Booknotes

Mr. ROBERT TIMBERG, AUTHOR, "THE NIGHTINGALE'S SONG": (From July 1995) I think what we're edging to is did I--was I wounded over there? Yes, I was. And--and I came home and I had a have bad years. And I then said it's time for me to go on with my life, and I did. I mean, I put Vietnam very much off to the side. I mean, it was--I mean, I--I think in--in a way, this was--in--in--in this way, at least, I think I feel particularly close to Senator McCain, who I think said, you know, `Whatever happened is over. And whatever I'm gonna be, good, bad, whatever, whatever--you know, whatever destiny has in store for me, it's gonna--I'm gonna make it happen, what--Vietnam or no Vietnam.'

(Excerpt from November 1998)

Mr. JOHN MORRIS, AUTHOR, "GET THE PICTURE: A PERSONAL HISTORY OF PHOTOJOURNALISM": Right.

Mr. MORRIS: Well, you could call it an--an execution.

Mr. MORRIS: Well, I sure w--I sure did my best and it succeeded. It came in before the early afternoon, the preliminary page-one conference that day. And I don't usually--I didn't usually take pictures into that conference. But that day I--I took it in because I wanted to make sure that everybody would know it was there and that it would get used.

(End of excerpt)

(Excerpt from September 1988)

Mr. SHEEHAN: Very small number then.

Mr. SHEEHAN: Oh, sure. Most of them have stayed friends of mine over the years. There were less than a dozen of us then; Halberstam for The Times; Malcolm Browne, and--who's now with The New York Times, as--as a science writer.

Mr. SHEEHAN: He was AP. Peter Arnett.

(End of excerpt)

(Excerpt from January 1994)

Mr. PETER ARNETT, AUTHOR, "LIVE FROM THE BATTLEFIELD": Put it this way, I wouldn't have been surprised at any point that death would've taken me, and--not surprised at all.

(End of excerpt)

(Excerpt from September 1993)

Mr. MALCOLM BROWNE, AUTHOR, "MUDDY BOOTS & RED SOCKS": That was one of the rare times when we were actually on the same operation together. I don't even remember what the operation was. But, of course, we were all very active competitors, out to cut each other's throats professionally, although we were good friends off the field.

(End of excerpt)

Mr. PETER JENNINGS, AUTHOR, "THE CENTURY": (From December 1998) I did two very early dilettante visits in 1965 and '66, very, very short dilettante visits, and it didn't take more than that to realize that the country didn't have a particular sense of what it ultimately wanted to accomplish in Vietnam.

(Excerpt from May 1997)

Mr. WALTER CRONKITE, AUTHOR, "A REPORTER'S LIFE": Yeah.

Mr. CRONKITE: I--I sensed that he was fed up with Vietnam at that point. He was fed up with the leadership, the civilian leadership in Vietnam, remarked upon it at some length. And--and it just seemed to me that--that he was too bright to have wanted to remain in a circumstance where it meant that we were going to have to take over that war and run the war in an environment which quite clearly was going to require a great deal more effort, more dedication of men and material than would've had ever been planned. And I just feel that he would've--he would've gotten out.

(End of excerpt)

Mr. PETER KANN, AUTHOR, "REPORTING VIETNAM": I--I think most reporters who covered Vietnam for any length of time became critics, some more or some less, but all to some extent became critics of the way the war was being waged.

Ms. FRANCES FITZGERALD, AUTHOR, "REPORTING VIETNAM": I--I agree with Peter, more or less. I think that part of it was generational, too. I mean, the--the first reporters who went there in the--you know, 1959 and so on, tended to come from World War II and to have certain assumptions about what happens or what reporters ought to do when America goes to war. And those assumptions were really broken by Neil Sheehan and David Halberstam, Mal Browne and so on.

(End of excerpt)

SWAIN: Vietnam has been a trend throughout the entire 10 years, and that is because of the generation that this network was born in, that it--the host of the program and many of its producers come from. The impact of Vietnam continues to be very much a real thing in this city, and BOOKNOTES tends to reflect that.

Mr. ROBERT McNAMARA, AUTHOR, "IN RETROSPECT: THE TRAGEDY AND LESSONS OF VIETNAM": In the book, I relate that--I--I talk about the protesters, and I had great sympathy for the protesters. My wife and my children and my friends' wives and children shared many of the--of the views of the protestors. But in any event, one day, I believe it was 1965, a man burned himself to death before my--in front of my window--below my--below my window.

Mr. McNAMARA: His name was Morrison. He--as the flames were consuming him, he had a child in his arms, and passers-by were observing this and they shouted, they screamed, `Save the child!' He threw the child out of his arms.

Mr. McNAMARA: I believe it was 1965. The child is alive today. The mother of the child, the wife of Morrison, wrote me a note, and I'd like to read it if I can. It's a beautiful, beautiful letter. He was a Quaker, by the way, and she obviously is, as well. And she says, `To heal the wounds of war, we must forgive ourselves and each other, and we must help the people of Vietnam to rebuild their country. I'm grateful to Robert McNamara for his courageous and honest re-appraisal of the Vietnam War, and his involvement in it. I hope his book will contribute to the healing process.'

(End of excerpt)

Mr. McNAMARA: (From April 1995) The lines I ha--I can't read them from here, but I know them well; I know what they say. They say, `We shall not cease from exploring, and at the end of our exploration, we will return to where we started and know the place for the first time.' Now I haven't ceased from exploring, but I'm a little further along than I was 15 or 30 years ago. And I think I see a little more clearly, not as clearly as I will a few years hence or before I die--but I see more clearly today than I saw five, 10, 30 years ago, events. And to tell you the truth, I didn't really see clearly enough to be confident in my judgment about the mistakes we've made in Vietnam until two or three years ago. I saw clearly for a long time, at least I believed it was a failure.

Mr. HENRY LOUIS GATES Jr., AUTHOR, "COLORED PEOPLE": Quite a lot.

Mr. GATES: Well, I'm quoting people. I'm quoting my father. I'm quoting my uncles. I'm quoting sometimes my mother, the people I grew up with. This is a book about black vernacular culture. This is a book about what black people thought and felt when no white people were around. I tried to imagine myself as a video camera on the sofa of our living room, circa 1955, 1960, 1965 and finally 1970. And we used the word `nigger' all the time; sometimes it's used very lovingly, sometimes it's used in a mean-spirited way. But it's a natural part of our--of our culture, of our language.

