Read . Look, i like anything that Steven Ambrose wrote. He was really a lot of range in in writing. Very good, obviously, john John Mccollough is an excellent historian. It have focused on british history and, you know, these were not all all, you know, histories but, boy, churchill was always worth reading whether its memoirs, whether he had a wonderful little book called great contemporaries written in the 20s which nexton did a follow on kind of book himself. I like to read Richard Nixon stuff. I like to read about Richard Nixon. Fascinating politician of my life and i thought the things that he wrote were really quite good. Did your reading help you in your work as a congressman . It does. History in particular provides a lot of context, a lot of analogies, frankly a lot of understanding because most people when they get to congress they sort of think history begins with them, but youre really stepping into the flow and if you read particularly contemporary history, a lot of interesting not only parallels but background quite frankly to whats going on. You want to understand congress. John berry wrote a book called the ambition and the power. Berry is a substantive writer that what was it . Gosh, 1927 flood mississippi, i think rising tide or something. But he happened he got hooked up with speaker wright before he realized they he was in his last year and he was going to write a book about congress and turned into, you know, the rise and fall of of, you know, speaker wright and theres a lot of characters in there. In that case a lot of people that i know, newt gringrich, guys like west watkins, more consequential figures in the sense that they were close that you read about. Those things are extraordinarily helpful and sometimes when older members are more senior members are telling stories, you know, you know something about the context of the story that it really comes out of. I love al rogers, al rogers has been here since the chairman of appropriations, my chairman, hahs been here since 1980 and when he starts telling you stories about guys that got in the 1950s, its fabulous. Any other books that you would recommend about congress or that yaw read before you took your seat . One of the most interesting books and its not about congress per per say. Its a biography but lynne cheney biography of madison is a good book. This is a guy that in many ways shaped the system, so to speak, in terms of the constitution and in serving in the body in its first term. Hes always worth raiding about. I like these things, again, nixon, is good, im trying to remember johnson series. Robert carl. Those are spectacular. They really nobody knew this institution, the senate, the presidency obviously just the breath of american politics like he did. I had an opportunity to meet him on several occasions. Really, really knew this but i would also say that the biography of of gerald ford obviously because he even though he was a president a very much creature of the house. Maybe joe cannon. I think youre right with luke cannon. Maybe. I think it was time and chance or Something Like that. It was a wonderful book. Youre lost in the politics of the era because this guy comes in the 40s, you know, minority leader, thats an awful lot of history. And years ago i worked for a guy that not enough people remember, they should jack who was a creator of the modern Political Campaign committee at the nrcc and arrived in 1966 and lost republican primary in 92. Youre talking about a guy that understood the institution because he was involved in campaigns all across the country, he was a consequential legislator and delivered nominational speech and pretty cool guy and ability to tell stories, recount institutions, observations, i used to call him moses because he got us right to the edge of the promise land and he had not lost 92 primary he would have been reelected as nrcc chairman and probably did more to bring it on than any single guy. So just you pick up some of the listing of members an some of it reading. When you read the older biographies about john jon or gerald ford and you say, the house doesnt work that way . Obviously house changes with the times. Although there are lots of elements that are the same and i like to think honestly the Appropriations Committee is a Little Island that actually pretty much functions the way it was supposed to. Now that wasnt always true. It went through a rough time but rogers who very much in the best sense of the word a institutionalist, creature of the house, so to speak, has really done a lot, i think, to restore that in the hopes that it can spread more broadly across congress. Theres no question we live in a very divided ideological time and where the ability to arrive at consensus or make a deal or literally, i have a lot of good friends on the other side but theres not that many issues that you can work on like predecessors did. Do you ever read books of Andrew Jackson. [laughter] my grandfather was forcibly removed from mississippi some of the last chickasaws to come out. We were raised with i use today tell people, when i was 5 years old i wasnt sure who Andrew Jackson was but i knew he was a very bad man, my grandmother wouldnt carry a 20dollar bill. So, yeah, ive read i remember when robert was the historian of the house and written a wonderful book on congress, i should have mentioned him, but roy blunt who has a hes a big reader, you should talk to roy sometime. Roy he invites me up and hes chief whip to have lunch with dr. Remini and presents me with a copy of jacksons indian wars and presents rodney with a copy of henry clay biography because rodney, i think it was his great, great grandfather theodore who ran on the ticket with henry clay and actually held the floor against indian removal for three days, so we were both sort of jackson enemies by decent and but it was i remember remini handing me the book saying, now, you probably wont agree with my thesis in this book but i want you to read it and think about it and come back and the argument was basically not that