You leave a pistol on a drawer for me and that made him anxious that he wanted to kill himself. How much of these are cries for help in the reassurance or whether it indicates true suicidal ideation. The fact he didnt kill himself and yes this is one thing one thing about him he would get knocked down and come back again and again. He was finished off in 62 and he said he wont have nixon to kick around anymore. Even after he is with him from office, he moves back and he had this beautiful house. He moves back to new york and is a block away from Arthur Schlessinger in the belly of the beast. He needed to get back into the arena. Two months after hed be assigned committees outside implement the end its october, 1974 compounded by depressionr that flares up and he goes into a coronary crisis and its brushed to the hospital and his doctor writes a memoir tha the t he almost died that night. He came very close to. They were saying wake up, come back. While he did come and he spent the next 20 years of his life turning his career into that terrible of a man who had suffered, died and had been reborn. Thats why these two books are so well timed out because 40 years come if you go back 20 years in the 1990s, there is an obvious and largely successful i think attempt to reinvent the legacy and the global statesman and now 20 years later i think we can finally use the tapes and thehe journals and above recommendations and reviews and get a great sense of whats mixing really was like. So i wanted to remind everyone weve been talking to tim weiner, the author of one man against the world. The tragedy of Richard Nixon and also evan thomas, the author of being nixon, a man divided. Thank you very much. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] as well as its role in ongoing conflicts and about how everything became more and the military became everything tales from the pentagon. Shes interviewed by Kathleen Hicks the former deputy undersecretary of defense for policy and Senior Vice President and director of the International Security program at the center for strategic and international studies. Congress isnt going to wake up one morning and say lets triple the budget. But if that isnt going to happen and the military and the foreseeable future will continue to be asked to take on the task to make sure the military is good at it. Sunday at noon eastern live at Hillsdale College in michigan with author and radio host Dennis Prager the author of the nine questions people ask about judaism, happiness is a serious problem, why the jews, still the best hope and the ten commandments. Join in the conversations with your phone calls from noon to 3 p. M. Eastern on cspan2. 8 p. M. Eastern former White House Correspondent profiles the 10 80s since 1960 and her book. She speaks of politics and prose bookstore in washington, d. C. And monday on the science used to improve the effectiveness and safety of u. S. Military. E. Laine on why the public has lost faith in the political leaders, biographer Jean Edward Smith on the president ial tenure of george w. Bush and senator trent lott and biographer jon meacham talked about president ial politics. Go to booktv. Org for the complete weekend schedule. Next a discussion on president Ronald Reagan from the Fourth Annual san antonio book festiv festival. Welcome to the san antonio book festival. This panel is called Ronald Reagan by my fact and fiction. Im Gilbert Garcia from the san Antonio Express news and im very excited to be a part of the panel with two brilliant writers who in very different ways in the most recent books look at the legacy of Ronald Reagan. Before we get started, i want to let you know both authors will be signing books in the reference area on the second floor after the session ends, and a portion of the proceeds benefit. This panel will air on cspan2 on april 30. He will devote about the last ten, 15 minutes for questions so if you have questions, well do our best to give everybody a chance to ask those. To my far left, h. W. Brand holds the chair at the university of austin and New York Times bestselling author he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize biography for the First American and traitor to his class. Hes written biographies of Franklin Roosevelt communities grant among others and the latest book is Ronald Reagan, the life to the biography of the president. To my immediate left, thomas is the author of nine novels including dewey defeats truman. Truman. Hes a contributor to the new yorker, New York Times book review and the atlantic. In 2011 he received the American Academy memorial award and has been the editor of gq in the National Madonna for the humanities and the latest book looks at the reagan years by weaving fictional characters with historical events and historical figures such as ronald and nancy reagan, nixon, Margaret Thatcher and one of my personal favorite characters in the, merv griffin. [laughter] you write about this wall Ronald Reagan had at the detachment and i think nancy said she was the only person even though she could only go so far and thomas, i know you talked about how youve written about historical characters from their point of view in many times you do that with both nixon and nancy but then Ronald Reagan was very tough to do that with so i guess i will start with bill and talk about what accounts for that wall that so many people talked about and what kind of challenges posed in writing your book. When i was writing on the book i was doing it for a previous book and i was speaking on the radio show im pretty sure that it was based in chicago and at the end of the hour, the host asked a question that comes up all the time in this context. He said whats your next project and i said