Transcripts For CSPAN QA Craig Fehrman Author In Chief 20240713

Craig fehrman, the author of the new book author in chief. Who was oran follett . Why did he make the claim that he made Abraham Lincoln president . Oran follett was a publisher in ohio. He had is a Printing Firm in ohio. They published lots of different local books. He had the distinct privilege to publish Abraham Lincolns bestselling book. We should probably back up, because a lot of people do not know that he wrote one. When lincoln ran for the senate and lost to Stephen Douglas, they had their famous debate. During the debates, there were a couple of people from newspapers transcribing the debates, writing down shorthand and then a couple of days later, they would print it in papers so people who didnt attend could read it in the newspapers. Lincoln, after he lost the senate race, for most people, the story stopped there. This is breaking news. Lets move on. Lincoln, after he lost the senate race, he worked hard to gather those newspaper transcript. He worked hard. There are at least nine surviving letters of him gathering these newspaper transcripts. He cut them out and pasted them in a scrapbook. You can still see it today at the library of congress. It is an amazing document. He is making these tiny little edits in pencil. If one paragraph is not accurate, he is cutting it out and putting a different paragraph in its place. This book contained almost 100,000 of lincolns words. Nearly as many as Stephen Douglas. He did the most perfect you could do in 1858 before recording devices to devices. Lincoln went to try to find a printer. This was not easy because lincoln was not a prominent figure, he was just someone who lost the race for senate. With the help of ohio republicans, they brought the book out in 1860. It was an enormous bestseller. It sold 50,000 copies. It is a big number any time, especially in 1860, it is a huge number. If you adjusted by population, it is the equivalent of a bookselling. 5 million copies today. This book came out in time for lincoln to be helped to become the nominee of president. Voters would write lincoln letters about this. When people would ask lincoln, what do you think about this issue . He would say, just look at my book. This book was essential to circulating his ideas and legitimizing him as candidate. When the first reviews came out, they would say here is the book from Stephen Douglas and abram lincoln. They could not even get his name right. People started to learn his name correctly and his ideas and it played a huge, overlooked role in lifting him to the white house. That is what led to folletts quip. He visited lincoln after the presidency. Lincoln said it was good to see you. He said it should be, after all, i am the one that helped you become president. I think lincoln appreciated it. All he could do was smile. One of my favorite lincoln letters was after he heard that the book would be published. He said this was the greatest complement i ever received, that somebody wants to publish my book. That is because lincoln is a book lover. This is just one concept. Tell me about the concept for the book. Craig is the untold story of president s and their books. One thing that is really fun and surprising is that this is a history that as long as American History itself. I talk about two different types of books, Campaign Books like lincolns and they use a book to help them run. Then legacy books, what did i do in the white house, what did my enemies say and what do i say . Just as an example of how old this history is, the First Campaign book, that comes from Thomas Jefferson. The first legacy book comes from john adams. This is a really deep history. It is a brandnew angle on the presidency. When i started working on this book 10 years ago, i had to make a list because no one had written about this for. How many books there are even out there that fit into this rubric . It really there were a lot of made a difference. Them. What in your mind is the value of judging a president or presidency by his writing . Craig it reminds me of what history felt like not just to president s but regular people. Sometimes we forget about this, because we live in an age where there are a lot of different media, including Television Shows like the ones we are on. When lincoln is running for president , books and newspapers were the mass media. When you think about a book, helping somebody run for the white house, it also tells you something about what it was like to be alive as a president ial candidate or voter. It was a distinctly human angle on these issues. It shows a humans side of the president. It applies to writing. There is something about writing that if you try to put your thoughts or feelings into words, you have to slow down, think what am i afraid of . What am i scared of . What do i want . That is true of president s just like it is true for the rest of us. Time and time again, i would look at president s taking their time i tried to go behind the. Scenes and really find the details. I felt like i was finding even our most wellknown president s at their most human. Before we dig into the research of your book. There is a craig fruman story that is interesting. How did this all gets started for you . Craig it was back in 2008. I was in graduate school at the time. Where was that . I was in graduate school at yale. I was spending a lot of time going to politicos website and clicking election year. It was an exciting election. What i noticed was books were making a big difference. Barack obamas books were everywhere. John mccains books were everywhere. These books were really making an impact. I got curious and i thought, did this happen before . This felt special and new but is it . I started digging in and what i found is that history is so much deeper than i expected. As i mentioned, it goes way back. There are so many books that had a huge impact that lifted people to the white house. It gave them a chance to make a memorable case with their legacy. It took me 10 years, because there was a lot of groundwork to lay to even be able to write a book like this because there were not precedents. If you like reading history books, this will tell you the history about yourself. There is material about, what was Calvin Coolidges favorite bookstore . How did the Printing Press work when Abraham Lincoln was president . I think those kinds of quick little stories remind us about how American Culture works and how important books have been to our country. What happened to the phd . Craig my mom would like me to say that it is still in progress. I will defer to her it is still in progress. When did you say that there was a book here . Craig it happened pretty quickly. After the 2008 election, i was curious and then i started looking into it in 2009. I would go to really Good Research libraries and get in those card catalogs and look up John