announcer: cspan's coverage of the solar eclipse continues. that's on washington journal monday. but mooney eastern, we join nasa tv as they provide live views of the shadow passing over north america. then, viewer reaction to this rare solar eclipse over the continental united states. all-day coverage of the solar eclipse starting at 7:00 a.m. eastern on c-span and c-span.org. trumpow night, president addresses the nation on the future of u.s. military involvement in afghanistan. live coverage of the at forttial speech meyer, virginia, starts at 9:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. next, q&a with journalist and

author carl cannon. chance to see the kenyan elections and u.s.-north korea tensions discussion at 1:30 a.m. ♪ announcer: this week on "q&a," author and real clear politics washington bureau chief carl cannon. he discusses his book "on this date: from the pilgrims to today, discovering america one day at a time." brian: carl cannon, your new book "on this date: from the pilgrims to today, discovering america one day at a time." what is it? carl: it is a snapshot, it is a morsel.

like tapas. day from january 1 through december 31, an essay on something that happened in american history on that date that tells you something you may not know and gives you an understanding of this country you did not have. brian: how do people find it? exactly how do they find it? carl: how do people find my book? brian: no, how did you find the essay topics? carl: i do something that relates to whatever is going on that day. i have been doing it for 5.5 years now. is just a rambling thing. brian: for somebody who is not theygood on the internet,

go to realclearpolitics.com. carl: they go to "a.m. note," and they click on it. if they like it, they can get it in their mailbox. every day, five or six days a week. brian: what about the archives and all the 5.5 years of these? carl: we go back and forth with our i.t. guy. that is the sore point. i wish you would not have raised it. that's why they need to buy the book. brian: let's start with the first one. january 1, 1915, everybody stopped and stared. what is it?

carl: the first female cab driver in new york. these essays are about 400 words. you can use in economy of language. telly story in 500 words. this woman loved cards. -- cars. she was a mechanic, she loved cars. this woman shows up on the corner and the first hurdle is, are her papers in order? there is a patrolman there. one up new york's finest. he looks at the papers. her papers are okay. the next hurdle, what are the male cabdrivers going to say? they go to the opposite corner and they caucus. they say -- in my mind one of them knows her. whatever happened, they decide to accept this.

we won't make trouble. we will be good about this. the third hurdle, and all of this unfolds in chapter one, how will the public -- it is a service industry, driving a cab. what will the public think? a few minutes later, someone gets in and she asks where you want to go and they say, "we just want to ride in your cab." and in way, and that little incremental story, progress takes place. brian: how many essays? carl: 368. i do it every day plus leap year. and a couple days i did a few of them. it was my signal to the reader that you could have picked any of 1000 days.

on one day, august 28, i could not decide and i sent three of them in. brian: how long does it take to research and write these? carl: when i do my early morning note, i get up early in the morning at 5:00 a.m. i wander around my library, come up with a subject and research it. they take about two or three hours to do. when i made this book contract, i thought i had already written a book, i would just take my notes. it turns out, i had to write a book. it took a while. i had to re-report and rewrite all of them is what i am saying. brian: i want to pick something right in the middle of the book. it was interesting how many chapters you devoted to the uss indianapolis. the first day i found was july 28, 1945, the secret mission. carl: most of these are one

page, two pages. 450 words. i think one of them is three pages. i have to or three things i revisit. this one is like five days running, the first one is the first week of august 1945. wrapped intotories one. first of all, it is a tragedy. world war ii. it was a big ship. maybe ship. you are a navy man. it was a navy ship. cruiser. it comes out of san francisco. it had gone there for repairs. there is a secret mission. what is the secret mission? there is a thing loaded on to it, very heavy.

it is uranium. it is the component of the atom bomb. it is so top-secret that the navy does not do the normal thing. this ship, after it delivers its cargo, it has to rendezvous for what maybe is the battle of japan. not many people are aware it is missing. it is sent to submarine-infested waters and they go into the water. 900 guys go into the water. what happens to them? the story is they drown. they die of the hydration. sharks eat them. takes five days in the book, but it took years for this story to resolve itself. the caption is court-martialed.

