[applause] well i hope youre having as much fun as i am at this festival. You know, i always think of students in college a few of you were in college few years ago as best thing to do is to take the take the teacher not the course. And here i think is thing that is fun is to tack these incredible authors to be in a room with them whatever theyre talking about. The only problem with it this with this festival is theres somebody in every room and you want to be with but today we have terrific people who i think, youve heard from them all at one point or o another Douglas Brinkley written biography about more president s than most of us have ever heard of but also done so many other interesting things including among ga gazillion and great space race so be watching for that. And to give you gossip he has basement, basement studio basement studio envy of john who has got that msnbc, and margaret is trying to make the same deal with the cbc. [laughter] of course great history in 1919 that transformative book so porpght and john who has written so many wonderful so many wonderful biographies former editor of news weekend and many of his know him from his basement studio. [laughter] from morning joe. The assignment today is really to talk about who is your favorite historical figure. I think i want to make that a free and fun thing. So people who have one or two and why, and then maybe later well duet into some other elements that thinking about writing about people that you love. But john why doangts you start us off with your favorite historical figure. Pledgets the way it is questioned often phrased is who would you like to have dinner with, and i us yod to say jesus but that didnt end very well. So dont want that. So so mine is and margaret has a connection here. Mine is Winston Churchill a i wouldnt have to say much. [laughter] so thats good. There would be a very good bed of cigars important to me, and he was able to it was a genuine renaissance man. He was able, able writer usually prolific he was a good paint or. Just a man of parts as i called him largest human being of our time. And my fence is, that listens i take from the most of all is perseverance. Churchill got about one thing right but if youre going to get one thing right adolf hitler is the one to get right. [applause] so if church hill had died in 1938 even into 39 he would have gotten some notices in the New York Times interest british statesman who would said earlier he changed parties three times if anyone can rad it was character to rerad he was wrong about gandhi wrong about inked why and gold starngd and wrong about sidney street riots but by god when the crisis of the time came he was right about world war ii and i think that to my mind inarguable so we can argue but im convinced that we live in a brighter, better world because this man lived and rose to power when he did on the tenth of may 1940. When he became Prime Minister he later wrote that i fell apart walking as destiny in all of my life in preparation for this hour and for this trial i was sure i should not fail. No one else was sure he wouldnt fail. When roosevelt learned about his being appoint ofpointed becausee time difference and fdr used to keep cabinet to work all week and depending on your point of view that was good or bad so cab thet meetings were on friday afternoon and he was handed a note saying that churchill had been called to palace to be called to replace chamberlain and he read it and looked up and said i suppose winston is best man england has even if he is drunk half of the time. [laughter] so to which i quote our own great war time demander in chief is that if that is what had it take i hope they send a case of whiskey to all of our Prime Ministers. Theres a particular book wrote his own wonderful book, there have been many biography but is there for one who want to follow you you say this is the one to read . Well there are one of the reasons he is large for me is because i read william the book, the first volume the last when i was of an age highly impressionable. I actually read i think i was an Early High School day, and one with summer i read the first volume of the last lion, and my future friend evan thomas and the wisemen, and i love them both so much that i reread both sequentially, and ten years later, so i was in a Job Interview with evan for newsweek at the time and i said i want to tell you, i read your book when i was 13 years old. And then reread it. It was just such a great summer and evan said he must have been a real loser. [laughter]. Dipping in and out of great contemporaries where he did portraits of various spacemen and writers. Margaret wonder two favorites . Favor is of weather then euros because i think heroes are a bit dangerous because you sit tend to see him as better than everyone else. Theres a risk by the way if you read about them you find they have causes. The lovely thing about discovering people is discovering how human they are and they are not like us but they are in some various important ways. One of the people that im most fascinated by and love is someone i suspect most people wont know much about and that is someone called bab or from the 16th century. He came from a very small kingdom in central asia and when he was about 12 his brother who was very was out feeding pigeons and he became friends in the so kingdom. His loving family took it away from him so he became an exile and got fed up. At one point he was giving up any points to have a kingdom and move to china. It was truly extraordinary because the fact that he was later it was extraordinary in those days. Those people his this type wouldnt have been literate at all in the kept us personal general journal. He talks about getting fed up and falling in love and then he discovered alcohol. He was muslim but he loved drinking and he loved taking drugs and he sounded like a fraternity boy. He said i got so drunk last night they tell me they dont know how i drove home. I got on my