(End of excerpt)

Mr. JOHN LEO, AUTHOR, "TWO STEPS AHEAD OF THE THOUGHT POLICE": (From August 1994) I have very severe doubts about affirmative action. I think it has allied itself with the PC movement and created a furtive culture on campus, where the culture now on campus is not allowed to talk about affirmative action. To raise any doubts about it, whether you're black or white or whatever, is to be deemed racist. And that threat of being called racist keeps--keeps it undiscussed.

(Excerpt from October 1994)

Ms. MELBA PATTILLO BEALS, AUTHOR, "WARRIORS DON'T CRY: THE BATTLE TO INTEGRATE LITTLE ROCK'S CENTRAL HIGH": Hell, a living hell. Somebody'd walk past you and drop maybe a lighted piece of notepaper in your lap. And then somebody'd else come by and pour water on you. Most of the teachers by th--the--say, second or third week we were in school were even those who were most rational were by then harassed by segregationists into ignoring what happened to us.

(End of excerpt)

Ms. BELL HOOKS, AUTHOR, "KILLING RAGE: ENDING RACISM": (From October 1995) You notice in the book that I use the term `white supremacy.' I prefer that term to racism, because it implies that all of us, no matter our color, can hold white supremacists' attitudes. And for people who don't understand that, I try to explain white supremacists' attitudes can be just a belief all black people are lazy. I mean, there are a lot of black people out there saying, `Well, black people are lazy.' So that the--the notions of inferior-superior thinking around race isn't just something white people hold. It's something all of us are socialized into white supremacists' attitudes.

Mr. STANLEY CROUCH, AUTHOR, "THE ALL-AMERICAN SKIN GAME, OR THE DECOY OF RACE": Irresponsible, opportunist, screwball.

Mr. CROUCH: Well, I mean, he's--well, he's kind of--he's--well, he's a political and intellectual and spiritual pestilence, but he's a--he's--see, he's connected to the kind of nutballs that appear periodically in the United States. I mean, you know, Father Coughlin or Nathan Bedford Forrest. I mean, you've always had these loons who appear in--in America, and they--they conflate a--a bizarre brand of politics, racism, paranoia and real frustration with the complexity of--of realizing our democratic ideals, and they gather cult followings.

(End of excerpt)

Mr. SHELBY STEELE, AUTHOR, "A DREAM DEFERRED: THE SECOND BETRAYA; OF BLACK FREEDOM": (From November 1998) We now think that it's--`I'm black and I'm proud, and it was my blackness that did so'--our blackness did nothing. It was u--it was used by white America at that time to oppress us. It was used against us and a--against our humanity, and it was--our humanity was so tenacious, it's w--our--our story's one of the great human stories in the world that we were able to withstand that oppression and--and to--to persevere and--and come--come through to today. And to get to--to this point and now embrace our race rather than our humanity seems to me to finally have come to a point where we're almost agreeing with--with those who oppressed us. (Excerpt from August 1994)

Mr. HUGH PEARSON, AUTHOR, "THE SHADOW OF THE PANTHER": Well, the cause was one of--it was--it was kind of a two-pronged thing. The--the notion that--of taking up arms against the establishment--again, like I--like I--I was saying a little bit earlier, this was a very common notion back in '67, '68, '69 that the establishment was wrong and something needed to be done about the establishment. You had to overthrow the establishment. And the Black Panthers were more or less seen as the vanguard of--among people who decided we needed to take up arms against--because Huey Newton would say, `Look, pick up the gun. We have to pick up the gun.' So you had a lot of people, like the people you just named, whose--who basically had the idea something does need to be done about the establishment.

(End of excerpt)

Mr. KEITH RICHBURG, AUTHOR, "OUT OF AMERICA: A BLACK MAN CONFRONTS AFRICA": (From March 1997) And that I remember my father taking me in the middle of this riot up to a major intersection--intersection called Grand River in West Grand Boulevard. And there was a store I used to go shopping with--with my mother there quite frequently, and I--I was watching it suddenly--little nine-year-old kid watching this store burning to the ground. And I remember it--I couldn't understand what was going on, what's a riot. And I remember--I remember my father saying to me, you know, `I--I wanted you to see this so you'll always remember what your people are--are doing to their own neighborhood.'

Mr. JOHN LEWIS, AUTHOR, "WALKING WITH THE WIND": (From May 1998) I--I--I love books, books are important. I remember when I was growing up, I couldn't check a book out of the--out of the library because I was black, and they didn't allow blacks to come into the public library in Pike County, Alabama, in Troy. And--and we had very few books that--in our home. So anytime I could get a book, I would read. I wanted to read the book.

Ms. LANI GUINIER, AUTHOR, "THE TYRANNY OF THE MAJORITY": (From June 1994) You know, I don't dwell on racist experiences, which is not to say that I haven't had any, but one of the lessons that my mother taught me when I was a kid is to try to take myself out of my own skin and out of my own shoes and step into somebody else's shoes and try and see where they're coming from. And so even when somebody might do something to me that I thought was really unfair and that may have been motivated by prejudice or bias, I would often try to see where they're coming from and then see if there was some way we could sort of move the conversation or the experience to another plane rather than to sort of wallow in the sense of victimhood. I just don't like to see myself as a victim. I see myself, really, as a survivor.

Announcer: C-SPAN's look back at the 10 years of BOOKNOTES will continue.

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(Announcements)

(Graphic on screen)

BOOKNOTES 10th Anniversary

Sex

(Excerpt from November 1991)

Ms. SUZANNE GARMENT, AUTHOR, "THE CULTURE OF MISTRUST IN AMERICAN POLITICS": Well, the chapter on sex is really good, for starters.

SWAIN: BOOKNOTES, because it's anecdotal and because we're interested often in the lives of people and how they affect history, you'll find frequently brings up topics of scandal and sex. The reason for that is there's a lot of it that goes on and there's a lot of interest in it.

(Excerpt from November 1991)

Ms. GARMENT: Fannie Fox became a name that was on the `must' list for every serious student of American politics.

Ms. GARMENT: Well, at that time, the authorities were becoming less willing to cover these things up when they involved congressmen and other high officials. In this case, I'm not sure of what they could have done since there was--since there was a--a newsman right there on the scene. But, in general, what was happening was that congressmen who were arrested for solicitation, for instance, used to be--before that time, were never booked.