he is movie star-handsome. the men love him. he is scapegoated. years later reinstated by the he never recovers. he takes his own life. later, there's a boy in florida watching the movie "jaws." in the movie, quint has a soliloquy on why he hates sharks, he was on the indianapolis. many people who saw "jaws" in this country had never heard of the indianapolis. brian: why did you pick it? do you remember? carl: i picked it because at the end of the five days there is a kid in florida, he thinks the captain has been railroaded and he wants to do something about it.

he does do something about it. i will not give away the whole story because it is a fun one, but joe scarborough has an interesting cameo and eventually the navy admits the captain was blameless. it matters to those people who were on the ship, the handful who were still alive. brian: out of all the years, did you have one they got the most reaction? carl: people grab the book if their name is there. that is why richard ben cramer in "what it takes" did not have an index. he wanted people to look through the book. individual people have different reactions to it. one of the reactions i got a lot was to august 28. the one i did two days.

it is the second one, the martin luther king story. i do not read about the speech, i write about a kid who was railroaded for a murder that day that he did not do what and how that speech played in interesting roll it in him eventually getting exonerated. brian: how did it play a role? andhe was african-american he was accused of this murder and he did not do it. convicted. when the case was real but by a crusading new york times reporter who went back and looked at it, his alibi checked out. and the reason it checked out was his 10 or 11 african-american friends all remember exactly where they were and that he was with them because there was the martin luther king speech and he was watching them with it. the chapter is, "they had a dream, and to."

brian: here is one, august 21, 1959, this is one of those universal news reels. we will just watch less than minute of it and you can tell us the rest. [begin video clip] ♪ ♪ >> it is made official at the white house, president eisenhower congratulate the new representative of hawaii. adding the 50th and southernmost part of the united states with a population of 600,000. during the signing, the president was flanked by vice president nixon and speaker of the house sam rayburn. >> for the second time in a little over a year, a new state has been admitted to the union.

[end video clip] brian: how big a deal was that for president eisenhower? carl: he looks happy and he was. that is not fake. he referenced a year and a half early. that was alaska. ike was seething. he wanted both. he wanted hawaii. he got his way and pushed for it hard. when ike got angry, people came around. like most american military people, hawaii had a dear place in eisenhower's heart. attacked.n pearl harbor took place in hawaii. everybody in the united states took that as an attack on the united states. some of the southern democrats argued it was a tactical one. eisenhower would not have it. you can see he was happy that

day and that was genuine. on that date i write in my book the congressman who lost an arm fighting in the famous regiment famed 442nd regiment. brian: richard nixon on the right, eisenhower on the left. do you have any personal recollection of rayburn? carl: i think about rayburn and eisenhower and lyndon johnson. i think of these three guys sitting around in the white house and running the world. we do not want to go back to the days when three white male from texas ruled the country but back then it seemed like a better system than we have now. i think of them sitting over their bourbon and branch water and running the world. i don't think we want to go back

to the days when three white males from texas ruled the i gety, but sometimes nostalgic. it seems like it was a better system than what we have now. brian: here's another universal newsreel. this one is from october 19 57. the best thing is comparing what has happened in the world since this was made. how much more we know about this kind of thing. [begin video clip] ♪ ♪ >> today a new moon is in the sky. a metal sphere placed by a russian rocket. here is a artist conception of how the feat was accomplished. its weight estimated at 50 tons. it carried on, the artificial moon is put to speed counterbalancing gravity and put in place. 500 miles up, and this beat is boosted and counter gravity

kicks and a end to it is released. you will hear the actual signals . one of the great scientific feats of the age. clip] deo brian: one of the first things i want to ask you about is not in the book but the handling on that was "reds." why would we not see that headline today? carl: we might. we have this russia scandal with the donald trump. now it is the democrats. we are talking about russians again the way we used to talk about them then. actually, sometimes what goes around comes around and that is a deliberate pun about sputnik. when sputnik is up in the sky, it sent shockwaves through this country.

