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>> guest: alex kellner was the name that my uncle, alexander korda, was born with and which he changed when he moved to biewd past as a university student because it sounded deeply jewish. at first he spelled it corda, then he changed it toor >> host: who was sir alex korda? >> guest: he was perhaps at the prototypical film producer -- also film director. directed hit first film at a teenage age in 1914, and directed at least 100 and perhaps twice as many movies during the course of his life and produced i don't know how many, many, many, many. europe, united kingdom, and of course in hollywood, when he was there. he was an affable genius, and being his nephew was a full-time excitement. >> host: what was his influence on you? >> guest: he, your father, and your other uncle? >> guest: well, you know, first of all, an enormous respect for talent of any kind. by definition. people were good at making films, got at recognizing talent, even though they don't share it themselves. and secondly, although they were intense, intense on making the best possible film and intense on making profitable films, they also had a great capacity for having fun and enjoying what they were doing and friendships that came along with their business relationships. they were enormously influential in my life. >> host: what was your kool like? >> guest: well, barring that great unforeseeable episode, the second world war, which sent my father and myself and my mother first to canada and then the united states in the late autumn of 1940, because alex found himself unable to complete three films in england. one was jungle book, the other was bad guy, and the third was hamilton, and the only way to get them done was to go to hollywood and do them. we all went off to california, and that was a huge upset in my life. before that i had grown up in england, thought of myself as english. at six or seven years old. and i suddenly found myself plunged into a new world, which was america, and now to go back to it again from 1945 when i hit 46 after the war was over. so my childhood was in no way difficult, but was a constant succession of ups and downs and changes and moves, that were very unsettling, which is probable my why i stick close to home now. >> host: in your book, charmed lives, a family row monday you rite write that, like my father, alec went to great double to spare the children of his youth while at the same time believing an unhappy childhood was essential to success. paradox sickly, bus we had not suffered he was not able to take us seriously. >> guest: that's true. alec has gone through so much, being borne in hungary in a stage of antisemitism. and the father of the three children die at a quite a young age for them. and then becoming, in his teens, the mainstay of his family, having -- none of you could have -- to make enough money to support his two brothers and his mother. and alex was, in any case, by instinct, a survivor, no matter what happened. first world war, second world war, alex kept going and kept surviving. he loved us very much but didn't take seriously people who had not had the experience of having to scrabble and fight for survival. >> host: why did you not go into the movie business? >> guest: i thought there were not kordas in the movie business to begin with, and the second thing is i could not see myself as having a real talent for movies. struck me the only thing i knew how to do was play with words, and so i became associated with -- became a book publisher and then a book writer. i think that was actually quite satisfactory. i don't think the world needs another korda in the movie business. >> host: you fell into publishing accidentally. >> guest: quite accidentally. never thought of it as a serious profession, in fact not a profession at all. i was a book consumer. never occurred to me how books are produced or why or any of those things. and i came over here after completing my education at oxford to work for my cousin, sidney kingsley, on a book about the hungarian revolution which i par -- participated in a play about it. then i went to cbs as a scriptwriter, which is hard to imagine how grubby that is as a word. like the shape of the longshoreman. you went every morning to cbs, sat in this big room, and waited until you were presented with a book or script or not. and then once they did, you brought it back the next day and then got paid. for me when a job open up in book publishing, it was a huge change in my life because you had a weekly paycheck, a desk, a place to work. because that was such a huge change in my life, my relationship in the place i worked became an absurdly -- i spent 48 years working at simon & schuster, and that's because it was in some sense home. >> host: when did you becomed -- become editor in chief. >> guest: i can't remember. certainly a long part of the 48 years. maybe four or five years after went to simon in schuster in 1958. >> host: when did you leave simon & schuster? >> guest: i don't remember exactly what year. would have been perhaps ten years ago-something like that. i was halfway tempted to try for 50 because it's a round number, and seems a serious episode in life. but my beloved wife, margaret, felt, and i felt, too, that eating out the last two years merely for the satisfaction of being able to say, 50 as opposed to 48, really didn't make much sense. so i left really with no regrets and have never gone back. i have the greatest fond necessary for simon & schuster and all who work there and good real estates with them, but became something i no longer wanted to do. >> host: what does an editor in chief do? >> guest: well, it's like being a company commander, which is to say that you do what all the other soldiers do except that supposedly you do it better and with more experience. it's not a direct order job. you don't tell other editors what to buy or what not to buy, though you may try to influence them to do those things. but essentially you are -- first of all -- >> what was like to work with max schuster and nick simon. >> guest: a deep eccentric and secondly, because they went back to the very beginning of book publishing when they had been at serf, or young people going into the book business in an age when the book business did not, to be frank, have a lot of jews, and they were among the first to confront that. horace wright came slight by before them, and i think dick simon worked for -- who was the alcoholic, uber genius of book publishing in his age, and so they connected themselves to a whole world of book publishing that was utterly fascinating, and they were, as i say, in different ways hugely eccentric and interesting people. >> host: how often is an editor also a writer? which you became. >> guest: well, most editors past a certain age took a stab at writing a book. it's rather like eating out in restaurants and deciding you ought to be able to cook. i don't think very many editors have become full-time writers or written as many books as i have, which i think now i mark at 24 or 23. that i think is probably unique. most people retire from their book publishing careers before they take up a writing career. i did not. i put a toe in the water, writing books, and to everybody's surprise, above all to my own, the first of those books was a sensation, and the second of those books was number one best seller, which is not say i wouldn't want to go back and read them again now. and that did have marked effect on my life, both in producing much more money than i had made before in book publishing, and also, in carving out for myself a kind of parallel universe, one side of it going towards book publishing and editing and the other side going towards writing. and bringing those into focus was -- took many, many years, and difficult balancing act. >> host: your first book came out in 1972. >> money shove system. how it works at home and in the office." the second book, "power, how to use and it get it" and you write, all life is a game of power. the object of the game is simple enough to know what you want and get it. >> guest: i think that's true. that was true then and it's true by the%lpvf÷ way in knowing whau want, there should be some moral basis to it. if what you want is entirely immoral and wrong, then, of course, your life is going to pursue a very difficult pattern. but assuming that is the case, e power for its own sake, but power to do the job we want to do as we think it should be done and to live the life we want to live as we have always wanted to live it. >> host: 1972, writing about male chauvinism. that was pretty cutting edge, wasn't it? >> guest: well, it was. i didn't think it would be. i owe to nan taliz, the fact that book was purchased, and we were all astonished at how i largely due to clay felker, who put a piece of it on the cover of "new york magazine" the hot magazine in town. hilarious cover of a young woman taking dictation and in front of her southeasted at the desk is a big in an absolutely beautiful beautifully cut suit and shirt and tie, and it just clicked in the public's mind as something that they absolutely understood, and it worked in a way which astonished us all. >> host: mike what cord da, in your book "another life --" where did you get the title? >> guest: i got the title by accident because i wanted to call it, sacred beast. and then i thought, no. i can't really do that to these people. though it's true. and so i changed it to the tight -- the title to another -- because it was from the beginning to become another life and because it had been at the beginning another life than the one that was represented by being a korda growing up in the film business, moving to london and growing up not knowing what direct i wanted to go. it was this choice of another life. it was book publishing and editing. >> host: who are the sacred beasts. >> guest: the sacred beasts were jacqueline suzanne, harold robbins, my friend, graham green. ronald reagan, richard nixon, henry kissinger, the people i published. some only them very sympathetic beasts, others not so sympathetic. >> host: a lot of your personal life -- tell me if i'm wrong -- reads like a nonfiction "mad men." >> guest: i'm not a huge watcher of "mad men" but i know what you mean but it's try. and that take place in rockefeller center, and that dovetails geographically, and partly because any office drama will resemble "mad men." all office dramas resemble other office dramas. >> host: a lot of dripping, smoking, extramarital affairs. >> guest: a lot of drinking and smoking, anyway. but, you know, it's not the advertising business. i don't remember in all my time anybody being a very heavy drinker. certainly not drinking while working. i remember a level of drinking when i fir came into book publishing that was astonishing but that was the age of the two martini lunch. i never never done that myself but many of my elders in the book publishing business were that kind of steady, habit waited, lunchtime drinker. the smoking, of course, everybody smoked, and everybody had an overflowing ash tray, and nobody erv thought anything about it. it was a very different world. >> host: we have an e-mail from a viewer and he asks: i enjoyed reading about richard snyder, very well-drawn figure in the book. could you dredge of a few of your favorite memories of his tactics during his rise in sly mon and excusester. >> guest: he was extremely confrontation alaggressive. never confrontational and aggressive with me. and could be very, very difficult. he was apt to say, whenever anybody said they liked their particular manuscript very much and wanted to publish it, how would you sell it to the simon & schuster sales force, and if you can't once that question, wouldn't buy it. he made instant judgments half of the time -- less than half of the time he was wrong, and other half he was absolutely right, and 50-50 is very good average for book publish can. >> host: what do you mean. >> guest: if you're wright 50% of the time you're doing astonishingly well. >> host: during your career in publishing then and today, how has it changed. >> guest: now it's unrecognizable bias it's an electronic business. it's in the process of transforming itself. the book that object with which we're all familiar, into a business that concentrates itself around electronic purchase of a book in a nonpaper and nonsolid form, eliminating thereby the book store, that familiar institution. so it's very hard for those who are outside it, even for those inside it to keep track of what is happening. i would say that behind all the technological changes, the book publishing business is still the same old business it's always been, which i you have to find books that people will read and buy a lot of them. >> host: is it insular? >> guest: no, i'd never say that book publishing is insula. i think book publishing is probably, of all industries, itself can be quoted as an industry -- the most open to other people's ideas, to radical ideas and to ideas which one might not ones self want to live. book publishers have always been open to new ideas and to new ways of writing in a way, for example, that the movie business has mostly not. >> host: good afternoon and welcome to booktv on c-span2. this is our monthlily "in depth" program. this month it's author, book publisher, michael korda, and we'll put the numbers on the screen if you want to participate. >> host: mr. korda is the author of many books, both nonfiction and fiction. of course, here on booktv, we'll concentrate on the nonfiction, and just to give you an idea of the topics he has wherein about, here's a list of some of his knock fiction books, including mail shove system, his first one, power, how to get it, how to use it, charged lives, family romance about the code cord da family. man to man, surviving prostate cancer. another life, memoir of other people, came out in 1999, country matters. the mess sures and tribulations of moving from a big city to an old country farmhouse. you his seeings s grant, the unlikely hero issue came out in '04. journey to a revolution. ike an american hero in 2008, with wings like eagle, the up told story of the battle of britain, 2009, hero, the life and legend of lawrence of arabia, and clouds glory, life and legend of robert e. lee is his most recent book. who is t.e. lawrence? >> guest: lawrence of arabia. perhaps the only hero that anybody remembers of the first world war. lawrence of arabia was bigger than life even before david lean put it on the screen in what was probably the