Author jeff, you opened your recent book with this quote from Rick Perlstein the historian. Crosscutting motives and narratives the complexity that defies storybook simplicity that is usually the way history happens. I think it is the most cogent ive ever heard. Rick does a tremendous job himself, and its true no historic event happens in vacuum. Its tied to many other things and that is the fascination in research and writing on the narrative nonfiction history. To read a quote from you as well and this is from 2021 in the cleburnene times review a lt of people no longer want to buy nonfiction to learn things. They want nonfiction bks to reflect what they already believe, books to reinforce their opinions. They want books that tell them everything they believe is absolutely right and that the other side is even worse than they thought. If you take a look at the bestseller list for nonfiction for the last several years, theres three categories generally represented. The first books by political commentators in the public mind with one side or the other talking about how the nation is in danger from the opposition. That america is going to hell. Heres what weve got to do to save the country starting with you watching my network and buying myse books. The second category is religious in nature, how i came to understand gods plan for my life, what god wants us to learn from reading the bible, and of e third category is what i call the magic button. Ten ways you can make your fortune. Nine ways to ensurea a happy marriage. There are fewer and fewer titles represented on the bestseller list that are simply fact filled and look at certain aspects of American History but theres still people who want to read those and its important to get the history down. Thats what i try to do. Tell us then what do bonnie and clyde, david, charles manchin have in common, people that youve written about is there a thread through that . Oddly enough, there is. My goal has always been to write books that capture the sweep of American History from the final settling of the west to the present day. Each of the subjects are iconic. We remember them. A lot of times they want myths rather than facts. Ive always thought the facts are far more interesting than anything. When i pick a subject lets use manson as an example. I wanted to write about the late 1960s in america which in terms of a chaotic time makes today look people when we are all living in unison. To write about that you need to someone or something from that area that will make the readers wantnt to pick up the book and open it. For better or worse there was a lot about the 1960s the culture of the time and of the e things people want to talk about, things people got obsessed with so iou wrote a bok thats really about the late 1960s. Everyone you name is represented in a certain year in america. What people were doing, thinking and believing at the time. Tell me if im wrong about this i find in your writing that you treat your subjects and topics with respect. Maybe respect isnt the right word. Thats what struck me. The worst thing you can do if you want to write a book about an aspect of history is to go into it thinking you already know everything you need to know about it and youve already formed opinions about everyone youre going to write about that are unshakable. People that take that approach or telling the readers what happened, dates and names. I think its important to try to learn how things happened and whyng they happened and what things earlier might have precipitated the events that bring about the twoyear state of crime. If you do that you may not agree with of the people that are the subjects of the book but you can at least demonstrate understanding of what made them become what they were and the readers not only get a better sense of them but a better sense of the time they lived in. If you can do that i think the book has succeeded. I almost felt sorry for bonnie because most of the two years she was in pain from riding around in a forward and undeveloped america. It was fascinating to me you were gripped by it and 5 oft was historically accurate. I wanted to know what they were really like and Bonnie Parker is a poor girl coming from a dreadful slum. Her dream is to be famous, a world famous actor. People didnt come looking for certain actresses where bonnie lived. Sheon was tiny and the brightest throughout her school years but in those school days it didnt matter how smart they were. She wanted things, she wanted attention. And for a poor kid when she got together with clyde into the newspapers needed something to write about besides the depression, heres the romeo and juliet pulling off their daring robberies and highspeed escapes. They didnt rob banks much because they were not sophisticated enough to do it. If we look at them from the aspect of poor kids when they have no other option in life when they are ambitious have to turn to something illegal, that doesnt forgive the crimes they committed. People died. Thats horrible but at least it lets us understand why to them it was the obvious and the only way out of the poverty stricken lives that they were going to be living otherwise. How did a movie and the methodology develop around the corral . Was it that big of a deal . Lets first state the obvious. It didnt happen in the okay corral. Buwhen western history became a thingg in america around the turn of the 20th century in the 1900s, masterson who we remember seeing on tv and who was a gambler and buffalo hunter turned journalist. One he picked was wyatt earp who had a checkered past at best and that fabulous shootout at the corral thats what we remember the guns drawn around all the horses and Everything Else. But what it meant was this was a timeme when the survivors were brought to trial for people dying out of their hands using guns. While they were acquitted the case got great coverage and sent a message out to the frontier before. This meant the restrictions of law had come backo t frontier and were to there to stay. Heres whats important about the trial. The gunfight itself at the okay corral was popular methodology that helped share the story to newspapers and formed the basis of a bunch of movies people still like