people thought -- it is not just the soviet union doing this, the country thought, they are superior to us. they are in the heavens before us. it was a shock. eisenhower, we're just talking about a minute ago, demanded to know about it. why he did not know. congress demanded the same thing. lyndon johnson raised hell about it. that was a big deal. a radio commentator said, listen now. that sound for evermore separates the old from the new. that is what he said about sputnik. brian: page two, the headline is "round zero." the sky was that same unbelievable blue in new york city to use springsteen's phrase. it would be eight decades later on 9/11. almost instantly, the air was black with smoke, the street red with blood.

what were you getting at with this one? walle bombing on the street. by what was called anarchists. we do not have a better word now. it was a terrorist act that killed a lot of innocent people, mostly working people. it did not kill wealthy one for centers or whatever the phrase at the time was. whatever the phrase was at the time. we have had these attacks before. there are three or four themes in my book, one, if things seem inconceivable to us, we have had them before. people on 9/11 did not talk about the wall street bombing. it backfired on the people who did it, it humanized wall street.

it reminded people these were human beings. it was an event that brought people together in the end. brian: 38 dead. carl: no warning of any kind. all of a sudden a bomb goes off. brian: they say the crime was never solved. is it still on somebody's radar screen? carl: good question. be the nextk could unsolved crimes. it was widely considered a political act. world war i had been this cataclysmic event. it had unleashed forces. the bolshevik revolution had taken lace. people were questioning capitalism itself and were -- there were a lot of

people in this country, i do not want to say left-wing or right wing but they would've considered themselves left-wing. they thought the united states had entered world war i and people at profited him up. there was a lot of hatred on the left toward wall street from people who thought this way. that is why said this helped humanize wall street. it helped dissipate some of those feelings. brian: i am jumping all over the place. october 5, 1947. page 309. dimes and butter. you talk about the first tv address of president truman. to address human catastrophe. the u.s. president employed a new technology. the first televised address from the white house. didn't watch it? carl: yes. people do watch it and talk about it. from the beginning of television

people when it those things in their houses. they were expensive. lack and white. presidents and placed -- black and white televisions. technology.mbraced a lot of of people look askance at donald trump's twitter habits at it helps to reach as many people as he can without a filter. it is an impulse all the presidents have had. truman was not the first. in this case you had a collection of forces coming together. the marshall plan. herbert hoover once again coming organizeic service to relief efforts in europe credited with saving lives. one guy, herbert hoover. truman tapped in. second time he had been tapped by a democratic president.

when i was a young reporter, he would still talk about hoover at these democratic rallies. hoover's legacy is much more complicated than the president who did not do enough after the stock market crash or during the depression. herbert hoover, egg and, woodrow wilson center. his efforts saved many, many people. he did the same thing after world war ii. brian: you talk about the marshall plan. how important was said and what was it? carl: the marshall plan was a plan to upper relief. rude, housing, medicine. clothing. , housing, medicine, clothing. other things, too, but mostly the war.r it was mostly an anti-communism

measure. was on the verge. other countries, too. in eastern europe was behind the art curtain and western europe, which way did they want to go? the marshall plan was a map to american hate.e --was not really motivated it was mostly motivated by anti-communism. that americans got it, it was to help people we did not want to see star. it was altruism. brian: go from george washington to the current president. you have items on almost every president along the way. from your standpoint, what is the most interesting president in history to write about? that is lincoln. but i could do every one on lincoln.