Quincy Adams by his last name. How many books are thereby John Quincy Adams . Making that list, it was astonishing how many were by them. Herbert hoover wrote a mining textbook. Who knew . Also, there were these really intimate and important books. I started to realize that Abraham Lincoln, Calvin Coolidge, ulysses s. Grant, jefferson, adams, there were so many examples of these books really mattering. That is when i started to realize that there was a story to tell here. You alluded to the history of Nonfiction Book publishing in america. Why do you tell that part of the story . Craig that is what helps us realize how important these books have been. Even if you read a good biography about a lot of the president s i talk about, their books dont come up. There books are not central. Biographers and historians have a lot of work to do. They are worried about the policy. My books are about the human side and the publishing side and running for office. Without that context, you cant realize how important these books are. I will give you an example from lincoln. When lincolns book came out, it was a best seller. Slavery was a huge issue, everybody wanted to know where the candidates stood. It was a bestseller because of Steam Powered engines. Trains were finally widely available. It was much easier to move a book from one city to another by train. Before there were trains, you had to move them by horseback or horse carriage, and books are heavy. If you want somebody to deliver a book by mail, they are not going to do it because there is only so much room in the saddlebag. Then Steam Powered engines helped because of Printing Presses. Printing presses had been similar to what gutenberg had done. One person takes the arm and pulls. In this period, Printing Presses started to get powered by steam engines. That made it faster to make books and cheaper. That made it easier for people to buy books. Those kinds of changes, first of all, they are fun. If you like books and you want to know about the history of bookstores and books, i have a lot of material about that. I like books. I think it helps us appreciate how these books mattered in their own times. When did readily available reading glasses become a factor . Craig the 19th century as well. I like those small details, because you dont think of them as a technology but oil lamps, reading glasses, those really matter because it is hard to huddle up next to a fireplace and read a book. The more light you have to read by, the more you can read and the better reader you can be. I have one footnote that make me laugh. There is a passage from one a reader who lived in new york city he is such a fun character. He decided, i am only going to read biographies for the next year. I love nonfiction. He goes to the church and there is an oil lamp there. The pastor knocks over the lamp and there is a fire. There was a lot of chaos. A lot of disaster in the pastor is freaking out. He said why didnt we just stick with candles . Candles, oil lamps, those are technologies just like smartphones or anything else today. Everyone has the darn internet, is identifying with the candle in the oil lamp. You mentioned footnotes. Your book has about 60 pages of notes filled with stories like this. How did you do all of this research . Craig slowly. It took 10 years of work. A lot of the work was looking at the history of nonfiction publishing and figuring out how president ial campaigns work, because there were really important shifts in how you can run for president. How did you support yourself . I lived in the midwest. That helps because the costs were low. My wife works. She is a very patient woman. She is actually a book editor. She is a wonderful editor as well. I was fortunate to get a generous book deal, that helped. We made it work. There were not a lot of travels or fancy splurges. It was my first book and i wanted it to be as good as i could possibly make it. What was the biggest aha moment . Your biggest discovery . Craig sure, because i am from the midwest, my bias wants to say lincoln. Another came from kennedy. The fact that people have this vague sense that john f. Kennedys book was written by someone else. I looked at thousands of pages of documents and i try to summarize that and show just how little work kennedy did. Then i found this humans side of how much kennedy cared about the book. He is a senator, he is a celebrity. Being an author, it did not seem to be on the front of his mind but he would write his editor letters and say i was at the airport and i did not see any copies of my book there, can we fix that . Why would a senator notice Something Like that . I think kennedy cared about being an author and seeing that surprise was surprising to me. As a firsttime author, what was it like picking up the wall street journal and seeing a fullpage positive review of your book . It ends up being one of the best books on the presidency that has appeared in years. Craig i cried. Ill be honest with you. To work on something for 10 years and then have it described in those terms and have the reviewer do a great job summarizing what is in the book, he loved the publishing side, the president ial side. It meant the world to me. It meant a lot that i started my book tour and talked to regular readers to have them tell me about president s and their books. It has been a wonderful experience. The fact that it took 10 years to get there makes it all the sweeter. How many cities will you visit. Cred 13. There could be more down the road. Before we dig into individual stories, i wanted to run through a couple of quick facts. Which president wrote the most books . Craig Teddy Roosevelt. I dont know that i ever crunched the numbers specifically, but it cant imagine anybody other than Teddy Roosevelt did it. It was well over 30. You have to define whether a pamphlet is a book or a collection of speeches. I feel confident it was Teddy Roosevelt. If he were here, he would be announcing that fact. Who was the most gifted president ial writer . Craig it was probably lincoln. Just in his style of his speeches and books. There are also some surprising president s. Calvin coolidge, maybe even history fans dont have his presidency at the front of their mind. He was such a talented writer. I found a New York Times article where they said that Calvin Coolidge, and his presidency, in his presidency, is the best literary president since lincoln. He wrote a thank you letter to that author because it mattered to him. You talk about president ial reading as well. Who were the most voracious readers . Craig for a lot of them, books helped make them president s today. Somebody like Ronald Reagan or harry truman, it was their local libraries that gave them that boost. Their families were working class so they couldnt go out and acquire a lot of books but they had their libraries. That is where they started getting ideas and