>> funding for overheard with evan smith is provided in part by hillco partners, texas government affairs consultancy and its global health care consulting business unit, hillco health. and by the mattson mchail foundation in support of public television. and also by mfi foundation, improving the quality of life within our community. and also by the alice clayburg reynolds foundation and viewers like you. thank you. >> i'm evan smith. he's the hipster historian, as comfortable editing hunter s. thompson's letters as ronald reagan's diaries. a professor at rice university, he is an author as popular and critically acclaimed as he is prolific, with six new york times notable books of the year and several best-sellers to his credit. his latest book is the quiet world: saving alaska's

wilderness kingdom, 1879-1960. he's douglas brinkley. this is overheard. cler >> doug, good to see you. >> nice to see you. thanks for having me. >> thank -- thank you for being here. so the -- it's not a coincidence that this is the second book in a row with the word wilderness in the title? >> well that's right. a few years ago i wrote the book called the wilderness warrior on theodore roosevelt and it was really about the birth of conservation in the united states dealing with gifford pinchot on forestry and john muir. this is ultimately the second volume. it's called the quiet world:

saving alaska's wilderness kingdom and i pick up with tr's presidency. >> yeah. >> .in places like the tongass national forrest and take it all the way up to 1960 when president dwight eisenhower signed legislation creating what's called anwr today. >> yep. >> .which is the "drill, baby, drill!" of sarah palin. this is the "save, baby, save!" story. this is about how since the 1870s people have been fighting to save wild alaska, these beautiful pristine places and save the great species up there ranging from polar bear to literally hundreds of different types of rare birds. >> you could have called it save, baby, save! >> well, i know. [laughter] >> that actually.as a commercial thing that would've been awesome. >> it may have been good but the quiet world is -- you know we're.we're such a noisy and cluttered culture. >> we are. >> .and i the great writer.i grew up in ohio and sherwood anderson was my favorite writer. >> mm-hm. >> .and he once wrote about how americans are forgetting solitude and quiet and it was very thoreau-ian [chuckles]. >> yeah. >> .and thoreau is one of my favorite people. and in.and in this book i

have all sorts of wilderness heroes of alaska ranging from walt disney who saved the seals. >> yeah. >> .to aldo leopold whose a sand county almanac turned on a generation, rachel carson that was starting to warn about chemicals in our environment. >> yep. >> .and, most importantly, william o. douglas, the former supreme court justice. >> supreme court justice, right. >> .from yakima, washington who walked the walk. he wrote a book called my wilderness and studied the brooks range and came back and convinced people in government, republican president eisenhower, to save the arctic refuge for. >> yeah. >> .future generations. >> now so i'm clear and we're clear on this, this is now imagined to be the second volume. >> yes. >> .of a much larger series of books about the history of the conservation movement. >> i'm writing the third volume right now. >> yeah. >> .called silent spring revolution which deals with john kennedy. >> it goes back to rachel carson of course. >> .rachel carson, stewart udall the important interior secretary. >> and you'll do seven books in total then? >> .yeah i'm going all the way through up 'til.i don't know the exact cut-off point now but the one after that is a texas book 'cause it's gonna be about lyndon and

lady bird and beautification, conservation. >> really? >> yeah. that will be after the. >> oh wow. >> .silent. >> and you intended this back when you did the tr book that it would be a part of this? >> i did. the danger you have.this book flies on its own. my publisher, harper collins, gets nervous about multiple volumes 'cause sometimes people will say, "oh my gosh i didn't get one. why would i buy two." >> well this is not exactly like lord of the rings. i mean. [laughter] >> yeah i know. it is.it's not linked that way but they worry about things like that; it's a tough book. >> yeah. >> .marketplace. but i've put a lot of narrative research and writing. >> yeah. >> i lived in homer, alaska with my wife and kids. we went up there. >> but you were not the one who lived next door to sarah palin and got banned right? >> no but we've heard a lot of stories up there in homer; homer's a great place. >> the idea that you wrote a book about alaska that's not a book about sarah palin could be viewed as anti-commercial actually. >> [chuckles] >> but did you ever get a chance to see her or talk to her in the course of reporting. >> no i saw lisa murkowski up there and -- but i had not.she's really a very minor figure in alaska. she's much larger. >> and maybe not just there. >> .yeah maybe not [chuckles]. >> .as it turns out. >> she's .the only part that really affected this book was that she would go aerial