he meant to do it but that, you know n some ways the removal of the five, you know, great tribes of the southeast cherokees, chickasaws, seminole, thats a unique explanation for violating treaty rights and what was effectively ethnic cleansing of the southeast of the country. So as i told him, i said i dont agree with you in some ways but i will say this, i remember having gone at the same time frame we had a festival in oklahoma, a greatgapped father who was the chief of the chickasaw nation. It is amazing. That might not have been the case. We might not have survived in quite the same way we did because we were a large tribe, 60,000person tribe but, you know, you dont have anything anywhere near that size on the east coast and the areas where you obviously had european and then american conflict and contact. What about books on native American History . Oh, gosh. I read a lot of them. Charles manns book is where you ought to start. Its not so much native american. Its 1491. Whats the state of the indigenous population in north and south america on the eve of european arrival and what had happened and the contact was and everything man makes the case that the disease alone was much, much greater in terms of the number of people and indians, you know, whether north or south america always had contact in the sense with whites long before they saw them because disease traveled ahead and decimated a lot of the populations. So thats a good one. I love empire, the summer moon, the comanche nation is in my district, thats a great biography and it was award winner, one of the best biographies. My own tribe the chickasaws. You know, again theres a lot of them. Biography of my great aunt. Lived almost 100. Did First Entertainment in Roosevelt White house in march of 33. Entertained the king and queen of england in 39, performed all over the world. I have to get a plug in for her. Lots of great books. Angie, one of the great historians of native america. A lot of people will be flaf with her biography of geronimo but most consequential about and still the waters flow and oklahoma was opened up to White Settlement and the process and my family owns a lot of our land still but pretty devastating experience for the tribe that it had been removed and effectively had every treaty broken, you know, land allotted up to individual ownership which in many cases were then alluded from them. Its a really tragic tale. Its not that every bad to indians happened 200 years ago, this is early 20th century in oklahoma. So, you know, still a very its a difficult history. Difficult for americans, i think, sometime to get their hands around because honestly, it doesnt reflect very well on either the American Government or frankly the american, you know, treatment of native americans by the nonnative populationist so its a hard history. Congressman coal, do you ever bring authors in to speak to the republican conference or do you ever recommend books . I recommend books all of the time. As a matter of fact every every christmas i have a dinner for my republican appropriators in my classmates. Im going to lose Three Friends this year. But we always buy present and its mostly always a book. I think most popular one was probably unbroken, Everybody Loves that book. Laura yeah. Yeah. Fabulous book. You know, one year i gave them politics is a great book and i think in particular i gave it in 2012. Its the budget crisis and the budget act of 2011 she told me the story. And read the comments on host you had put b. S guest yeah. Well, i cant remember what the story it may have been aimed at the character as opposed to the account. Because i do think, you know, i dont want to be critical of the book. Ive had, you know, i have a wonderful relationship with john boehner but an up and down relationship well, i should say up, down and up. Were in a good place now. And i have a decent relationship with the president on a personal basis. Ive had the opportunity to interact with him. He was wonderful, frankly, in my hometown in the moore tornadoes in 2013. We couldnt have asked for a more compassionate response. If you look around this office, i always joke im probably the only republican that has five pictures of barack obama in his office because weve done hes good on indian things. Most indian legislation is written tends to be bipartisan. Weve worked well with the white house on everything from the cobell settlement which is the largest settlement in American History for mismanagement against indian trust land, had an important provision to expand tribal sovereignty, tribal law and order a act try and, you know, i could january reservations indian reservations are underresourced in terms of police, and theres all sorts of tricky jurisdictional questions to try and work with the those. So, you know, but having said that, i like both these guys, i mean, some of can i think some of the president s observations about john boehner really based on misunderstanding who john boehner was. You could see in that book theres actually a part where he talks, well, i understand guys like boehner, hes a country club republican. Now, i will grant you that boehner looks like a country club republican, and he plays a lot of golf at country clubs, but hes anything but. This is a guy that grew up in a family of 12, hes the only one that got to college, his dad ran a bar, you know . I think he took longer to get through college because he was doing a business. I mean, hes really hes a much different guy. And his story in some ways to rise to the speakership is every bit as remarkable given his circumstances and where he started in life as the president s is which is a Great American story, you know . So i think sometimes it would have helped if that book had been written before and they could have each read the book. [laughter] i think we might have had a somewhat different ending to the story although, frankly, they maintained a reasonably Good Relationship despite the difficulties of the era. So anyway, back to the main point. Obviously, we give books every