what struck your interest in dexter perkins, and when?> after that list appeared, the only living author on it set me -- send me -- sent me a note and thank me for recognizing his work -- thanked me for recognizing his book. he said it was a good list. -- a good list of someone who had taken a course in diplomatic history. i rode back to him and i said -- i wrote back to him and i said that i was actually an english major and never took a course in diplomatic history. these were just books that i had read during my amateur studies. i like them. as it happens, several books were published before 1960, -- if you worry about taking track of the monroe doctrine, you just have to is the book that was published last year and ignore everything else. i actually told the journal that you probably should mention the subtitle or else no one would know what it was about. i guess that they ran out of space. dexter perkins was a very prominent diplomatic historian. he taught at the university of rochester. the book is a wonderfully written book. it goe

dexter perkins was a very prominent diplomatic historian. he taught at the university of rochester.he book is a wonderfully written books. -- a book. it goes beyond and talks about some discussion about conditions in latin america. the point being that we still think in terms of the monroe doctrine 3 >> how does it apply to the? >> it applies today in the sense that we still practice the monroe doctrine. president kennedy cited by name during the cuban missile crisis. it is not an instrument to prevent european colonial expansion anymore, but outside interference in hemispheric affairs, whether the soviet union or nazi germany or whatever. it is the business of the united states as a sort of a big brother of the hemisphere. >> what physically appeared? >> it was drafted by the secretary of state john quincy adams. it appears in monroe's state of a gang in -- a state of the union address. it was a kind of parenthetical idea aimed at britain. >> the second book, the diary of james capel -- james cak. polk. the tennessean old was an austere, detached, deeply jaundiced chronicler. pouri