lance morrow in your newest book, the noise of typewriters, you describe henry luce as perhaps the most important journalist of the 20th century. why do you say that? well, for three or four reasons. he was a he was a tremendous journalist in his own right. he in the in what was the golden age of magazine reads, which was roughly from the early twenties to the seventies. he was a genius at inventing new forms of magazines. he and his partner, britton hatton, with whom he founded time magazine, invented a whole new the news magazine and a whole new form of sort of magazine in 1930. then just as the depression set in, he invented fortune magazine, which was arguably, i would argue. possibly the best magazine ever printed. and then in 1936, he invented life magazine, which became an immensely success or perhaps the most successful american magazine. so in three different directions. he was tremendously creative and inventive. more than that. robert hutchins, who was the former chancellor of the university of chicago and a leading american educator, once said that that luce was the most luce's impact on the american mind was greater than that of the entire of american system of public education. that's an extravagant thing to say. but it was i think it was almost true. he had a tremendous impact upon the self-image of the american middle class. americans are a very self-conscious people to worried about whether they are good or whether they are bad or whether they're they are moral or immoral and so on. and they were particularly so in the luce era from the twenties to the sixties and ed luce functioned. the luce magazines had functioned as a kind of guide commerce, science. and he drove intellectuals, especially intellectuals, on the left, absolutely crazy because they really hated his politics and so on. but he had a tremendous impact on the american middle class and. so i would argue that. i would argue that because of that, events influence during that crucial period in the 20th century, he could be called the most consequential journalist of the 20th century. he's he's mostly forgotten. now, people don't remember him too much, but in the end, he is a he's a thread that runs through my my book, the noise of typewriters. he kind of holds it together. he's i say that he's like charles foster cade in the famous movie the citizen kane and i'm trying to a fascinating character, but he was very consequential. what you're well in the noise of typewriters which is your newest book you write that henry luce told americans who they were and what they thought. you you mentioned his politics. what were his politics? well, he was is his enemy is accused of being a reactionary and even a sort of monster is part of his politics, really? were were moderate republican. he was a capitalist. he was a republican. he was a patriot. he described himself as a patriot. and added that he was a christian. he was the son of a china missionary. his politics were actually the moderate republican he supported, for example. he was a big backer of dwight eisenhower in 1952 for the presidency. he was a principal backer of wendell willkie for the 1940 republican nomination. and this was hardly reactionary politics. it was because of china mainly that his enemies referred to him as a reactionary. but he was, as i say, he was mostly he's mostly forgotten now, but but he he was enormously. an enormously important figure at the time and enormously contrary, especially left wing intellectuals and people who couldn't stand this politics. well, it was in 1941 that he wrote the essay the american century in the in life magazine. does that did that hold up for the american for this century? well, the americans century editorial life magazine was, i think, rather misunderstood. it was taken to be an arrogant kind of proprietary that typically lucy, an overbearing or almost jingoistic statement, but i don't i don't read it that way at all for a time. it did. yes, it bore up. up for for a very significant ways. he he was talking about he was he was interested in the responsibilities of american power in a world that was very dangerous, as in a world that had had seen the rise of fashion and had seen the death of millions and millions of people, had had seen the rise of the japanese empire. seeing the rape of nanking, and had seen the whole of the war, the ukrainian famine, the the terrible crimes of the stalin regime. this was he was thinking of what the responsibility is of american wealth and power. were or how that wealth and power were to be used after the war was over. and mind you, this was 1941, when he wrote it. but i don't i for a period of my life, i couldn't stand loose. and i thought he was a way off. but but i think that he was unjustly. criticized for the american century as, say and and, of course, don't forget, for a long time during the. 20th century, the united states exerted a enormous influence in the world. and, of course, it still does. it it's almost silly to it to shock these terms that his emphasis was. what what should america what? he was very earnest, earnest guy. and very serious minded about america and its duties and responsibilities and so on. and his question was, what how should america handle itself and handle its power in the world? and i think the people who like henry wallace, who was roosevelt's vice president for for a time, and that was a socialist, that sort said, well, i wish he had said instead of the american century, i wish lewis had said the people's century was a pious thought. but luce was interested in power. he was interested in how america should or should use its power. that was his is america's thesis. and the i think i think the american century as ed was unfair treated by there were there were some lines in it that were a little overbearing because as loose sometimes was overbearing but it really was a perfectly intelligent and responsible piece of work. perfy intelligent and responsible piece of work. >> what was your career like at times? lance: i was there long, long time. i was there for 40 years, which was as long as henry luce. i was very lucky. i had the best from the writer's point of view. before 1972, the writers did not get bylines, so that was a pain. but early in my career, the managing editor from 68 on created the essay section. i was lucky enough to do essays for a time for many years. those -- and those, one could express one's own opinions, attitudes and style. i was quite lucky. let's time magazine, before the bylines came in was a little more formulaic. still, it was a lot of fun. time was very hard work. there