horse and they say i just rode like a maniac. You get this extraordinarily personal voice which i love. Hes not like us. You think what a nice man and everywhere we went he would build a garden and a built beautiful gardens then he would come to delhi and he didnt like the climate that he would build a garden. Wed be talking about gardens and about how beautiful they are and then he said i found out my cook was trying to poison me so i sent her trampled by elephants. Just wonderful contrast. I recommend it. It reaches across the centuries and a translation done by the smithsonian. Its fascinating to remind to their great number of human beings. Something we should do is post these on line so their readers. I continue where the book is. I think i would have had to drink a lot and suddenly be trampled by elephants. Michelle for french essayist was the most symbolized inhumane person coming out of that dreadful century when catholics were killing protestants and vice versa. Hes interested in literally everything. He starts off calling on carriages and he starts writing about different kinds of carriages. He says have you noticed how odd it is that some people smell differently than other people in the waters off at that and any waters off of the flowers. Every once in a while he said i must get back to my subject. He gets back for one minute and then he goes off to these normally civilized and he keeps on saying we tell them, we keep telling those people that live there im not sure we are bringing them anything of the sort. He has this wonderful openness and willingness to question. Between the two of them i think i would like to meet them at some point. Before we drag you into talking backstage about the difference between the ways these issues are seen by historians versus biographers. Could you talk about that for just a minute . Theres a slight cold war sometimes between story or some biographers and we tend to look down on the other. Historians i biographers yes they go on about their feelings but they dont understand the times in the context and biographers say about historians they are so unimaginative and all they do is talk about rate historical times and they dont understand the living breathing suffering human beings in the middle of it. I think we need to talk to each other and i think we do both. Good for situate their people in their times and good historians understand the people who are part of those times. We do have a cold war i think. You are behind that a cold war anyway both sides of that particular divide but who are some people you love to write about or who you would love to have dinner with . Ive been doing a lot of panels on president s so its easy for me to say Theodore Roosevelt who i used to say was my favorite president , franklin roosevelt, they are my stars in president ial history. I just adore reading about both been studying George Washington is another one of my personal favorites but i wanted to pick rosa parks because the reason i pick rosa parks as i was born in atlanta georgia. We lived there when Martin Luther king was my childhood memory was dr. King in atlanta. I was eight years old when dr. King was killed. I subsequently bounced around and i taught history in new orleans and i had a thing called the magic bus. I would take College Students around the country and we would visit history sites. We created one for civil rights tours. We went to birmingham and atlanta studying the Civil Rights Movement but i would go to montgomery and those days there was no memorials for rosa parks. There was one street named after her Jefferson Davis avenue intersected with rosa parks boulevard that i wanted to see where rosa parks lives on december 1, 1955 when the montgomery bus boycott kicked in and she became the mother of the movement. It was the most decrepit underfunded Housing Project she was living in and in her room without exaggerating, her home was the size of the stage. She lived with her husband raymond in this impoverished away yet her integrity level was so high. She didnt go to college but she went to an Industrial School for girls where they taught home economics. It was one of the booker t. Washington Industrial Schools in the south. Then she worked her way and would do things like work as a secretary for the naacp for no money. Ed nixon who is the big kingpin of the railroads, the Porters Union she would file all those things and keep it all but i couldnt believe with rosa parks there was nobody that ive written a serious book about here. Theres taylor branchs volume. There were 200 books on Martin Luther king but nope looks on parks. Wed like it to be an africanamerican woman. She said im not that. I brought like three of my books to her to get my credentials to interview mrs. Parks in all of this and that neither was walking back to the Consulate Club in d. C. Where i was staying and Elaine Steele called me and said i didnt like hearing myself telling you that. You are a good historians. You write a lot. Theres nothing wrong with you so im going to have you spent time with mrs. Parks. I started going with her. I was with her when she got her congressional old metal on capitol hill with the wheelchair. Stay with her on eighth street. I went with her to Beverly Hills where she spent time and i went to detroit where she was a microscopic history on the underground railroad. Your apartment overlook the Detroit River and her apartment was in the exact spot where john brown and Frederick Douglass. I would spend time with her and i would Advertiser Newspapers and show her the newspapers because she would say oh my gosh that orange soda wheeze to drink it because she had a frame of mind only to say the same thing when i read transcripts about number 155. It turned out to be an amazing woman. During world war ii she tried to get africanamerican kids to go into a library and they wouldnt let africanamerican kids in montgomery evening get a book in the library. She sued alabama for the right