thinking about history. Harry truman was the biggest lover of history. Ulysses s. Grant was one of the biggest fiction lovers. He read so many novels. He got demerits as a cadet at west point for spending too much time in the library. All that fiction reading helped make his president ial memoir a stunning book. On the converse side, President Trump often says that he does not have time to read many books. What other president s were not readers . Craig Lyndon Johnson was not much of a reader. His wife would joke that he had not read a book since he was in college in texas. I am sure that is not true but i dont think reading a book is the most important thing you can do as president. It is understandable that they are busy and they have a lot going on. But i value books and reading books on the way to the white house or taking some time to read can be a useful way to step back from all the excitement and news happening around them. Johnson and trump are two good examples. You mentioned a legacy books and Campaign Books as the two types. James buchanan wrote a legacy book. How did that help him . Craig it did not help him. Nothing was going to help him. He was a terrible president. People in the north and south realized it. I think that is why he wrote the book. He said history is not going to look kindly on me or the civil war. He decided that he wanted to write a book. He tried to recruit some friends and say i have all of my letters and papers, why dont you come write this book defending me . He did not get any takers so he said i have to do this myself. It is not a book that is very rewarding to read today. It is a book written in the third person. Writing an autobiography like running for president has changed a lot over the course of American History. I am sure we can talk about some of the reasons for that. Because buchanan did not want to appear too arrogant, he wrote in the third person. James buchanan is writing mr. Buchanan did this and that. It grabs long chunks of documents from those papers. There will be a little bit of writing and then a long document. Even if he was the best writer in the world, i am not sure it could have saved him. The New York Times ran a review after the book came out that said buchanan did not wait for his enemies to write a book, he wrote a book himself and everything you need to attack him is right there in the book. Buchanan eventually told his friends to stop sending him reviews. We are going to listen to a few clips. The first one is a contemporary president , bill clinton, talked about the importance of writing an autobiography or memoir. Lets look. [video clip] mr. Clinton i concluded from doing this book is that everyone who is fortunate enough to live to be 50 should sit down at some point and write the story of his or her life even if it is just for yourself, your children, your families. It is important what you remember, how you remember, what you forget. It is important to come to terms with the life that you lived and think about how you wish to spend whatever years are remaining. Everybody talks about how terrible book writing is. I enjoyed it. And i have written every word of this book. He is arguing that everyone should do it. When we think about president s, what does the whole genre of president ial memoirs do to that history of that presidency . Where does it fit in how scholars judge . Craig have to take it in two parts. When president s write about their childhoods, those passages are the only place that scholars can get that information. In Harry Trumans memoirs, there is a wonderful story about his Favorite High School history teacher. You will find that in every truman biography and that comes right from truman himself. The books are very valuable for those early formative years. They become less valuable by the time they get to the time of real political power. That is when the president s tell their own version and use a little spin. That is when scholars have to sift and evaluate what the president said versus what actually happened. But i think there is value in seeing how somebody spins. If you see how they view themselves, you can try to understand what they were trying to accomplish at times. In my own book, that is when i tried to take readers behind the scenes. I can give you a good example from president clintons book. It is a very proclinton book. I dont know how we could expect it to be otherwise. Instead of running through all of the points he made in my life, i tell the stories of how they were working on book. He did write the book himself, he was late on the book. He is right. He was a procrastinator. They got this book with millions of dollars writing on it. Bill clintons editor came to his house and slept on his couch to make sure that he made the deadline. I think those stories can be as important as the book itself. He makes the points that he wrote the book himself. When did ghostwriters become part of the picture . How should we understand the president s personality if someone else is writing his words . Craig it is a really good and important questioned. There are a lot of president that didnt need ghostwriters. Obama, roosevelt, wilson, lots of president s did the work themselves. I would push back against the idea that a ghostwritten book is automatically inauthentic or automatically a poor book. I just dont think that is true. If we want to talk about the history of ghost writing in america, we have to start with George Washingtons farewell address. It is really foundational texts for our nation today. When it came to the time of the writing, washington got help. It was James Madison and Alexander Hamilton who helped put his ideas into words. They were washingtons ideas. They landed with such impact because they had washingtons name attached. Washington was very involved in the process. He said this is the style i want to be. I want to review the draft and i might make some changes. It is washingtons speech. He still got help writing it. I dont know is this book ghostwritten or not, i go is this a good book or not . With the farewell address, that is an example of good ghost writing how the process can help. Lets spend more time on the jfk story. I have another clip from 1957. Cbs, mike wallace was talking to drew pearson. Lets watch. [video clip] you wrote that kennedys father, Joseph Kennedy is spending a fortune on a publicity machine to make jacks name wellknown. No candidate in history has had so much money spent on a Public Relations advanced build up. Jack kennedy is a fine young fellow, a personal follow, but he is not as good as that Public Relations campaign makes him out to be. He is the only man in history who won a Pulitzer Prize on a book that was ghostwritten for him. Pretty tough stuff there. This is 1957, before he sought the white house, but aspirational. Were people debating this concept at the time after he won the Pulitzer Prize . Craig the Pulitzer Prize was the turning point. That is important to understand in the history of the book and in terms of understanding kennedys psychology. The book comes out in 1956. Over the course of that year, it is a hit. It is everything you could want a book to be. It is on the New York Times bestseller list for weeks and weeks. It elevates kennedy from being a senator from new england to being a national figure. In 1956, kennedy very nearly gets the Vice President ial nomination. That is a big surprise. Kennedy had a meeting with harry truman. He was an expresident but he was in the party infrastructure. Kenny and truman meet at trumans hotel suite. When kennedy comes out, they ask him what they talked about and he says my book. That shows you that harry truman is a good reader but also shows you how important it was in 1956. If the story stops there, i think it is a happy story. Yes, kennedy had the book written by someone else and we can talk about the Details Behind that. But good ghostwriting and bad ghostwriting. This is an is example of good ghost writing and bad ghost writing. This is an example of good ghost writing. When i was working at the kennedy president ial library, i found documents that showed for the first time that jack kennedy was involved in securing that Pulitzer Prize. The story has often been, and you sought in that quote that kennedys father was the one pulling the strings, but that is not true. Jack kennedy wanted that Pulitzer Prize. There were many times that he brought that up. He told another historian, i would rather win a Pulitzer Prize then be president. He had a strong desire for literary fame even though he did not want to do literary work, he got himself the prize. In new york city, in washington , d. C. , people had been gossiping did kennedy write that book . I wonder how much money they are getting out with those royalty checks. The pulitzer made it a moral and ethical question. Readers realize this. When i was at the kennedy president ial library, i looked at the letters kennedy was receiving in 1957 and librarians into School Teachers were sending him letters and asking him if he really wrote this book. You would not have accepted that prize if you did not write it, that is not the right thing to do. It was a moral question. Kennedy and his family had an answer that was different than what the readers did. In the long arc of history, does it matter . The book was being referenced during the recent impeachment debate. There is an award given out by the Kennedy Family foundation on an annual basis. Does it matter . Craig i think it matters in a very human and personal sense. Does it matter as much as what kennedy did as president . Probably not. But if you want to know something about kennedy, human being, this is a chance to see what his values were what he was willing to do and how he treated other people. Ted sorensen did most of the work on the book. One thing kennedy did right was the preface in the acknowledgments. He wrote it and did not even mention sorensens name. Sorensen gives it an edit. Sorensen says you should mention me. Kennedy added dimension back in. Then when the scandal came about, sorensen and kennedy both would refer to the acknowledgments and say that everything is above board in this book. We mentioned that the work was done but it is kennedys book. But that credit only existed because sorensen had to remind kennedy, maybe you should give the person who actually wrote the book the credit. That is not the cuban missile crisis in terms of historical import but it is a human choice. It is a human being that decided this is how he wanted to act. I think readers and voters, it is ok to think in those terms and think of president s as humans and evaluate them as, did they do the right thing as a person . There was a story much farther back in history where an author claims authorship. Would you briefly tell the story of eliza hamilton and her claims that her husband wrote George Washingtons farewell address . Its a crazy story and one of my favorite ones in the book. It deals with the farewell address that we talked about. The fact that it was washingtons speech is what mattered. Alexander hamilton famously died in a duel, and his reputation had hit a low point. His wife, who was very loyal to him, decided that i need to prove my husband was the one who wrote the speech to give him help in recovering his reputation. Its a crazy story. It was like a spy novel. There was a bundle of secret documents that was sealed and waxed. Hamiltons supporters would pass it around. These are people who were loyal to hamilton. One of the people involved with somebody who really cared about Alexander Hamilton. His children were trying to hunt this down. One of his sons would try to go to the house and be nice. He would say, why dont you turn over these documents . When that did not work, the other son came along and was very menacing and tough. That did not work. It took a long time. It was one of those stories where people were gossiping. How much of this is hamilton, how much of this is washington, washington had nothing to do with it himself. He was deceased at this point. Washington did not claim authorship in the way that someone like kennedy did. It is an example that americans have always loved gossiping about president s. John kennedys success seems to have, according to your book, inspired nixon to publish his own. When did he publish it . Craig he published it in 1963. We have a clip of nixon talking about lets watch that the process of writing. And come back and talk about him. [video clip] this was my ninth crisis, writing a book is very hard work. I know you interview people on your program. I have seen them and i admire authors. I am not saying that in terms of myself but it is a great ordeal for me. I dont write easily. I see youve got some notes on a yellow pad. I write outline after outline and i dictate to a machine. It is the spoken word the written word is very formal. I have good people that work with me. When i get down to crafting the final product, it is a great burden for me. Every time i finish a book, i say never again. Lets start with six crises. What did that do for his political aspirations . Craig it was important because he had just lost that election in 1960. It was during the cuban missile crisis that kennedy asked nixon to come to the white house so they could talk to the issues. Nixon could tell how tired kennedy was. It was a time that was weighing him down. When they were done, nixon mentioned that he was thinking about writing a book. That perked kennedy up. He said i think every politician should write a book, it can help your standing in the political realm. That is what nixon did. He worked on a book. It cover different moments, different crises. It is similar in structure to george bushs. It really picks key moments from that persons