year to these thing, and its always interesting to see what your colleagues ones that read them. You dont have a lot of time to read. Unbroken was popular, empire of the summer, they loved that one. Did one recently, boy, im blanking on the authors name. Devotions, a fabulous, fabulous book about two american pilots, one of them the first africanamerican carrier pilot and his wing mate who was annapolis, ivy league educated, i think, but from a very affluent family in connecticut still alive. And the africanamerican shot down over korea and these joint missions where they were, frankly, helping cover the retreat from the river. But how close they were and the white pilot all the pilots are trying to cover this guy who had to crash land his plane. He cant get out of the plane, hes trapped in and eventually dies in the plane, sadly. His name was jesse brown. But the white pilot crash lands his plane to try and get can his friend out of get his friend out of the plane. I tell you, its everything from the letter that the africanamerican pilot writes to his wife the night before hes killed is just and its all reproduced in there, photostat of the handwritten letter. Wonderfully clear penmanship. But stuff like that, you know, thats pretty priceless stuff. Host adam makos. Guest yes yes, yes, thank you for remembering. I should be embarrassed to have forgot. That was one of the best books. Said so many great things about country. At a time we still had jim crow, way precivil rights and yet heres two guys and the crew around them on the Aircraft Carrier that they all became friends, and, you know, its a very moving, very patriotic story. Its like unbroken, it ought to be a movie, and i hope someday it is. Host do you read a book a week . Guest you know, it varies. Obviously, it depends on how long the books are. [laughter] so, yeah, on average, probably one a week, Something Like that. Certainly two or three a month. Host on the airplane back and forth to oklahoma . Guest absolutely, yeah. I do very i do two things on the airplane. If im fortunate enough to get upgraded, i keep a journal, and so thats if im several days behind, thats a good of time to good stretch of time to catch up. But usually reading, yeah. Host is that journal for a future book . Guest i dont know. A good friend of mine whos since deceased was rufus spears, and if you ever listen to Teaching Company which has these wonderful lectures, hes got like five different series in there. He was a classical historian, so theres lives of famous greeks and romance, but at the romans, but at the university of oklahoma he wrote a lecture series called the history of freedom and was a specialist on lord acton, Great British historian who had that same thematic flair in the early 20th century. But rufus and i he was a guy that i used to sit down with, you know, two or three times a year, just liked to know what he thought and would seek advice. Is so to not long after i got to congress, or actually maybe even before i got here but id been elected, we went to have lunch, and i said, hey, just want some advice, what do you think i should be doing up there . And he thought for a minute, and he said write. First of all, tom, not many people do anymore. And so it needs to be done. And frankly, do it in hand and not on the computer because the Electronic Technology can get corrupted in ways. So do that. He said you may not be very important when youre in congress, but youll seem important when youre gone, because there wont be very many of these things around [laughter] and historians will look at it. Ive kept journals when i worked for Frank Keating as his secretary of state, and its pretty cool to have written through the Oklahoma City bombing and have that. Its literally that day or the next day and what he was doing in the crisis and what we were seeing around us as that was unfolding. So ive always kind of, you know, sort of dabbled witfor certain with it for certain periods of time. But when i got here, ive been pretty good at it. There are no breaks, its been pretty continuous. Host is it a real discipline to write every day . Guest no, its kind of fun. I usually do it two the or three times a week. You always keep your scheduling card with you because you can bring, boom, whatever the memory is right back. I dont have a certain time or whatever, but im very, very systematic about keeping it up because, you know, i go back and look at it occasionally. Huh, hadnt thought matter of fact, boehner and i went through a good period and a challenging period. When i first got here, actually, i had known him when he was a freshman congressman. I was the executive director of the nrcc, our campaign committee. He was one of the, quote, gang of seven. We actually came up with the poster over at the nrcc, it was so cool. So were his six guys. They were rebels back then. All the leadership hated these guys. So i knew him very well, and hed been helpful in my campaign. I was on his committee, we were doing well. But i was always very good friends with roy blunt, nowsenator blunt but then our chief whip. And roy was, had been exceptionally good to me. I mean, didnt know me but he not only contributed to my campaign and it was a very competitive race in 2002, he literally sent a busload of volunteers to my district from his district in joplin all the way down to laughton, oklahoma, because we had big events going in both places. I had to cover a big parade in my hometown, and we were stretched, and he was close. I he said, what can i do to help . I said, you can help us, id heard it was called a stomp program. They hit 5,000 doors for him. He made me a whip, i was the first guy in my class to become deputy win in my second term, so we were pretty close. Well, you know, they end up running against one another k and im on team blunt which put me in the doghouse for about two or three years with Speaker Boehner. But one night, and this was before this race had occurred, i was sitting at the Capitol Hill Club with some good friends of mine john klein, whos still he