 1974. he stumps the pound. no one knows who he is. if we have long campaigns today, i think we have jimmy carter to blame. he is the first person who really takes iowa seriously. he has three sons and they're all married and has a staff of six and, he did not have any money. without that staff, they are going all over the country raising small donations. i spoke to chip carter and what came up was just how tough he was of the father. we tend to think jimmy carter, his biggest accomplishment as president was the camp david accords, he won a nobel prize,

peace prize and there's no question that as a politician and post president, he is committed to peace and extremely concerned about talking problems through but what was shocking was that in his own family he was very tough. he had a philosophy of spanking and jack carter, his eldest son came up to him in the 1980's and said dad, i think you run my life with your harsh parenting. to carter's credit, he takes jack seriously. he takes jack seriously and has written about it in a couple of his books. and he tells jack, my own dad was tough. they carter was born in

1920's. getting whooped by your dad in the south in the 1920's was common. and he realizes unwittingly that he passed on the harsh parenting he received to his sons and makes amends. i was in atlanta giving and talk and i ended up passing on a book to jimmy carter to his grandson, a political consultant and his grandson, james or a carter, is the one who found the 47% tape that mitt romney said last election that is not concerned about the 47%. jimmy carter's grandson found that. gave it to "rolling stone." i met him and i passed on a book to his grandfather and i said, to america's best post president and also to america's best post presidential dad for the courage to become a father he had always longed to be and i was so moved by how carter really acknowledged that he had not

been the dad. carter is in my first chapter and that is the largest category. most people who become president are obsessed with politics and if you are obsessed with obtaining power and keeping power, you're not going to have a lot of time for children and that was true of the three people i profile in that chapter. frequent roosevelt, lyndon johnson who famously said i think about politics only 18 hours a day. brian: what did you learn from his daughter lucy? mr. kendall: i learned he did lucy the johnson treatment. i was so amazed, i'm not a lbj expert, but just how much he got done on the first couple of years before vietnam, amazing amount of legislation.

through the johnson treatment and cajoling, he also did to his daughter. the public and the private. brian: how much did his daughter know about all of the mistresses he had? mr. kendall: i don't think his daughter knew much about it. johnson also comes out in the doubledealing dad's chapter. there is a mistress who wrote a memoir which includes canceled checks about a son who died in the 1990's. johnson once bragged to his staff that i had more women by accident than kennedy had by design. johnson was quite the ladies man and that has not come through in a lot of biographies. brian: which children, 153 legitimate children, 43 men, which had the worst relationship with the father or went on to

live bad lives? mr. kendall: the saddest case was a suicide that may have been a result of a contentious relationship with a father. i told you that john adams was a tiger dad. be president or else. john quincy does the same thing to his firstborn and gives him the name george washington. with that kind of freight, you know what is expected. george washington adams was a smart kid, goes to harvard, wins the boylston prize, a big award over ralph waldo emerson. he goes up there and is smart as a whip but is a little shy and he just finds his father very oppressive. in his 20's, and 1820's, george washington starts drinking, is trying to work as a lawyer and that has an affair with an irish chambermaid which results in a

kid. in 1929, john quincy adams is voted out of office, going back -- i'm sorry, 1829. in march of 1829, he is coming from washington going back to boston, writes george washington and says please come to washington and help me move. george washington is terrified his father will find that his life is a mess and he has an illegitimate kid. on the boat to washington, he committed suicide. he jumped off the boat. you can't say that his father killed him off. that would be crude. but you can say there was a tremendous amount of stress in that relationship. probably has a mental issue or other factors involved. what is so moving is that john quincy has an amazing comeback.

after his presidency, he goes to the house of representatives and becomes this fire abolitionist or quasi abolitionist and i think that death changed his life. brian: you talked to a couple psychiatrists, medical doctors. why? mr. kendall: my interest is in personality. i think we have to try to understand the psychology. at george washington university, he's done psychological profiles of political leaders from bill clinton to saddam hussein. this notion of trying. i'm interested in understanding what makes people take and when we think of presidents we tend to think of list of policies. coolidge, flow taxes. roosevelt, the new deal.

i'm trying to change that and have people think of them as decision-makers. how do they make decisions? i think seeing how the decisions inside the family can flesh out our understanding of them. brian: chapter five is the grief stricken. i want to ask about somebody, william mckinley. you have calvin coolidge and the loss of his son and think what appears in the loss of his son and a couple children. what about william mckinley? mr. kendall: mckinley loses two children in the 1870's and as with john quincy adams, out of that tragedy comes some kind of energy and resolve and mckinley goes into politics in 1876 and his wife is very shaken. she developed a stroke and will be invalid for the rest of her life.