greatest single epic motion picture ever made. and lawrence was a -- an extraordinarily charismatic figure. i was taken by lawrence at a very early age when i read my father's copy, seven words of wisdom, and followed in some degrees lawrence's path. not all of them, of course. i loved motorcycles. i joined the royal air force when i went in military service. i felt that in some respect, lawrence was my guy. that is the impulse under which i went from oxford to the hungarian revolution, following winston churchill's famous remark that is it very pleasant to be shot at and survive it. i thought that was an experience that one should have at some point. much of that comes from a childhood misspent in reading lawrence or reading about lawrence. >> host: in that book, the life and legend of lawrence of arabia, this book is about the creation of a legend, myth thick figure and man who became a hero not by accident or even bay single act of heroism but who made himself a hero by design and did it so successfully that he became the victim of his own fate. -- his own fame. >> guest: the fir modern victim of his celebrity. that's a familiar thing. the basis of which all gossip magazines and all trash television, reality shows, are based. is that people reach a level of fame that not only cuts them off from the rest of the world but at the same time makes them illuminated even when they don't daytona to be. lawrence became somebody who could not step out the door to pick up his bottle of milk without flash bulbs going off in his face. he was essentially shy person and became more than he could bear and joined the royal air force under an assumed name. when he was found us back again under a different assumed name. taking george bernard shaw's name very aptly because shaw was a friend and supporter, and attempted on the one hand to escape from it which was undoable. he was, period, the most famous person in the world. lowle tom-lo owell created a show, lawrence of arabia, which contained motion pictures and photographs and lawrence's write examination music, and played to million around the english-speaking world. so the more famous lawrence became, the more he tried avoid and escape that fame, and the more he tried to avoid and escape it, the more curious the journalists were to find him and dig him out: it's a difficult combination of factors in which to live. >> host: you also say he created his own fame. >> guest: he created it in the sense that all heroes do. that is what achilles did, what ajax did, what hector did. what robert e. lee did. they know, even if unconsciously, will build their fame. they know the image that will be useful for them in the extreme circumstances that heroism calls for. it isn't necessarily that every aspect is thought out and certainly not that every aspect is -- that not the case, but the hero knows how, as it were to make the camera focus on him. for example in lee's battles. if you read about them, you realize that most people who write about these enormous battles in the american civil war, place at the center of it the vision of lee on his horse, even though they may not have seen him. >> host: how do you pick your topics? you have quite variety of topics here. >> guest: i like to write about people who overcome their difficulties, succeed at a very large way, and to somehow balance as best they can the fame and the discuss which they have won. the two things are very, very difficult. it's difficult to become enormously successful or enormously famous. it's difficult to balance that with some kind of a life, and i like to write about people who have gone from a relatively humble position to a position of enormous fame and success, and had to cope with that difficulty. >> host: any of your books published by simon & schuster? >> guest: yes. they were a great publisher of me during the days when i game a novelist, and published queenie, huge best several about my aunt, merle oberon, the actress, made into a television miniseries, and a november about nelson rockefeller and his death. and several other novels, including one about marilyn monroe, called "the immortals" and during that period, various -- very happy being published by them. i think it's probably little uncomfortable in be published by your own house and have to deal with your own colleagues about your own book. so i was not totally unhappy when i left to go to harper collins. >> host: from clouds of glory, the life and legend of robert e. lee," lee had demonstrated his skill at reckon sense. his courage without which no military virtue has meaning and his ability to keep his head when all about him they were losing theirs, to paraphrase kipling. all in all, he was the perfect warrior. >> guest: i actually thought of calling my biography, the perfect warrior, and it's not a bad title. yet i felt clouds of glory, the phrase from the poem so much better described -- because despite lee's defeat, despite our doubts today, to put it mildly, about the wisdom of forming forming the con -- confederacy, despite the question whether he should have continued fighting after failing at gettysburg, that lee had nevertheless that magic quality of self-conviction, courage, and ability to see exactly where he wanted to go and how to get there. he was the perfect warrior. he was good mannered, he was gentle in manner, and yet he was implacable, and aggressive, and bold on the battle feed. all together a very remarkable figure. >> host: this e-mail from john gibson in mobile, alabama: mr. korda was general lee truly a great virginia gentleman? if grant sherman and i dare say mcclellan had never come on the scene and the southern blockade had failed, would the u.s.a. be as divided today as a nation? >> guest: had the southern blockade -- i wonder if he means had the confederacy survive and we ended up as two nations in what form -- >> host: i think he is also asking if grandand sherman and mcclellan had not come on the scene ask the southern blockade, would the u.s. be a divided -- would it about two nations today? >> guest: i am inclined not to think so. one of the things that makes lee attractive it that let was a very reluctant secessionist. in fact he disliked the idea of secession, called it silly, called it anarchy. he often bee moened we were giving up a republic earned by our patriot fathers, and his father was a cavalry commander, and was pushed into secession slowly, very, very unenthusiastically, and eventually arrived there because he had drawn -- in a famous phrase, line in the sand, as early as 1858 or 1859, which was that he could not agree to cede the state of virginia, his home state, attacked by federal troops, and that if and when that happened, he would have to, as he put it, draw his sword. otherwise he would not. so when virginia was attacked, he, with great reluctance, joint the virginia mel lit should, and when virginia voted to join the con fed was si, he assume -- con fed was si, he assumed the rank of a confederate general. once he had made that, he erased in doubt from his mind which is a correct thing for a general to do, and became the most famous of confederate generals and commanders, and i think became the symbol for the confederacy. certainly the symbol that people admired then most and still do. >> host: what was his feelings about slavery? what he a supporter of slavery and was ulises s. grant an opponent of slavery? was slavery an issue with these two? >> guest: always an issue. cannot be erased from the civil war. i would say to do the question separately, grant disliked the idea of slavery, although that was slightly altered by the fact that his wife, mrs. grant, came from a slave-owning family, had her own slaves and that grant's brief experience and failure as a farmer was sustained by the slaves his father-in-law gave him too do the actual work in lee's case, lee grew up in the vast lee family, who extends through virginia, and slavery was as familiar to anything else around him. nevertheless the expressed frequently and certainly very strongly in 1858 and 1859, a dislike for the institution of slavery which he thought an evil in any country where it exists. that does not necessarily mean that lee would have met a litmus test for racial equality in our time. he thought that slavery was a way station towards a better future for blacks. he thought that though freeing them was a worthy ambitious -- amibition, they were not at present suitable to vote or be citizens. so he was not a pair gone of racial equality. however, it has to be said that, a., he would not have fought for slavery. he disliked it. b., that he had the ability to see the slaves as people, not as objects or as potential wealth. he saw them by and large as people, which wasn't true of everybody. he stood up and shaked the hand of a black man who was leaving to pursue a career. he neiled at the commonon rail next to a black man, to the shock of the congregation of his church in richmond. he was that paradoxal figure, man who ended up fighting for something in which he did not deeply believe. >> host: what makes for a goodded it for. >> guest: a goodded it -- is somebody who knows what is wrong with a book and what could be done to fix it, and also knows when to leave things alone. the only thing worse than a sloppy or unambitious editor, who doesn't -- is an editor who does too much. it's a balance. new must do enough but can't take on the job of authorship. you should not change the author's ideas however abhorrent they may be to you. >> host: what was is like to work as richard nikschon's editor. >> guest: he was very, very easy to work with. first of all, he wrote himself. he wrote in long hand on legal pads. and his prose, although not poet tick, was nevertheless very solid and very readable, and he was open to advice and suggestions. he was always willing to listen. i found him a very, very interesting and likeable man. he was the only one of my authors who i ever dealt with who always spoke of himself in the third person so if you had dinner with him, he would say, nixon will have another glass of wine. or if you suggest a change in man you script to him, he would think of it seriously and pantomiming thought with a furrowed brow, and would say, nixon would not like that. it was -- you got to accept that. he thought of himself -- me thought of nixon as a separate creature altogether and referred to nixon in the third person. even at home. even had lunch at his house, he would still say, nixon will have a cup of coffee, as if it was personally normal. >> host: ronald reagan. >> guest: charming man. he was a great pleasure to edit. he did not, i have to say, do much writing himself, although his letters and his diaries and documents are very, very well-written. the book that we published by him, his autobiography, an american life, he regarded as something being done by others. he went over it carefully, or had other people go over it carefully. he was a pleasure to be around. he had a very good relationship with my wife, margaret. he would speak by phone because she is a great horsewoman and a lover of horses, and of course so was he, and they both shared a great interest in pigs. one time we had a number of pigs on our farm and turned out that ronald reagan had been very interested in pigs and never failed going to state fairs to go visit the pigs, and he sent her a lovely picture of him with the winning pig at the iowa state fair. he was a charming man. >> host: canyou tell an episode where he came to the simon and shoe score offices when his auto pie brokinggraph was fin earned and turned to the photographers and waved and said errings hear it's a good book. i'll have to read it sometime. >> guest: absolutely. unfortunately it was true. and he did eventual he read and it like but was not deeply connected. nixon was, nixon started out writing it -- every book himself. certain amount of editing went into it, and a lot of other people's research. even a lawyer. he would stack it in front and take a legal pad and write, and he took some pride in his work. ronald reagan i think was not essentially interested in that. but i remember visiting his office in california, after he had ended his presidency, and he had this magnificent glass cabinet that stretched forever, containing every single saddle that he had been presented with during his gubernatorial, his acting and his presidential career. this wonderful row of western and english saddles, beautifully made, and he was so proud of it. took one down and showed each one and described what it was and where it had come from and who presented it to him. it was quite extraordinary. i describe, i think next book, the fact that when you visited his office, what you got was a photograph of yourself with the president. which is par for the course, i suppose, which he signed because it was taken with a polaroid camera so it could be signed and put in a frame for you. and when he did that, i realized, because i grew up in the movie business there was a mark on the floor of his office, on the beautiful carpet, two pieces of duct tape crossed so that you and he would step to the right place together for the picture be taken, and i thought, that's extraordinary. the man is the governor of california, the man has twice been president of the united states, and he is stale movie actor. he knows where to hit his mark. >> host: did that book sell? >> guest: reagan's? >> host: yes. >> guest: it was disappointing. did not sell as many as we hoped to this day it's actually rather difficult for know say why because i thought it was pretty good but these thing does happen. political books are very risky. you can pay a lot of money for them and mostly they do go nor a lot of money, and you cannot gauge the success of the book by the popularity necessarily of the author. some of them work, some of them don't. it's maybe the riskiest kind of book to publish. generals are much easier. >> host: simon & schuster can p published hillary clinton's second book and all reports are it's not selling well. i if you had been editor in chief would you have advocated for that book? >> guest: the hypothetical is always difficult to. a probably. but probably for the wrong reasons. i was absolutely charmed by meeting ronald reagan and absolutely charmed when i published jimmy carter's book, a government is as good as its people, and i'm sure i was absolutely charmed by hillary clinton, a woman that i hugely admired. so, the answer is, yes, probably, but for the wrong reason. that's often the case with political books. >> host: joan crawford. >> guest: joan crawford. couldn't go wrong with joan crawford. i published joan crawford's book. i had a great time with her. i used to go to her apartment so we could edit it. she, too wrote in long hand, very carefully, and knew exactly what she wanted to say, and she maintained that firm control over everything that was always a part of her career, and i remembered that -- although by that time she had been reduced to quite a large but not impressive apartment in new york city, this was every her husband had died, and she had lost her temporary control of the pepsi-cola corporation, and she took me in one day to show me her closet. in fact it was three or four bedrooms in the apartment. they were completely covered in clothes, all -- each dress in a plastic zippered bag, with a note on it in her hand of the places and date when she had worn it and the matching pair of shoes underneath it. hundreds of them. and going back to -- i don't know how far, and it was just amazing. it was one of those -- you say to yourself, i cannot really be seeing this, but i was. >> host: will durant? >> guest: he was a philosophy student and teacher who set out to write books that attracted the attention of max simon because max not only loves philosophy but also yearned to publish large tomes on philosophy and history, and will durant satisfied that over the years by writing the story of civilization, which i think reached possibly ten very substantial volumes. big volumes over there behind you that might be that same size. i became the editor of the last two or three. >> host: what was it like working with him and did the sell. >> guest: they sold terrifically. the book of the month club determined what would happen to a major nonfiction book, and will durant, as max schuster liked too say, the mainstay, the foundation of the book of the month club. the book of the mock club was founded upon people getting every volume of the story of civilization. i'm not sure anybody necessarily reads them today. >> host: when you were editing reagan, you were also kitty kelly's editor. did that create economy problems? >> guest: it created a brief spat because kitty kelly did a book about nancy reagan, which we published at the same time when we were publishing ronald reagan, and the reagans felt about kitty kelly as one might feel about a hand grenade with a pin removed. and -- but when it was explained to the president that we had a contract for kitty kelly's book and would therefore have to publish it and it was just as it was in the movie studios, contract is something you have to respect. he totally understood and forgave. i'm not sure that mrs. reagan did but he did. >> host: i want to read one more quote and then we'll get into phone calls and e-mails we're getting. this is from 2006, journey to a revolution, a personal memoir in history of the hungarian revolution of 1956. when things get bad enough, men will give a gold watch for a loaf of bread, and women their virtue. war and revolution teach you the relativity of value pretty quickly. >> guest: i think that's true. don't you? there's nothing like extremity of hardship and danger to bring out just how far people will go to survive. and when bullets are flyover head, a gold watch doesn't seem like a big thing to give away in return for some kind of safety. the same can be said for extreme inflation, when extreme inflation hits, then it suddenly takes $100,000, then a million dollars, and a billion dollars, and then a trillion dollars, overnight to buy a loaf of bread, gold watch becomes something that keeps you alive, it's real, as opposed to paper money. i think that's so. we go through life skating along, until we confront something that is on a huge historical scale, and that we are plunged into or go into into -- -- then realize that the scale of values is quite different from the one we ordinarily pursue. >> host: are you a trained historian? >> guest: no. i'm not trained at all. i did study with greated a mr.ation, a little bit, under trevor roper when i was at oxford, who i admired enormously and whose book is superb and hugely readable historical document, exactly the way history should be written. that's a book -- like the armada and the guns of august -- that combines scholarship and story-telling in a way i've always wanted to do. i found my way towards it a little slowly by writing first self-help books and novels. when i started to do the biography, i said this is what i have always been aiming for, what is at the back of my mind, and i'm just going to somehow do it. don't claim any special train organize indeed any special skill at doing it, and i think the biggest project that i'd done is probably cloud0s flowery, the robert e. lee book, it was relatively small and i could deal with english things with a background of knowledge, but i came to lee as somebody who was not born in america and was not a southerner or a confederate sympathizer. and so i had to con front a vast amount of material and somehow make it come out all the same as a story. i think when you write a big biography like lee or lawrence, you always have to say to yourself, however much material you found, how die fit this into a story that people will read from page to payment. not a telephone book of facts but a living story. >> host: carman e-mails from glendale, californias and you poke to this first question a little bit, can you ask mr. korda if general lee ever had any doubts about the cause of the south and the civil war? his second question, were there any letters or diary entries that made him think war wasn't the bess option for resolution? >> guest: let me answer the second question first. -e. lee was a west pointer, 36 years in the united states army. his father had been a very successful general, not so successful after the revolution ary war but successful general, and robert e. lee was a professional soldier. war did not seem horrifying to him. it was what he did. he fought in the mexican american war, he had his doubts about whether that war was good idea, doubts were from very different impulses. but i don't think that lee rode out on to a battlefield and found himself repelled by what he saw. that's not to say he was blood thirsty and not to say he was -- that he war for its own sake, but a professional soldier who is, as we saginaw english, put off by war is a contradiction in terms. that is what we expect -- we expect professional soldierses to want to fight wars and that's how they get promoted. as for his doubts about secession, yes. lee never gave up the dot doubts help disliked politics to begin with. whether confederate or union politics. he had been pushed into secession with the jut most reluck -- utmost reluctance, and yet once he was there, he could not forego his professionalism. he had chosen to commit himself to the cause of virginia, when virginia joint the confederacy, then he was committed to the confederacy and would fight to the end. it's very interesting that when he surrendered at the an courthouse, before he surrendered he said destroy the army, take the weapons with them, and each man will go behind a bush or tree and will fight the union troops all the way to their homes, and lee would not hear it. he was determined to surrender his army intact to surrender their weapons down to the last weapon, except for the side arms that officers were able to carry with their horses. determined to make a professional, complete surrender. the idea of guerrilla warfare, as any provingsal army officer, howeverred him and he would not have the war stretched out to infinity by 100,000 jesse james behind each bush trying to shoot a federal soldier. once he had surrendered, then that was it. the war was over. and he himself, which i thought was very moving, that under all circumstances, whatever we saw, that event might prove and he hoped would prove that god had in mind a restoration of the union, and he immediately put his shoulder to wheel, as the phrase goes to make that union possible, by surrendering completely. when he got home he was in the habit, at first, of cutting off one of the buttons from his gray uniform coat to give to his daughter and her friend -- one of his daughter and her friend, and then he was told, which was correct, that the federal governor of richmond has forbidden the wearing of confederate buttons so he stopped giving them away and removed them from his coat and replaced them with leather or horn buttons. he was determined to live up to the surrender and determined to reunite the two parts of the country after the war. i think lee more than any other figure helped cement the two parts of the country together in the four or five years he lived after surrendering the army of northern virginia. >> host: did he and uhis sis grandhave any relationship in those four or five years. >> guest: not a prior relationship. lee and grant met in the mexican war, but was an obscure captain, and lee was a national hero and then a lieutenant colonel. quite famous, and one of the great heroes of the mexican american war, a war they both disliked, by the way. he came to grant late in his life, grant did not confront lee's army until after gettysburg. and he came to a great respect for grant after the war, when there was a move to have lee tried for treason. grant put an end to it immediately by writing that that contradicted the terms of lee's surrender, and therefore, it could not take place. and in 1868, when lee came to testify before congress, he actually met grant briefly and with great respect each time. so they were not close but there is a huge respect, to read the pages in which grant describes in his memoir meeting with lee at appomattox courthouse, is to read one of the glories of american nonfiction writing. american writing it seems to me has two great stars. in fiction moby dick. in nonfiction, general grant's memoirs. a time when there was no house north of the mason dixon line when there was not a bible and general grant0s memoirs somewhere in the home. that book, to read grant's description of lee's surrender is to be overwhelmed by the dignity of both men and by the respect they had for each other and for each other's army. it's an enormously moving piece of american literature. >> host: in another life you write that general grant was the last from write his own memoirs. >> guest: the last president to write his own memoirs without any help. richard nixon wrote his but he had large numbers of researchers, and helpers in that sense. grant was dying when he -- and also bankrupt. he wrote his moment moyers because mark twain invented the idea of paying grant for the book before it was written. something publishers up to that point had probably never done and paying grant, in modern terms, huge money, and so grant sat down with pad0s paper and a scarf around his throat because of the surgery on his throat, and wrote without anybody's help. wrote this huge, enormous book, gathered the facts, remembered them. it is one of the epic courageous events in the history of literature. certainly of american literature. and did it sitting on the porch of a borrowed house in a silk top hatt, and people came by to watch president grant sitting there, writing and dying. >> host: in your book, the unlikely hero, grant had an extreme almost phobic dislike of turning back and retrace his steps. if he set out for somewhere he would get there somehow, whatever the difficulties that lay in his way. this would turn out to be a factor in making him a formidable general. >> guest: very formidable. grant as a boy would not go back on his steps, and always went at a straight line where he wanted to go. as a general he did much the same thing. the result is he took very, very large casualties quite often. lee was a much more inventive general than grant. first of all, lee was always short or the men, always short of guns, always short of ammunition, short of shoes are short of blankets in the winter, and short of everything, and the confederacy could not supply it or replace it. lee made up for it by an enormous ingenuity and maneuvering he was spectacular. he would advance to the flank, vanish for days, reappear to the side of an enemy. one of the great maneuvererrers and military history help fought his battles where he wanted to fight them. and when he wanted to fight them. and when he got all of those equations right, he won. when he didn't, of course he lost, but but the speed with which he moved, stonewall jackson, march evidence his corps 54-miles in two days before manassas. 