were very talented people there. i'm very grateful. i sometimes hated it and sometimes bad, i have to get out of here, but overall, i think i was very lucky. >> lance morrow, the noise of typewriters, is it a biraphy, all of the above? lance: all of the above. it is partly a memoir of my career. before that, the washington star. there were a couple of large test cases. john hersey and his famous book was an examination of what happened to a handful of people at hiroshima, when the bomb fell. the incident on the book on hiroshima was described as the best journalism of the 21st century that walter, the moscow bureau chief of the new york times, in 1932, during the ukrainian famine, when stalin took all the food away from billions and billions of people, his performance or nonperformance when he wrote articles praising stalin, just at that moment when he was starving millions of people to death, that was described as the worst journalism of the 20th -- 21st century. i examined both of those cases and i have other essays. it is a sequence of essays about journalism and things related to journasm. i have a chapter on robert caro and his multivolume biography of lyndon johnson, talking about him as a journalist and his tech , and talking about his book called working, which is a wonderful book about how a journalist were, what he does. it is a funny book. it is a combination of thing. i guess primarily, it is an essay. >> you also move into the new journalism. when did that begin? >> they called self new journalism, but i do not think it was new at the time. in the 60's and 70's, a wonderful writer like joe, but also like in new york magazine, at the time, there was tom wolf and norman baylor it was terrific, although flawed. of course, new journalism is as old as journalism. it is an error to call new journalism belonging specifically to that 60's and 70's period. what i talk about those distinctive writers who are a lot of fun and devote a tremendous amount of energy. he brought a tremendous amount of energy to journalism. this is the journalism of wild exaggeration and picturesque to the 10th power. so i talk about all of these care. the book, or not all of them, but a variety of them. i talk about what they brought and how they function. what i am saying is, with the new generation and the new journalism of that time is now the old journalism that i am writing about. the book, its overall effect is nostalgic and i am looking back at a period that is basically how typewriters have gone. not an entirely different way, but in a substantially different way and a technologically very different way from journalism today. >> studio think has the influence that the time magazine had in the 1950's and 1960's? who has that influence today? lance: it is hard to say. journalism has become siloed and tribal eyes. it is like the states that came after a dynasty in china. you have the warlord state of nbc. the time magazine represented -- this is what was unusual. it was said that the greatest of the 1960's was authority, the authority of parents, the authority of the presidency, of teachers, universities, the military, so on. well, the empire of magazines belonged to the world authority that came in to radical question in the 1960's and began to be dismantled. the dismantling of that authority goes on today. what i am saying is that they had in the american middle class. that is what robert hutchins was saying when he said his magazines had more impact than the entire american system of education. people today, to begin with, they do not understand the authority that magazines themselves had because there was no social media. television news was in a fairly rudimentary state. they were extremely important. for example, joseph and stuart were columnists for the saturday evening post, which was a very -- my father was an editor in washington during the 40's and early 50's, and he edited. what they had to say in the saturday evening post was very carefully attended to and it was important. it was very important. the country, the whole zeitgeist , the racial mix, the cultural identity of the country is really quite different. what changed came in the 60's -- 1960's, starting with the immigration act of 1965. it said there would be no longer a preference for white european immigrants, but the doors would be open to immigrants from all over the world. the country began to be much more diverse than it was. more importantly, the 1960's called into question the authority of the old america. henry luce was almost an incarnation or a personification of many aspects of the old america and its culture, and its belief in itself, and its self image. the way america thought of itself. when i talk about the difference between then and now, between the 20th century and first century, you might say they are different countries. the journalism was certainly different, but the deeper down -- peoples sense of the country was quite different. one rarely -- rarely was america not as bad or evil -- heaven knows there were plenty of things going on with what the americans were engaged in elsewhere world. the american self image remained pretty strongly that of henry luce and what he presented in his magazine, up until -- you are getting into 1967, which is when henry luce died. and then in early 1968, you have the tet offensive. it changed a very great deal. it changed the idea that america was winning the war. the first great shock -- well, during the canadian administration -- kenneth -- kennedy administration, there was the bay of pigs. and then the assassination of jfk was a tremendous national trauma. and then, lyndon johnson, getting up into vietnam, getting into urban uprisings. and then the assassination of luther king, bobby kennedy, riots -- this amounted to watergate. this was a transformation of the american self image. what i write about in the noise of typewriters is principally the world before america and the world before that big transformation occurred. >> i want to read a quote from your 2003 book, people. you write that the america in which i was born tended to think well of itself in a moral sense, to think of itself as good in the world. evil is sometimes a matter of generational perspective. that does not mean that people itself changes, only that it is seen or not seen in different light. lance: i think that is true. that goes to a big theme of the noise of typewriters, which is the theme of storylines, of narrative lines. what changes -- storytelling is at the heart of journalism. and how you tell a story, and how you slant a story and interpret