Off russia and china to create a triangular diplomacy where opening to china and a detente with russia as we pulled out of vietnam, preserves the United States influence and power in the world after a retreat from vietnam by doing this tray triangular balance with russia, china, and to me that was a Creative Leap that even the bright people the best and the brightest, the mcgeorge bundies hat not thought spoof that helped preserve ore influence in the world. Host the wise men, six friends and the world they made, Averill Herry man, georgetown ten net, dean acheson, robert love vet john mccloy. Were they the establishment . Guest they were. I wrote that book with a friend evan thomas, because i was knew at Time Magazine. I was covering Ronald Reagan these people handing out leaflets and evan, a friend of mine from college, he had come from a more prep school background. I said evan, whats this establishment thing . Then we decide to demystify is buy writing a book at six people who at the core of the establishment there were three republicans, tree democrats, had a passion for rising above politics. They are creative. They think out of the box. After world war ii in which russia had been our ally suddenly we have to contain russia. So they create new institutions. Nato Marshall Plan world bank Radio Free Europe even the Aspen Institute, we have to win the war of ideas, of economy and a defensive struggle against sovietbacked threat of communism. That was thinking out of the box. Today, were engaged in a whole new type of struggle against terrorism, Islamic Radical terrorists. And were still using the old institutions to that still trying to make nato and the imf deal with it. Wish we were as creative as they were think another off the box and say what international antiterrorist organization should replace nato. What should we do instead of Radio Free Europe to fight the hearts and minds of people around the world. So, i like the creativity of the wise men. Clearly it was weird too have two very young people myself just out of college, go to a publisher and say we want to write about six people you barely heard of in a time that was far distant. Seem Simon Schuster, my editor said chev said yes ive always wanted to do that book and call it the wise men. Like the best and brightest, the generation before, and she was able to make that book good. She was able to untangle a pretty complicated narrative and make it flow chronologically, which is why every book ever since then has been publish bid Simon Schuster and edited by alice because i feel such a sense of loyalty that they would and she would publish a book about these statesmen nobody ever heard of and make it into a book that actually made sense after we turned in a manuscript that needed some untangling. Host alice mayhew pops up on booktv quite often as the editor or best selling authors of nonfiction books. What is it about her from an authors perspective . She sees the big picture and detail which is the essence of creativity. Whether youre a bob noyce or steve jobs you care about each the beauty of each curve in the computer youre making, but also moving to a mobile system. That was steve jobs genius, people like kissinger had that as well ben franklin seal the big picture and also know that the devil and god is in the details. I remember the very first chapter of the wise men and it was trying to keep harriman and love vet together with acheson, who went do School Together and part of skull and bones at yale and she wrote in the margin all things in good time. Dont get ahead of theonology dont get behind it. Keep itonnologial. Dont flash forward, dont have to flash back. That was the first piece of advice i ever got on a book, and every book ive done since then may not have been as brilliant as A James Joyce or faulkner who can move around in time but i realize that in our lives, we build on me moments that happened before, and that you should keep all things in good time, you should do things chronologically, you should start the biography with the person being born and end with the person dying and show how it builds up. All things in good time. Host a handful of men you write in you quote there, handful of men and few of their close colleagues knew that america would have to assume the burden of a global role out of duty and desire. They heeded the call of service. They were the original brightest and best men whose outside personalities some forceful actions brought together brought order to the post war chaos and left a legacy that dominates american policy to this day. Well, we have spent an hour talking with Walter Isaacson. Well begin taking calls emails, tweetses and Facebook Comments and weflash the addresses and phone numbers on the screen one more time. This is an email from jim gibb in east peoria illinois. Mr. Isaacson, big fan, im currently reading your biography on kissinger. Of your biographies on kissinger, franklin, einstein, and jobs who do you identify with the most and why . Guest well, ben franklin. And ill leave the woffords to the words to my daughter who, when she was young and i had down these books. She said, you know, all biography is auto biography. I think emerson said. She said when youre writes about ben franklin you were writing about yourself. She said, thats who you wanted to be a publisher, editor, person in the media and also cared about diplomacy and liked science and juggled a few things. So, ben franklin was your idealized self. I said yes that makes sense. Then i said what was i doing when i wrote about einstein . And she said, you were writing about my