. >> rose: you tell the story in here of i guess at a dinner party given by arthur schlessinger or someoneand the two of you saw each other there or did you go together. >> bob finally got the nerve. he was my source. he finally got the nerve to ask me out on a date. >> rose: right. >> he said we're going to-- we're going to arthur schlessinger's house for a party for jimmie carter-- jimmy carter. i dressed up in my best bell-bottoms my peasant blouse my platform shoes. i walked in and there was this gassly fairiland of sad inand sycuans and feather boas wrapped around swan thin next. and they looked at me like i was homeless. but jackie kennedy came in and the society ladies dropped their jaws and just were smiling at her, and smiling at her. and i looked at bob. and he was smiling too. but not at jackie,. >> rose: at you. >> at me. >> rose: so you knew. >> there was that, my god oh pie god have i misinterpreted this one. >> rose: the prelude to the book, you write to him, every day you're making history while i make nothing. i'm little-- standing in the shadow of a giant. your success se

talking to a broader public and figures charles a beard and arthur and your -- arthur/injure -- arthur schlessinger. they write and speak in a fashion compelling to not simply those practicing historians. the other part of the discipline i always found very important is historiography. you are trained as a historian to engage in debate, to question the conventional wisdom even among their own colleagues, to accept the idea that interpretation can be dynamic and always in flux. that training lends itself to someone who will ask those same kinds of questions in a broader arena. one of my formative moments came about when i was trying to decide where to go to graduate school. one of the places i looked at was u penn, to work with michael katz, who unfortunately passed away this year, whose work is for me also an example of how you can reach a broader public. when i went to visit with him i got off the train and i was walking somewhere to get to his office, and there was a big rally of civil rights activists. it was disconnected from u penn, and the person speaking was holding a copy. 48 21-year-old ge