i was working on Ronald Reagan. He put his hand over the microphone and said after we get off the air, there is something i need to tell you so im all years. I felt okay. After we got off the air we had to hear what he had to say and if you want to understand Ronald Reagan is one thing you need to keep in mind. He said of Ronald Reagan was the son of an alcoholic father. And i wasnt quite sure what to make of this comment because i didnt know if he thought he was telling me something i didnt already know. But his father was an alcoholic because he wrote two memoirs and describes what like growing up as the son of an alcoholic father and so i waited to hear what i have to say further and so he said i speak as the son of an alcoholic father and i would tell you, he said, when you grow up in those circumstances you develop a characteristic attitude towards the world and learn to keep your emotions to go south because the person on whom you most want to rely who is going to be an adult, the one who will want to be your pillar of emotional strength is the most unreliable person in your universe and one day he is your best friend and is telling you a funny story and throwing the baseball around the backyard and is taking you out for ice cream and the next day he is beating the living daylights out of you and every morning when you wake up you dont know which one you will be dealing with so you learn to build this wall around yourself and you develop kind of an emotional selfsufficiency. This is what he told me and i was probably halfway into my research and i thought okay this was his experience. And it was an interesting insight. I think quite sincerely and accurately she knew him far better than anyone else but there were times when the wall went up between the two of them and even she didnt know what was going on was in his head and heart so i thought if she said this, this at least corroborates to that extent what might radio host had said. Said. Theres another moment and this bit of evidence comes from a. If they called winter afternoon getting dark at temperatures below freezing theres snow on the ground coming home with the ymca and he walks down the street onto the sidewalk, turns to get into the house and there is his father passed out in the snow and in his telling he pauses for a second and ask themselves whether he should just walk on inside the house. Now im in the memoir he doesnt tease out exactly what that means but the implication is im going to let him die in the snow here. Now in the next sentence in the memoir he says ive decided to bring this in. But heres an 11yearold kid entertaining but his world might be better if his father were dead. To me that is a pretty heavyweight having an affair. So im not going to say that this explains everything about ronalRonald Reagan but does expa lot about his standoffishness. He was a person that seemed friendly from across the room from a distance but a closer you got to him, the cooler he got. I was working on reagan to weeks teefive realized that would not have them die completely got the edmund problem there are any number of biographers but referring to the instance of these passages but in no way he threw up his hands about warm lee m. Personal quality was very real. He said i think that this is overblown. And consider the reagans as personal friends. He said he had one friend he married her. [laughter] thought however molas that even nixon had to france. [laughter] so to understand that the unusual quality but there were times when i thought reagan was preposterous silly but other times it that he was deep white the character in the 80s he thinks reagan in this way to know very little so one of the keys to reagan is his film career such u. S. Can one time how can an actor be president and then you realize he wasnt an actor but could do the job but his acting career paid tremendous decisions on bill whole to imagine things very sentimentally. In a cheap hollywood way. Lot of minor concern that at the time is perceived as a failure. But it comes over the transcripts of the summit but the note taker is taking very detailed notes and then reagan says 10 years from now we can come in backyard to bury the last Nuclear Weapon and have a party for the whole world. I will be a very old man at that time and they will say is that you . I will say it is good to see you. It is like running and save the world if you look at him compared to nixon of the tactician who would steady above the issue to lend astonishingly greater degree he could not bring himself to that point without the soviet union by reagan could buy the key learned that in hollywood. I think that is the central part of your book as it is focused on the summit and it was perceived that the time maybe we have a different perspective now but what was reagans legacy if you look at the cold war . I will say there was a large portion of the media and those watching but most of them did not realize what the top got to. He said i will abolish Nuclear Weapons and there wasnt that standard so reagan can that deeply disappointed. In addition to enhancing his imagination to envision himself in the role hollywood taught reagan how to be a celebrity and put itself in public and one of the things i concluded his president ial success depends on a large part of the ability to perform of presidency. It isnt good enough to understand how the Government Works but the public comes to expect so one of the finest beaches of 20thcentury rhetoric with of loss of the challenger basically the counselor and chief this is something that jimmy carter had a really hard time because carter was better in policy but he didnt understand the craft of being president to philbys roles. Would they learn from hollywood it