life. It was a bestselling book. It helped him begin to reestablish himself as a politician and begin that second act that led him to become president. After watergate, he authored several more books. How does this change his reputation post watergate . Craig his president ial memoirs which cannot directly after watergate, were hugely anticipated. It was breaking news when the page count came out. People were like, this is how long the book is going to be. There was intense issue because the watergate issue. After that, the books became less newsy, they were more philosophical, books about governing philosophy and politics. I think they helped, as much as anything else, president nixon settle into that senior statesmen role. It is amazing to think about his reputation after watergate and talking about humans beings and people who make personal decisions, i think he and watergate is a very revealing episode. He was able to become the person you see in that clip, the senior statesman whose views on International Relations were valued and sought out by other president s. The regular rhythm of her releasing books had a lot to do with that. Thomas jefferson, a wellknown lover of books. His famous quote i cannot live without books is on coffee mugs everywhere. He ended up selling his collection of books to create the library of congress. How many books did he own . Craig 6000 and 7000. Then he started building another collection. He had a couple thousand more when he passed. You credited him with the First Campaign book. Craig it is called notes on the state of virginia. It was not a Campaign Book like Abraham Lincolns. The story started a little earlier for jefferson. He worked on that book in the 1780s. It came out more than a decade after he ran for president. It was essential, it was a huge flashpoint during the elections of 1776 and 1800. This is when Thomas Jefferson and john adams are running against each other. There were other candidates as well. To understand why notes on the state of virginia were so important, we have to talk about how campaigning worked in that time. Nowadays, president ial candidates want to be everywhere and they want to be on tv and twitters and make their case directly to voters. It was the opposite of that. Early in our history, it was the complete opposite. If you went out to everyone and said i want to be president , that was proved to most voters that you were not the right person to run for president. The idea was that you should be humble. You should be called to serve. It should be other people advocating for you and your ideas. Most president s stayed home and stayed quiet. There was a public silence around john adams and Thomas Jefferson. What that public silence did thats a vacuum. Something needs to fill it. That is where notes on the state of virginia came in. It sold the equivalent of. 5 million copies. It was one of the most important books any american wrote in the 18th century. It was a vital book that defended america to its european critics. People knew and respected that book. Now that jefferson was running for president but not saying much about it, they looked to his book for what he thought. We have a clip of a wellknown historian, roger wilkins, talking about jeffersons notes on the state of virginia. Lets see what he has to say and then come back to you. [video clip] in the end, you have to in the end, you have to believe that what he wrote in notes on the state of virginia is his deep belief in black inferiority. He thought that blacks were smelly, stupid, and lazy. He said it more elegantly, but that was the gist of it. He, more than any of the virginia founders, seemed more unable to distance himself from even emotionally, from his ownership of slaves. So people wonder how the author of the declaration of independence can square his views on slaves and slave ownership. You answer that to your own mind in your book. What are your thoughts on this . Craig this is another troubling example of where going behind the scenes and looking at somebody sitting down to write can really reveal something about who they are as people. In that book, jefferson offers sort of bigger, broader comments about how slavery is a moral evil, but then, because he is jefferson, he slips into this rational, scientific discourse. The tries to explain, lets look at the difference between lack black americans and white americans. And his conclusions are exactly what we just saw. They are troubling. They are written in a way that makes him sound scientific, but i think it reads even worse. Jefferson was very frank that he thought black people were inferior not because of their circumstances, but because that is who they were. If anybody wants to give jefferson a pass because of the standards of his time, no. Because he showed drafts of this book to his contemporaries at the time. And the first versions were worse. Said, he doesnt believe it they said they dont think is right. You are not talking about humans in a way that is just. Jefferson says this is only my hypothesis, but he wrote what he wrote. And he never changed his mind. Notesold man, jeffersons on the state of virginia was still a very popular book. One of the book sellers called a it acalled it called standing book. Today, you will always see if you books. In jeffersons time, his book was that book. Printers asked him if he wanted to change anything in the book. He always said no. That includes the dehumanizing passages about black people. One set of memoirs that is available on bookstore shelves today is ulysses s. Grants. What is the story of him writing that set of memoirs . Craig its almost an unbelievable story. He was a wonderful writer. I think we sometimes forget that when he was a general, some of his orders that would go out at the battlefield were printed everywhere in newspapers. They really introduced people to his literary style, which was concise, funny, and concrete. He was a tremendous writer. But he did not want to write a book. After his presidency, publisher after publisher said your book would be the biggest selling book of any civil war figure. Do you want to do it . He did not want to. What changed his mind were two things he went through a terrible bankruptcy and he became ill with what ultimately became a fatal form of cancer. And so, he has these pressures. He does not have enough money. He does not have enough money to pay his butcher. He has no money and he is dying. It becomes difficult for him to even speak or swallow. But in those harrowing circumstances, he just got to work. And he worked so hard on his book. One thing i do in my book is reproduce a page from early in the process, when he is starting to write it. Because i think it puts you there with him in the writing. You can see it in his handwriting. He is crossing out words and stopping midsentence. He doesnt know what to say or how to write. But he gets momentum, he