i had to watch myself. when i got these morning notes i had written for real clear all attacks and looked at them there were probably 30 or 40 on lincoln. myselfed something about doing this about presidents. about how i feel about presidents. there is more truman then roosevelt and that is interesting because franklin roosevelt is considered the greatest resident in the 20th century. some conservatives will tell you run is there with him. ok. i'm being generous. one of the two greatest presidents of the 20th century. most scholars think he is the third greatest after toward washington and lincoln. but i find myself coming back to truman. when truman left office, he at 25% -- he had richard nixon's approval ratings after watergate. jimmy carter and george w. bush ratings. low approval

truman, by the end of his presidency, democrats will not be seen with him. they will not campaign with him they want to offer the nomination -- dwight eisenhower it turns out he is not even a democrat. senator fulbright shows up and says, we should go to a parliamentarian system. they cannot stand this guy. weathered well in history. in previous stories i called him the patron saint of beleaguered president. but he is more than that. he is this beleaguered guy who is a truth-teller. well.thers after world war ii, these african-american soldiers come back in their suffering the same conditions or worse. lynchings, violence, after their own home. truman, with the stroke of a pen signs and order integrating the american armed forces. something eleanor roosevelt could not even get fdr to talk about. i will answer questions.

i must like truman more than roosevelt. i would not set out loud, but there i have said about love. -- but there. i have said it. brian: what is realclearpolitics.com? carl: it was started by two guys who went to princeton at the same time. after college, they were political junkies, they were doing different jobs. one was a day trader, one was in politics. but politics was their passion. they saw a need where you can get a one-stop jump of politics whether you are a conservative or liberal or libertarian. it turned out not only was our business model about to be blown up because of the internet. these two guys who knew nothing about the news business, that was a time when it was the right amount to know. we who had grown up around it

had negative knowledge. do things we thought were true or not true. and they started this company. it is a free website. anyone can go to it. we started it as an aggregation. we have 17 stories on our front page every day. it is left, right, center. it is unpredictable. whatever your views are about politics, you'll find them there. then they started aggregating polls. other people do it, too, but they were the first. when you aggregate polling, you do not run away with your hair on fire and think the race is going one way when it is not. you can sort of have a calm review of what is going on in politics. now we have a staff. we have reporters. i oversee the original content. we have reporters covering the white house and congress. i am pretty proud of it.

adhere to the old model, which is the model i grew up in which is we are not taking sides. we're just trying to present the information and trust the voters to get it right. brian: is it based? carl: it was based in chicago but we have graduated incrementally and migrated to washington. we have an office at the arelower hotel and we bursting at the seams and growing. it is really based here in washington. money?how does that make crowe: we stay in business is the old-fashioned model, adds. : we stay in business the model,hioned advertising. we do not do click dating. we hope there is an audience who wants the news without a lot of hype and so far it is working.

brian: is a working financially? coral: it is working. the paychecks clear. carl: altogether now, because we have investigations, sports, markets, we do some events around washington, but we are up to around 50-60 people. it is a vibrant little company and we are growing. host: if you go to the website, what else is available besides ?he polls and editorials carl: there is video, video of interesting clips. pretty good archives. so you can follow what has been happening in the past. the stories i commission and edit.

host: is it the best job you have ever had? carl: it is the best job i have ever had. host: what over the years was your favorite job besides this? carl: when i came to washington i was here two years and thought i would get back to california but reagan was president and that did not happen. i helped set up politics daily at aol. i just, you know what, i love what we do. i have loved it since --, you my first newspaper job. , i was a paperboy delivering the san francisco. where is your dad? carl: my dad is in california.

if you are with reagan, he spent a year of your life in santa barbara. there were other people who do not spend on that time up there. my dad grew up in nevada. i was born and raised in california, where my mother is from. but he, we did not know that part of the country and he fell in love with santa barbara. he bought a house out there. and after he retired he moved , out there. he writes for us. he writes for state net. he is in his mid-80's. he covered the scottish elections for real clear politics, that was a few years ago. he is the only 82-year-old foreign correspondent on that story. host: page 351, the first world war ended on this date. at the-fire was assigned 11th hour at the 11th day, at the 11th month of the year. in here are the words from

woodrow wilson, you said he never said. carl: it is the war to end all wars? yeah. host: you found this on a number of occasions. carl: that is something i try to do. we think we know history, we know some of these stories. but some of what we think we know is wrong. now, the woodrow wilson thing is a much less arrogant and much more appealing, really a better comment. but it is not far off. but some presidents, i mean i have calvin coolidge in here and quote you willhe here is, "the business of america is business." but he knows profit is not enough. and he said the real business of america is altruism.