i think there is a comparison between mckinley and roosevelt. at some level, franklin roosevelt, polio makes the politician, that he becomes deeper after he has polio, develops more empathy and is just a better speaker and i think the same with mckinley. out of the tragedy, he kind of develops a brand of, even though he did not have children, he is a sensitive family man taking care of his invalid wife. americans fall in love with mckinley for that reason. he is very popular in 1896 and his wife is very fragile. mckinley, out of the tragedy, comes the political identity and tries to -- he is even keel and try to get everyone to get along.

the pearce case is on the most horrific things i discovered. pierce in january of 1853, he is on a train going back to new hampshire and his third and only surviving kid gets his head split open during accident and pearce have to pick up his own son with a hole in the head and if you talk to a psychiatrist, that is the worst kind of experience. it is the worst of the worst. his wife literally goes psychotic and starts writing letters to all favorite dead children. pierce is considered one of our worst presidents and he did nothing to stop the slide into the civil war. and i think that at the record. it was not an effective president, but i think you need to understand that something was going on inside of him.

it adds some context. i think grief has a huge impact on america. that's affected campaign 2016. joe biden would have been fighting tooth and nail against hillary clinton this past spring if he had not lost beau. that is part of my argument. a lot of historians ignore the family life. it think it is squishy stuff. why should we care about the kids? look at this election. this is affected by biden family life and franklin pierce, his presidency. family life may be huge impact. coolidge is another case. calvin junior dies in july 1924. when coolidge dies nine years later, dorothy parker of "the new yorker" famously said how could they tell?

what she is referring to to the fact nine years coolidge was not really alive. he was sleeping, taking these long naps, sleeping as much as 11 hours a day. before the death of his child, he was a dynamo. there's an earthquake in japan in 1923. he's one of the first national leaders to respond to it. his very energetic. he loses it and becomes lethargic and probably would have run for president in 1928. he could have run. there were no term limits. he could have run it would have been a second full term. he would have run had it not been for the loss of a child. brian: back to franklin pierce, you say the president who would continue to don black gloves for years everyday? mr. kendall: the observers in washington said that the white house is like a morgue.

it cast a pall on the entire administration. what is so moving, lincoln loses willie. his 11-year-old son. one of the first people he years from his franklin pierce, who is still around. he says, mr. president, i know exactly what you are going through. i wrote in "the new york times" about presidential great that there are two pathways. one is post-traumatic stress, some only coolidge was out of it or pierce who is out of it. the other pathway is hinted at, posttraumatic growth. which means that the person still expenses lost and is sickened by it, john quincy adams, out of that pain, come something amazing. some kind of energy. i think that happened with lincoln. he loses willie in 1862 and right around the same time he becomes this amazing civil war leader who is hell-bent on winning the war. he steps of the military

campaign and uniting the country and willie was his favorite kid. and a few days his shot, i thought about willie every single day. out of that pain comes some kind of heroism. franklin pierce went on to be defeated and the election, his wife did not make an appearance for the first year. you say because the sun was killed. he put his hands in his pocket while talking about his beloved hawthorn. who is hawthorn? nathaniell: hawthorne, the scarlet letter, he was his buddy from college. brian: the response was, i will not take them out of my pockets. i am in the country and i like to feel the comfort of it. mr. kendall: his wife becomes

really crotchety. hawthorne writes a letter and says don't worry about not sending the invitation to the white house, as long as jane is there, i'm not so keen on going. she becomes really difficult. pierce has a problem with alcoholism early in his life and she makes some references to it, undermining her husband. all of the stress that pierce had to deal with, he had the violent death in front of his face, his wife collapsing, i think we have to take the family considerations, they are part of the historical record as well. brian: who else did you talk to? mr. kendall: what i really roosevelt,h franklin i spoke to a lot of the grandchildren. franklin roosevelt had five children. franklin roosevelt's children did not do so well. he had five children who had 19 marriages. one was ellie seagraves, daughter of anna, roosevelt's

eldest child. she was at roosevelt's inauguration and john botegur, another child of anna, he told me this amazing story, roosevelt was very charming, he did not connect. people felt like they did not know him. but they could be charmed by him. that is why the skills of a politician are not the same as the skills of a parent. roosevelt was a consummate politician but he really charmed john and had this wonderful memory of sitting on roosevelt's bed and reading the sunday funny papers. brian: in the acknowledgments you talk about belong to the biographers association. biographers international association. what is that? mr. kendall: a group of biographers and we meet every year at a conference.