figures it out, and then he realizes that he cares about the writing. He poured everything he had into that book. His wife supported him and his sons were Fact Checking the book. They all worked as hard as they could. Although he passed away for the book came out, his publisher, who was mark twain, his publisher made it one of the biggest best sellers in American History at that point. It seemed all of america was waiting to see whether or not he would finish it before he passed. Would you tell that story . Craig absolutely. This is an example of how these books have been so central to American History. We have forgotten about some of them today. These books, in their own time periods, because of the Publishing Industry and the things we have talked about, they were news. They were at the core of what americans were thinking about. Grant was working on his book on his deathbed. The country knew that he was sick, the country knew that he was working on a book, and newspapers would have headlines like, general grant went for a walk today. General grant did not sleep well last night. General grant managed to write three pages. These are newspapers all over the country. There were telegraph lines that ran from houses close to his two other offices for updates. To other offices for updates. The updates happened in real time by the standards of that time period. The country was obsessed with it. And while this was happening, while he was racing to finish his book, there was an army of booksellers, a lot of them were civil war veterans who were thrilled to have one last chance to serve the man they served to celebrate the man they had served under, were going door to door. They had a careful script. The first line of that script was, i am here to talk to you about the book you have heard so much about in the newspapers. This was news. It was a book that every american was excited in and interested in. Grant wrote a book that lived up to that anticipation. He needed to read it for julia grant because he had lost all of his money with bad investments with his son. How much did she make of the book . How much money did julie grant make off of the book . Craig it was hundreds of thousands of dollars. In that era . Craig if you adjust, it was more than 10 million. That was not a perfect adjustment, but a paycheck comparable to what president clinton earned for his and president george w. Bush did for his book. That is an example how popular these president ial books have always been. It set his family up for life. But it seems not to have it did not tarnish his reputation for a long time. He was pretty low. Coming up more recently, what happened, why did that not have the effect that he hoped it would . Craig it is a curious fact. I think it is a fact that would serve other president ial authors to take note of. Grant doesnt just write a good book, he writes a book that is a wild bestseller. You would think those are the two criteria that could shape a legacy. And yet, once grants book comes out, his reputation starts to stumble. Newspaper critics are saying, why arent there more things about ulysses s. Grant . The reason there wasnt is because the south did a much better job in the literary war than they did in the actual war. There were a lot of historians who were prosouth. Who wrote histories that celebrated the south. One of the biggest strategies was to tear down grant and make grant look like a bad president , a butcher and a drunk and elevate robert lee as a saintly figure. Grant got granted himself. He had amazing resources. But in the literary war, it was the south with the amazing resources, and of course, grant was a terrific general. The southern historians were all calculating writers as well. They overwhelmed grants book. For decades, that book was one that writers respected and that readers liked, but in terms of defining grant as a general and president , it did not have the impact you would expect. Its only more recently they trueseen grants reputation. If you are a president and you want to write a book that defends yourself, history says write a personal book instead. If ulysses s. Grants book cant save his reputation, what hope do you have to write a book thats going to save your reputation . Dont worry about the political debates or the battlefield accounts, tell a personal story. There have been very recent successful grant biographies published. Have they served his standing to change it . Have they served to change his standing . Craig williams did. It came out a couple of decades ago. Also, another book by joan. Its one of the finest books written about grant. It does not just tell the story of grant, it tells the story of grants reputation at the same time. It is a wonderful book that i would highly recommend. Earlier, you referenced Theodore Roosevelt as our most prolific writing president. Both him and Woodrow Wilson who was our only president from the academy, you say that their first books were their best. Why . Craig i think because they were young and passionate and they had a lot of energy. But i also think they were really thinking of themselves as writers at that time. And being a writer and a politician are not always the same approach. They dont always require the same skills. A writer looks for complexity, and says, what is the core of this problem . What is the back story of this problem . A politician needs to simplify. Because a politician needs to get popular support. So when roosevelt and wilson were working on their first books, they were thinking as writers. Roosevelt started his first book actually while he was a student at harvard. And he was obsessed with it. He would sit in class, the book was about the war of 1812 but in specific, it was about the naval side of that conflict. And roosevelt would sit in class and just daydream about british and american ships battling. It was all he could think about. He did incredible, original research. He went to archives to find out plans of ships, the size of ships, how many cannons they had, he would draw diagrams to show the way the ships moved in battle. And all of that information helped him understand something important, and that is that patriotism and heroism are not the best explanations for history. Are not necessarily the best explanations for history. An example in roosevelts book is oliver perry. He won this great battle and was so celebrated people named towns after him. People thought it was this underdog victory. When roosevelt went back to research to see what kind of ships perry had versus which ones the british had, he found out that the reason that he won that battle is not because he was brave and heroic, it was though of course he was those things, it was because perry had better ships. What is interesting is once roosevelt got to being a president himself, heroism and patriotism were what he cared about. He sort of did a 180 as a