father an engineer at times, wonderful guy who loves electrical engineering, has halo of hair and said you were doing because your father really loved einstein, and you were trying to i said, thats great. And what was i doing when i was doing kissinger . She said you were writing about your dark side, too, and i said oh, watch out. So when i did steve jobs, she said i cant quite figure out what youre doing when you did steve jobs. I said i was writing bat young person who could be a little bit bratty a little bit pushing love beauty and technology but was a kind of hard to deal with, and then i stared at her and she said i said no, no. But i love ben franklin. I think that ben franklin is the one i get to talk to some members of Congress Later this week, at the library of congress they have a gathering that david reubenstein helped to put together, and who do you want to talk about . Talk about Ben Franklin Ben franklin is the person who was able to do the practicality and holding true to values that we like the most in this country and so i cant say ill ever be a Benjamin Franklin but if i wake up eave morning and say what should i aspire to be issue read Ben Franklins autobiography. Host Matthew Foley from indianapolis email. Very much enjoyed your book on franklin. Been a number of years since i read it but i recall you writing that during the revolution and the latter part of franklins life there was animosity towards franklin from many of his peers. I recall this animosity continued past his death and it took a number of years before he was appreciated. Guest yes. The happens to everybodys reputation in public life, more so now than back then because with all of our media you can be tore down pretty quickly. Franklin was somebody who was very much a compromiser. He believed that compromisers may not make great heroes but they make great democracy. So there were passionate people on either side who felt he was too willing to compromise. Secondly franklin rubbed a few people the wrong way because just of his jovial personality bringing people together. So i think anybody who is powerful wellrespected greatest scientist of his ear roo, greatest diplomat of his era, a great statesman, you have people who resist evidence him and he was not the most profound of our thinkeres. He was not madison, not jefferson. And so there was a genial surface quality to him that i argue in the last chapter of the book ran much deeper that the ability to say we should all the collegiality and working together is the essence of what america is about. Some people felt that was a shallow and even a mark twain or others disparage the autobiography of ben franklin, how to succeed how to win friends, how to influence people side of ben franklin. I think it goes deeper to that and i tree to show that. Host ann in california you are the first call for Walter Isaacson. Caller yes. Ive been reading the innovators eye and trying too figure out if theres any particular symbolism behind the design of the cover over cover of the book snooze no. I wish steve jones helped more. I wanted to show interconnected. I wanted to show that people wove together. I wanted to make it feel a bet creative but also show some of the pictures but there was not a grand secret design but thank you for ask. Host four people on the cover. Guest theres ada lovelace of course, at the very top. Steve jobs, bill gates, and then allen touring. Theyre about 30 main characters in the innovatorsbut those four i felt were the ones that inspired me. Host bill, portland, oregon good morning to you, your on with Walter Isaacson. Caller good morning, thank you, cspan for taking my question. And i appreciate you mr. Walter isaacson, and i think youre a great man. And i guest i write about great people. I dont think i can caller i wish you well a long life. And to keep bringing the history and icons to us common thinking folk. First, a question and just an additional question. With the server farms are Cloud Computing and 3d printing do you see that as an evan to all change or Industrial Revolution to the whole world . And my second is, when does elon musk going to talk with you . Guest yes, i see that the Cloud Computing, 3d printing mobile will have a transformative effect. Were already seeing it now. Which is really since the Industrial Revolution the way we organized work is through firms or corporations or whatever because you had to be a big company to have all of the equipment you needed to manufacture things. To distribute things to bring together the people in a working environment to do the creativity. Nowdays i think were beginning to see that anybody can be an oncall worker if they want. Whether its driving an uber or designing something really cool that stores in the cloud or uses server farms in order to instead of having their own big old servers and having to do it there, and then 3d printing so things can be manufactured in a tailored way. When lord byron was worrying about the advent of mechanical looms he thought we would be butting out the same fabric over and over. Now we can go back to the period where art artisans create what they want to and instead of having it be ms. Produced and mass marketed by mass corporations, i think the notion of Cloud Computing the notion of 3d printing the notion of Ondemand Services will allow people to be more entrepreneurial, create especially if we get Digital Currency that allow easier transactions and sales online that allow people to create on their own rather than being part of Large Industrial organizations. Host richard in palm springs, california. Go ahead with