(End of excerpt)

Mr. RON CHERNOW, AUTHOR, "TITAN: THE LIFE OF JOHN D. ROCKEFLLER, SR.": (From May 1998) He has this afternoon ritual where he goes out with a party of people in this large touring car. He always sits tightly wedged between two buxom women on either side. He has a blanket that he draws over their laps and up to their necks, and his hot itchy fingers would stray under the--the blanket.

Mr. EDWARD JAY EPSTEIN, AUTHOR, "DOSSIER: THE SECRET HISTORY OF ARMAND HAMMER": (From December 1996) Then his wife, Frances Hammer, his third wife who he's married to, found out about their liaison and demand--and demanded Hammer do something about it. So rather than give up his mistress, or rather than to leave his wife, he found hi--a solution that was typical to the kinds of solutions he found. He had his mistress totally change her identity, change her hair, change her appearance, wear a wig, ch--and change her name from Martha Kaufman to Hilary Gibson. And then he told his wife he fired Martha Kaufman. And his wife said, `Oh, that's good.' And he said, `And there's a new woman who's much better, Hilary Gibson,' who looked, by the way, 10 years older because of the white wig.

Mr. FREDERICK KEMPE, AUTHOR, "DIVORCING THE DICTATO: AMERICA'S BUNGLED AFFAIR WITH NORIEGA": (From March 1990) The hardest job was not coming up with the information; it was coming up with the corroboration. And hours were spent that the reader won't even notice, trying to make sure that I didn't overstep the bounds when I write that the man is bisexual. Believe me, I have talked to people who were intimately involved with Noriega in one way or another, and I was able to confirm that to my satisfaction.

(Excerpt from July 1993)

Mr. FREDERICK KEMPE: Well, there was this odd thing. They were always together. They were each other's best friends. I mean, I don't think anything ever happened. I don't believe these stories, you know, that they have now about Hoover dressing up in drag. I don't believe it for a minute. I mean, J. Edgar Hoover's whole life was devoted to getting dirty stuff, gossip on other people. The last thing in the world he was going to do was provide gossip for his enemies. I mean, he just wasn't going to do that.

But there was this odd relationship between him and Tolsen. They were together at every meal. They went to work together. You know, they ate alone. Nobody else--you know, nobody else need apply. The two of them eating lunch and dinner a--almost every day of their life. I mean, it was an unusual friendship. I mean, I don't think anything was consummated, but it really did make people talk about them.

(End of excerpt)

Mr. JACK NELSON, AUTHOR, "TERROR IN THE NIGHT: THE KLAN'S CAMPAIGN AGAINST THE JEWS": (From February 1993) Well, I never once said he was a homosexual. I never th--I--I can't say I didn't think about it because, for one thing, I got a--a--a--a letter--an anonymous--an anonymous letter on FBI stationery saying that he was a homosexual and that he and his top associate, Clyde Tolsen, were homosexuals. I never cared whether he was or not. It didn't make any difference to me. If I'd had to guess, I would have guessed he was asexual, but I didn't know and I didn't care.

(Excerpt from November 1997)

Ms. SUSAN BUTLER, AUTHOR, "EAST TO THE DAWN: THE LIFE OF AMELIA EARHART": Yes.

Ms. BUTLER: Yes.

Ms. BUTLER: Yes, it has.

Ms. BUTLER: The morning of the wedding.

Ms. BUTLER: The morning of the wedding. Doesn't seem to have phased him a bit.

Ms. BUTLER: She's saying--she's saying that she's not going to be faithful to him, and that he doesn't have to be faithful to her; that he has to let her have her freedom.

(End of excerpt)

(Excerpt from April 1993)

Ms. NADINE COHODAS, AUTHOR, "STROM THURMOND & THE POLITICS OF SOUTHERN CHANGE": Yes.

Ms. COHODAS: That's right, the famous prenuptial headstand. This is right before his marriage to his first wife, Jean Crouch, who was, at that time, 20, 21 years his junior. She had just graduated from college, and he had seen her, found her attractive, invited her to work in the governor's mansion. A romance blossomed. They announced their engagement and--and a lot of titters, etc., but to Scholl, Show he as the caption in Life magazine said, that he was plenty vigorous and virile, he stood on his head.

(End of excerpt)

Ms. SALLY QUINN, AUTHOR, "THE PARTY: A GUIDE TO ADVENTUROUS ENTERTAINING": (From December 1997) One night, we went to a cocktail party at Gwen Kafertz's Cafritz, the old Washington hostess, and she had a beautiful sloping lawn and lots of buffet tables, and my mother and I walked over to a buffet table. Now this is, I hate to say, somewhere in the neighborhood of over--let's say, over 30, 35 years ago, and we were standing there getting some shrimp or something together, and all of a sudden, both of us went `Ah!' and we turned around and looked and there was Strom standing between us with one hand on my mother's behind and one hand on mine, and just smiling and beaming and just feeling so pleased with himself. And, of course, my mother, who's very Southern, just as the way Strom is, and from Savannah, Georgia--we're both from Savannah--mother said, `Oh, Strom, you old devil,' you know. And we just thought it was the cutest thing, and we told everybody about it, that wicked old Strom Thurmond.

(Excerpt from October 1995)

Mr. BEN BRADLEE, AUTHOR, "A GOOD LIFE": I did get that, yes.

Mr. BRADLEE: They were--they were very ma--they were kind of mash notes and I didn't--I didn't know who sent them until the person involved wa--had quit The Post to go be a television anchor in New York and confessed to me that she had written them and said that th--that--that she was leaving because she couldn't work out her emotions about me.

Mr. BRADLEE: Sally Quinn.

Mr. BRADLEE: Well, I can't remember them now, but it was--it was--it was...

Mr. BRADLEE: No, I didn't save them. And, in fact, I didn't save them at the time, so I just--I said--you know, I thought it might be somebody playing a practical joke. You know, this was the days of dirty tricks, so I moved on and I'm awfully glad that she confessed to being the author.

(End of excerpt)

(Excerpt from November 1991)

Mr. MARTIN GILBERT, AUTHOR, "CHURCHILL: A LIFE": When Churchill was 20 and a young soldier, he was accused of buggery, and, you know, that's, you know, a terrible accusation. Well, he ended up prime minister for just quite a long time.

Mr. GILBERT: You don't know what buggery is?