wolf hunting if you recall and it had been largely banned up there and many people were breaking laws; they didn't want to give up the killing of wolves and i write a whole chapter about the story of wolves in alaska. a man named aldo.adolph murie who went to mount mckinley and started saving the wolves 'cause the outdoor person.many people thought they were just predators, they were like mange, something you just. >> yep. >> .got rid of. and it took this generation of people. a woman named lois crisler, she lived with wolves up in the arctic and did a program with disney and wrote a book called arctic wild to make people start seeing wolves in a little bit of a different light. walt disney in the 1950s' true life adventures did a lot to save desert ecosystems and the arctic. >> yeah. alaska doesn't seem like an obvious subject of a book. for one thing, the great majority of people you run into have never been there, will never be there and almost forget.you know yes it's part of the united states but it seems in the mind at least to be so remote and it's in fact so physically remote that we almost take it for granted.

>> oh and it's spectacular up there. >> yeah. had you been before you started recording the book? >> oh many times. i even brought a group of 27 i like outdoors and wilderness. and happened was that when theodore roosevelt became president he saved the rain forest and the tongass and the aleutians and the yukon and he put them all off but it was the federal government controlling alaska and the extraction.big extraction industries hated it. so there's like constant war in alaska between federal government, wilderness protection, animal protection versus gold rushes, oil rushes. >> right. >> .extraction and it's -- it's a clash. and this is the story of a group of eccentrics, some of them who made it to high places in government including theodore roosevelt [chuckles] and and.and dwight eisenhower joined their ranks too of people that saw that we needed to save this for our children's children, that mount mckinley is not just our tallest peak but the whole denali wilderness needed to be saved. >> mm-hm. >> that the aleutians.today if you go out there it's the most spectacular bird rookeries and seal rocks and

walrus and.and so we're tryin' to make sure as we're moving quickly into the 21st century that we save wild alaska and this is the story of the people that did it. it's.it's a.american triumphal, a story that a lot of wild alaska's been preserved but it's always a near thing. as i speak to you shell oil is trying to get into the arctic refuge. >> well you mentioned you know the.the anwr, always a controversy over anwr and the possibility of our energy independence running right through places like the places you're talking about. it's a constant push/pull. >> bec.constant push/pull and i went up there with a man named tom campeon, a buddy of mine. we went camping in the arctic and it's spectacular. the arctic ocean, i mean you really feel god and a spirituality coming off of the water and it's -- we have -- we have yellowstone, yosemite, the everglades; well the arctic refuge is ours and it.but it takes vigilance to protect it because once oil was discovered there in the 1960s everybody wants to break into the refuge

boundaries when really it's much more valuable for future generations as a.as be.as wild land. >> so your position, having studied this, having spent time there is that we should not disturb the pristine nature of this part of this part of the world. >> i would say leave it alone and don't molest it. >> even though people say that there is oil that is rightfully ours that would allow us to decouple ourselves from people who wish us harm overseas? >> not goin' anywhere, the oil. >> yeah. >> .and if we're claiming that we're running up debts for our kids then you can give them the arctic with the oil in it. we don't need it right now and it's. >> yeah. >> .as you saw from the bp spill in the gulf of mexico it's not safe. they don't know how to do deep water drilling and it would literally ruin the pol.the main polar bear denning area. >> right. >> .where shell's trying to put on platforms now. i don't get into that argument here with shell. >> right. >> what i do show is that this arctic refuge had great champions, one named bob marshall who created the wilderness society and was in the interior department and wrote incredible books about the brooks range and the arctic and it's usually writers and poets that have championed wild alaska. >> right.

