Brilliant at it. I mean, you would take train rides around the country. Six weeks in the spring and fall and he talked about simple language. He said the Harvard Audis think i talk into folksy language, but i know i reached them. Speak softly and carry a big stick. It summed up his entire administration. He then gave Maxwell House a slogan good until the very next stop. He was able with his relationship, but he was so interesting. He had a mida shave. When the barbarous shaving hand he is answering their questions and they say the barber has to keep up with him as hes moving around. He understood the press was an important channel for him to reach the public and so he would read their articles ahead of time. Investigative reporters would be able to criticize him. They would criticize them. He didnt have the relationship of the press that he had so the president was drifting and the progressives were moving further forward than teddy was at the time. It was a desire to be back in office and his feeling that he had to keep that pressure on the conservative ideology in the country that taft wasnt up to the job but he decided to run against him. So you rant against against him and he barely loses the republican nomination so he decides to run as an independent on the newly formed party and while his campaigning he is shot. Somebody shoots right into his chest and he nonetheless go ahead and make his speech even though a bullet has been lodged into him. Why did he do that . Guest is just part of him. It was an extraordinary moment. He was in a car. The assassin did shoot him and it did go into his chest and they said he cant give the speech. He said i have to give a speech so he goes into a green room and the doctor takes his clothes off. He is a big red spot from a blood but he says i can still breathe. I know im okay i can still breathe. He says hes going to to give the speech and he goes in and takes the speech out of his pocket and it was like 50 pages of speech twohour speech and i was folded over and he realized when he took it out of his pocket that the bullet hole had gone through the speech and it had also gone through a spectacle glass case which was the only reason he was not killed automatically. So he gives a a speech and he a speech and he starts throwing the pages down finally they keep coming up to him because hes beginning to get woozy. He says i can tell i finish. He says okay take me to the hospital. Hes in the hospital for weekend as the sustained the rest of this campaign than i thought he might have had a reaction to the shot but it was i that crazy kind of courage that he showed all of his life that he felt compelled to do. He came second in the election. Woodrow wilson is elected in 1912. Taft came in third. You think id have to not become the republican nomination that roosevelt would beat will send . Guest yes do you think so. Think roosevelt was still so popular then that i think yes for sure he would have because roosevelt and taft together got 50 of the vote so i think it would have happened. The sad thing was because he did this i know, you and i know about this guy. The guy that got so into my emotional head when i was writing this book was a man named archie but who had been a military aide for teddy before becoming a military aide for taft and again for what you look for it as a historian or letters and diaries. This guy wrote letters to his his family of a single danny loves both teddy and taft. He was despairing when it turned out, he stayed on with taft and teddy thought it was fine at first and then went teddy started running against him he felt he was born into and he was so depressed he was beginning to lose some of his vitality so taft said you had better take a vacation. He said okay im going to go for a while but ill be back before this heats up. As it turns out went teddy finally announced that he was running against taft archie but says i cant leave you now. Taft says go now, it will be fine, you will be back in time. He goes to europe and comes back on the titanic and he died. For taft it was yet another blow. He said every time i look in the room i think is coming in. I miss him every single moment but those letters are an absolute treasure in showing how taft especially felt betrayed and saddened by his great friend teddy running against him. To me the most poignant part of the book is taft and roosevelt were enemies even though they have been friends for so long so after the election wilson as president. Taft and roosevelt dont talk at all and taft tries to talk to roosevelt that roosevelt ignores them and finally they meet by happenstance in a hotel. What happened than . I was so happy this happen. What happened is when i finished the book up to 1912 i did not want it ended with a sense of betrayal but i didnt really know what the relationship had been like past that. I followed them in 1914, 15 and 16. People brought them together but taft says it was like an armed neutrality. In 1918 teddy was in the hospital with an operation that taft had once undergone any work undergone any wrote them a letter saying i know how painful this is an teddy wrote him back. Its often things a little bit so it just happened than some months later by happenstance they were both at the Blackstone Hotel in chicago and when taft checked in the elevator operator told him roosevelt was in the restroom restaurant eating alone. Taft said bring me down immediately. He walked over to roosevelt and the whole room, 100 people dining in a broom and he says im so glad to see you. They throw their arms around each other and teddy says please sit down and the entire restaurant collapsed. Entire restaurant collapse. Theres a journalist there to record this. I said yes i have my ending and then what happens is only six months later teddy dies. Hes only 60 years old and he dies in his sleep at night and has a private funeral. Taft is an honored guest at that private funeral. He comes and stands at the grave longer than anyone else and tells teddy sister i dont know what i would have done if we hadnt come together before he died. I have loved him all my life. Its ridiculous to say you want a happy ending that you want an ending that sums things up. I couldnt bear the idea of lincoln dying in the end