is hard to find the bad picture of Ronald Reagan coming out of that last session of rico veeck he is surly ejected because he thought he could get to the point where they could rid the world of Nuclear Weapons and disappointed in happen but he could spin that as a success but interestingly some people were thrilled that when he went off with his presidency reagan is more regularly criticized from the right and from the left to say he is going off with Americas Nuclear arsenal so even if he came to lead deal he never would have gotten the deal or berger chopped wouldnt have so one of the things was demonstrate so he backed down with the intermediate Nuclear Weapons with the strategic weapons and agreed to the deal all along and he got the deal the next year. So in the time leading up to the summit youre trying to give a vice and i was fascinated if there is so Much Research and one of the things that is mentioned as they conversed from time to time. Nine have rather crucial facts. One of the things i was struck by is the frequency and the calls were initiated and nixon was on his longstanding quest and he wanted is advice to be valued by one of the things that i sorely missed that i did not have when i was writing the reagan book you can listen to the filmmaking fall calls the 10 00 at night. Of course we dont know what the substance of of conversation like reagans diary and he does record things irregularly and in a way that frequently with a political enemy. This in as the meeting is over they tear them apart again. I think i made the french. He goes and to nixon for of course, we dont know what he says you can imagine a advice to consider the relationship. But when reagan gets to china but then he told me. So there is room for a novelist. So what is fascinating the detail of reagans testimony to be anticipated of the mccarthy area era with the new deal and the democrats in the 30s or 40s where did that transformation happen that is the place to look at. One of the Big Questions is even during his presidency acknowledged in terms of political philosophy but reagan was a legacy democrat. His father was a democrat he got a job for the neil for the new deal agency so he was quite willing to go along he was a politically engaged as a College Student but one of the things he did admire in this transcends political philosophy was reagan was starting his radio career when roosevelt was conducting his fireside chats and roosevelt was a model of how you use radio to create a world for the listeners out there and he appreciated that as someone who eventually wanted to convey his vision to the American People but by the time reagan came along the medium was television so to the end of his political career in one of the last beachs he gave dainty 88, again he cited roosevelt as a model not so much what to do but how to be president but in terms of the change of the philosophy but he was never really a liberal to begin with some it was easy to shaky above that the reagan tells the story if it was his awareness of communist and hollywood and the threat that they posed not simply to the movie industry but to reagan himself. As the head of the Screen Actors Guild a bitter strike behind the camera crews and a union that had a strong trying to carve out the turf and reagan to revise the union and partly for reasons world war twos over the actors want to get back on the regular peacetime pay scale. For the screen actors there rather highest skilled of the unions favor on the side of management as labor by reagan make the decision of a jurisdictional dispute that actors can cross the picket lines and for this he was physically threatened. So the cold war came home to reagan that is the moment he began to rethink his ideas actually he may have felt that emotionally but it doesnt wash politically because american liberals were as strongly opposed to communism actually more subtle but the cold war with harry truman was his idea and not taft. So that doesnt exactly answer the question but part of that is he was a wealthy man at the time when the top marginal rate on income tax was 90 and you dont have to be a conservative to think 90 percent is pretty high. And other part that is important with reagans Political Development is he got a job as a spokesman for General Electric and they paid his way eight years and they were writing the checks and reagan was used to playing of rolls of the screen writers but now he writes his own script so he and stands where they come from he didnt have to endure in the strongly held belief to gradually think that the private enterprise system works well and the jobless to convince the ge workers against unionizing to go out on strike so he also begins to believe the government is wasteful so he looks at various programs and one of the programs he is criticizing is the Tennessee Valley authority but it turns out that is one of the biggest consumers of ge equipment so became known to reagan that this was causing problems for management that he would say he really value the fact that the ge management did not sincere him they did not have to because he censored himself he understood i could find other examples of ways and dont have to pick on the bottom line so is relatively easy for him to gravitate across the spectrum partly because he had no deeply held beliefs in the first place and essentially he was a pocket book republican before a philosophical republican. Along those lines in 76 with a president ial campaign he attracted a lot of the democratic crossover votes and is history as a democrat probably helped him to convert people but this year we see donald trump leading the president ial field and looks like he is getting substantial democratic crossover votes his message is make