to vote. She women that were raped in alabama with by white men and was covered up that i started realizing this tamir very christian woman. Later in life she adopted buddhism with her christianity. She used to tell me that i mixed race. Im africanamerican, im scottish, cherokee, creek and she would rattle them all off. So getting that opportunity to write about her and when i turn the book into my publisher i got back you know that you are the biographer what is your darkside . I said there isnt one, honest. She would take care of the reason montgomery roses because she would draft a School Program to teach people and always dressed to the nines, never swore and the only agreement that i had made with mrs. Parks was that i would let her read my book before publication just for error but no editorial comment. She called me, she called my wife and she called me and she said i have one change you must make. I thought, what could i do . You call my husband raymond an alcoholic and he was a heavy drinker but not an alcoholic. It was generational. She didnt like that term. I wrote very well i thought about raymond in my book and so it was one of those things when you get to know somebody there disadvantages about writing a bout a living person is a biographer. You dont want to hurt them but in other cases the experience uplifted my life. I have three kids, 11, 13 and a 14yearold. They all studied rosa parks in school and i get to go to their schools and tell them that you too can make a difference. Stand up what you believe in and stand up against injustice. Great people can be everyday people. I think its important for them to know you dont have to be president s and world leaders. Mrs. Parks is a great vehicle. Thats a great story. [applause] is a think about the impact on young people one of the ways they learned whether its through fiction or movies there was another panel but we will talk about. They are sometimes distorted that sometimes they are true. I dont know how accurate it was but certainly was an inspiring story. Is there anything like that where you think theres a figure that has been wonderfully displayed and you brought that person to life to a world that otherwise wouldnt have known them and thats inspiring . There is very much an example right now which is kathleen graham. When you were the editor of newsweek. I worked with her. There were a bunch of helicopters on the tarmac and the g. I. S had no mr. President thats not your helicopter. He said son, they are all my helicopters. We all worked for mrs. Graham. The other great story is the newsweek would close on saturday night and it would appear sunday night usually in washington. We had an item in the front of the magazine about a sitting senator, not here, that was woefully wrong. The senator had called mrs. Graham on monday morning and let her know that he was not wildly pleased with this. I happen to be in his office. He was the Washington Bureau chief. Mrs. Graham got the call from the senator. She called evan i could hear her voice on the phone. Now i think its meryl streeps. [laughter] evan charmingly but ineffectively quoted phil gramm who had said maam im sorry but your husband this is supposed to be the first rough draft into wonderful mrs. Graham voice. It doesnt have to be so bleak so raw. [laughter] so i think they captured her. Several of us knew her and she would have been beyond thrilled. I just think how much he would have loved that portrait. She was cut out of shes not in that movie and its kind have been needed correction of the record. Is there someone that you think of that has a wonderful historical portrait whether its a novel or movie. Im always worried when we decide to historical figures and interesting enough and tries to update them more. Some of you may have seen the movie with Kevin Costner and Kevin Costner says hes a caring feminist demand which is unconvincing given the times. Maid marian is there protofeminist who insists on women having equal share in whats going on around nottingham. Im a bit worried when we tried it recovered people and bring them up to date. I guess we are always doing at finding people we talk about. One of the things about womens history for example through that we have found women who should be celebrated. The black american women who work at nasa whose contributions simply were not recognized. I think thats a useful thing that history can do is uncover heroics are lost people. For some reason they werent paid attention to at the time. They were the wrong gender or they came from the wrong social class. I think thats something that we are doing a lot of. There are wonderful biographies being written and one that hillary thats all has done about a whole generation of people in england and its very complicated and very difficult. I think she has unlike a lot of historical novelist and filmmakers she has kept very much to the historical records. She has used it and she has kept to the record. I think the book is almost always better than the movie. I will say sophies choice, the book in and the movie were both tremendous. I thought also like kill a mockingbird the book in the movie are both tremendous. It does happen and thats a very happy moment. I thought the movie was good and the book but we are talking about Hidden Figures in history. When you are working on a book you do discover under some figures. You are working on the big person be the other roosevelt than many realize wow the person i should be writing about is and im writing on t. R. And conversation when pinchot is a the name everyone should now put a recently found out the woman figure of Rachel Carson and silent springs but i found the Supreme CourtJustice William o. Douglas who was doing a documentation and ddt and all of this was playing in court. He was an environmentalist but how was he getting this information . Because he was a member of the Wilderness Society which was created in 1935 and he started going all over the country writin