so knowing what mattered to him so much was to be remembered after he died from the time he was young, that was his greatest dream that his story would be told. When i found this incredible interview with tolstoy given to new york newspaper yes it shows he remembered him even then. Tolstoy went to a remote area of the caucuses where they were barbarians who had never set foot outside the apartment where they were living so he was excited to have tolstoy. He said i told him about the napoleon and alexander the great but before i finish the chief of the barbarians stood up and said wait, you havent told us about the greatest ruler of the mall. We want to hear about the man who spoke with a voice of thunder and laughed with the sunrise. Tell us about man, tell us of lincoln. Tolstoy told him everything about lincoln and then said what made them so great after all not a great general not a great statesman. A greatness consisted of the integrity of his character in the moral fiber of his being. Then i knew, heres ending ending for that book. Your eyes looking somehow to make it to make it all come beyrle full circle. So, what is your next book going to be . Right now im doing two things. Im working on what might be potential movies about teddy and taft. They bought the rights for the bully pulpit maybe even a miniseries. [applause] im trying to think about muckrakers as a miniseries. A ida tarbell is my favorite character in the idea of this great female investigative journalist and then the relationship between teddy and taft but for a book at this stage of my life i dont think i can afford 10 years on Millard Fillmore or franklin pearce. Theres no big person to go back too easily so im bringing all my guys in the room at the same time and im going to write about leadership. Thats really what i care about underneath it all. [applause] oh thank you. I just started it. After you finish that book i hope you will do a Great Service for america by running writing an autobiography about your own life because its quite extraordinary. Thank you. [applause] cspan is going to have questions called in from cspan and cspan will now ask from all over the country some questions of doris. Are you ready . Host this is the tvs live coverage of the 14th National Book festival. You are still might appear. 20 to 202 is area code if you want to get in line here as well well be taking questions from the audience as well for Doris Kearns Goodwin live on booktv on cspan2. 202 5853890 east and central timezones 5853891 and for those of you in the pacific timezone and the mountain timezone as well we will begin taking those calls in just a minute. Go ahead and ireland. Live coverage on booktv on cspan2 and we have people in line. We will begin taking those calls as well. Ms. Goodwin thank you for joining us here on booktv for another 50 minutes worth of calls from our national audience. Lets start with this gentleman right over here in line. The relationship between lincoln and Frederick Douglass in terms of bringing the end of slavery because we often in a sense celebrate the emancipation emancipation proclamation and remarked that anniversary but in a real sense blacks were not freed until they were behind the union lines so there is that time in 1864 we are now at the 150 mark when there was a temptation to have a compromise which would preserve slavery in the south and not bring the freedom that Frederick Douglass would want. I guess he was becoming even critical of lincoln in public. So they would have at least two meetings that i know of. The meetings between p. And Abraham Lincoln are extraordinary historical moment. Douglas was the agitator and wanting to move lincoln further. He was the head of the movement and lincoln had to be the political man figuring out how far can i go planned. Some of their early meetings i think there was some tension between them but eventually douglass came to a Great Respect for lincoln and once he finally opened the doors to africanamericans to come in as soldiers douglas played a big role in mobilizing them to come into the army. He was upset that they werent getting the same pay and the same privileges as the whites and they talk to lincoln about that but the great moment really occurs in 1864 when the election of november is coming up and its august. You are absolutely right to republican politicians are coming to lincoln and they are saying to him the only way you are going to win this election because the north is so weary of this war and there are so many people that have died is to get this out to the bargaining table and have peace talks and the only way they will do that is if you promise to compromise on slavery. He will still get the union if you compromise on slavery but no way was even thinking about that. In fact he said i will be in eternity if i turn my back on the black soldiers. He turned those politicians out without a second thought. They thought he would lose the election. He thought he would lose the election possibly but it didnt matter. That was his moment of conviction and what happens is despite the despair in the country about the way the war was going sherman takes atlanta and in september the whole mood changes. He wins the election and who does he want the most at his second inaugural but Frederick Douglas . He brings a man in the first person he says to what did you think of my inaugural is your opinion i want want. Douglas said mr. President if it was a sacred efforts of that relationship between the agitator and the politician had its moments of tension but in the end was an extraordinary positive thing for the men. Lets take another question from the audience right over here. Hi. I was interested that you met with barack obama and of course i know he read team of rivals. I wish you would have read the roosevelt book because my biggest frustration with barack obama has been his lack of using the bully pulpit. I mean i feel whether its health care or syria or any other issues it seems during elections to have that ability to be verbal and inspire people and then you know i just miss that from his presidency. Why do you think that is some also i wish you would eventually do a book about him because i think he has a head full of interesting ideas. You know its a