it is a significant misquote. he was speaking at the press club. he was speaking to american newspaper editors. i've been known to be a schooled in other forms. about wrong quotes. i have a couple of examples like that, where it is important in history to go to the original sources and do your own thinking and to see what people really said. host: this is from april the 30, 1975. it is an abc news report. a lot of people will remember this day. it is the american immigration -- evacuation of saigon. >> the vietnamese were fleeing with every available transport. loads of men, women and children were appearing at the command ship. they were searched on arrival for the many weapons they had in their possession, weapons thrown overboard.

however, the navy was caught by surprise by the way that many finally reached the u.s. ship. panics the great show of where the stolen helicopters, choppers crashing into the sea on arrival. people diving for safety. the blades of the helicopters were flying in all directions use.hey were no longer of as they came, the navy tried to decide what to do with the airplanes that managed to land on the deck. it was decided to tip them into the sea. host: there are many people that live in this country right now that can remember that day because they were there. what did you write about on that day? carl: i wrote about the song that played over the radio, "white christmas" which was an song song to play -- odd

to play in that part of the world. and this was ignoble. this was not like dunkirk. the united states left. and we left without adequate warning to the people who supported us. we are not used to losing wars. this was a different experience for the people who lived through it, not just the people that were there. years later ronald reagan would call it a noble cause. but it did not seem noble at the time. whatever your view, if you are against the war this would have seemed like a waste. if you had supported the war, cut and run, it was a tough time. host: off of this piece, let's "white christmas" and irving berlin. carl: i thought you had a clip.

host: you are the clip. [laughter] carl: it is not just politics. there are athletes in this book, musicians, horses, and jockeys. and i write about elvis, the beach boys, john lennon in new york. i write about bing crosby. it was an unlikely hit. it has never gone away. it stayed with us. it was written by an immigrant. that is another theme in my book, immigrants. host: why did you dedicate the book to immigrants? carl: in american politics right now, i used to cover this last election. we have this broken debate on immigration. liberals will tell you that donald trump won by appealing to

racist impulses. i think that is unfair. conservatives will tell you, which country does not defend its borders? that is defensive. we are not having a political conversation, not even a civil conversation, and what i wanted to do was take a step back and not debate the merits of an immigration bill, but remind americans that when somebody says america is a nation of immigrants that is not a cliche, that is a historic fact. not only that immigrants have , been there at key places in our history when we needed them, making -- giving us something that we needed, an invention, an idea. jose andres is a chef. he invented small plate dining here in washington just at that time that we were about to start being so fat we are all going to die. and i am only half kidding. here is another example. when a group of immigrant scientists realized that nazi germany was trying to build an atomic bomb, they got authorized

-- they thought that they needed to get word to the president and they got albert einstein to write a letter. because it is einstein, the president reads it and launches the manhattan project. freedom of the press. the great freedom of the press john peterss -- anger is an immigrant. he is from germany. he picks a fight with the crown over the governor of new york. he is turning out a political newspaper. but he writes that you have to have freedom of the press. it is not in our law. we do not have laws. we are british subjects. he is put in prison by the governor. and when he finally comes out eight months later, he apologizes but not to the governor, but to his readers for missing a single edition of his paper. another immigrant, a third immigrant enters our story.