your question or comment for Walter Isaacson. Caller mr. Isaacson, its fast nitting listening to you. I have two questions. First, where would you place Stephen Hawking in relation to einstein and you mentioned the imitation game. Of course the theory of everything is also another film about Stephen Hawking, and secondly in the imitation game, ellen touring was having a problem with charles dancers character, until his request got to Winston Churchill and churchill signed off on it, and i have read that Winston Churchill loved these sort of slightly outside the box ideas, the bouncing bomb, and all those different inventions of world war ii. Will you talk about Winston Churchill, who i personally regard as the greatest figure of the 20th century. Thank you very much. Guest absolutely. Im going to wind the tape because i forgot to talk about elon musk as well. So ill do elon musk and steven hawking and Winston Churchill. I interviewed elon musk. I was on stage with him. I admire the way elon musk is doing inknow vacation because its easier to do innovation in the Information Technology and Digital Space because theres less regulation. You can do it in a garage or dorm room, create facebook or apple. But doing Something Like cars or batteries or rocket ships, that requires a larger degree of collaboration and a higher degree of difficulty because we have so many regulations its hard to innovate in those fields. So his ability to think outside of the box is something i deeply admire. Stephen hawking. Stephen hawking is somebody ive also deeply admired and we wrote about in and i spend time dealing with at Time Magazine. He takes a a strange thing about einsteins theory of general relativity, which einstein was uncomfortable with at first, if the equations are true you could have black holes. All of a sudden, even gravity everything comes in on itself and like asing singularity and Stephen Hawking hemmed us understand how that works. I see him as one of the great thinkers of our time and i love the movie about him. And finally, Winston Churchill. The good thing about churchill is he encouraged out of the box thinking. Somebody who did indeed, as the movie shows the movie simply identifies it agent built but when the letter comes in saying we need these resources, churchill understands how important it is. However, as much as i admire churchill, talk about him being the greatest figure of the 20th century. When i was at Time Magazine we had to pick the person of the century. We spent five years doing conversations, working on it, public event, to discuss it. It came down to four or five people. If you thought it was a century of great political struggles against communism against naziism, fascism, then you have people like Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill who stand up. Also a century of civil rights, where women and blacks and colonial people all get their own individual rights, and then gandhi or Martin Luther king as far as that. And finally, you think it as century in which science and technology took us to the moon and everything else. Einstein to me, his fingerprints are on it. We ended going with einstein, and one thing that sort of in some ways cut against structure as much as i admire himhe was on he wrong side of history when it came to colonial rights when it came to the rights of everything from blacks and women and his clash with gandhi was legion and in the end, the side of history was towards more individual and civil rights and empowerment, and churchill, who was ahead of every game when it came to fighting communism, fighting naziism, he is sort of caught behind on that one. So when we look at history, we admire the strength of great people but we also have to look at gee where did they turn out not to be as right as they could have been . Host how much conversation about Albert Einstein being person of the century. Guest i was interested in einstein when i was studying him to say person of the century. I realized there was no biography of him written since his papers became available, and no biography pure to the end chronological biography written in english. It realize it i would be fun to write a biography of him. Obviously you can probably tell from things ive said that my vote in the end as much as i like churchill and gandhi and Franklin Roosevelt and king my vote was for einstein because some centuries become remembered. Maybe five six, ten new jersey from now will be remembered for huge advances in science. The fact we went to the moon. The fact we invented the microchip, the computer the internet. That we had an entire new revolution that was based on Digital Technology on splitting the atom on the way elooktrons dance on elooktrons dance on the surface space of conducting material. All of that creates a revolution just like the 18th century with Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, was a century of states craft and revolution that was political, and just as other new jersey will be remembered for other things. So i came down on the side of einstein. Host you were the editor at the time guest well i we went up to hyde park. Certainly went to churchills war rooms in england. We had fun exploring this. I read all of gandhi. I went to south africa where gandhi started. I loved to soak myself into the history of that, and a great debate. Obviously no right answer. Thats why its interesting i kept saying, steve jobs would say the journey is the reward, meaning instead of the destination. Not sow much einstein the destination being the award. The able to talk it through and we did for two years in ou