54-miles in two days in the middle of summer, from men who were mostly barefoot and carrying their rifles, they're bayonet. a mission, and their powder. that's a huge distance. lee counted on that. he could move like lightning. the german pan sir generals, when they evolved their technique it was to lee and jackson they looked. the germans knew more about the shen endowould valley than anybody does in this country. studied it as if it's was part of their own home. every single town, village, river, stream, hill, they learned in german military staff school. it's quite extraordinary. lee was a enormous genius of -- he had, as i describe it in clouds of glory, the serenity of genius. he relied on that genius, and by and large it served him very well indeed. ultimately, however, numbers tell, and grant's ability to use numbers, his determination to keep on going towards where he wanted to go, those wore lee down. he was forced to retreat again and again and again, until finally he was outside richmond, at which point the war could only become a long and painful siege. >> host: you have been listening to our conversation for the past hour, michael korda is our guest. former editor in chief of simon & schuster, historian, writer, et cetera. a lot of talk about. a lot of topics. won't be able to stump him. we covered a lot of topics, whatever you want to ask, it's your turn now. we begin with david in heap sound, florida, david good, afternoon. >> caller: good afternoon, peter, always a pleasure to say hello to you, and mr. korda, i absolutely do admire you very much. i'm somewhat familiar with your writing. years ago i read a book by ben hect, child of this century, his autobiography, in which he talked about -- wrote about a conversation he had with your uncle, alexander, at the time that israel was coming into existence, and your uncle said to him, and this is as an accurate a quote that i can muster -- after all these years -- if the jews in palestine act up, we will -- we, meaning the british, will exterminate them. that was a terrible thing to say and i've never forgotten it and it's colored a lot -- every time i see his name on the credits in a movie, i get angry because of it. i'm just wondering what you have to say about that. >> guest: let me say, first of all, that i would not trust ben hect's word about anything. so that that quote is very unlikely from my uncle alex to have made. i will not say that as a naturalized british subject he would have been in favor of israel but he was too simple thing at the a perk to factful and caution a person to say anything about the jews in palestine. ben hect i have always thought of as very talented but somewhat a gossipmongerrer whom i would not necessarily take seriously. it's a wonderful book. just don't believe most of the quotes in and it certain my not that one iyou write that you weren't fully aware you were have jewish. >> guest: fully is not exactly the right word ump wasn't aware at all until quite late in life, when my uncle died and my father flew to california to meet me in los angeles for his funeral, and mentioned that he had been searching for a rabbi, and it suddenly hit me, what on earth? and my uncle was man of curious enthusiasms and as we all know, los angeles is a place where people develop very unfarm religious cults. ... develop very unfamiliar villages coals. it struck me as odd that he would have wanted a half-life. i asked about it and finally came to the conclusion that the answer to the question of jesus learned they were originally called for jewish. also not an advantage. my mother's family was firmly english. so i had never -- my mother in fact, long after my father's dad, said today she liked the book very much, but she thought the whole description of my father being jewish was a greater demonstration because he would've surely told her he never did. so she went to her grave thinking my father was jewish. she just thought i was wrong. so i came to accept that instantly explained a great deal about and that would've otherwise been inexplicable. not to say that anyone of them would've ever made an anti-fanatic for anti-zionist statement. quite far from it. i think the answer is we have to somehow place ourselves back in the spirit of the 20th in the 30s, were people coming from part of the hungarian empire and now has become in the 20s of fascist center of europe. people were already exotic, strangely accented and peculiar. there were for no reason to further complicate that. the jewish refugees quote, unquote. they were exotic enough to begin that. so without ever having made the point, they slid into the world being forced to confront that. that's understandable in terms your opinion 20s and 30s. none of them could have been fortunate to say. postcode area code t >> >> not still tennessee. >> caller: mr. korda you say you are a horse person. in 2003 you published a book called horse people. i read it january 2005. but the question is what do you see as a horse person with the future of horses and horse people and a horse culture in america given all the anti-horse sentiment coming from development building boards and environmentalist antivitamin agricultural. >> guest: first of all, i keep glancing up to the right because that is where the speaker is so it is like to hover like angel i should not do that. i am a late in life course enthusiast. tip the scale and whenever i know about horses i have learned from being around her. but that we say you combine a number of different factors. a lot of people who love horses but they are exposed to bad weather or accidents or freezing rain. i'd like the carriage horses being there but as an animal lover i am entirely sure that is a good idea for the animals. but it could be right i've lived no where else that i know of but that has receded but it is not anti-course -- horse that i know of we keep a number of forces -- horse on the property but i do have to say we would be much richer had we not kept them but of the energy and who also be much poor in so they have become a part of my life when. i am sympathetic as long as they are well-kept and provided for in and looked after. i would not want to push them out of the way but major that they were treated well. >> host: you just made history the first guest to talk about the robert e. lee and hunt period revolution the same program. [laughter] >> guest: as a rule there are-- in the winter -- to the winter it is difficult to do because it is so called and circulation is not as good as it used to be but i am a fairly consistent writer had my wife rides every day of the week for her it is the second day of the weak activity. >> host: california. good afternoon. >> caller: hello. mr. korda this is a wonderful interview i have enjoyed it so much i am of a great admirer of yours since "charmed lives" a wonderful overview of them were world. talk about the scale of values what advice would you give to young man graduating from universities today in light of all the madness that is moving the world in decades to come? >> guest: let me save madness has always ruled the world there have been brief periods when two's certain areas our nation's worst table like during the victorian era in the united kingdom. and america after the civil war winter long period not without problems or issues but with reliability and another world war and the cold war but never in the history was there a time where some part somewhere was not in flames instead of taking place forever reasons but the fact that they are taking place right here right now but i would rise in the young people but to keep an even keel. in tissue from past experience as a time when the world is absolutely peaceful. and that is a permanent fact of life. and then on an even keel is what matters when the crisis hits us we will know what and figure out what to do. >> host: alabama. >> caller: it is a thrill to meet you i and stand your the nephew or the son of alexander? evidently i abided late but i did have two big questions for you though. the love your father's in your uncle movies. i am a stickler and it burns me up about copyrights and royalties for one's work not going to the original producers or leased the errors partly because i've a commercial and studio artist full-time. >> host: please get your questions. >> caller: i am a big fan of old warner brothers worked so the studios sold there copyright's with the syndication copies that is not as tragic as full positions. >> guest: i a understand the question. but as of plies two's the teeeighteen may uncle alex sold the copyrights when he wanted to sell them. he regarded his films that his children would carry him into the old age they he did not see so deals were made that led teeeighteen films to ownership -- korda to order shipped via not all aware of. people buy them and sell them and you cannot expect the children or grandchildren to inherit them when they have been sold. >> host: go ahead you are on booktv. >> caller: i am enjoying the interview. >> host: who was gramm green? >> guest: i believe he was on the grade english in the 20th century in the vast body of work but his nonfiction as what he is known for. but i have known him ever since my childhood and he wrote for my uncle alex of film script that was later made into a motion picture and was perhaps the most successful. in those old enough to remember and today as a man of extraordinary charm that was going to say conviction but that is the wrong word. and the catholic who was not able to follow and i owe him a great deal. that in my publishing career i finally became the editor. >> host: you indicated he encourage you to go too hungry during the revolution? >> guest: he thought in the venture was always good for a young man. it was a forceful way he was probably correct about that in the narrow sense of the word. but yes he was in favor of me going for broke he was always in favor of the adventure to step out of the ordinary and love to go to cuba and vietnam and his life was spent on the edge and he was the most lovable. >> host: writers are always outsiders as should be because only they see things clearly. whoevers successful the writer is. >> guest: the other of the patriots and my mother's cousin the arrival of shirley temple everytime their brains pennies from heaven. and he told me that and agreed to take me under his wing and was my first death into paid work as a young man. it bet yet i've never found myself into the world of book publishing. >> host: i was soon two's discover a tendency among book publishers making speeches on public occasions that this is pious nonsense. >> guest: it is. the book publishing industry is sliding into wave for wrasse for people's books are sold h or $9 and electronically and their own authors' works for their work still the publisher and the writer are at the same business that i do think that was entirely true. but they're trying to make money out of what they do. but it is not the same profession. >> caller: please tell us about -- later in life. >> guest: and attempted to tell in the course of the novel the salient fact and about my uncle alex that was a stroke of genius to make her into a movie star. and i could not tell it in a nonfiction way but i needed to get inside and i think i did because the first thing to be said that enormous appealing figure she is talented and very loyal to the men in her life but loyal to people because she is loyal to those who helped her of the way to stardom and that was very rare period. and also enormously gifted that is just wonderful and i had a wonderful time but i had never written a novel before but that is different from sitting down in those days in front of a typewriter and actually trying to write i really did know her and her story so would she have said that are done that? then if the answer is no than he would not have the there. but i remember that with kirk douglas of all people in one that has not been repeated so that is my most six -- successful foray into the realm of fiction. >> host: what was it like to go from novel to miniseries? >> guest: fortunately i was not involved nobody in the room and asks the not there what they should do when they make of miniseries. and i looked at it as an interesting process but not familiar to me because i was a child of the movie business but i knew better than to say that is not the same as the book. llord my uncle alex would not do what douglas just did like going to wait for a country enjoying it but then to go back to revisit uncle pencil --. >> host: pennsylvania go ahead. >> caller: i have two brief questions one is i am interested in the mechanics of your writing if it is longhand or typewriter or word processor? and with the screenwriter and the novelist but you have any stories about that? but there was the treatment based on "charmed lives" it was difficult to do it ever went anywhere it to comment on my abilities as a screenwriter. but i don't think that rating -- writing is separable into different projects. any way that you write it is good weather novels, a screenplay, poetry is all the same you cannot write poetry or screenplays of the issue have a sense of it. ultimately and a buddy who does it is linked into a fraternity or sorority something that sounds easy but it is not when you sit down in front of a page. >> host: michael korda is our guest. >> caller: on the wings of 81 eagles i enjoyed it and you mention serving in the into i aircraft service and in researching that i found very little details you know, more about the character of her service? >> guest: i am surprised you cannot find a lot about it they're plenty of photographs of her and then taught how to repair or change the tires at the place for the anti-aircraft guns were aimed to the mechanical equivalent of the computer into be in charge of that or a part of that. at the early part of the war that with any biography with the service during the second world war. >> host: where we physically during the war? >> guest: during the first part if we are british 39 through 40 i was in london. november 40 through 45 i was in canada then i came back to the united kingdom after the war. well. i remember that my school, which i remember only vaguely was actually bombed with one bomb. no one was hurt, but there was a big noise. i remember us all moving out of one and two a housing data because my father and the will alex besought issue for novel. they believed, as did everybody at the time that when war came he would begin with a german air raid that was flattened blend in and they had actually shown this as the beginning of this movie of the novel. we all move to the country in the days looking to the horizon, waiting to see london. of course we had no idea the first of all they were not prepared to do that but was not close enough to do that. even when they started to do it, wouldn't follow. but there is this apocalyptic vision, from which they had created effectively on film at this rented house made tyer was forced to live in one house but disastrous consequences because there are people who liked their independence and my mother used to go to bed every night scene where is that such a theory. i don't have dramatic memories of the war except during from 39 to the end of 40. >> host: frankie melts into you, since you, sincere with his soul research, i wonder if there's any good history resources online for deselecting handle primary research has what it loved and? >> guest: with? gloved hand. i'm trying to think, i don't think i ever used gloved hands. i am more at ease paper. that is not in any way a condemnation of it at all. i've come late to the computer and i think of myself as quite competent with it. but i am not totally as my son as, for example i found people today are. i would rather like to get a stack of paper and go through it particularly to the records of the war i like to have in front of me than go through it, mark it off. i am always afraid if it's on the computer screen that i was at a rival bill to give back again. if a piece of paper, i know it's there. >> host: carroll is in texas. hi, carol. >> caller: thank you for your program. i think he wants his book in the desert and been there, he is proud of his ability to blow up things, to his expertise with demolitions. he doesn't show any real remorse or in the antiwar sentiment. would you comment on how is this sentiment and mr. morris find its way into the portrayal of head and launch of arabia. the question is how do you square the realty lawrence with a projected on the screen. his unaffected boyish pleasure and blowing things up and his lack of remorse by killing people was wanting to say these are among the things they do is a great warrior inquiry lawyers did not sit around talking about people they kill. he crept into his life later, but not strongly. they were haunted by many, many things. i don't see much evidence that was a huge concern at all. i think that found its way onto the screen because david lee, the screenwriter put it there, but i don't think lawrence would have accepted that at all. >> host: (202)585-3880 the eastern central time zone. 585-3881 for the rest of you. we have an hour and a half left in our program. here are some of michael korda's books we have been discussing. "mal chauvinism." power cannot in 1975. charmed lives in 1879. man to man in 1997. another life: a memoir of other people in 1999. country matters within 2001. "ulysses s. grant" the unlikely hero, 2004. journey to a revolution, 2006 about the hungarian revolution. "ike" an american hero. "wings like eagles" 2009. "hero," the life and legend of lawrence of arabia, 2010. and finally, his most recent, "clouds of glory" came out this year. what book are you working on currently? >> guest: well, i am edging towards -- first of all, i don't want to start soon. i think if i start another long biographical work, i would hope that was a mistake. so i want to write this time a somewhat shorter book. i book. i have to myself writing another book of 816 pages. not the length of "clouds of glory." i think that is outlandish for someone approaching 82. >> host: one of the things i like to do here when we have a "in depth" gascon is find out what books they are reading, book looks influence then. here is a look at michael korda's answers. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> host: and back live with michael korda n >> host: back live with michael korda upon it in depth we continue to take your calls. new jersey were on the air. >> caller: mr. korda your experience working with jacqueline? >> guest: that book was first but the second one did very well. and an entire film isn't she great was made about my relationship with jackie suze in. we got along previously but every reason she was put on hold this voice would come over to say at once the name of the girl who put me on hold and i want her fired. [laughter] she was amazing. she was very nice but could be tremendously difficult she had the only ibm's electric typewriter in the world painted pink and always rode on a pink paper in space and she was amazing. when we published it was the one after republish. once is not enough. the publisher of simon & schuster center red note that read once was enough for us. [laughter] >> host: is the high maintenance? >> guest: very high maintenance. and quite an experience it gives you insight into what was then. of machine they'd would not have had at your desk. and those were the days of a columnist getting on to the merv griffin show and johnny carson tonight what all of that mattered. >> host: this is not typically a booktv topic but so we will tell a quick story. the first night that you met her id new york you tell two's stories that you ended up with her husband's kashmir jacket when you went to dinner with them all the crew of people. >> guest: irving mansfield was so proud as elegant and precious he would pass them around the table to the gatt and admire but suddenly we've got water we doing here? we still had not ordered dinner and we're sitting at the dinner table looking ahead peters shoes so how did i fall into this particular part of book publishing? >> host: what she's popular? >> guest: hugely we paid a fortune and made a fortune but we cannot keep up with their demand. they expected to have the full attention of a large publishing house directly on jackie and her book. and the big publisher into grapple with the notion that was exceedingly hard for her to except. >> guest: who was swiftly? >> guest: practically everybody else's he was a force of nature. and having a checkered by a very successful career one of his authors famously said anybody who counts for anything is irving lazar because he had no compunction but he already had an agent but he was of a wonderful man. and was always kind to me and margaret but he was a vanished breed to get up every morning late around noon go and have a swim in his pool in beverly hills said sitting in his pool he would start to call publishers all over new york city before they just got back from lunch and he would pick up the phone you always have the private number he would say what's cooking? [laughter] and then give me a list of things he would be prepared to say. and then said kirk douglas he would say great. [laughter] and he was an amazing person >> the co-founder of random house with seidman then went on to start the paperback line for the modern library. and still is the modern library and had his own television show as one of the judges on what's my line. and was the biggest rival of simon & schuster. but between random house and simon schuster and those that inebriate that were connected as a word to boston and cambridge. and who were brought into the modern world of publishing and then all the books and crossword puzzles they were very serious they want the best doctors in the best books but you may have to publish commodities to do that kind of publishing. >> caller: hello. very interesting program. i am your age michael. my father i was a five year-old and saw the first radar that i learned many years later with the actual card where that you wrote about in your fantastic book. thank you for that i just wanted to give you that strange tidbit of information. >> guest: thank you. with the years between 1937 and 1940 that was the critical factor to know how many come from which a direction so we did not have to keep aircraft in the air but could send aircraft up when i knew exactly where to go and that what heights to find the germans. that is critical for. in that mention is one of the great allied triceps. >> host: michael korda rules the power rule number one act impeccably. number two's never reveal all your stuff to other people. number three used time and think of it as a friend. number for accept your mistakes still we a perfectionist about everything. number five don't make waves. move smoothly. >> guest: i think number five is very good. mike category willingly goes back to read books. i am not ashamed of anything i have written so those two's the of the test of time for those who tried to get anything done. >> host: please go ahead with your question. >> caller: i read three of your books and i enjoyed them very much. power and "charmed lives" in and hero and they're all different. power was the analysis of contemporary culture and "charmed lives" about your feebly and he wrote a biography. and have you write about what he experienced into biographies of other people? >> guest: interesting question. but "male chauvinism" came out of the upper section that was not a radical two's time and subservient positions in business and other areas under the rule of what we would now call a male chauvinist. so the women of course, had been married men not just on gary and. so it is very powerful. and they're used to having their own way. but the spirit was alive and well but nevertheless the mother was a very successful actress but my aunt is hugely successful actress in her own right in films made by my uncle alex and other people. and actually his first wife was a huge story of success in several european and german foams before the invention of sound which put an end to hear career which she had such a heavy hungarian accent she could not be on sound. there was this reality who made a lot of money because when they came to their careers so finally ended up on my feet with simon & schuster where i got my first real job to the story that the women were submerged there were a couple of exceptions we had a wonderful head of production of 80 who ran the financial side but he would not increase per budget and helen famously followed him into the men's room while he was standing there and explain how she absolutely had to have this money and finally he gave up and said get out of here. but that is unthinkable now. especially wearing a patent suit to a publishing office you may have thought the world was coming to an end. we had board meetings if that should be allowed. all of this was presented the little book world despite the fact that that tradition of "male chauvinism" was still tinkering. it was there and i wrote about a. on things that made me famous. in death of forcing women to become stereotypes. >> guest: i think that is still by and large true. that is true of all of the greatest of motion picture stars is that their careers have suffered by men putting them into the stereotypical role in not giving them the chance of growing and changing and doing different things, for example, is meryl streep's career has been where she spent so many different things. even the best of movie producers at the time when i wrote male chauvinism, did not do that. >> host: jim barr, mercer island, washington. e-mail, what books sell best in america and white plates >> guest: i don't think that ever changes. in fiction, books with a strong story and a somewhat sympathetic , bond girl, which has been number one forever in which i read, as i explained in the west with his reading, except for three and a half, four years have been writing nothing but letters supporters. slam coming back to reading fiction because margaret is said to me when she read gone girl, what a wonderful book, what a wonderful novel. now it is out there in glorious dead. i could pick up gone girl and read it. i told her, you are so right. i could not put this book down. there is an element of likability to the despite the fact that she is in fact vicious and conniving. that for me totally explained the books success. it is a question of her character and her personality driving the book. i think that's always true. i think in nonfiction narrative kinds of books that succeed, one is the celebrity autobiography or memoirs. others fall flat on their face. it is like going to the tables in las vegas and picking a number and you win or you don't. the other however our nonfiction books that tell you how to improve some part of your life. that is a particularly american phenomenon and one which sells millions and millions in whatever format. doesn't matter where they buried e-books, and shame and its sister was virtually created as an ongoing entity by publishing and how to influence people by dale carnegie. they read this book and it will change your life. that book, whatever it is. that is not to say what people want to say is how to influence people. but there will always be somebody who captures that need. >> host: you write that max shuster was writing a copy as far as selling. wonderful, wonderful. it's a somewhat abrasive personality. but he could spout flap copy and advertising copy like an endless fountain without even thinking about it. tonight i walked all the explained to me acrobatics. the he had the strange ability to find in the book but one thing it was that would make somebody want to go to the stores and buy it. it's a mutual talent and not all that widespread. >> host: diana warned, e-mail, given the changes in the industry in the absence of transcends, what is the equivalent of getting a book today for unpublished writers like me? .. >> guest: my feeling is that the internet will lead not necessarily to self-publishing. there will be quite a lot of that, and it will be interesting to see. but it affords a forum with its various internet sites that allows a writer to get their work realize, a chapter of it, by many, many people. and my experience with book publishers is they're now very much attuned to that, and they go to the internet to look for what's interesting on the internet. it isn't coming in a package from federal express or the post office, it's coming on screen from the internet. >> host: the first thing i found on my desk, you write, when i came to work officially on august 11, 1958, was a cast bronze plaque bearing the words, quote, "give the reader a break." [laughter] >> guest: by richard l. simon. i have one on my desk at home. this is vital to keep in mind. you must always ask yourself about anything you've written, is it clear to the reader? when you're in the publishing business, particularly as an editor but also as a book designer, as anybody involved in books must be, you must ask yourself, does it help the reader? give the reader a break. so you want some space between the lines even if it's more expensive, otherwise it's tiresome to read. you want a recent in depth in a nonfiction book. you need the chapter to have a beginning, a middle and an end and to fit into sequence chronologically. you want all of these things. so whatever your satisfied with what you've done, whether you're a writer or an editor and are looking at it spread out, ask yourself have i given the reader a break? that's what we're here for. >> host: each though the time had -- even though the time had not arrived when dick simon and i were to get together over a drink in the office to lure senior editorial talent from other houses, vice president and associate publisher, chairman emeritus of the editorial board, senior editor and corporate vice president, nobody with their heads screwed on tight could possibly believe that an editor's title held anyone genuine significance. >> guest: i think that is always true. i have held every publishing title it is possible to hold, and i am now, i believe, editor-in-chief emeritus of simon & schuster, if you can accept the presence of so dazzling an object in this studio. [laughter] but the truth of the matter is an editor is judged on one thing and one thing only, and that is the books that he or she brings in and how successful they are. now, if to lure them you have to pay for money, fine. if you have to invent a title to make them feel important and part of management, that's fine too. but nobody pays any attention to that. an editor is judges by his or her authors. >> host: like most people, dick snyder, the publisher, credited me with machiavellian deviousness fueled by fierce ambition. >> guest: well, he did, yes. and there's probably an element of me that that's true of, but nothing like to the degree which he thought. i have always found in book publishing that the most interesting thing about it is reading people's books and liking them. machiavellian ambition is not uncommon in book publishing, but i think that