my guest tonight an author, his new book is called the pat ree ark, the times of joseph p kennedy. welcome to the program david nassaw. hello, sir. how are you? >> doing well,. >> sir this book, this something right here. the patriarch. i'm going to start right in with joseph kennedy. so the biggest perhaps i guess misconception that i have is joseph kennedy's a bootlegger. joseph kennedy is one of the dukes of hazard. he made his money slinging liquor during prohibition, illegal activities. the book very meticulously says -- >> i would have been delighted had he been a bootlegger because i could have written about momoji and cannes but he wasn't. he wasn't. well, i can't say that you can never prove a negative but there was absolutely no evidence. i mean the people who tried to make him out as a bootlegger relied on the evidence given them by tina sinatra who heard third hand from her father that he had done this deal. al capone's piano tuner who-- . >> jon: you how do you trust al capone's piano tuner, really, have you ever heard al capone's piano, you call that a c flat, please,

joseph p. kennedy. the father of president john f. kennedy and senators robert and ted kennedy. patriarch of one of america's most famous political dynasties. with unrestricted access, our next guest weaves a story . revealing some stranger truths, for example, he wasn't a bootlegger but he did provide harvard colleagues. with us today is david nasaw. author of "the patriarch." david, i guess what i want to ask you, i have always been sort of struck when i think about the kennedys. today we think of them as symbols of american liberalism. ted kennedy, robert f. kennedy and the old man, he was very, very different. i mean, he was an isolationist. he didn't want nato created. against the marshall plan and the truman doctrine. he was very anti-semitic. how do you get from that man sort of a right wing reactionary democrat almost to ted kennedy? >> he was a great, great father. and he raised his kids to be independent. he raised his kids to think for themselves and they thought for themselves. and he kept encouraging them. they're -- there's one moment in time in which he's talking

what i discovered in writing this book is that joseph p. kennedywas a remarkable and extraordinary father. when he was in london, separated from his children, he wrote each of them letters. he wrote nine separate letters. he knew what each child was doing. he knew that eunice were 200 school and was too skinny. he knew that rosemary, at the time, was slowing needed encouragement and to watch away. he knew that jack was too sloppy and careless spent too much money. he knew that joe work too hard. the kids loved him and they loved him. it was his greatest accomplishment. at the bay of pigs, which was, jack and he believed was the end of his presidency, it was a disaster. it was a political disaster and a personal disaster. because kennedy felt responsible for every soldier who was either killed or taken hostage, and he felt responsible for each of the individuals. and he also felt that his political life was over, as did his brother, bobby. when jack was so low, his wife reported that he was crying, sobbing. bobby said, let's call dad, he'll make us

eyed intern for condit and joseph p. kennedy who has since retired. .. >> i appreciate the applause, and it has nothing to do with a personal achievement. i think really it's a collective and shared victory for all of us. it means that the solutions that we're developing in government are more comprehensive and more fully informed because of that different perspective. so i thought a great deal about this issue, of retraction and retention. more than that, how do we keep native bostonians? because we were losing younger people who had been, who were raised here who were going someplace else. they do come back, though, i have to say that. they sort of go on this pilgrimage to see what else is out there, i but they do come back. and so to the point around social issues, this is an issue that i'm working on. again, we have 22 distinctive neighborhoods, and it's very easy for us to be very siloed. i think what young professionals are looking for and what i was looking for and found when i went outside my campus community is communit