>> gary snyder is one of the people i profile in here. i also talk.the influence of some of the beats like jack kerouac . >> mm-hm. >> .and alan ginsberg who went to the arctic in the gift's, ginsberg did, and how that sense of ecology that emerged in the late 50s affected the save wild alaska movement. but fdr i write about a lot, harold ickes his interior secretary... >> yeah. >> .fred seaton, the interior secretary for dwight eisenhower, they all had a vision that we needed to keep some places wild like. >> right. >> .here in texas, guadalupe mountains or south padre island or big bend or the big thicket. these are.these are our gifts to our kids' kids. >> yeah. every state has places like that. >> yes. >> this is a story of a place as opposed to a person but in some ways this is a biography of this place every bit as much as some of the many biographies you've written over the years approaches the subject that way. you're bringing out the human qualities and i.that in my mind at least distinguishes this from the kind of book that would be written on this subject by

somebody else. >> well that's exactly the way i thought of it. and there's a woman named mardy murie who lived to be over a hundred and won the presidential medal of freedom. >> yeah. >> .and she got married up in the arctic with her husband and they lived all over but went by dogsled on their honeymoon up there in the 1920s and she lived all the way to the 1980s. and margaret murie wrote wonderful books about the arctic and she became a protectorate of the land trying to teach people that, just like deserts, they're not wastelands; these are very. >> yeah. >> .you know sensitive and fragile and important environments and i'm just so happy we have it and and have been able to preserve it. but also they.we.alaska does get people on the cruiselines that i write.begin the book with john muir seeing the glaciers and the glaciers are melting in alaska right now. now whether you wanna call it global warming or whatever they. >> well what do you call it? >> i think it's global warming. i think there's climate change; they're melting. i mean ask.somebody like lisa merkowski who's a republican will tell you it's a concern. places that john muir wrote

about are disappearing. >> yeah. >> and so you know part of this is to wake up people to what the.the game that's going down.down in our resource-rich alaska which includes.really the greatest fishery in the world is bristol bay, alaska. >> yeah. well it's fascinating to hear you talk about it and the fact is it's an enormously hard book to write and you seem to have written it in a reasonably short time. the tr book came out in '08? >> no. i've been writing it straight 'cause what i'm doing is writing all these volumes straight. i'm keeping the narrative going 'cause i'm that you can tell enthusiastic about it. i'm very. >> oh yeah, yeah, yeah. >> .invested in it and because alaska became ground zero. people don't realize theodore roosevelt created the bull moose party in 1912 because of the stealing of the guggenheim. morgan-guggenheim syndicates -- >> these battles over extraction versus preservation are.have been playing out up there for quite a long time and it's.it's an ongoing battle.

so here roosevelt also >> yeah. >> .these groups are part of a continuum of.of preservationist-, conservationist-minded people that wanna leave america better or as pretty as.for future generations as we have now. >> but as you well know this is a controversial issue even today. it might have been back then; it certainly is now, the tension between trying to keep things the way they were and the inevitable press of the modern world. and you have out in the political environment today a lot of disagreement over what our priorities oughta be nationally and you've been a commentator about contemporary politics and affairs for some time. what do you think about this? >> well i think that they've you know.well the grand canyon they found zinc and copper and people wanted to mine it and theodore roosevelt said no. the railroad industries wanted. >> yeah. >> .to cut through yellowstone; they said no. we've gotta leave our arctic refuge.our.it's the crown jewel of our whole wildlife refuge system. >> yeah. >> .in the united states. leave it alone. >> do we have the stomach or maybe another body part enough to -- to tell business no these days? >> well it's hard. >> yeah. >> .and it's. >> in this e.well we always hear about "this economy". >> yeah. >> .and how this economy forces us to make compromises on the things that we hold dear. what about that? >> that's been the argument. >> yeah. >> .from day 1 of saving the