andrew hamilton, no relation to alexander hamilton, is from scotland and he argues the case for jury nullification. by things.ded he went past the court and talked to the jury. which meant he went to the phrase of jury of public opinion. they exonerated him. this is 50 years before the declaration of independence. we think that the founding fathers, that the country created freedom of the press. but really it is the other way around. freedom of the press helped create this country. and there was an immigrant fighting and went to jail for it. host: this is nbc news september 5, 1975. this is a political trip. part of the president's campaign to lock up the nomination. so he was shaking hands as he went along, working the crowd. as politicians say. and it was a friendly crowd, accompanied by aides, he reached

for every hand in sight. [chatter] >> suddenly a young woman holding a gun appeared at the president's side. secret service grabbed the gun and wrestled the woman to the ground as other agents formed a protective shield around the president and moved him swiftly to the capital. >> i think the secret service and the other law enforcement jobcies that were on the were doing a superb job. i want to thank them for everything they did in this unfortunate incident. host: that was sacramento. squeaky fromm, then a couple of weeks later it was san francisco and sara jane moore. what impact did that have on the presidency and the country? carl: two women, slightly unhinged. they tried to take a shot at the president.

it helped, it did not do much to the presidency. the in geared -- it endeared people to jerry ford. after the pardon of nixon, he has never run for president. and it helped humanize gerald ford. so he comes back to the white house 70 days later. -- 17 days later. she could have killed the president. she bought the gun that morning. she had never tested it. it did not fire right. that is a scary thing. anyway ford came back. ,the reporters come to the white house. they say, can you tell us how you feel? he takes a deep breath and says i just want to look at all of , you for a moment. can i just do that? that was jerry ford. imagine the president saying that today, so happy to see the reporters again, he was happy to be alive. november 18, 1867.

i'm trying to help you. carl: you could have stumped me. dickens in america part , one and part two. why dickens? carl: his visits to america are fascinating. the first time he comes, he has been greeted as this hero. he is a massive celebrity. that was before there were mass celebrities. people wanted his autograph. they wanted his time, his hair, they wanted everything. a couple of things, one, there is no real international copyright law. so all of these people are publishing his books and he is not getting a nickel from it in the united states. and he sours a bit on americans. at first, he loved this. then he decided that americans are rude. they eat with their mouths open. he goes back to england and he writes a book, a nasty book

about us. and then these people who have dickens in their house felt betrayed. and they think, he is dead to us. then after the war he comes , back. he is different and we are different. and it is a very positive experience. i do it in two parts to set the scene. dickens is the guy in some ways that helps invented christmas as we celebrate it. he has a lot to do with that. so a cartoonist who is also in this book, he is the guy that portrays the democrats as donkeys and republicans as elephants, also draws saint nicholas, santa claus, as the jolly old elf. and these are people who had a great impact on our country. dickens is a visitor. the cartoonist is an immigrant. theme is there

america is richer because we , borrow from these cultures. they talk about cultural appropriation, but they are missing the point. that is the culture is, appropriating other people's habits and theories and food and conversation, ideas into your own. host: how much of this do you agree with? charles dickens concluded scholar jerome meckler found americans "overbearing, boastful, vulgar, uncivil, insensitive, and above all acquisitive." carl: i do not agree with any of that. that was his first visit. on his second visit, he apologized. he said -- he was like, scrooge coming back. he was reformed. it is dickens two that i think about when i think about

how he thought about americans. um, page 369, breakfast of champions. we are talking about william howard taft and how he ate. carl: wait a minute. wait a minute. aft, dickens to t describes his visit to america on his first visit. this book is about the american identity. and as i sit here thinking about it, if you ask me what i think about americans, in this book i think we are optimistic. i think we are inventive. i think what fdr said, we have a can do spirit. i think we are brave. i think we are more warlike than we would like to think of ourselves. but mostly we are problem solvers. it can mean anything. we try to get it right. and we usually in the end, we

do. it can take a while. host: as i was saying breakfast , of champions. there is a connection here. william howard taft at his heaviest was 332 pounds. he liked to eat breakfast alone and never before noon. -- and almost never before noon. anybody with a jingled lifestyle one psychic anchor every 24 hours, and mine is breakfast, thompson wrote. carl: that is not taft, that is thompson. i can go from taft to thompson. how can you do that? you can write about what they had for breakfast. taft was a guy who was ahead of his time. he had a weight problem. and he knew it. stress increased it. he ballooned up. he was president, that was not the job he really wanted.