Mr. GILBERT: Oh, dear. Well, I--I'm sorry. I thought the word we--buggery is what used to be called a--the--an unnatural act of the Oscar Wilde type is how it was actually phrased in the euphemism of the British papers. It's--you don't know what buggery is?

(End of excerpt)

Ms. BLANCHE WIESEN COOK, AUTHOR, "ELEANOR ROOSEVELT": (From April 1993) I leave it up to the reader as to whether or not she had a full sexual affair with Lorena Hickock, who, when she met her, was the highest pra--paid reporter for the Associated Press, but it does seem to me that the letters which--and there are thousands of letters which they wrote to each other--reveal a very passionate friendship.

Ms. DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN, AUTHOR, "NO ORDINARY TIME: FRANKLIN AND ELEANOR ROOSEVELT": (From October 1994) I think the person that I'm interested in for Franklin is not simply Lucy Mercer, who everybody assumes is the central romantic figure in his life because she had an affair with him back in 1918, and it almost broke up Eleanor's marriage. But there's another woman that I think had an even more central role to play in his life, and that was his secretary, Ms. Ela Missy LeHand Hand. She had started working for him when she was only 20 years old in 1920. She loved him all the rest of her life. She never married. And everybody in Washington knew that she was really his other wife.

(Graphic on screen)

BOOKNOTES 10th Anniversary

Sex

SWAIN: And while we don't want to dwell on it, it is and has been an aspect of human history since time immemorial. And that's one of the things you have to learn about it. When this city was tying itself in knots for much of 1998 over the impeachment process, it was great context to look back and learn that there have been scandals in presidencies as long as there have been presidents, and that often there was a sexual component to that. So there's just one example why it's good context to learn that everything knew was here once before.

Mr. RICHARD NORTON SMITH, AUTHOR, "PATRIARCH": (From February 1993) Sally Fairfax has been described as Washington's great love. That may or may not be true. We don't know. She was a young woman of dazzling virtuosity who, I think, impressed a young man who was terribly self-conscious; not only of his lack of formal education, but his lack of polish.

Mr. WILLARD STERNE RANDALL, AUTHOR, "THOMAS JEFFERSON: A LIFE": (From December 1993) In--in looking at Jefferson in love in Paris, I think we have quite a different slant on the man. It's not only Jefferson in love, but Jefferson is discovering the importance of women. In Paris he learned to respect the intellects of the women of the salon who really ran the French government; not all that well sometimes, as Marie Antoinette could attest. But Jefferson, I think, opened his mind in those years and had a wonderful time, I think, with Maria Cosway, an educated, brilliant painter. And I think it changed him into a--a much more sophisticated individual.

Mr. HAROLD HOLZER, AUTHOR, "THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES": Mary, right. I'm not sure if I would call it a romance, but I would--th--that's been exaggerated by films and novels. They certainly knew each other. Douglas spent a good deal of his early years in Springfield before he moved to Chicago. And he was supposedly quite interested in--in this young Lexington, Kentucky, belle, Mary Todd, who was shipped from Lexington to Springfield to live with her sister so that she could catch a--a husband. And he was a pretty attractive candidate for marriage: successful, booming voice, leading politician. But she--she cast her eyes on this unlikely fellow who supposedly said to her, `I'd like to dance with you in the worst way,' prompting her to say that was exactly the way he danced.

(End of excerpt)

(Excerpt from February 1998)

Mr. DOUGLAS WILSON, AUTHOR, "HONOR'S VOICE: THE TRANSFORMATION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN": Embranglement. The Mary Todd embranglement is simply the fact that as a result of this situation where Lincoln wanted out of their relationship and Mary resisted, and Lincoln became emotionally--began to sink into kind of a despondency. For--and for a week in January of 1841 he was simply out of it. He was dysfunctional. Then she presumably released him, according to some of the testimony, and--but she wanted him back. And Lincoln felt guilty that he had made her unhappy by breaking up the relationship, and this situation went on for a long time, almost two years, until all of a sudden, unbeknownst to most of their friends, they had been seeing each other and become reconciled. And they announced, to the amazement of their friends, that they were gonna get married that very day.

The embranglement is this entanglement that Lincoln got himself into with Mary Todd and he never really could get himself out of. And so the solution was to marry her.

(End of excerpt)

Mr. AUGUST HECKSCHER, AUTHOR, "WOODROW WILSON: A BIOGRAPHY": (From January 1992) But these courtship letters to Mrs. Gault Galt show a president so preoccupied by wooing this beautiful woman that sometimes you wonder how he had time to carry on the business of the--the nation at all.

(Excerpt from unidentified BOOKNOTES segment)

Mr. DAVID McCULLOUGH, AUTHOR, "TRUMAN": He certainly was. Absolutely.

Mr. McCULLOUGH:: Never, never, never.

(End of excerpt)

Mr. MARK NEELY, AUTHOR, "THE LAST BEST HOPE OF EARTH: ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND THE PROMISE OF AMERICA": My favorite thing was the letter that Abraham Lincoln wrote to General Sherman, General William T. Sherman, during the Civil War. Sherman was busy. He was laying--getting ready to--he had just captured Atlanta and was getting ready to march to the sea. But it was a presidential election year, 1864. And in those days, they didn't have absentee voting. And so in many of the states, the soldiers, who were, many of them, eligible to vote, would be campaigning in the South and couldn't vote at home. And so Lincoln wrote a--a letter to General Sherman asking him, since there was a very tight state election in Indiana, to furlough as many soldiers as he could to vote in the state election in Indiana.

And he said, `It isn't an order.' Lincoln was commander in chief, but he didn't order him to do it. But he said, you know, `It's important to the Army that the Republicans win this election.'

Well, Sherman didn't like politicians and...

Mr. NEELY: Yeah, he ha--yeah. Sherman hated politicians and politics. And he wasn't very cooperative. But it's wonderfully illuminating about Abraham Lincoln's abilities and character. Here he--he always took the high road, but he never neglected the low road.

(End of excerpt)

(Excerpt from October 1996)

Mr. CONOR CRUISE O'BRIEN, AUTHOR, "THE LONG AFFAIR: THOMAS JEFFERSON AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION, 1785-1800": (From October 1996) Ab--absolutely yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. The whole--the whole idea in--in--in his writings, even when he's condemning slavery, he's also arguing, `Hey, maybe the--maybe'--he use--he al--he--he--he studs his writings on the subjects, but maybe--I'm not con--what it all amounts to is `I'm not convinced that they are fully really human beings.' That's it.