that is a factor that is also the less there is at stake, the more people want to have a big part of it so that even though book publishing isn't essentially a corporate business a lot of titles that mean something, i was on a corporate charter of general motors, of course, a failed company, mercedes benz a successful one, nevertheless, pima neuroand want those things -- maneuver and want those things expect will raise them in the hierarchy. the truth of the matter is there's a cleavage, a difference in book publishing between people whose career rests on what they do -- ie editors -- and people whose careers run on running a business, publishing. it's possible to move between these two things. it's possible to share some of those things, but they're quite different way of looking at the same industry. >> host: joseph in pittsburgh, pennsylvania, thanks for holding. you're on with michael korda. >> caller: yeah. hi, michael. >> guest: hi. >> caller: i was wondering why general grant changed his given name, hiram simpson grant, to ewe ulysses simpson grant? why did he change his name? >> guest: well, he didn't, with all due respect. mrs. grant disliked the name hiram and wouldn't hear of it. and when her husband came home and said that the boy would be hiram grant, she chose the name ulysses. actually, she had a kind of raffle, put names into a bowl, and her mother picked out the name ulysses, and he became ulysses s. grant because it was felt that he should have a middle initial. it's supposed that as for simpson in her family, but there's no guarantee of that. in any case, his father continued to refer to him as hiram, and his mother always referred to him as ulysses or lys. and when he enlisted into west point, he was put down as ulysses s. grant which was embarrassing for him because his transcript which was a big deal -- his trunk had the initials h.u.g., hiram ulysses grant. and he very firmly moved to say that his correct name was ulysses s. grant and get away from the embarrassing notion of hug for a young west point cadet. >> host: casey's in new york city. hi, casey. >> caller: hi. michael, thank you so much for your work, and you have such a, an expansive intellect and wonderful mind, and you are a fantastic recontour. and it's so important to have you and people like you as the head of publishing houses, because you select the books that make it out to society. so thank you so much for your work. >> guest: that's very kind of you to say. thank you. >> caller: my question for you is what you think of the publishing industry going forward and whether you think it is on a decline for nonfiction books. and some say that what you did was wonderful in selecting important books, but now publishers are really selecting authors who already have a presence primarily in social media and so that sort of thing. and in order to get your book published, you have to have 50,000 followers on twitter as opposed to whether or not you are a wonderful writer and a wonderful, you have a wonderful book idea. thank you very much, michael. >> guest: thank you. i think there have always been these two strains in book publishing. one strain is the rush for books by celebrities, and that has always existed in the 1920s and even before then, in the 19th century. and the other is the strain to find good and important books, which is more difficult because you have to read them. more time consuming. i don't think book plushing has changed -- publishing has changed much in any respect. i always like to make the point that books were originally written with sticks on clay tablets that were then dried in the sun and sold in a basket with x number of clay tablets. then papyrus was invented, and the scroll came about, and people began to read books with a scroll as they still do, a torah in a sin -- synagogue. and i'm sure there were people who said this is not as good as the clay tablet. the book just isn't as easy to read and isn't as much none on rolls as it was on clay tablets. and in the same way people say today, well, reading an e-book is not the same as reading a real book. but it's only a technological factor. the book is the same book. i was trying to think of a book which has had every one of those technical innovations over the many, my eleven ya, and that's probably -- millennia, and that's probably hamarabi. so it's the same book. however you read it, it's the same book. and that will always be true. >> host: our next call comes from duane in quincy, california. duane? good afternoon. >> caller: hi, mr. korda. i was stationed in munich in 19 1956 with an airborne infantry regiment. we were out on the airport for three days on alert to go into budapest. i was wondering whether in any of your research you ever found out how serious eisenhower was about sending us in. thank you. >> guest: well, i know you didn't get there, that part i know. [laughter] yes, i think people were -- up to a point, and eisenhower was certainly up to a point -- serious about the hungarians. but i think, and i make my point in my biofig about eisenhower, ike was very realistic. he would not confront the soviet union in a situation in which they would be expected to use nuclear weapons. he simply would not do this, and i think he was right. i think an american division crossing the iron curtain to come to the aid of the hungarian revolutionaries would have started a nuclear war. ike wasn't about to let that happen. and i think the hungarians did not expect that to happen, quite frankly. but i would have been very happy to see you guys arriving in budapest. >> host: from your book, "ike: an american hero," ike did not preside over an inert world of ge refrigerator commercials featuring ronald reagan. he presided over a country going through seismic change as it accepted at last what it had refused to accept in 1919: global power with all the associated dangers, temptations and risks. american isolationism, for all practical purposes, had ceased to exist. ike himself had done as much as any man to kill can kill it when he landed in the north africa in 1942 and in normandy in 1944. >> guest: i think that's absolutely true. i am an enormous admirer of ike as a president. i am an enormous admirer of him as a general. where i think he got a rotten deal historically, because his critics came out with book after book, general montgomery, general bradley, everybody came out with books putting ike's role down. in fact, ike was an amazingly successful general and a resourceful one. and operated on a scale which is hardly each imaginable to -- even imaginable to us today. on the eve of d-day, he had two million men and women under his command, i believe over 11,000 ships and 10,000 bombing aircraft all under his command without any need or call for him to pick up the phone b and ask washington in the form of general marshall or president roosevelt what he should do. he was supreme commander. when he postponed the invasion for two days because of bad weather, he did not call washington. he simply did it. when he decided to go, he decided to go. he made up his own mind. he didn't consult churchill, he didn't consult fdr, he didn't consult george marshall. and that ability is what makes him a great man. it is extraordinary, the degree to which ike coming as he did from this relatively humble mennonite background in abilene, from the beginning of his career took on big decisions, made them the right way and put into action what he wanted to put into action, the way he wanted it to happen. he was a hugely successful president. i know he was overshadowed in the end by the brilliance and the youth and the energy of john kennedy. but i think that eisenhower's place as one of the great american presidents has securely been written about and has securely been earned by what he did. and his place as a general is second to none except possible to lee and grant in american history. >> host: and you have gotten to know the eisenhower family through your work at simon and & schuster? >> guest: well, slightly. i know david eisenhower and met him through julie when i was nixon's editor and publisher, and susan eisenhower has become a friend, and a very dear one with. and although -- dear one. and although i never set out to write a book that would please the eisenhower family, nor did it occur to me that they should in any way have a say as to what i wrote about ike, i think that in "ike" they found a book which portrayed ike honestly; dealt with his mistakes, but portrayed him as the great man that he was. >> host: and one more quote from your book on dwight eisenhower: the transformation in the way americans think about their own history has been accompanied by a perceived need to ignore and denigrate dead white males. and since eisenhower is dead, was white and was indiewbtly a great man, his role as a general, supreme commander and president now seem less important to historians than the social issues of that period. >> guest: i think that's very true of american history today. i think american history today suffers from having been, in essence, shatter ored into tiny -- shattered into tiny, specialized areas of knowledge rather than giving anybody a broader sense of american history. and that there is a tendency to automatically underrate people like ike despite their importance, or to see that ike's career was like grant's, a jewel one that he was on the one hand a brilliant and successful general and supreme commander, and on the other hand, for two or years a very successful president. in addition to he was the first commander in chief of nato and the president of columbia university, though i think that last one is one in which he had the least impact. he was a very capable man. >> host: jim is in vera vista -- sierra vista, california. you're on booktv. >> caller: hi, mr. korda, i'm enjoying your discussion very much. i recently read memoir of william tecumseh sherman, and i was amazed at his ability as an author, his ability to capture in one detail the essence of something. and i would like to hear your thoughts on sherman and why perhaps he's underrated by people that are interested in books today. >> guest: well, you know, i feel about that the way i feel about grant's memoirs, that people have stopped reading them, that they have been placed on the shelves as great american classics rather than being realize as a living part of our history. sherman, like most people in the 19th century, wrote extremely well. he was also very smart, and his march through georgia, cruel as it may have been, was a brilliant that brought to an end that war. sherman himself, and i've always liked that, used to say i stuck with grant when he was drunk, and he stuck with me when i was crazy. [laughter] and there's some truth to that. [laughter] but i agree with you, his memoirs are both readable and important. >> host: you list as one of your favorite books leo tolstoy's "war and peace." how would you suggest people to read that? i mean, what approach should they take? should they just open it and start going, or -- >> guest: well, yes. there's no other way to approach a book except open it and start going. i think, though, that you first need to put yourself in the mood of wanting to read something that's hugely expansive and which end closes -- encloses not just an entire world, but an entire point of view about that world. so it is very important not to feel rushed. it is important to approach war and peace in a mood to receive it despite its length. i've never found its length a problem myself, and i have read it both in english and in russian. for me it simply sweeps me off my feet. i would agree that anna karenina is probably the more engaging book. but on the other hand, "war and peace," it is like a beethoven symphony. you can't do it in five minutes, you have to take the time, have the silence in which to hear it and appreciate it, and with "war and peace" you have to take that time and not hurry it and let it work on you. if you do, it will come, and it won't seem that difficult. >> host: as an editor, what would you say to an author when the author would say, oh, it's all written, it's just up here. [laughter] >> guest: those are the famous words of almost every author who isn't going to write a book. no, up here is no good. we don't care whether the book is up there or not, and the truth of the matter is it's probably not up there. it isn't up there until it's down here. what counts is what you put on paper, not what you think. >> host: this is an e-mail from arlene. hello, mr. korda. i worked at simon & schuster, pocketbooks, oh so many years ago. i admired your management style and insight then and still do. your book on chauvinism and your comment on women being molded by their mentors has me curious. i remember an executive secretary to the publisher wielding more power than most men in the building at that time. also in your book "power: the description of a company having to move to another location to insure the removal of an executive who insisted on paying visits even after his retirement," struck a significant memory with me. i love this interview and thank me. i just ordered three more of your books. >> guest: this is already good news, arlene, and i thank you. yes, i think that what she writes is absolutely true. there was a period in time when the, "great man's" assistant or secretary had enormous power, but it was a borrowed power. you couldn't get through to the great man himself, but you could perhaps get through to her in the knowledge that she might perhaps take that case or that proposal or whatever it was to the great man. this was what television was like when i used to read scripts at cbs when i first came to this country. which, as i said, was like to shape up a long shoreman, hoping they would pass something to you because you got paid by piece. [laughter] and the notion of going to see one of the upper level executives at cbs was unthinkable. if you were lucky, you got to have a cup of coffee with the great man's assistant in the hope that she might say a word about you to the great man. yeah, of course that's a form of power, but it's a form of power which rests, nevertheless, on the assumption that the real power is behind the closed door in the office and not at the desk that's outside it. women have changed that so enormously that it's unrecognizable at point. and at this point many of the great and important publishing figures of decision who direct big publishing houses, and for that better, are women. and not a few of them have managed their assistants or