he wanted to be on the supreme court and he eventually was. the exercise he liked was horseback riding. insert joke here. you know -- [laughter] but he kept a journal of what he ate. he was an early sort of guy, you could say that he discovered -- he founded weight watchers. he just could not always stick to it. host: you go on to say that he described the contents of the meal itself. food factors should be massive. four bloody mary's, pot of coffee, crates, i have pound of either sausage, bacon, spanish omelette or eggs, chopped lemon, and something like a slice of key lime pie and two margaritas for dessert. was he serious? carl: no. but he was taking liberties. ,nd if you look at the there

that was where the cocaine goes. my publisher asked me to drop it. maybe kids want to read the book. host: why do we pay attention to thompson? carl: look at the writing. obviously he is exaggerating. he covers bill clinton. grider,down with bill when he is working for rolling stone, and they interview bill clinton in 1991 and he was running for president. thompson does the same kind of thing. he is writing the story and goes off in his flights of fancy. he has clinton grabbing the food and putting the big mac stuffing , his face. putting the french fries of his nose. it is a style of writing. and gonzo is the last practitioner of it. one of the few who really ever tried it. it is satire. and it would probably be lost to in today's literal world where

we have to do a motor can't -- do emoticons to show people that we are kidding or being ironic. thompson was a brilliant writer. his observations, he would make a point. he would paint a picture for you. you would see it. there was a great writer, jim murray, a sports writer for the new york times. he would use metaphors. people thought it was great writing. was a hybrid of journalism and fiction, and he was the best. host: you say you get up at 5:00 in the morning and write these pieces. wendy you send them out? carl: 9:00 eastern time. five days a week. host: have you ever missed a deadline? carl: i have missed deadline, but it is virtual journalism. i've missed a deadline, couple of them. i try to get out by 9:00.

i have missed a deadline. couple of them in july. host: what kind of library do you have? carl: i have 2000 books. with those books do you find your items? carl: there are a half-dozen websites. the library of congress has one. national archives, new york times, the history channel has a good one. and i pick something. something every day. after a while, i think that is not very original. began keeping a file of dates i wanted to use. it was more time-consuming and in a sense more rewarding. i really started getting going on this a couple of years ago. now i usually pick something i want to write about and find a date that corresponds to it. that is more difficult. that is where the books come in. but it is more rewarding. host: whose idea was it to put

these different columns together, these different essays into a book? carl: you know, there is a publisher called sean desmond. he came down and we were having a cup of coffee at the mayflower. i do not drink coffee, but he was having coffee. i was having an adult beverage. he asked me if i knew anybody who wanted to write a book. and i took that as an opening. i said i'm thinking about , turning my morning notes into a book for you. he said that would actually be interesting. it came out of that. host: and 12 means something. carl: the idea is that they put one book a month. sometimes they do more than that. originally, it is one book a month and they are all going to be bestsellers. i do not know if this will be a bestseller, but i hope it will be. i want people to read about their country and maybe fall in love little bit with their country again.

host: december 10, 1869 in wyoming. state of equality. page 386. carl: mhm. host: this chapter begins "remember the ladies." carl: abigail adams had written to john adams. it took a while. it took wyoming a long time to give the vote to ladies. host: how much did it take off people that before they became a state they were able to vote. you say that they had difficulty becoming a state because people resented the fact that people have the right to vote. carl: look, women were going to get the right to vote. there was no excuse for this. and they did not really offer a reason, they just said no. it came down to wyoming, and you want to be a state or not? wyoming said if that is the price of it, then fine, we're

not going backwards like that. and you could argue that it took another 50 years or more. took six more decades, but you could argue that after that, after wyoming did that it was , just a matter of time. host: i once asked a historian from the university of southern illinois who was an expert on lincoln and editor of the grant papers, was there anything about grant you did not like? it was funny. i was in the library and he said follow me. , he walked over and he picked out one book, and in their was re was what he had said about jews. carl: i knew that is where you are going. host: on page 397, grant's folly, you talk about this relationship and the beginning, grant and what he had said about jews. carl: when grant was commander