i'm on the board and every year we celebrate a biographer. u inch are now -- ron cherna guess is a household name now because of hamilton. stacy schiff, just america's -- a worldwide group led by the american contingent. we get together for annual conferences to discuss biography and how to tell stories. brian: how would you describe a biographer? mr. kendall: i think biographers just love information. we just had to go after everything. we can deal with the writing later. i think readers know what is on the page, but they don't know that to get that one paragraph it took, sometimes it can take a

two-week trip or going to mountains and mountains of documents. it is wanting to know everything. i think that is what characterizes us. since 22u said that presidential children have attended harvard, 15 more than yale, the second-most popular academic it destination, i also found it useful to visit the harvard university archives. did these children that attended harvard, did they get in because they were smart or because they were sons or daughters of presidents? mr. kendall: there was a piece for politico because molly obama is going to the number 23 at harvard. year thising a gap year. about nine presidents have attended harvard and when the president goes to harvard, they often do very well. barack obama was the editor of

law review. john f. kennedy, his senior thesis became his first book. rutherford b. hayes was a distinguished graduate of the law school. until recently, the kids have not done so well. i spent some time at hyde park and a lot of the kids were roosevelts. franklin roosevelt's son james, i read his letters to his father from harvard and he struggled with german. andnded up flunking german never graduated. roosevelt's kids were partyers. brian: another thing about sources, i viewed additional unpublished letters between charles adams and his father. have been reported as missing. there's an unpublished memoir. on the page before that, there's another unpublished memoir.

how is it that after all these you, youmeone like walk in and see something never published? mr. kendall: what you're talking about is archival resources. letters that are in the archives or a memoir in the archives and publishers, george washington adams wrote that is not a well known figure and wrote a memoir about his life. if you put it in barnes & noble, no one will read it. it will be of interest to historians. my method was to read to make biographies and then do my own digging. i went to major archives. the massachusetts historical society has all the adams papers. john adams and john quincy adams. it also has the jefferson papers. people think, tom jefferson,

virginia guy, everything must be in charlottesville. family marries a coolidge, and all the papers, bulk of the papers are in massachusetts. brian: have you decided what your next biography will be about? mr. kendall: i haven't finalized the topic. time on theuch presidential families, i'm just not sure what the angle is. this is a new angle. there was a book on presidential children that came out. what i thought was so exciting was, it is not just about presidential children, it is about the interactions with the fathers. i want to look at a new angle. brian: you associated closest with john eisenhower the son of dwight eisenhower. of all the other dads, who would you not like to have been the son of?

mr. kendall: i think john quincy adams was really tough. brian: number one reason? mr. kendall: he had a son who is 30th in his class at harvard and he said don't come home for christmas. i will feel nothing but shame. there were 75 students in the class. brian: joshua kendall has been our guest. he is the author of "first dads." he lives in boston. we thank you very much for joining us. mr. kendall: it has been a pleasure. ♪ [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2016] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] for free transcripts or to give us your comments about this program, visit us at q-an

d-a.org. "q&a" programs are also available as c-span podcasts. >> if you liked this program, here's some others you might enjoy. evan thomas, author of "being nixon." james nor linger on his book about the lives of children of dictators. and frank kaplan, who shares his biography of john quincy adams. you can saturday, august 6, c-span's issue spotlight looks at police and race relations. >> when the bullets start flying, the men and women of the dallas police did not flinch.

and they did not react recklessly. >> and south carolina republican senator tim scott, giving a speech on the senate floor about his own interaction with police. >> the vast majority of the time, i was pulled over for nothing more than driving a new car in the wrong neighborhood or some other reason just as trivial. >> our program includes one family's story about an encounter with police in washington dc, followed by a panel with the city's police chief. >> most people get defensive if they feel you are being offensive. , if it is respectful not a crisis, requests versus demands, those things change that dynamic a little bit. >> watch our issue spotlight on police in race relations

saturday, august 6 on c-span and c-span.org. did you miss any of the republican or democratic national conventions? now you can go back and watch every moment. go to c-span.org to find every speech from both conventions. at the top of the c-span.org homepage, click on the democratic or republican convention and find video from each day of the conventions. you'll also find highlights near the top. click on the speech you want to watch and share on social media or e-mail. c-span.org is your most comprehensive guide for finding video of any convention moment. c-span, offered as a public service by your television provider. they look at the increase in lone wolf terrorist attacks and efforts to counter the threat. speakers include alfred