of esquire, the voice, the tone of esquire was to be knowledgeable, and that was the personality of esquire and he insisted they be able to write in that style and find articles but we also wrote features that were not signed in the magazine. a long the editors were bonnie and clyde, so we had a pretty interesting staff put together and he later founded the new york magazine. anyway, i developed writing talent in esquire and getting as much as i could on the page in a few words as possible keeping the reader interested that will last i consider the right and to be a form of entertainment and i keep it in a magazine all kind of things competing for attention. they are not as committed to leading as someone who sits down with a book. c-span: how did you get into harvard? >> guest: i applied and crossed my fingers. i had been a good student. also, i had extracurricular activities interested in a well-rounded student. c-span: what were the? >> guest: i was not very good but i was on the track team on the newspaper and i was a volunteer worker after school in various places in syracuse,

i was approached by the editor of "esquire" and asked if i wanted to be an editor of "esquire." of course. there were at other candidates it was in its glory days of the large size magazine and norman mailer was trading for it. i thought it is funny he called me he must not have enough candidates so i go up and i wrote a critique of 20 ideas originally he said when you give them to me i will get back to you and i thought he will be so impressed he will have to call me the next day, which he did. but i later learned when i have lunch with an old high school friend of mine, we grew up with each other from grade school. via admire him enormously and said why did you get your job? i said december he said that is what i was up four is so it turns out the only two candidates that neither one of us knew we were a candidate and he went to right on the dispatch and several pieces of that appeared. >>c-span: on the back there is a blurb. >> guest: some people i knew beforehand and to buy never met. that is how they work sometimes you ask the friend and he asked if he could read my book. h

really more in line with the way "esquire magazine" was in the '30s and '40s. >> yeah. and you talk about how hugh kind of looked up to esquire in aceps or sort of looked at them as something of a model might be too strong a word, but he definitely took some cues from them, it sounded like. >> be i think he did look at them as a model, i think he was copying because he was a real gap of that as he was growing up -- a real fan of that as he was growing up. he was disappointed in the way in which esquire by the early '50s had let go of some of its sexual emphasis that had made it popular in the '30s and '40s, so he wanted to redo that in the 1950s. >> uh-huh. i think one of the main themes from the book is this pretty sympathetic take on, um, hugh hefner's, playboy's vision of and the kind of effect on women's sexuality. and i'm particularly interested in you view the centerfolds in particular as presenting women more as sexual agents than as sexual objects and that as being a distinction between some of the other sort of explicit men's magazines out there at the time. i'

to see people, but always start some writing and of course every month there would have to do my esquire column. so break away and do research for - quarter, and right that and said that by fedex and later by fax when i had a fax and they became widespread. then i turn back to the book and sometimes it took me two days to get back into the rhythm of it because i'd have to steep myself into the information on the tractor and was working on and did into the rhythm and the flow of the ambience and i'd start out with and work. for today's sometimes it would take me to come down from having written the a square piece to back on the book. c-span: you're next book, everybody speculating the city and all that. are you looking for a city or have you found a city? >> guest: i had been looking and told all of my friends even if you think it is a harebrained idea, you have one for me, please tell me. .. >> particularly that english speaking which is fascinating. but then going back and february interested in what was the american family owned coming out this fall and then by the boston families but

and the reason for that is that in "esquire" magazine in 2007 you said the following. i can't go anywhere, not if you want to talk. this is l.a. i mean if you can find me a taco place, a place where we can go sit around, drink beers, argue politics and be left alone, then take me there, i'll go with you, i'm yours. well, charlize, here we are. here are the tacos, here with the beers, we're all alone. you have taken me to utopia. >> you never realize when you say these things how much trouble you get into because people remember them. >> tell me what incenses you, what issues in america wind you up? >> there are a few. i try not to get myself in -- look, here's the thing. i voted for obama and i've only voted twice in my life. i voted for obama and i voted for mandela. and i won't lie to you. both times felt like i was part of something pretty historical. >> do you still feel with obama that he is capable of being as great as everybody hoped? >> yes, i think he's incredibly capable of it. i just sometimes wish the democrats would actually kind of put action to what they

attacks, and we know the place, when that fighting was over their were 8,000 men on the ground in esquireile. it would shift to what we call bloodline. the yankees would break through bloody lane. two is in the front? james longstreet's maintenance. d. h. hill, major-general rounding up 200 men that he could find. this is the center of the army of northern virginia at that moment, and they are going to counterattack with 200 men. this is how close it came. then you have the collapse. once burnside gets rolling. the only thing that saves lee's army is the hills division. what he asked his men to do is simply remarkable. they did it. and you know what is also interesting, as the battles shifted from the north and through the center into bloodline midafternoon, and jackson's men, was left of them are hanging on in the west woods and around the church and so forth tamales sends a request to jackson to have chips toward conducting reconnaissance a round the flank of the army of the potomac to see if he can counterattack. they are hanging on by a thread. lee is looking to see whether they can c