their secretaries. that's less true of the movie business where for reasons which have to do partly with stardom and female stardom in particular, the big studios tend still to be to run by men. there are exceptions, i know. but nevertheless, that still remains true. but it's a vanishing phenomenon. it will go. i don't think gender has anything to do with business at all. >> host: mary therese is calling from corpus christi, texas. >> caller: yes. as an aspiring writer, michael, i've found your responses to be both inspiring and fascinating, and i have a couple of questions that are very similar. one, what would be your words of wisdom to aspiring nonfiction writers like myself who are considering writing autobiographies? and, number two, in your opinion, what are the biggest challenges facing a writer in the process of writing an autobiography, perhaps including, you know, any pitfalls you might want to avoid. >> guest: well, autobiography is a different part. i'm glad you asked that question. i have done it fitfully by writing about my family, first, in "charmed lives" and a little bit about myself in book publishing in "another life." and i think that the first thing you have to do is to find a way of telling your story that is she sequential, beginning with the middle -- beginning with the beginning, going to the middle and getting to the end of the book and telling a story. making your life into something that reads like a story even though it's true. and that's difficult, and some people can do can it, and some people can't. the second is that i think you have to force yourself to a certain kind of objective impartiality about your own life. an autobiography is always difficult to read when somebody is trying to rewrite in the history of their own lives and come out looking better than they did in the actual fact. you have to be able to put down the times you were wrong, the times when you were sad, the times when things fell to pieces. and write about it with a certain objectivity. very few people can write an autobiography that is a kind of self-yea-saying book. some books do sometimes work, but it's rare. >> host: you write about the first time you ever approved the use of the f-word in a book. harold robbins. [laughter] >> guest: yes. well, we couldn't say no to harold robbins because he was our number one consistent best-selling fiction writer for many, many years. so what harold wanted, harold got. and when harold finally got tired of having the f-word eliminated from his books and insisted on keeping it in, everybody expected that the sky would fall. and, of course, it did not. first of all, because harold's readers had always been able to put the f-word in where he meant it to be without having to say it on the paper, and secondly, because by that time nobody cared whether the f-word was in a book or not. and i think this is true of a lot that has to do with book publishing, is that people build up this resistance to things, to the use of words, to the use of phrases. when i first came into book publishing, 'em ram london's -- ephraim london's defense of any number of books that were considered unpublishable was a famous legal issue which was taken, i believe, all the way to the supreme court. but within ten years of that great victory, books were being published that would make lady chatterly's lover read like a sunday school tract. so we're always, whenever we find that there's something in our way that can't be done, we nearly always find that when you do it, it's all right. and i don't think anything should be -- people will always say, i remember being told about any number of books where you can't, it's in bad taste. it isn't the publisher's job to decide what's in bad taste. it's the publisher's job to figure out what will sell and what people want to read. not to inflict upon the public his or her own judgments of what bad taste is. it's not about that. >> host: max schuster did not publish albert spear's autobiography. >> guest: no, he did not. but, on the other hand -- well, this will sound like a contradiction. it isn't. the -- i remember telling him what a great historical document this was and how compulsively, yet malevolently readable it was. and max took me very seriously, and he read this long, long book. to be honest, he read sections that i selected for him, but i carefully made sure that some of them included the things that would most offend people in a book about hitler and nazi germany. and what max said was, it's a masterpiece, it's a great, great and important book. he said, i do not want my name on the same book as albert sphere's. now, that's different, and that i understand. it's wrong if all publishers say we will not publish any book that uses the f-word. that's not what the book publishing world is about. it's not for an individual publisher to say i don't want to publish this book. i'm uncomfortable. i'm not saying random house shouldn't push it, i'm not saying strauss shouldn't publish it, i don't want to publish it. perfectly legitimate. >> host: max in indiana, please go ahead with your question for michael korda. a few minutes left in our program today. >> caller: yes. mr. korda, as a war historian that you are, i have a question about the current wars that we're involved with. in your work as a writer and researcher, what is your opinion of the evidence that engineers and architects for 9/11 truth has presented about 9/11? it appears that 9/11 was a false-led, inside job. and i'll hang up and listen to your answer. >> guest: i'm not in a position to comment on that. it doesn't feel like an inside job or look like an inside job to me. i think it was an act of terror and very carefully planned and carried out. and i've not read anything that would convince me otherwise. >> host: frank in arlington, virginia. hi, frank. >> caller: yes, mr. korda, i'm very glad you mentioned president eisenhower and talked about him. i believe he helped to lay the groundwork for the modern, high-tech world we live in by investing a tremendous amount in science and technology. the creation of the first satellite and the defense advanced research products agency, darpa, and other endeavors that really moved along a lot of our, you know, progress in science and technology. >> guest: i think you're right about that. i think that ike -- while he was not a scientist -- was extraordinarily aware of the effect of technology on life and on war. in those terms, it was ike whose enthusiasm for the autobahns in germany caused him to produce our highways which changed the face of the united states. and ike certainly was the most thoughtful person in the world about the atom you can bomb -- atomic bomb. henry kissinger has often pointed out that when he published his book on the atom you can bomb and foreign policy, he went down -- atomic bomb and foreign policy, he went down to ike to talk to him about it and was absolutely stunned by ike's intelligence, his grasp of the subject, his understanding of the subject. i think ike was a very, very smart guy, smart enough that he could afford sometimes to appear not so smart. which is the ultimate smartness. >> host: thomas, santa barbara, california. e-mail: i'm an admirer of u.s. grant and am troubled that his presidency is usually rated among the worst. how would you assess his presidency? >> guest: i make it clear in my biography of ulysses s. grant that i think grant was a pretty good president. he had his limitations, as every president does. but he managed to sew the country together. he failed in terms of civil rights. he tried, but failed. he was a disaster in terms of economic policy. but there was an economic collapse coming anyway, and whoever had been president it might have taken place. but i think grant's presidency holds up as one of the more important presidencies of the united states. he certainly kept us from entering another war, and that was the most important thing for the future of america at that time. >> host: and a follow-up from vince of shelby township, michigan. you mentioned today that grant's autobiography is one of the greatest pieces of american nonfiction writing. does mark twain deserve most of that credit since he edited the book? >> guest: no. mark twain went over the book. he published the book. he found a means of publishing the book that was unique. he created the book club in order to publish grant by sending salesmen around from door to door with pictures of the various leather bindings you could have on grant's memoirs when they were finally published. it was an enormous and imaginative project which changed the face of american book publishing, as i say, invented the book club. he did not, however, change significantly any word that a grant wrote. and grant wrote what he wanted to do. to my knowledge, mark twain never claimed to have had edited grant in that, in that sense. >> host: michael korda, is there an author that you simply would not work with again? because of your experience as his or her editor? >> guest: well, i don't think i'm going to be called to make that decision can unless something truly miraculous should happen. at my age, i'm not planning to make a comeback as editor-in-chief of a major publishing company, even if anybody wanted me to. no. but an author i would not publish, there are authors i would hesitate to publish that would make me uncomfortable. jack abbott, for example. for those of your readers who are too young to have heard of him, he was somebody who had been sent the prison for an ec tended period of time -- extended period of time and on his release wrote a very interesting book called "belly of the beast" about his life in prison and his former life in crime. and a group of american publishers and authors, including norman mailer, labored to get this book published. and in the middle of their laboring to get this book published, which it was successfully, he killed a waiter in a restaurant. i had the feeling then that jack abbott would be a risky person to publish. maybe because i'm more cautious than other people. so, yes, there are people at who i would draw the line, but how and where you draw it is difficult to say. i think any publisher, like anybody else, has to be able to say that's going to be too much trouble, that's going to be too big a risk or, no, i just don't want to involve myself with that perp. >> host: son of sam laws, good idea? when it comes to publishing? >> guest: i don't think it's a terrible idea. i'm opposed to them because it seems to me a somewhat roundabout restraint on freedom of speech. but in point of fact, if the crime is bad enough and the criminal or defendant can sell the story of the book, yeah, i don't think that it's wrong that the victim could get a share of the profits. >> host: who is robert moses, and what was your relationship when you published him? >> guest: well, we published him. i only met him once or twice in my life because i did a book that he wrote about the new york governor -- >> host: al smith. >> guest: al smith. he wrote a little book about al -- very, very good book which for the first time made me see that al smith was more than the perp who disliked -- person who disliked franklin roosevelt and thought he should have run as president instead of fdr. it was a very good little book. he was not only the most powerful person in new york at that time, but he also was one who run roughshod over everybody in his path, including me. so i would, i would have been reluctant to do another book, however short, with him. much as i think he was a great man. and i thought that robert caro's biography of him, "the power broker," is one of the great nonfiction books of our time. it is a wonderful, wonderful book. in its own way, as every bit as good as his multivolume biography of lyndon johnson, and i wait for each volume of that. >> host: next call comes from robert in smyrna, georgia. hi, robert. >> caller: hi. how are you all today? >> guest: hi. >> caller: i was listening to your answer to the lady that called about writing an autobiography. i'm interested because friends and family who know my story say, yes, you definitely need to put this down. i'm nobody. i'm not famous, so i just want to get an answer based on that. do you have friends or family or someone that you know that are not famous that you have recommended that they write their autobiography, and how did that work out? >> host: robert, before we get an answer, what is it about you or your story that people in your circle think you should write? >> caller: well, my wife had a disease which i won't mention, i don't want to, i don't want to take away from people who have that disease. it led to trials actual in the court, problems with work history and the politics of losing a job because of insurance, and then tragedy at the end. but, you know, it's kind of a shocking tragedy. i don't know, maybe they think it would help -- >> host: robert, let's hear from mr. korda. >> guest: let me say that as a truism, i agree with what every book publisher's always said which is everybody has a book this them. whether you can get that book out on paper in a way that will interest anybody else except your mother is a question that will only be answered when you've done it. so if you have a story, if there's something in your high which you think is worth writing about, i am all for people trying to do it. i am tentative on the notion that their hope should be built up that ever one of these books will be -- every one of these books should be published, but i am all for trying. but it has to go on paper, and you have to be able to make it interesting to other people. >> host: did robert capture your attention with his description of his story? >> guest: well, it's a very sad story, and probably a very good one. but can he make it a good one on paper? that, i can't answer. only he can. >> host: michael, denver. good afternoon. >> caller: good afternoon. mr. korda can, big -- mr. korda, a big fan of yours over the years. i'm wondering, i'm just finishing up sally beetle smith's biography of william bailey. i'd like to know more about what you thought about him and also kenny -- [inaudible] the late richard holbrooke's wife who has written about the hungarian revolution for all the obvious reasons. your family's mentioned quite a bit in some of her books. so those are the two people. >> guest: well, i don't believe i ever met william s. paley. he appears in the unfinished novel that truman capote was writing, "unanswered prayers," in a most unfortunate light, but i have no idea whether that's