watching to this day but it wasnt really what happened. How is it that wyatt earp became the wellknown over cavirgil who was the sheriff in tombstone . In his Law Enforcement days, he was one of the deputies that had to do all the work the sheriff didnt want to. His job was scraping dead animals up off the street on the sidewalks, but he was friends with a notorious doc holliday and even in his own times. He looked like this tall, striking, handsome young man who was greatly ambitious. He wanted to be famous and wellknown. After his name had become familiar to the readers across the country in the newspaper articlesh. For the shows that we remember today again the truth is so much more interesting about a multidimensional man who like all of usinab had his good poins and bad points. His only regret at the end of his life was he was about to get famous but hehi didnt make any money out of it. How did it become a town . It was one of those towns across the frontiers of america in that era where there were great mineralits discovered in tombstones case, silver. The apaches had been moved out or at least partially moved out and so the miners came in. The prospectors and when they found a place and they settled in and actuallyy began producing large quantities of minerals, that is when all the businessmen came roaring in. You needed restaurants, bars where they could drink, ladies ofed the evening so they could have a little companionship. And at the towns would spring up and die out within a few years in the Mineral Deposits were used up. Tombstone lasted a little longer than that and its still there but for a lot of people its their chance to go to where the old west still exists. This is exactly what it looked like and the simulated a shootout was exactly how it happened. People loved going to tombstone. What is it like today as a tourist attraction . I say this with respect for the people in the town who managed to survive and even thrive by making use of the things that happened there. For wild west history buffs it is the equivalent oft disneyla. You could go there and meet largerthanlife characters, you ecould have a couple thrill rids so to speak and feel like you are back there just like it was except theres nobody thats going to shoot you in the back. There is no drunken miner staggering around and theres no dead animals in the street. One of the things about the gunfight that struck me is that every western town that you charted and researched had gun laws. There were no handguns allowed in the city limits. Heres the wonderful thing about writing history and reading history. These were the great debates of the day. Government, how much of it did we need and how much of our lives should government stay out of. Immigration, we cant have these people crossing american borders and taking jobs away from real americans and gun control. This is my gun. If i want to wear it in town who are you to san and get the very people today that a sort of idolize the old west as they think we would stroll around downtown with shooters strapped to both sides, they had gun laws. They knew that a combination of liquor, macho tendencies people wanted to prove how tough they are. If you had guns, bad things are going to happen so they wouldnt allow the guns. The nra wouldnt last an hour in the world tombstone. The nra doesnt mention that in the popular literature and yet its a fact. These issues that were splitting america apart in the 1880s weve still got them and the reason we do ways we dont look back at history and see where all this began and that gives us the thread to decide now we have to stop and get some common sense gun laws, laws regarding immigration and we have to have a National Assessment how much is in our lives and we really dont have these debates. We have people lashing out screaming at each other. Hi so 100 years from now our grandchildren say can you believe they are talking about the same things now immigration, gun laws, if we are going to stop we have to go back to genesis this is what we have to do or else we are going to repeat this again. And the life and times of Charles Manson what was your goal without a book so much has been written about him and it didnt come out until 2013. Asked the right place at the right time if it committed the crime he was originally jailed for he was the most incompetent in the history of american prostitution. He was a smalltime car thief. Claiming to be a prophet and handing out drugs to kids who were looking for somebody to tell them what to do locals would have stuck him on a pitchfork and put him out in the field like a scarecrow. But just in the time in American Life where california was where everybody was looking for inspiration i was in college in austin texas and all i could think of why cant i be in San Francisco or los angeles where the culture is great, the music is wonderful, the philosophy is there. Manson gets out of prison and ends up in berkeley california, a hotbed of protest and then goes across the data San Francisco. These were places where young kids flocked. They were looking for those like the beatles had and i found people who knew manson at this time and they would describe they were to preach to the kids gathered around of them hoping they were going to hear some great wisdom. Charlie would call two or three things would seem to be very effective and then he would go to the free clinic where sick kids were just jammed in the lobby and he would preach to them getting his pattern down then he would go back to golden gate and proclaim himself as a prophet. It worked enough with some kids that they decided to charlie was some great profit maybe even some religious figure. He made sure they had all the drugs they wanted and pursued his dream of musical superstardom which didnt happen. Have you ever heard any tapes that he had at the time . I had a son who wanted to be a musician and others formed a garage band before the neighbors asked us to close it down or move. That was the level of sophistication that was never going to happen. But only in that place and at that time could he have gained the followers heated and talk to them into committing a couple horrific crimes that just at that moment caught the attention of the