it came down to richard holbrooke and madeleine albright. actually leaning towards holbrooke because he said he's brilliant, he has a great mind, he knows more. he's relentless. hillary clinton wanted her husband to pick the first female secretary of state, which we decisively, but in the end clinton said to al gore i don't think holbrooke has the self-awareness. that was clinton's very shrewd analysis of holbrooke's character. holbrooke understood the person across the table brilliantly, whether it was slobodan milosevic or bill clinton. he did not know himself very well. he couldn't see himself if he couldn't laugh at himself. he couldn't see himself as others were seeing him. there was a kind of lifelong blindness to his own flaws and his own character that i think was a fatal flaw. in the end it meant he could negotiate but when there was an obstacle that laid within himself, he didn't know how to get around it and that was what undid his relationship with barack obama. holbrooke was driving obama crazy with his lecturing and flattering a

how do you think richard holbrooke would have done going up against james baker on the florida recountpolitical operative or campaign manager or a lawyer but a brilliant negotiator. how would holbrooke have done against baker. >> that's an awesome question. one of the interesting things going back to that 2000 recount was many democrats who said to me that we knew that al gore was toast as soon as we heard that jim baker had been involved. so i think that people were well aware, even at the time, even before the recount, of the differences between those two men. but here's the thing. one of christopher's great mistakes actually was sitting down and we tell the story the book of the two-them sitting down nor first meeting dramatic motion, and christopher's blocked off a whole amount of time to city the and thinks they'll roll up their pinstriped shirt sleeves and get down to business of negotiating and jim baker wasn't there to negotiate him was there to win and i don't think that fundamentally i think is where his experience as a corp profit lawyer -- corporate lawyer for decades came

george, richard holbrook, i use the word complicated.doesn't begin to do justice but why did you want to write about him and talk about his ambition and what drove him he offered his personal papers and i knew holbrook a bit, not a very well and i thought i had a chance to explore a flamboyant mesmerizing mesmerizing character whose career covered a vast century from kennedy to obama to be at nine and afghanistan with an intimate look in the delta when the war was at its hottest in 1963 and as soon began reading the letters i knew i made the right choice because he was such a good writer, so intelligent and observant and funny and arrogant, and just a guy that could fill a book and maybe more. so, his ambition was an engine, a kind of demonic engine that was there from the very start. and that got him into high places and lead to some triumphs and also in the end i think it cost him a great deal. friendships, relationships and maybe his own heart's desire to rise to the top of his field. he never got there because people found him to be

they are george packer, whose latest back our man, richard holbrooke and susan glasser and peter baker whose book, the though the man who ran washington "the life and diamond james a. baker iii." two brilliant booked about two complicated and fascinating men. born a decade apart, baker in houston in 1930, holbrooke in man had tan in 19 41. bakery republican trained as a lawyer. holbrooke a democrat, foreign service officer, student of foreign policy. if the lives took very different trajectories but both ended up in washington where they became major power players. peter, picking up on that, this is a man with great ambition it and was there even before he came to washington. >> yeah.

a staff writer for the atlantic his nonfiction books include our man, richard holbrook, and the end of the american century of finest dominic finalist for the pulitzer prize to stop the unwinding 30 years of american decline, which won national book award. the assassins gate americans in iraq and blood of the liberals, he is also the author of two novels and a play in the editor of a two-volume edition of the essays of george orwell. legality welcoming our special guests. >> welcome everybody. i hear there's at least a couple hundred of you which is fantastic. it will be a privilege and a pleasure to talk to frederik logevall today and get our heads out of the presence and out of the news for an hour or hour and and a half and into the past which is a great refuge as well as guide for us as we try to navigate one of the storm yesteryears in our lives. fred, i know you as the author of i think the two essential books on the vietnam war and it's not just me saying that, people i know who fought in vietnam and served in vietnam when i asked him what are the books i have to read on the war

>> i had a different problem, which was richard holbrooke, by the time i book came out, was a fading figure in american foreign policy. he kind of dominated many rooms in many news events in his lifetime but he was not on the scale of jfk, not close. he actually first went into the foreign service under jfk. >> that's right. it was his call to service that inspired holbrooke to join the foreign service. i felt i needed to grab the reader with this first paragraph and never let that reader go or else they would abandon the project because who cares? that was my great fear, who cares? you didn't have that problem. people care about jfk. i begin my book about holbrooke in the voice of a novelist even though the book as 35 pages of notes and it's as accurate as i could possibly make it, it begins holbrooke, yes, i knew him, as if you're about to hear a long yarn by -- and that is a voice the carries the entire book. it gave me a ton of freedom to do things the traditional biographies don't do but always within the guidelines of the contract that the reader, that all has to be true. i tri

i am a great packer fan, i left book and richard holbrook, my first boss emma by the way.t about how badly we have misunderstood so many of these complex from vietnam to iran to bosnia to our current situation. we are obviously, human beings are terribly flawed and diplomats are as well. >> are you suggesting not much of a learning curve? >> well, i think the cia is probably much more capable today than it was in 1979. there were certainly a lot of, no offense to anybody who went to this school but it was considered all white male and male who were, for decades. diversity was certainly a huge problem at the cia and i think it helped lined the cia in many ways. i think we've been historically, for many decades, failed to understand each other's cultures and lack of diversity was certainly part of the period that has vastly improved. i think improved in many other ways, to. >> interesting. i want to tell everyone if you have questions, feel free to put them in the chat q&a, which ever you would like. i worked a few into the conversation already but i will work them in. i hav

i love this book our man on richard holbrooke who was my first boss by the way. about come just about the human, just about how badly we have misunderstood so many of these conflicts from vietnam to iran to bosnia to our current situation. we are obviously human beings, are terribly flawed, and diplomats are as well. >> so i just just just think this that much of a learning curve -- are you suggesting there's not much of a learning curve? >> i think the cia is probably much more capable today than it was in 1979. there were certainly a lot of, no offense to anybody who went to the school as i did, but it was considered all white male and yale for decades, and there was diversity was certainly a huge problem at the cia. and i think it helps to blind the cia many ways. i think we have been historically for many, many decades failed to understand these other cultures and lack of diversity certainly is a part of that. that's vastly improved now. i think the cia has improved in many other ways, too. >> interesting. i just want to tell everyone if you have any question

his nonfiction books include our man, richard holbrooke and the end of the american century, finalist for the pulitzer prize. the unwinding, 30 years of american decline which won the national book award, the assassin's game, america and iraq and love of the liberals. he's also the author of two novels in a play in the editor of the 2-volume edition of the essay of george orwell. please join me in welcoming our special guests. >> welcome everybody. i see a couple hundred of you which is fantastic and it would be a privilege and a pleasure to talk to frederik logevall tonight and to get our heads out of the present and out of the news for an hour or an hour and a half and into the past as a guide for us as we try to navigate one of the stormy as tiers in our lives. .. so i knew you as a vietnam expert. but now i know you something broader as an american expert and someone who just shares a lot of interest with me in american history and foreign policy. so it is great to get to talk to you about your completely engrossing, and source languages the word david kennedy using the times book