(End of excerpt)

Mr. ARI HOOGENBOOM, AUTHOR, "RUTHERFORD B. HAYES: WARRIOR & PRESIDENT": (From April 1994) Hayes traveled more than anybody up to that date. In fact, they called him Rutherford the Rover.

SWAIN: We specifically look biographies about presidents--How did they develop their leadership style? What were their influences?--hoping to understand them and therefore the decisions that they made that affect so much of us.

ROBERT CARO, AUTHOR, "MEANS OF ASCENT: THE YEARS OF LYNDON JOHNSON": March 1990) Once when Johnson was still a young assistant he got pneumonia, which, of course, was very serious back in--in those days. Mrs. Johnson was back in Texas on a vacation. And Rayburn sat next to Johnson's bed all night in the hospital in a straight-back wooden chair. He was so afraid--he was a chain smoker; he smoked all night. But he was so afraid of making a movement and disturbing him that he didn't brush--want to get up and brush the ashes away. So when Lyndon Johnson woke up in the morning, Sam Rayburn was sitting there with his lapels covered with this cigarette ash. As soon as he saw that Lyndon Johnson was awake, Johnson recalled, Rayburn leaned over and then said, `Lyndon, don't worry about anything. If you need anything, call on me.'

(Excerpt from August 1998)

Mr. ROBERT SOBEL, AUTHOR, "COOLIDGE: AN AMERICAN ENIGMA": (From BOOKNOTES, August 1998) They knocked on the door and Coolidge's father answered with a lantern in his hand. `What is it?' `President Harding has died. We have to speak to Calvin Coolidge immediately.' And he called upstairs, and Coolidge later said, `I knew something was wrong from the tone of his voice.' He came downstairs, he learned about this. He went upstairs, got dressed, prayed, went across the street to the general store, which is now open, and called Washington to find out what he has to do. And they said, `You have to be sworn in immediately.' `Well, who can do it?' `A judge.' `There's no judge here. My father's a notary public. Could he do it?' The answer is, `Yes, he can.'

So he went back into the house, and by the lantern, father holding the family Bible, Coolidge is sworn into the presidency at a little after 1:00 in the morning.

Mr. SOBEL: Went back to bed, got up the next morning, dressed, washed up, got into the car--walked out. And as he walked out he noticed a--a--a stone was missing from the step and he said to his father, `You better get that fixed.' Gets into the car, starts driving off, and he tells him, `Stop.' Stops the car, goes to the family cemetery and goes to his mother's grave, prays, gets back into the car, then he's off to the train.

(End of excerpt)

(Excerpt from January 1998)

Mr. ROGER SIMON, AUTHOR, "SHOWTIME: THE AMERICAN POLITICAL CIRCUS AND THE RACE FOR THE WHITE HOUSE": (From January 1998) Bill Clinton. If you go out into the crowds after Bill Clinton speaks, and many reporters have, you--and interview people, you find the same comment over and over again, whether you're in Petaluma or Poughkeepsie, and it's, `He made me feel like I was the only person in the crowd.'

(End of excerpt)

(Excerpt from October 1997)

Mr. JEFF SHESOL, AUTHOR, "MUTUAL CONTEMPT: LBJ, ROBERT KENNEDY, AND THE FEUD THAT DEFINED A DECADE": Well, the--Johnson is giving Moyers the treatment in that picture. It was well known in the 1950s, when Johnson was majority leader, as the `Johnson Treatment' and that he would use his huge size and his large hands to basically bend people backwards. He would get into their faces and--and cow them physically. And you can see him moving in on Moyers like that. It's a very intimidating thing, and certainly many were intimidated by it through the '50s and '60s.

Mr. PAUL JOHNSON, AUTHOR, "A HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE": (From March 1998) Gerry Ford, incidentally, has one extraordinary gift, which I've never come across elsewhere to the same degree. He never forgot a name or a face, and that applied to unimportant people as well as important people. And that, of course, is why he got so high in the system.

(Excerpt from October 1995)

Mr. MARLIN FITZWATER, AUTHOR, "CALL THE BRIEFING! BUSH & REAGAN, SAM & HELEN": Well, President Bush was the most interested. I mean, he was really a news junkie. I mean, he would read all the papers before I ever got in in the morning. He'd always--I'd check with him about 7:15 in the morning. He'd say, `Did you see this Times story? Did you see this Wall Street Journal piece?' I said, `Mr. President, I haven't seen anything. I've been on the road driving in all morning.' And he'd been up since 5:30 reading the papers.

At night he had four television sets in his study in the--in the private quarters of the residence, and often he would invite me up there and we'd watch all the newscasts simultaneously or st--st--staggered, if they were. And he would compare the newscasts by--from each correspondent in each network.

(End of excerpt)

SWAIN: The other thing i--about presidents that--that's a great way to study American history because it takes history of a certain period--four years or eight years or, in FDR's case, longer, of course--where you can see a personal view of all the events that were happening in the nation. So it's a way to get a real sense of what America might have been like during the Gilded Age or during the Great Depression through the decisions and the life of the person who led it.

Mr. CHRISTOPHER MATTHEWS, AUTHOR, "KENNEDY AND NIXON": (From May 1996) They met at a National Press Club reception for returning GIs from World War II who had been elected to Congress. It was just for veterans who had all come back from the service about a year before. Billy Sutton, who was press secretary to--to Jack Kennedy, a freshman from Massachusetts, introduced him to Richard Nixon, a freshman from California. And Jack Kennedy said, `You're the guy that beat Jerry Voorhis, aren't you?' And Nixon said, `Yeah.' And Kennedy said--he said--and Kennedy said, `That's like beating John McCormack up in Massachusetts,' because Voorhis was a big New Dealer. He was a five-termer, very respected, probably the most respected member of the House. And it'd be like beating Mo Udall, or somebody like that, somebody everybody liked.

And Kennedy was so impressed that this guy had knocked off the big guy, and--and Nixon, of course, not very good at small talk, says, `Well, I guess I feel great.' You know, that's all he could come up with. But that was their first meeting.

Mr. JAMES HUMES, AUTHOR, "CONFESSIONS OF A WHITE HOUSE GHOSTWRITER": (From May 1997) Nixon was--is a--a--a person who was sometimes awkward in--in social situations, but he was the warmest in a intellectual situation. He was the warmest of all of them. He--he was an introvert or an intellectual in an extrovert's profession. So while you knew you'd see him at a cocktail party, (imitating Nixon) `Well, you know, the Redskins, they're really gonna kick butt,' I mean, but he--he was being one of the boys, and he wasn't quite.