absolutely true or is something that truman ca capote invented. she included my uncle alex and did him great justice, i thought. wonderful book. and she and i were both together awarded the order of merit of the republic of hung agy at the embassy in new york. so i think of her as a comrade in arms. >> host: michael korda, the next call is sam in houston. sam? >> caller: yes. >> host: hi. >> caller: yeah, hi. mr. korda, i'm very much enjoying the interview. and my question refers to a statement you made maybe half an hour ago that had to do with publishing industry has not really changed that much. and wouldn't you agree the burden that's been placed on the author now for self-promotion and doing -- i'm talking about the newly-published author with the expectation that most of the marketing to come from the author as opposed to perhaps in the past when there was more marketing, and i realize there was more money also at that time. but this is a significant change, is it not? and the follow up to that is what then would be the advantage to go with the publisher as opposed to self-publishing if your going to do most of the work anyway -- >> guest: well, there may be none in the future, that's perfectly possible, that people will self-publish themselves on the internet, and then if their book is successful enough on the internet, that it will pass into form as a written book or as an e-book published by minute. may i say that the most -- by somebody. may i say that the most successful nonfiction authors and even some of the most successful fiction authors have always tended to be very, very clever self-promoters. so that's not something necessarily new in book publishing. i mean, jackie suzanne is someone example of somebody who was a demon self-promoter and, from right out of the box. there wasn't anything a publisher could do for jackie that she and her husband irving couldn't do for themselves just as well. they simply needed the backing and preferred for somebody else to pay the bills. but self-promotion has always been a factor in book publishing and, i guess, always will. >> host: and j.b. is in toledo. hi, j.b.. j.b.? toledo, ohio? we are going to move forward then. >> guest: no? >> host: we're going to move east to william in harper, west virginia. hi, william. >> caller: hello. >> host: please go ahead, sir. >> caller: yes, sir. [audio difficulty] >> host: william, i'm going to put you back on hold. we're having -- not sure why we're having a little bit of problem hearing you. i don't know if you need to move around a little bit on your cell phone and see if that helps a little bit, but we will try again in just a second. this is from fu won, and her e-mail or his e-mail: mr. korda had to have his prostate removed. this resulted in a number of physical problems that he had to teal with. she read or he read your book "man to man." how are you affected by that situation, and was it tough to write about such a personal, intimate thing? >> guest: yes, i think it's very tough to write about that kind of personal thing, and i think that i wouldn't have done it if i didn't feel at the time that it was important to be as open about that as i possibly could. i think that the radical surgery which i underwent in 1994, if my memory serves me correctly, is no longer the treatment of choice for people who have prostate cancer and, therefore, to the extent that we are reaching any large number of people in that situation, i urge them to consider more innovative forms of therapy than that. i, i'm still here. i mean, 1994 is a long time ago, and i'm still sitting around. [laughter] so you can have prostate cancer and survive for a long time. does it take a toll? yes, of course, it does as any heavy surgery does. but then you have to live with that and balance the fact that you're still alive with the fact that you've had a very serious and life-changing piece of surgery. >> host: what do you miss most about going to simon & schuster every day? >> guest: i miss walking past the skating rink in rockefeller center. [laughter] i worked for 48 years in rockefeller center and deeply as i admire simon & schuster, i've no wish to come back because it's a different place full of different people, and at some point when you leave, when you take your stuff with you and get out, you ought not to go back. but i miss that daily movement among large numbers of people in this extraordinary place that rockefeller center is. i, there's a grandiosity to it that i find inspiring, and i remember loving it in the days when nbc was really there and you could meet in the coffee shop, gene shalit, all those people as part of your daily life. i thought that was terrific. >> host: and jonathan karp today has your old job. >> guest: yes, he does, and is doing it very well, indeed. >> host: william in harper, west virginia. william, we're going to try you again. >> caller: okay, sir. >> host: yeah, william, i'm sorry. you've got to -- try again, just very quickly say what you want to say. [audio difficulty] >> host: we're going to have to leave it, william, i'm sorry, that's just not a good connection. mike in montana. mike, good afternoon. >> caller: hello. hello, michael. >> guest: hi. >> caller: it's a treat to listen to you. >> guest: thank you. >> caller: yeah, can you hear me? >> host: go ahead. >> caller: i'm wondering about poker. i know nixon was a great poker player. how about grant and lee? did they play poker, and were they any good, do you know? or did they play chess or something? [laughter] >> guest: let me see, i never participated in a nixon poker game, but i've heard he was very good. ike was certainly terrific. lee was a born-again christian, and cards were as abhorrent to him as alcohol and back. and tobacco. so i don't know that his card-playing abilities were ever called for. grant certainly has no reputation as a card player. that's perhaps because his chief reputation is for drinking too much, and it's hard to play a card game you're corruption drunk. [laughter] but i don't know if any record that shows grant as a poker player. lee certainly not. >> host: joanie, by e-mail, wants to know: what do you think of barack obama as a writer? >> guest: i've not read one of his books, so i can't comment. >> host: as a president? >> guest: as a president, i'm no expert on that summit, but i do not -- on that subject, but i do not think he is shown in foreign policy where it matters the steely determination to impose what america wants done in the way, let us say, that dwight d. eisenhower did. and i think that's unfortunate. i am a firm believer that if the united states is going to be a great power, that one of the obligations that comes with that is to use that power wisely and with determination where it has to be used. grant and lee always agreed upon one thing which was that american military force must be used precisely and in great force. and that it must overwhelm the opponent and overwhelm the opponent quickly when it is used and not be spread out in what montgomery always dismissed as penny packets. and when you go to a place hike afghanistan and -- like afghanistan and you scatter a battalion here, a group of men there, even though we fancy they will be in touch, the fact of the matter is you are committing the most elementary mistake in military history which is to scatter your forces in penny packets across the lines rather than concentrating them for a thrust that will make a big difference. >> host: all right. >> guest: on this lee, grant and dwight d. eisenhower would have agreed. >> host: somebody's going to buy one of your books, which one should they buy? >> guest: "clouds of glory," because it's the latest, and i find robert e. lee a fascinating and difficult and very important figure. so i think the answer would have to be "clouds of glory." it was terrific to do it. i do not think i ever want to write a long biography of a civil war general again, nor that my wife margaret would let me if i started. [laughter] but i am very happy to have had this one opportunity to write about him and particularly to write about somebody whom i so admire. i think one of the keys to enjoy the writing of biography is to pick people whom you admire. it's hard for me to imagine writing a long, interesting biography of adolf hitler. even though it has been done and i've read several, i could not spend three or four years inside the mind of adolf hitler. i don't want to, i couldn't do it. spending three or four years inside the mind of robert event lee is fascinating. >> host: the rise and fall of the third reich. a simon & schuster title. >> guest: huge successful came in to joe barnes who was a former new york herald tribune in those days, war correspondent. very nice day. savaged during the mccarthy years and, again, typical of book plushing, dick simon gave him a job when nobody else would. and joe got shire's book. shire's himself had been savaged during the mccarthy years and was unemployable. it was originally called hitler's nightmare empire, and the subtitle was the rise and fall of the third reich. and it had a red jacket in which the title was spelled out in barbed wire. and it was put down for something like a 3500-copy first printing, and nobody had read it. and i remember reading it in galley and showing it to my mentor who was then bob gottlieb, who later became editor of the new yorker and editor of -- [inaudible] and a are stunning, successful publishing figure. and saying, bob, i know it's not your kind of thing, but you have to read this book because it really is much better than anybody here thinks. and he read it, and he came back, and he said, you're right. we're going to approach it in a whole different way. and he and nina borden, our advertising director, came up with putting the subtitle, "the rise and fall of the third reich," as the title of the book. and doing a black jacket with a swastika on it. nobody at that time had ever put a swastika on the cover of a book, let alone a book published by simon & schuster. and there was such a fuss. well, you can imagine what a fuss there was about that, and how much fear, dislike, disgust had to be overcome. but they did it. and the book went on to have a first printing of something like 100,000 copies to become probably one of the three or four most successful books in the history of simon simon & sc. still in print, still read. millions of copies sold in one form or another, still being sold in one form or another. but it is a perfect example of what book publishing is. a, it takes courage. it took courage to hire joe barnes in those days. b, it took courage to let shire, who'd also been fired, write this enormous book. box after box after box, page after page after page. c, it took courage to look at that and say, no, throw away the barbed wire, throw away that title, put the subtitle as the title of the book and put a swastika right where everybody will see it. bookstores all over america phoned up to say or told you are to rep -- told our reps, you can't do this. i can't put a book with a swastika on it in the dead center of the window of my bookstore. i can't do it. and we told the reps, make them do it, and they did. so you can't be a book publisher and pussy foot around. you have to have the courage to do what you think you should. >> host: is there a book that you push for and you just kind of shudder now today that you wished you hadn't? [laughter] >> guest: a book about the fourth -- [inaudible] in south america is one, although i was very fond of a huge nonfiction bestseller. and the big hook in the book was that he had found somebody who had actually seen martin borman in paraguay, i think it was, and had a photograph of him coming out of a building and going to sit down in a café. and we published that book. we published that book on the day somebody phoned from par bay to say -- paraguay to say that isn't martin borman, that's a schoolteacher who's related to me. [laughter] so much as i like -- [laughter] i remember that as one of the sadder incidents. we had probably 250,000 copies of this long book, detailed nonfiction book about nazis in south america. most of which, by the way, was 100% true. and it had the wonderful bit in it about there being a miss nazi south america beauty contest every year which was true, as it turned out. but the one thing we had that was wrong was this photograph of martin borman, and it wasn't him. so it just shows, you make that kind of mistake, there's nothing to be done about it except close your eyes, hold your silence for a moment or two and then get on with the next book. >> host: miss nazi south america. [laughter] >> guest: miss nazi south america. >> host: mark in california, we have about 30 seconds left. >> caller: yes. i'd like to say i know a lot of people don't think there's much value in books that are read by the author, but when i heard colin powell and senator obama's books, i just thought they were the best way anybody could really even take that book in. the question i have for you, by the way, is like washington, ike was a spymaster. do you think ike would know how to deal with somebody like piewten who is working right out of the soviet playbook? a lot of people think putin is reacting to the containment we're trying to put on him, but i'd like to see what his opinion would be. >> guest: i think ike could deal with him. he dealt with kruschev, with stalin, he could certainly deal with putin. and i would say, yes, he was certainly a man who was a spimaster and -- spymaster and knew how to use spies. >> host: books on tape or audio books? >> guest: i'm all for it. i've only recorded one of them myself. i can't remember which of my books it was, i think it was probably "country matters," a book dear to my heart and my wife, margaret's. but i've found it for somebody who's not an actor difficult and the hardest money i've ever made. i remember saying to my agent, you know, this has been interesting, but i never want to do this again. [laughter] recording, stopping, correcting one's voice, i don't want to -- but i don't see, the way people get a book doesn't matter. if they listen to it, fine. if they read it, terrific. if they read it on their computer screams, good. if they read it on paper, also good. however you intake a book, it's the book that matters. >> host: michael corps -- michael korda's most recent book, "clouds of glory." for the last three hours he has been our guest on booktv on c-span2. thanks for being with us. >> guest: been my great pleasure. thank you.

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