very interesting question i think to ask, to what extent is the bully pulpit today as powerful as it was in earlier times . When you think about it when lincoln was speaking to the contrary the written word was king so the fact that he was such a good writer was very important because the speeches would be pamphlet sized and everybody would read the full speech in the newspaper. If obama were in that time it would have been more suited for him because when you read his speeches they often read better than sometimes the delivery because the teleprompter hasnt been friendly with him in a certain sense and by the time Teddy Roosevelt came along he was perfect for the technology at this time because he was able to speak in a colorful language that made headlines. Fdr comes on an age of the reader with the perfect conversational voice and then reagan and jfk are writes for the age of television. What happens now is even when a president gives a speech on mike earlier times when only three networks would cover it they would break away for pundits sometimes like myself criticizing the speech before its half over. You are only watching your Favorite Channel and they only hear parts of the speech. Breaking news comes in within minutes so its harder to sustain a conversation now on an issue but i also do think the lessons of Teddy Roosevelt a speaking simply and explaining things over and over and over again when he went out on those train trips and i wish obama would go out in the country more and talk in Little Village stations and get the message simply especially on health care to have explained in the first place what it meant to the country might have taken some of the rumors about it away. So i think its harder in this day and age and i think thats part of it but i think learning how to use the bully pulpit and get out of the white house more. Its harder again with all the vices that take place but to be out in the country is the key and that is what teddy did. On those train trips it was incredible. He would stand for hours waiting and waving to people just so they could see their president. Even one moment when he was disappointed because he was waving at a group of people and they didnt respond in any way until he found out there was a herd of cows. [laughter] i think there are lessons to be learned about speaking simply saying your message over and over again, using metaphors that people understand whether the arsenal of democracy or the fire hose or the square deal in knowing you have to reach the masses of the public, not just with the words that you use that might sound better but may not stick as much. We are here in washington d. C. In the next call comes from san diego. This is david in san diego. Hi david. Doris Kearns Goodwin. Caller good evening. I enjoyed all of your books. I wanted to ask you if you have ever thought ever given any thought to writing a history book for high school or even elementary because you have an actor bringing history alive. Its not something that most people young people today understand. Thank you so much for that question. In fact one of my sons Michael Goodwin is a history teacher and an english teacher and so we have talked about the importance of having history at that level be brought to kids. Once you capture them then, for the rest of their lives they will love history. They may not become an historian and he has done a wonderful job in our town in concord. We have all those sites, those revolutionary war sites in all the literary people al alcott and thoreau and emerson. He has created this experiential semester long program where he takes the kids out to all the sides during the semester long program and they become lovers of not only history that anguish and even math science and art because he shows how it all comebacks connects. Education is the most important thing still in this country for opportunity. When we worry about whats happening in the inner cities and when we worry about the fact a lot of a lot of people dont have the same opportunities that they do even in other countries that they are not getting out of poverty education is the key. Thats only one piece of it to make it love in high school the subject has to start much earlier and make them love school. Americas democracy depends on it. Its the most important thing. [applause] i just wanted to thank you for writing your book about the brooklyn dodgers and explaining explaining how about you and your father closer together. My father gave that book to me in brooklyn. He gave it to me shortly before he died and that it brought us closer together so thank you. [applause] i cannot thank you enough for that. Thank you so much. What happened is ken burns did a documentary on the history of baseball and came to interview me and it was a lot about the brooklyn dodgers and the red sox, these two teams that almost always one but almost always lost in the end. These beloved teams so id saw this program. Somebody asked me whether you write about a . I never would have thought about writing a memoir and it meant so much to me because my parents died when i was young. My mother died when i was just 15 and my father died when i was in my 20s. I had never really gone back to my hometown. I eventually grew up in long island but the book allowed me to go back home and meet my old friends again. Most importantly i spend my life bringing peace presence to live to bring my father and mother back to life and bring this team that we loved so much, the dodgers, back to life. As i is that a thousand times the way i think i love history was from my father teaching me when i was six years old the mysterious art of keeping score while listening to baseball games so i could record the history of the afternoons brooklyn dodger game. He comes home at night without letting me know he even knows what the score is and of course he does. I recount every played every inning. He makes me think im telling a fabulous story. Im convinced i learned the narrative of art because i would blurt out the dodgers one of the dodgers lost. There was too much drama in the two hour telling away. I learned you have to tell the story from beginning to middle to end. I have boys and i love the red sox. I sometimes go to those games imagine im a yo