(Excerpt from October 1997)

Mr. PAUL NAGEL, AUTHOR, "JOHN QUINCY ADAMS: A PUBLIC LIFE, A PRIVATE LIFE": His brother Thomas died--John Quincy Adams' brother died.

Mr. NAGEL: And his brother Charles died.

Mr. NAGEL: Mm-hmm. It com--it came to--it's a--in--it's a--the family is probably pretty good evidence that a weakness for alcohol can be genetically transmitted.

(End of excerpt)

(Excerpt from September 1997)

Mr. GEOFFREY PERRET, AUTHOR, "ULYSSES S. GRANT: SOLDIER & PRESIDENT": Not a lot. He--I mean, it's ironic. The most famous drunk in American history was not a heavy drinker. The trouble with Grant was that he could get drunk on two drinks. And not only that, he would start walking into the furniture and ne--need the wall for support. Well, it was always obvious that--that Grant had been drinking. Some people we know could--could drink a bottle and you would never guess, but he was the other way around.

And the--there was really only one reason why Grant drank, and that was he--he was deeply and passionately in love with his wife. Grant's marriage was not a limited partnership; it was a romance from beginning to end. And when he was away from Julia for very long, he felt desperately lonely. He missed her tremendously and he would start drinking.

(End of excerpt)

(Excerpt from March 1996)

Mr. WAYNE FIELDS, AUTHOR, "UNION OF WORDS: A HISTORY OF PRESIDENTIAL ELOQUENCE": Harrison. The first Harrison spoke, I think it was--must have run about an hour and a half.

Mr. FIELDS: Yep. And it was an important speech because it's almost longer than his presidency. He died within the month. So the--and--and there are lots of people that think he died because he was outside too long giving that speech.

Mr. FIELDS: The shortest is probably the--the last FDR that--with the third and fourth inaugurations, Franklin Roosevelt shortened his speeches considerably. And the fourth he's in bad health, and so it's--it's a different kind of occasion.

(End of excerpt)

(Excerpt from February 1999)

Mr. RICHARD SHENKMAN, AUTHOR, "PRESIDENTIAL AMBITION": Yeah, you opened a can of worms with this one. This is a big one. You've got Arthur lying about having Bright's disease, this fatal kidney disorder.

The very next president, Grover Cleveland, he comes down with cancer, has a secret cancer operation while he's president, doesn't even tell the Cabinet or his vice president about it. There's a conspiracy of silence about this. He only lets a very few people know about it because there are all kinds of repercussions if this word gets out that he's gonna be operated on for cancer. So what happens? He keeps it quiet, the press finds out about it, he lies. And then they drop it. They're not used to a president lying yet, and so they're willing to kind of give him the benefit of the doubt.

Woodrow Wilson, running for office, pretends to be in perfect health. It turns out that he had had two strokes as a young historian and a president of of Princeton. Two strokes; one kept him for several months with one side of his body partly paralyzed.

(End of excerpt)

(Excerpt from April 1994)

Mr. HOWELL RAINES, AUTHOR, "FLY FISHING THROUGH THE MIDLIFE CRISIS": Well, several. Hoover was a devoted fly fisherman. And Cal Coolidge fished with a fly rod, but with worms most of the time, and that irritated Hoover. He used to tease his fellow Republican about that. President Eisenhower like to fly fish. President Bush is a--is an ardent fisherman, but a novice--a self-described novice, as he says in my book, at fly-fishing. President Carter was the best fly fisherman ever to occupy the White House.

(End of excerpt)

(Excerpt from October 1998)

Mr. ERIC FONER, AUTHOR, "THE STORY OF AMERICAN FREEDOM": Any president. Well, see, this is the kind of research you can do nowadays. I wouldn't call it high-level research. All the papers of all the presidents are on CD-ROM, and you can literally search for the word freedom or liberty. And if you do so, you will discover that Ronald Reagan used those words more than any other president. Now that doesn't prove a lot in and of itself, but it does emphasize this--his very concerted effort to reshape the notion of liberty in his own image, just as FDR did.

(End of excerpt)

Former President RICHARD NIXON, AUTHOR, "SEIZE THE MOMENT: AMERICA'S CHALLENGE IN A ONE-SUPERPOWER WORLD": I had the privilege of knowing Churchill we--we--when he was past his prime. But be--past his prime, he was ahead of almost any other leader you could possibly know.

Former President JIMMY CARTER, AUTHOR, "ALWAYS A RECKONING AND OTHER POEMS": Except for my own father, Hyman Rickover had more influence over me than any other man I've ever known.

Former President GEORGE BUSH, AUTHOR, "A WORLD TRANSFORMED": Abraham Lincoln.

Mr. BUSH: Just because of such a--such a huge presence for preserving the Union, and in the process eliminating slavery.

President BILL CLINTON, AUTHOR, "BETWEEN HOPE AND HISTORY: MEETING AMERICA'S CHANGES FOR THE 21ST CENTURY": Well, when I was a young man I loved Thomas Wolfe and Wil--William Faulkner, the great Southern writers.

(End of excerpt)

(Graphic on screen)

10th Anniversary

BOOKNOTES

Announcer: C-SPAN's look back at the 10 years of BOOKNOTES will continue.

If you'd like a commemorative BOOKNOTES 10th Anniversary bookmark, send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to Booknotes, 10th Anniversary, C-SPAN, at 400 North Capitol Street, Northwest, Suite 650, Washington, DC 20001. The first 1,000 entries will receive the bookmark; one bookmark per address, please.

(Announcements)

(Graphic on screen)

BOOKNOTES 10th Anniversary

The Dedication

Mr. JAMES RESTON Jr., AUTHOR, "THE LONE STAR": (From December 1989) That's my mother and father.

Mr. RESTON: Well, until you asked it was sort an attempt to--of the author to--for it to be a rather private moment. For some reason that just aesthetically felt better than--than to say `for my mother and father.'

Mr. RESTON: Never have. I've been waiting for the right book, and I think this is the right book.

Mr. RESTON: My father.

Mr. RESTON: Barrett Reston.

Mr. RESTON: Sarah Fulton Reston.