writer. Wilson, how did he use his study of congress when he became president . Craig its the same trajectory, where the first book is full of original research. Wilsons first book is still considered by political scholars today. By scholars and Political Science today. It was an intellectual event when it came out in the 1880s. It was just a transformational book that did a lot to shape the academic arguments over the next few decades. And it is interesting to note that his book is called congressional government. Not president ial government. Thats because for a lot of the 18th and 19th century, congress was really the seat of power. If you were a reporter and wanted to cover the action in washington, you did not go to the white house, you went to congress. That is where the media paid attention. Wilson did a great job of wonderful job sort of explaining why that was in his book. He explained why the system in america is set up and why it works that way. Of course, when he became president , he and Teddy Roosevelt were two of the president s that did the most to make the modern presidency of today. It has flipped. The president now appeals to the people and defines ideas and leads the parties. Wilson and roosevelt did more than anyone on that count. With a wants to do more than anyone were the ones to do more than anyone on that count. Wilson made his own book outdated, because his book talked about congress and how powerful congress was. But when wilson was the president , he was able to irrigate that power to the presidency. We now live in the age of blockbuster deals for president s. The news reports are that the combined memoirs of the obamas may have made as much as 65 million. When did the blockbuster era start . Craig it started the 1980s. That tells you as much about publishing as it tells you about the presidency. Part of it was that the presidency was becoming more glamorous and celebrated. Ronald reagan of course was a president that did a lot to achieve that, especially with his background in hollywood. But the Publishing Industry was changing in the same ways. If readers think about it walden books showed up in shopping malls. Those kinds of changes allowed hardcover books to sell millions of copies, not hundreds of thousands. That change helped editors start to look for certain kinds of books, books where people came with a platform, an idea, a brand behind them. That matter as much as the book itself. And so, in the 1980s, lots of figures published bestselling books that were everywhere. And they would go on tv to talk about them. A really good example is donald trump. Before he was a political candidate and a president , he was one of those blockbuster authors with the art of the deal. It was also the era when people who work in the white house started writing books and at that point after they left and now we are seeing it midstream. How does that change the presidency . Craig it is unbelievable how things sped up in the 1980s. Things change so quickly that changed so quickly that people who left the Reagan Administration were publishing their books before people in the Carter Administration published their books. They were literally leapfrogging the administration before then, because publishers and political figures were seeing that there was a lot of money to be made in this. And so, i honestly dont know that we have quite come to terms with what these changes meant even today. Have meant, even today. You can see that with john boltons book. It is not out yet, but it has already been widely discussed. It will be a blockbuster and there is no question about it. There are ethical and moral questions about, should that information have been presented in the book, in a different format . Those questions dont have answers yet because were in the middle of this change both in politics and publishing. Do publishers make money off of these books . Craig they do. They did not for a while. Ronald reagans president ial memoirs he got an advance of around 7 million. They lost quite a bit of money on that one. Since about 2000 or so, publishing has figured this out. You mentioned the obamas advance, which was astronomical. Michelle obamas books is one of the best sailing in American History at this point. I have to imagine that barack will do equally well. Even better. Publishers have started to realize they can sell these books in a certain way. Blockbuster publishing is working for them, which is why i dont think it is going anywhere anytime soon. You mentioned Donald Trumps the art of the deal. We have a clip from peter roskams osnos. This is him telling the story of signing the book the art of the deal. [video clip] its one of the first times someone has intervened at random house. He said i want to do a book with this guy. I arrived at random house with a mandate of doing books of this kind biographies of highpowered figures. Highprofile figures. It, was, i like to put tasked. I went to see trump with this publisher. I took a big russian novel i had, generations a winner, wrapped black and gold paper around it, put trumps name on it and brought it to trump tower and showed it to him and said this could be you. Lo and behold, he agreed. He wanted the trump name slightly larger. How significant was the art of the deal . And President Trumps quest for the white house . Craig i think it was very significant. It was not twitter that made him a national figure. It was not a tv show. It was that book. Because it was a blockbuster. It really lifted him from being a new york city figure to a national figure. The book came out and sold more than a million copies. But also trump went on tv again again again and promoted it and told stories from it. Again and again and promoted it and told stories from it. It really defined a style and an image that he still used when he ran for president so many years later. Peter plays a role in cspans corporate history. He went on to found his own nonfiction Publishing House and they have brought our cspan books to market. I want to get that on the record. In his history, he brought both the art of the deal and Barack Obamas dreams from my father to market. What does that say . Craig it is hard to wrap your head around it. It says the Publishing Business publishes lots of kinds of books, and thats what we should celebrate about it. Peter osnos was the one that signed the deal but that was obamas second deal. The book was so challenging for him to write. I think today we think about obama as such a polished person and speaker and president ial candidate. He has got this life story with the father from kenya and the mother from kansas. It all just clicks together. His background explains how people can come together. It is a great story, it is one thing i think that helped him become president , but it was not an easy story to piece together. It was really in writing this first book that he was