country. Theres a newspaper war in la buying on who would have the most lewd story about the murders today in the National Media hence the Charles Manson mythology with great powers. We remember him differently because of the times he lived in. Thats why i wrote the book. There is an image stuck in my head from 1969 to 1970 of Charlie Manson or susan atkins. Three women who were part of his gang and it stuck there in time. Its very dramatic. I spent a lot of time with patricia researching the book in corona california womens prison. They will never get out because no california governor wants to be the one to let the manson family out on the world. But they remember the whole trial. He writes that fabulous true crime book helterskelter that sold over 9 million copies in the years since. For charlie its what he dreamed of, the center of International Attention and every day before the trial opened and the media came in, charlie, his lawyers and the women who were on trial with him cd for sessions and he said im going to do this today and when i do it i want you to jump up and say this. He orchestrated every step of it. If he had gotten into selling vacuum cleaners instead of crime he might have been a multimillionaire but he had an image and he told them he was going to play crazy charlie, the nutcase until it became so obvious that he was too crazy to be incarcerated for the crimes that led him out. But they didnt see the crazy charlie they saw the calculating. It gives a whole different insight and again why write books about history that dont bring something new that gives a greater understanding. I didnt know much about Charlie Manson before i started. When i finished the book i sure didnt like him or admire him but you had to shake your head and to some of the talent this man had. He knew how to sell himself and he sold himself in blood. What was it like sitting across the table from lesley and patricia . You are not allowed to bring a pad and pen or recording device. They were not going to sit at the same table and talk at the same time. The popular pretty girl i high school, youv to remember shes 20 when all this happened and she still has the little girl gestures when shes talking to you she plays with her hair and giggles and reacheh out to pat your hand like the pretty flirtatiousou girl in hih school would do. Patricia at one point an old woman now who spends her days in prison training rescue dogs to be guide dogs for the blind she will not remind you as you see her of anybody dangerous and she is telling me about stabbing abigail on the lawn of the house on the night of the purest firstmurders and shes rememberg how it doesnt hurt your hand when you stab unless you hit bone and then your hand really hurts. And it went back to the motel d i was trying to transcribe as best i could. Its about three in the morning when i finished i tried to go to sleep and i couldnt. For months afterwards, my wife would wake me up in the middle of the night because i was screamingg having a nightmare about women with knives coming toward me. Its not easy sometimes hearing what people say. But you have to listen to what they are saying. If they are honest enough to come out and tell you these things, then you better not to go i dont want to hear it. You have to hear it and you have to write it in such a way that the reader is sitting right there with you hearing someone tell you this thing. You want the reader emotionally invested because that is when history counts. Thats when it matters when its not a high school textbook. What was the process like of getting into that prison and convincing these two women to speak with you . It was difficult. In some form they will occasionally talk to outsiders because they think if they talk about what they did and admit that they were guilty this would have waitar with the board. Once people feel like they are having a conversation, but somebody is listening, then they tell their stories a little differently. The trick is not to say to someone tell me about this god awful crime you committed. Does it keep you awake at night . People dont want confrontational questions. But if you can say can you help me understand how this happened, what brought you to this point . Everyone wants to explain, and there again is the challenge of the historian. Make people comfortable enough to try to help you understand their viewpoint. It doesnt mean readers. It doesnt forgive horrific crimes but we need to look beyond what happened to why and how. This is how the story really matters. Was your next book about jim jones andpe jonestown a natural follower to the manson book . Ive never really en categorized as the writer of a certain type of history. And i never wanted to be known as a cult writer because i dont think theres a generic type and forot manson and the manson famy there is the similarity and great differences but having written about the late 1960s, i wanted to learn more because again im 18, 19, 20 growing up now. How do we segue from the chaos of the late 60s into lets goag with Ronnie Reagan and the conservatism sweepingsm the country. What has to happen . So if i was going to write about the 70s, i figure there are only two things that would resonate with readers. One was watergate. And i felt theres nothing new i can bring to watergate. Whatever there is about that is there. Buts what happened in jonestown and guyana is the prime example in history is when they get a bunch of followers to do the bidding up to and including killing themselves and dont drink the koolaid is part of the lexicon. I thought could there be something in that and i started poking around and learned two things. First, it wasnt koolaid, it was a cheap knockoff and as many as a third of the people that died in jonestown didnt voluntarily t drink it. If jim jones had been hit by a car and killed in the late 50s, early 60s, he would be considered one of the leaders of the Early Civil Rights Movement in america. How could he have attracted such attention and this time in america, and why would he have driven overseas by bad press decide on this final fetal and historic way of demonstrating his disdain . I was writing a followup book about meone who unexpectedly achieved great infamy and