(End of excerpt)

Vice President AL GORE, AUTHOR, "EARTH IN THE BALANCE": She died of lung cancer. And she was the very first volunteer for the Peace Corps.

Vice Pres. GORE: First ever. When I first ran for public office, she told her husband she was gonna have to take a few months away from--from him, and came and took the toughest counties that I had in that district and--and just worked full-time and really made the difference.

(End of excerpt)

(Excerpt from May 1994)

Mr. STEPHEN AMBROSE, AUTHOR, "D-DAY: JUNE 6, 1944": That's my wife.

Mr. AMBROSE: Indispensable. At the end of every day, I--I want to hear how it came out. And--and one of the things that drives me as a writer is curiosity. And I never can know what really happened until I sit down and have to write it up. After I spend eight, 10 hours at the typewriter, I'm dying to hear what I wrote. But I don't want to just read it. I want to read it aloud and get a reaction and response. So at the end of every day she sits down with me and--and if I've done 10 pages that day or 15, she listens and then she jumps me. She's always accusing me of triumphalism and making me cut back on that. I like to fly the flag high, and Moira wants to be a little more critical than that.

(End of excerpt)

Mr. RICHARD HOLBROOKE, AUTHOR, "TO END A WAR": (From June 1998) The book is dedicated, as it says on that page, to three cherished colleagues who did not reach Dayton: Joe Kruzel, upper right; Bob Frasier, upper left; and Nelson Drew at the bottom. Bob Frasier was my deputy. Joe Kruzel was a senior assis--deputy assistant secretary at the Pentagon. And Colonel Drew was at the White House. They died in an armored personnel carrier that was directly behind my vehicle as we tried to get into Sarajevo the first time.

Mr. STANLEY WEINTRAUB, AUTHOR, "DISRAELI: A BIOGRAPHY": What I remember most about my father was that he was a tremendous reader, although he had very little education.

(Graphic on screen)

In memory of my father, Benjamin Weintraub, and my father-in-law, Benjamin Horwitz, who each shared a name with Disraeli

Mr. WEINTRAUB: I think he didn't have education--formal education beyond the fourth grade. But when he died in his sleep, he was found reading Shakespeare's "Othello."

(End of excerpt)

Ms. F. CAROLYN GRAGLIA, AUTHOR, "DOMESTIC TRANQUILITY: A BRIEF AGAINT FEMINISM": Yes.

Ms. GRAGLIA: Right.

Ms. GRAGLIA: Because he--he is the foundation of it. If it hadn't been for him, I never would have had any of these feelings.

(Graphic on screen)

This book is dedicated to my husband, Lino, the foundation of it.

Copyright (C) 1998 by F. Carolyn Graglia

Ms. GRAGLIA: It--it--it was because of this tremendously satisfying marital relationship that I ever was able, I think, to feel secure enough not to need the security of a job.

(End of excerpt)

(Excerpt from November 1995)

Mr. CHARLES KURALT, AUTHOR, "CHARLES KURALT'S AMERICA": Catherine is a little bit of a mystery; some friends thinking that she must be a secret lover have sidled up to me and asked me that question. `Hey, who's Catherine?' Catherine is my well-loved sister, who--who, with her family, lives on Bainbridge Island out in Washington. And she and I became very close during this year because we mainly, along with my brother Wallace, were responsible for taking care of our dying father.

(End of excerpt)

Mr. TIMOTHY PENNY, AUTHOR, "COMMON CENTS": (From April 1995) In terms of politics, my mother is my inspiration. She--she was John Kennedy Democrat back in 1960. I was all of nine years old at the time. I helped with dishes after supper every night and I got my political doct--indoctrination right there at the kitchen sink.

(Excerpt from October 1992)

Mr. GEORGE WILL, AUTHOR, "RESTORATION": They're exceptional people that have had--they've both been here longer than term limits would allow them to stay on most recipes.

(Graphic on screen)

To

Pat and Liz Moynihan and Jack and Sally Danforth

Were more of the people who came to Washington like

these four, this book would not have been written.

Mr. WILL: Most term limits would be two terms for the Senate. They bring a seriousness and a gravity to public life that rises well above careerism.

(End of excerpt)

(Excerpt from October 1991)

Ms. SUZANNE GARMENT, AUTHOR, "SCANDAL": Annie Garment is age nine and has her father's temperament, and had just wrote an autobiography in which she said she wanted to be the first female chief justice of the Supreme Court, but if she could really be anything she wanted, she'd be her dog, Lola. So Annie's got her priorities straight.

(End of excerpt)

(Excerpt from March 1993)

Mr. PAUL KENNEDY, AUTHOR, "PREPARING FOR THE 21ST CENTURY": Well, I said first of all it's probably the only sort of international work of scholarship which got dedicated to a boys' soccer team.

Secondly, in writing this book, which is a very complex one, I felt a need for therapy. And I have to say that getting away from my writing and getting away from teaching at Yale and going and working with these young men--I've been coaching them since they were 10 years old now--is a--just a wonderful relief. You come back relaxed and you get on with thinking through your books.

(End of excerpt)

(Excerpt from November 1997)

Mr. JIM HIGHTOWER, AUTHOR, "THERE'S NOTHING IN THE ROAD BUT YELLOW STRIPES & DEAD ARMADILLOS": That's my daddy, known as High. So if you want to know where I get these little witticisms and kind of crazy things, start with the fact that my daddy was named High.

(End of excerpt)

(Excerpt from September 1998)

Mr. SIMON WINCHESTER, AUTHOR, "THE PROFESSOR AND THE MADMAN": Well, in a way--I--I don't want to be impertinent to you. I--I will confess as to who it is. I--I like that to be a little secret that people--they only find it out at the end of the book. And, in fact, it's my little test for finding out if people have read it, because th--people have come to me and said, `Loved your book, Simon, but tell me who is G.M.?' And then I--I know that they actually haven't read it.

(End of excerpt)

(Graphic on screen)

BOOKNOTES 10th Anniversary

The Writing Process

(Excerpt from August 1996)

Ms. ELEANOR CLIFT, AUTHOR, "WAR WITHOUT BLOODSHED": If there was one lesson that I think both of us learned is that writing a book and--and getting it through to conclusion takes a lot longer than you--than you ever imagined. It's--it's--I--it's sort of like getting a bill through Congress.