grand canyon or the arctic refu it's whenever we're in a recession people wanna open up the public lands. >> right. >> but we don't know what bank account we're gonna give our kids but i.i wanna know that my.my.my son johnnie and my daughters you know can someday go up to alaska and it's there, that there's public lands that they could get lost in the wild, that they could hunt, they can fish and that they could see bear and.and moose and so it takes some effort to preserve it. the good news is we've done it. you've written about a lot of subjects over the years but this.this.these two books, i mean you could view the tr book as a book about tr but in the context that you're talking about it really was a book about conservation in which tr was a lead actor. your books have been about people, they've been you know they've been biographies of people. even the books that have been outside the realm of public affairs whether it's the letters of hunter

thompson or the jack kerouac stuff that you've done. >> yes. >> .this seems like a departure, a different.a slightly different direction. what caused you to take this turn? >> it's.when i was young we had a.my parents were teachers and we had a 24-foot coachmen trailer and we would go to all the national parks. >> oh that was you people. >> that was us. [laughter] >> you hear about those sort of.ah that was you! okay. >> we really had it. we had the dog and cooler and we would go and so i got to go to the great smoky mountains and big bend and yellowstone as a kid and. >> yeah. >> .i kinda forgot some about it. >> kind of nothing like it is there? >> .there nothing like it and it.it makes you so proud of america. what would we be without those green spots and these wild places that makes our country so -- so great. and i've.as i started doing the tr book i kind of found my calling because you know some people like bruce catton or somebody used to do seven volumes on the civil war or carl sandberg, six volumes on the life of abraham lincoln. i'm writing seven volumes on.the first time anybody's done it. >> right. >> .on u.s. conservation history and telling it from its conception up until the end. >> but the book business back in those days was different than it is today and you know the reality is that a book publisher has got to really make a big bet on something like this. if they're gonna invest. >> they did. >> .in you, they're really

investing in you. >> and boy you should have seen i.and demanded color photographs in the book from these great wildlife and landscape photographers. >> yeah. >> and -- and that's the other thing that's become very interesting is the role photography's played in saving these places. ansel adams' photography did more to save beautiful places in california, in nevada, arizona, in alaska and i write the chapter about his work up there but ansel adams was a major figure in opening peoples' consciousness to the beauty of our landscape and the need to save it for its aesthetic value. >> yeah. >> .and because it's the right thing to do, not just to look at land as something to extract from. >> did your publishers resist the.i mean these are.this is also.this is not a small book. the other book was not a small book. this is a..it's. >> no i think. >> .again it's an investment on the part of book publishers and an assumption that people out there are gonna gravitate to the story. >> it's a good question and. >> yeah. >> .when the theodore roosevelt book came out, the wilderness warrior, they were worried about the length but it did unbelievably well. it was a new york times top 10 bestseller.

>> yeah. >> .and they -- you know it kept going and it's.it's just done incredibly well. so they trusted me on volume 2 that people do care about these issues, that and.and most people that are really into bird watching, nature hiking, the parks are very literate people, they're.and they're book buyers. they're.so there is a market out there. >> so it's a good bet? >> it is. it's doing.they.they do well and people buy and read 'em because they care about this .these issues of these great american landscapes. >> well congratulations. it's wonderful. now i wanna spend a couple of minutes here at the end talking about politics. >> okay. >> okay? you were here with me on the old program after the 2008 election, in fact, the next day i believe when president obama was elected; we had all this change that came to the country. what.what.and you have actually been over to the white house at the president's invitation. >> mm-hm. >> .to talk about the historical and cultural forces that are shaping the.the world today. so you've gotten to see him up close. you've witnessed him as a historian, somebody who's known about presidents enough to write books about them. what's your take after two years? >> he's a.he's a brilliant

man and he's a -- he's unflappable. he's some.he has. >> some people want him to flap more. you know i understand this. [laughter] >> boy i know. people want him.he's just.keeps a kinda steady b.in boxing terms he's muhammad ali rope-a-dope or you know he's got a kinda almost zen-like quality and everybody wants to jar him and pull him and he's taking i think a very pragmatic, centrist course. >> i might describe him like mark wahlberg in the fighter where he seems to get the crap beaten out of him for eight rounds, then he throws one punch and he's back in it. i mean. >> yeah you.you never rule him out. >> .his style is really, to a lot of people maybe out in the live audience or tv audience, maddening in that you don't really think he's in the game and then maybe at the end he kinda comes back and that's a different style than we've seen in presidents recently. >> he's never turned people off from his personality. now obviously there are people that can't stand him but the fact is that he's an excellent husband, a great father and -- and a great son-in-law. >> i think obama has a lot