able to piece those stories together. It was not a simple process. He got the book deal, he wrote part of the book, he sent it in. The publisher did not like it. The first publisher did not like it. He got married in october to michelle. A couple of weeks later, he lost his book deal. So obama, as a young man, just out of law school with a lot of debt, finds that he does not have a book deal anymore. He also owes his publisher part of the advance that he already spent. He had a very good agent who was able to get him a second deal. With peter osnos. I interviewed him and he talked about having obama going to their offices. They wanted to meet with him. He wanted to say, is this guy going to finish the book this time before i give him another advance . And he was impressed that obama came in and he knew what he wanted the book to be about. Once he was able to figure those themes out, it took a lot of reading, revising, took a really good editor to help him. Obama put that book together. And in that book, the themes would show up in his speeches and president ial campaign. The writing of that book helped obama sort of understand his life and future political appeal. How important are narratives to a political success . Did you see other president s who developed life narratives that they used on the campaign trail . Craig yes, absolutely. If you can tell your life story, in a way that connects not just to who you are, but the ideas and the issues that you stand up for, it is really effective. Because readers have multiple ways to respond to it and remember it. Calvin coolidge is a great example. His literary style was very clipped, concise, and surprisingly funny. It lined up with his image. He was known as silent cal, even though he had two fantastic books. He is somebody we should remember for his words as much as his absence of words. That stern and buttoneddown and serious approach lined up with his politics and his traditional approach to american life. The literary style of Calvin Coolidge lined up with the life of Calvin Coolidge, and readers and voters responded to both things. We have president obama talking all the way back in 1985 about writing dreams. Lets put that on as we get close to the end. [video clip] my father was a black african. And my mother was a white american. And much of my life was spent trying to reconcile the terms of my birth that divided heritage with the realities of race and nationality, tribal identities that exist not just in this country, but also overseas. So that this book is not so much a memoir i think as a journey of discovery for me, making some sense of my family. What do you see there . Craig i see exactly what i was talking about. It is the father from kenya, the mother from kansas, those lines that show up in that Famous Convention speech and when he ran in 2008. Somebody in Hillary Clintons campaign that year said, we are not running against a person, we are running against a story. Thats what gave his campaign momentum. But you can see right there in 1995, he had finally figured out that story after years of writing and reading and thinking. He solved that story and figured out that story, and that is what supercharged his political appeal and some of the ideas he stood for. We are almost up in our time with you. In a review in the washington examiner, one writer was critical of the fact that you did not include one very prolific diarist, and that was james k. Polk. How does he end up on your cutting room floor . Craig first of all, a diary is not a book. I relied on president ial diaries often. John quincy adams wrote wonderful diaries. James garfield wrote wonderful diaries. From garfields diaries, he was talking about civil war books like grants and shermans. Diaries are good sources. But i wanted my book to tell a real story and to be a coherent book. To do that, i had to make cuts. There have been a lot of president s, and they have written a lot of things. But what interested me was the story of their books and how important their books have been to American History. So i focused on their books, what they were reading, president s reading other president s. When i made those kinds of choices to tell the best story, no offense to poke, but his to polk, but his story is not one of the best stories. I did not want to waste pages on it. So having spent 10 years with president ial books if you have a favorite or if people havent spent much time with them, wheres a good place to start . Craig i like Calvin Coolidges autobiography. It came out in 1929. I dont believe it is in print anymore, though somebody should really change that. It is a wonderfully personal book. We talked about ulysses s. Grant , his bow, with so much history that did not change his legacy. So many president s have followed that approach, i got to list every fight i was in an say why and say why i was right in every one of those fights. Calvin coolidge did not do that. His book is a sixth as long as grants. It is a wonderfully personal volume. The example that stood out to me and what made it such a celebrated book in 1929 when it came out, centers on Calvin Coolidges son. Calvin coolidges son died while he was in the white house. He developed a blister while playing on the white house lawn. In the era before antibiotics, that blister became infected and it killed him. Americans knew that story because they knew the white house and followed along and listened to calvin juniors funeral on the radio. But once the book came out, Calvin Coolidge was able to tell his side of the story. And what he told was, i was the most powerful person in america and i had no power to save my son dying right before me. Any parent, any child can relate to that story. That is a sort of the presidency, but also of being a human being. That is what coolidge did in his brief and wonderfully written book, he told the personal stories that said what it was like to be president. I think that is what our president s should do in their books. That is what i try to do in my book, show that personal side. If more president s looked to coolidge as a literary model, i think we would be better off as readers. The book is called author in authors in chief. It has been a pleasure to spend time with you. Thank you for spending an hour with cspan. Craig it has been a pleasure. Thank you so much. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] all q a programs are available on our website or as a podcast on cspan. Org. Announcer sunday night on q a, Catholic University Political Science professor, matthew eene, on the careers of notable speakers of the u. S. House of representatives. That is sunday, february 23 at 8 00 p. M. Eastern and pacific time. Announcer tonight at 8 00 p. M. On cspan, a conversation on writing president ial speeches with craig smith, a speechwriter for resident george h. W. Bush. You can also watch online or listen on our free