a story is critical. the questions of good and evil, or right and wrong get all tangled up in the storytelling. the attitude towards a particular -- towards the facts of a particular story. henry louis -- henry luce was the son of missionaries in china. he was born in 1898. he learned storytelling from the bible. he learned it from the parables of jesus in the bible and then he studied the classics at yale and he was a brilliant student. and the moralism of plutarch the whole business of plutarch and his lives was to find the moral in a life. what he did, he always put a person on the cover of the magazine with the idea that he would examine the life to find the moral, just as christ, in his parables would tell the story, in order to tell the world. but of course, one of the most interesting, eye-opening experiences i had was going over to the middle east in 1988 to do a cover story. i wound up doing two cover stories. there, you had these radically different storylines. i would go up or down and spend weeks, gathering their stories, writing them down in notebooks and just listening to them. to them, 1948 is what they called disaster, the catastrophe . our catastrophe. and then i spent weeks and months talking to survivors of the holocaust, the original israelis. and i would hear their stories and in both cases, the narrative is in the same place. but they were radically different from one another. the cliche is that it is after the japanese movie in which you had different points of view telling the story. this is a great lesson. to me, when i think about journalism, it seems to me that journalism has so much to do with hard facts, irreverence for facts, but then, how you interpret those facts. the difference between the great fathers of history, they tell, only write what you absolutely no to have happen. herodotus said, tell absolutely what you know, what you absolutely know to have happened, but also, tell what people think happened. tell how they interpreted the story, and beyond that, tell their customs, tell their ways of doing things, the ways of getting married, the way of training their warriors and healing their sick. all the details of their lives, so you can understand them and their minds, but i dwell a good deal in this book, on the question of narrative because it is so critical to the business of journalism, and it remains in the 21st century, all you have to do is look at fox news and then switch over and look at the same story being treated to two radically different lines by different sensibilities. one of the things that i do, when i am talking about john hersey and the old argument of whether the hiroshima bomb was necessary, when i am doing is, to a degree, i am examining the narrative lines. i am examining the rather subtle way that john hersey set up the narrative to make saints and martyrs of those upon whom the bomb fell and made villains. in idolizing john hersey, i a, let's go back and examine his intervwi tech, and so on in 1945 and 19 -- was back to 1938 and let's suppose that john hersey had gone to nanking at the time and done precisely the same thing that he had done in hiroshima with 300 thousand chinese killed in an on incomplete atrocious, horrible episode, which went on for we in late 1937 and 1938. 300,000 killed. men, women, children, everybody. if john hersey had gone to nanking and published a book about what would happen, i argue that it is possible that instead of a relatively soft occupation after the war, the occupation of japan, he would have turned american opinion against the japanese for a generation or two. it would have been a whole different story. it would have arguably affect did the alliances and reach because it would have given a very different picture. you see what i mean. i am fascinated by that question. you remember the famous picture that eddie adams to during the tet offensive in 1968, the picture of the colonel, who was the police chief of saigon was executing a young viet cong and he just puts a snub revolver to this guy's head and shoots him in the head. it is. it really affected the way non-americans in vietnam were viewed, but what was left out of this narrative was that a few minutes before that happened, that viet cong, just up the street, they had wiped out the entire family of one of the colonel's friends and had executed them in the way that the romanoff family was executed in the basement. and if a picture of that event, side-by-side with the eddie adams picture of the execution of the viet cong, i would argue that world opinion would have been mitigated. it would have not been so categorical as it was. >> as you write in the noise of typewriters, there are 1000 way of telling the truth and even more ways of lying. the storyteller needs a narrative line and the hope of a laugh has led writers astray, leading them to bear for -- false witness. that afternoon and thank you for joining us on book tv. one author, his or her body of work and your phone calls a longtime journalist, lance morrow, the author of several books as well. he has written over 150 cover stories for time and profiles for that magazine. he is also the author of these books. his first came out in 1984, called the chief. fishing in the tiber was his next one in 1988. america: a rediscovery came out the next year. heart, a memoir came out in 1995 mentioned, came out in 2003, shortly after 9/11. and the best years of their lives came out in 2005. second drafts of history came out in 2006. god and mammon was his book of 2020. we will get into that shortly. we talked extensively about the noise of typewriters: remembering journalism, which just came out this year. we are talking politics, journalism, american society. 202 is the area code for all of our numbers. if you want to send a text budget -- text message, send it to (202) 748-8003. that is for texts only. these include your name and the city you are calling from. just remember at book tv, or our email address book tv at c-span.org. we will be looking at those and just a minute. what is the definition of mammon. -- mammon? lance: well, it is money. it is the impulse to make money. it is greed, perhaps, in that neighborhood. it is that commercial instinct is secular. all of that. it is cotton mathur in a very strange and interesting man. he said that amen must grow to heaven with two oars, that of his spiritual life and that of his material life. and if you pool on one or only, or the other, you will go in circles, but if you pool on both at the same time, you will get to the kingdom of heaven. i suppose mammon is a slightly invidious way of refe