of integrity. >> mm-hm. >> .and i think he's an honest person and i think people realize that about him. he frustrates people on both the right and the left but in the end of the line he's a kind of a.a bit of a statesman in a time when politics is .seems to be filled with charlatans. >> and he's asked you to the white house specifically to help him understand the larger context and a larger world in which he's playing a big role? >> he has a little group of historians that come by once in a while and have a dinner and it's been a couple times. i mainly have eaten up my white house dinner time talking about wilderness in alaska to him and about theodore roosevelt who he cares about a great. -- he has a great love of merch biography and presidents. so doris kearns goodwin was there and david mccullough you know we would talk about different presidents and he's very interested. so it's more than i think anything it's his idea of a book club, a little bit of r&r to talk with a group of historians. >> it's a heck of a book club actually. [laughter] >> it's.it's fun. >> it's not like he's sending out an evite from down the street and saying you know bring a covered dish you know. [laughter]

>> [laughs] but we don't.we don't influence him in any real way but he loves anecdotes and things. >> yeah. >> .and i think that part's a lot of fun and there.he has a great interest in ronald reagan for example. >> well and in fact a lot was made over the last couple of weeks of the fact that he took this book about reagan with him i guess to hawaii or maybe before he went to hawaii he had read this book about reagan and people are now saying, like reagan in '82. >> yes. >> .who got just the stuffing beaten out of him in the elections, was never gonna win a second term, he came back. maybe obama can look for lessons in reagan. >> well and his demeanor is rea.is a little bit like reagan meaning he's a very genial person. he's not very good at.at creating.he doesn't like enemies. he doesn't -- he kind of wants to not .you know maybe it's from having to negotiate the white/black racial divide so long, he's kind of a.likes to bring people together around him and in.so there's.even though they seem like opposite characters i see some reagan characteristics in obama. >> are you hopeful as much as.of history as you have read and studied and written

about, are you hopeful for the place we are now? there are an awful lot of people who look at the state of our politics and the state of our society, we're sitting of course in the shadow of this horrible series of events in arizona, and people are just without hope. they.they.how are we gonna square people who don't wanna even talk to people they don't agree with? help us understand that. >> the late historian arthur schlesinger, jr. used to say that the point of history is to remind us that our times are not uniquely oppressive. [laughter] and sometimes we feel like we're so oppressed right now but. >> right. >> .we've gone through a lot. we've had civil war in this country. we've had the death tolls in just even vietnam so much higher than in afghanistan. >> yeah. >> we've had great depressions not big.not just recessions. so we've gotta buck up and recognize this country's still great but we have these changes. i know i'm nervous about the way we do journalism and the decline in journalism in the country and i'm worried about the internet being used as a wrong tool, but

those are just worries that i personally have. i'm a bit old-fashioned and i'm.and i still believe civility needs to be.we need to have civility, a program like this where you talk. that constant food.national food fight that goes on. >> right. >> .it gets to i think wear us all down. >> and in fact the president's message at the beginning of his term and perhaps the president's message now as he wades into the arizona matter not from a perspective of politics but from a perspective of leadership of this large community, his message is perhaps going to be civility, that what.we've stopped as a nation being civil to one another and that maybe it is a time for us to put our differences aside. >> that's exactly right. it's civilities but.and.and you know need for just caring, that we've gotta take care of people in our community. we've gotta stop this -- this you know bitter, angry debate over you know a tax cut or over healthcare. you have those fights but we need to have i think a little more bipartisanship but it'll come back. it's just it's gotten .it's