in the western theater, there were privateers who would come selld they wanted to army stuff. several of them were jewish, but they were brought there by nt's father. he had a difficult relationship with his father. you get the idea that he is really mad at his father. he issues this hasty order that no jews can be in the district. you have to leave. and his wife is appalled. the other commanding officers do not want to follow the order. lincoln rescinds it a few days later. it is just a stupid -- but grant regretted it the rest of his life. he atoned for it when he became president. he put jews in office. he spoke about it. he wrote about it. he atoned. no one is perfect.

host: march 12, 1901. andrew carnegie said that there are three stages to life, you put it in your book, the first third of his life was acquiring his education. the second third, acquiring wealth. the last third, giving money away to worthy causes. carl: this repeats itself over and over again. it is part of the american identity, you come from nothing and you can make money. then the question what do you do , with it? the first thing people do with it, in this day and age in that day and age, they buy their mother a nice house. they buy themselves fancy things. after a wild, they realize that is not enough. there are very few people where that is not enough. -- where that is ever enough. some people want to give it back.

bill gates does this. modern billionaires do it. it is part of the american identity. host: how often do you waive your own personal views, something you feel strong about?t -- strongly carl: probably more often than i realize. i do this sometimes knowingly, like with willie mays. host: you had a lot of baseball in there. do you like baseball? carl: i love baseball. he was my hero when i was a little boy. so i have a couple of references to him. i try to be fair to yankee fans. i have dimaggio in there. the beach boys are in there twice. i was a member of the beach boys fan club when i was a little kid. [laughter] so some of that.

but you know, when it comes to political figures and historical figures, i try really hard to not just give my view. i try to give a fuller view. host: does anybody edit your copy in the morning? wel: there is a great editor , stole him from the washington post, called tom cavanagh. i probably could not have done this book without him. host: does he edit your daily? carl: that is what i am talking about. that is the daily note. host: what is the difference between digital journalism and hardcopy journalism? carl: we did not pick paper because we were in love with it. it was a better technology than papyrus. this new technology is here to stay, it is digital. and whatever comes after digital. the important thing for people like you and i, old-school

people, is to take a model from old-school journalism and being right, beinguotes fair to both sides, not doing snarky stuff, just being honest and true to the craft. migrate to these new technology. i think that is the challenge. host: you can find this book in any number of places. if someone is intrigued by the website, real clear politics.com , they can find your piece every day where? carl: on the left-hand column. and they can find a lot of other good stuff by our reporters. rebecca berg, covering politics. james arkin, covering congress. i will leave somebody out. david is our analyst. look it is a good website, it is , free, and i think they will love it. host: carl cannon is our guest.

the name of the book is called, "on this date." thanks very much. carl: thank you for having me. ♪ announcer: for free transcripts or to give us your comments on this program, visit us at q&a.org. programs are also available as c-span podcasts. week'sou enjoyed this interview, here are some other program that you might like. walter scott christiansen talks about his -- scott christiansen

talks about his book on 100 documents that changed the world. another author discusses his book on assassinations and threats the american presidency. culture and history. you can search our entire video library at c-span.org. c-span's coverage of the solar eclipse on monday starts at 7:00 a.m. eastern with "washington journal" live. our guests are a nasa research space scientist and the chief scientist at goddard. at noon, we join nasa tv as they provide live views of the eclipse shower passing -- shout adow.

live all-day coverage of the solar eclipse starting at 7:00 a.m. eastern on c-span and c-span.org geared this and live on the c-span radio app. tomorrow night, president trump addresses the nation on the future of u.s. military involvement in afghanistan. live coverage of the president's speech in virginia at 9:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. with british parliament in recess, prime minister's questions will not be seen tonight. two veteran journalist from voice of america discuss the recent election held in kenya. this is an hour and a half. >>