it comes down to this, or wallin churchill recognize the key question of the century, ultimately was not who controlled the means of production is marks the or how the human psyche function, as freud taught, but rather, how to preserve the liberty of the individual during an age when the state was becoming powerfully intrusive in the private life. so is that the theme? how did you come up on these two guys to tell the stories? >> it is a thing. you really picked it. it took me a while to settle on the theme. the book began after i wrote the generals and i was thinking i myself more of a writer and less as a reporter. i was becoming a full-time book writer, canvas my farewell to journalism i went back and read a lot of the famous 20th century journalists wondering who would laugh and who would be discarded. i began with mencken, and i found his style i can a stick in his style wrong. then i moved on to perlman who is not funny, i read eb white but his concerns were not mine at all, hemingway, blowhard. [laughter] >> and then i picked up orwell and it was different from all the other s