gotten ugly out there for a lot of different reasons. i.my other concern is young people don't wanna go into politics. who wants to have every library book they've checked out, every movie they've watched. >> right. >> .every.everything they've ever done scrutinized to such a degree? people instead say you know what? i'm just gonna make a lotta money. i'm gonna try to judge my success on capital. >> right. >> .not on public service. and i don't know, we've gotta figure out a way to re-engage people because we're making .we're trying to. we're playing way too much "i gotcha" politics on peoples' personal lives but -- >> and you're not getting a new generation of people to come in behind the current generation. >> none, they're. >> you're gonna find yourselves with no new.find ourselves with no new people to. >> a lotta.we might have a shortage of talent. >> .help us lead. >> .coming and we might be seeing that in this country right now. we're not having.developing the political. >> yeah. >> .leadership that we need. there used to be a -- you would serve a higher calling. part of it was when we had military service and people had a couple of years with the draft to feel it.we don't have anything like that now. people basically are.say i gotta.the whole game is to take care of myself.

and you know facebook has just become a.a metaphor for a generation of very self-obsession. >> solipsism, narcissism. >> mm-hm, yes. >> i'm gonna quit facebook tonight after you said that. [laughter] >> we have just a couple minutes left. last time you were here the tr book had just come out and you also had a 12,000-word cover story about bob dylan. >> yes. >> .in rolling stone. you've always had this sort of one foot in pbs and one foot in mtv ability to sort of you know... >> [laughs] >> .are you doing anything other than these conservation books right now, kind of in the cultural world, in the contemporary world that. >> well i'm.i'm also writing a biography of walter cronkite and his papers. >> of course, are right.university of texas, austin. >> .are at univ.and i've been working with my friend don carlton who was friends with mr. cronkite and his papers are here and his daughter lives in austin. >> indeed. >> and -- and so it's a wonderful collection and cronkite saved a lot and the briscoe center at ut does a marvelous job of keeping. >> how far along are you on this book? >> i have a whole first draft of the manuscript. >> oh good. >> .but i have to do probably about 75, 80 more

interviews of people but. >> yeah. >> .i'm doing them. i'm.i've worked with cbs news as a historian. >> right. >> .and so i've been able to get a lot of access to a lot of those people. i'm going up on book tour for the quiet world. when i'm speaking in seattle i'm gonna go to the boyhood home of edward r. murrow who's a big character in my cronkite book. >> yeah. >> and so it's nice simply because all the research is right.a couple miles from my house because it's all here at ut. >> what would cronkite make of the world today, of the news world of fox and msnbc and of the internet and of.cronkite would just.we're talking about cronkite taking off his glasses with tears in his eyes. that's when he would actually. >> glasses with tears in his eyes. he was already doing that before that before he died 'cause he.he recognized what was happening was the loss of gumshoe reporting, the lack of investigative reporting that.the. everybody trying to become the next famous journalist without really having any background in history or. >> yeah. >> .or any you know do.doing

the work. and he was a deeply honest man, walter cronkite, and kept a.a you know was almost.was so allergic to having anything air that wasn't 100% accurate, that he would have been.you know today and with the cable world it's just all misinformation flying by the minute to the point where when congresswoman giffords was shot she was reported dead everywhere. >> by about four or five different organizations. >> yeah i mean top organizations. cronkite never would have gone to.to give that news of a false story. he would have a hundred and.not just one source but two sources.he would said, "give me five sources. we don't need to be first if it means getting it wrong." >> yeah. >> and i'm.i'm afraid we've lost that in the media world. >> well let's hope we get it back. >> we will. >> all right. doug, great to see you. congratulations. hope the book sells a whole bunch and. >> thank you. >> .five more volumes to come which is. >> [laughs] >> .five more chances to come back. >> that's right. >> good to see you. douglas brinkley. >> nice seeing you. thank you. >> thank you very much. great. [applause]

cler >> funding for overheard with evan smith is provided in part by hillco partners, texas government affairs consultancy and its global health care consulting business unit, hillco health. and by the mattson mchail foundation in support of public television. and also by mfi foundation, improving the quality of life within our community. and also by the alice clayburg reynolds foundation and viewers like you. thank you.

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