(End of excerpt)

(Excerpt from October 1995)

Mr. EVAN THOMAS, AUTHOR, "THE VERY BEST MEN--FOUR WHO DARED": For me, it's joy. I get a writer's high. I find it euphoric. The hardest thing is waiting for the reviews. That's what's hard about it. The doing of it, for me, is sheer pleasure.

(End of excerpt)

(Excerpt from June 1998)

Mr. RICHARD HOLBROOKE, AUTHOR, "TO END A WAR": My wife saying, `Get it over with so we can get on with the rest of our lives.'

(End of excerpt)

(Excerpt from January 1999)

Ms. VIRGINIA POSTREL, AUTHOR, "THE FUTURE AND ITS ENEMIES": It was the most difficult thing I've done and the most fun thing I've done.

(End of excerpt)

(Excerpt from June 1997)

Mr. TOM CLANCY, AUTHOR, "INTO THE STORM": I think it's like the clerk of Oxford, gladly would he learn and gladly catch, Teach you know, it's--it's--Brian, it's what I do, it's my job.

(End of excerpt)

Mr. SHELBY FOOTE, AUTHOR, "STARS IN THEIR COURSES": I write with a dip pin, which causes all kind of problems, everything from finding blotters to pen points, but it makes me take my time and it gives me a real feeling of satisfaction that I'm getting where I'm going.

Mr. FOOTE: You have to dip it in the ink and write three or four words and dip it again. And it--it has a real influence on the way I write, so different not only from a typewriter but from using a pencil or a fountain pen.

(End of excerpt)

(Excerpt from October 1996)

Ms. NELL IRVIN PAINTER, AUTHOR, "SOJOURNER TRUTH": Writing is easy, actually, but I write about 100 drafts.

Ms. PAINTER: Of everything.

Ms. PAINTER: Yeah.

Ms. PAINTER: Well, OK, 98. But in the old days, I--let me explain this. In the old days when I used to write on a typewriter, I would start my--my drafts on that yellow paper. Remember yellow paper? So I--you know, I'd just open my mind and just keep going. I would never know exactly what I was going to say until my fingers were on the keyboard. And I'd just type, and a lot of it would be junk. So I'd retype it. And then I'd put in more and it would get better, and it--so I--these were called zero-minus drafts, and they were on the yellow paper. And then I would cut them up and cut and paste and I'd have these cut-and-paste yellow s--p--sheets, and then finally, it would begin to look like it should. And then I'd start typing on white paper and then I'd have white paper with yellow parts on it. By the time it got to all white paper, that was the first draft.

(End of excerpt)

(Excerpt from October 1996)

Mr. ANDREW FERGUSON, AUTHOR, "FOOLS' NAMES, FOOLS' FACES": Well, you just--you just make coffee--you make a lot of coffee and you sit down in front of the screen and you just sort of type out a word and then you go and talk on the telephone and you go get some more coffee, then you come back and you make yourself type out another sentence. And you go--if you're at home, you rearrange your ties or, you know, you clean off your dresser and then you go back and do it again. Then you make another phone call, and essentially, pretty soon, your editor's on the phone saying, `Where are--is my copy? I need your column.' So then you sit down and you just do it. It's very unpleasant.

(End of excerpt)

(Excerpt from May 1995)

Mr. PETER BRIMELOW, AUTHOR, "ALIEN NATION": Well, I just sat in front of the word processor until blood came out of my ears.

(End of excerpt)

(Excerpt from previous program)

Mr. FORREST McDONALD, AUTHOR, "THE AMERICAN PRESIDENCY": You'd see me writing in the nude most of the time.

Mr. McDONALD: Yeah. Well, we live in total isolation out in the country. They don't even read the electric meter because the electric man can't find it. We have to read our own meter. And we've got wonderful isolation and, you know, it's warm most of the year in Alabama. And why wear clothes? I mean, they're just a bother. You'd see me sitting on the--on the porch--we--we have a house that's mainly glass and otherwise screen--and sitting out on the porch with a--with a big 8 1/2-by-14 yellow tablet and writing. I write it out by hand.

(End of excerpt)

(Excerpt from October 1993)

Mr. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS, AUTHOR, "FOR THE SAKE OF ARGUMENT": Yeah. Yeah, I sometimes write in bars, too, in the afternoons.

Mr. HITCHENS: Yeah, I'll go out and find a corner of the bar, quite like--if the noise isn't directed at me--in other words, if there's not a phone ringing or a baby crying or something--I quite like it if the jukebox is on and people are shouting the odds about a sports game, and I'm just hunched over a bottle in the corner. And I write in longhand, anyway, so I can do it anywhere.

(End of excerpt)

Mr. THEODORE SORENSEN, AUTHOR, "WHY I AM A DEMOCRAT": Well, you'd see me, first of all, using a pen and pad. And I'm sorry to say I have not yet mastered the computer. As I write, I edit and I circle and I cross out and it becomes impossible for anyone to read, other than--than myself. You would see me, at times, get up and go and get the dictionary or even the thesaurus in order to get exactly the right word. It's a very inefficient use of my time. But I feel very strongly about the English language, which I think is a beautiful, expressive language, and having exactly the right word is important to me.

(End of excerpt)

(Excerpt from May 1994)

Mr. CAL THOMAS, AUTHOR, "THE THINGS THAT MATTER MOST": People ask me sometimes about the process of writing, particularly writing a column. I discussed this once with the actor and entertainer, Steve Allen, who has so many gifts, and I said, `You know, does it--does it ever amuse you that people compliment you for your gift, as if you'd lined up when they were being passed out and took one from here and one from there?' And it did, and it does me as well. I don't know how I do it. I don't know how ideas come to me. They just do. It's just a gift.

(End of excerpt)

(Graphic on screen)

Behind the Scenes

BRETT BETSILL, "BOOKNOTES DIRECTOR": We're standing in C-SPAN's Studio A, which, for the first eight and a half years of the BOOKNOTES history, was really C-SPAN's only studio and the only place we had to produce the BOOKNOTES program. And from a technical standpoint, the BOOKNOTES program is very simplistic. It take--it takes a director, an audio person, and it used to take two camera operators standing behind each camera that we had. And we had a third camera, also, for a wide shot for the closing of the program. But it's still pretty simplistic, no real set, except for two chairs, a coffee table and a black curtain at the background. So we keep it simple, keep the focus on the conversation.

And about two years ago, we s--had a second studio built, what--what we call Studio B. This being Studio A, naturally, Studio B was next, and that's just across the hall here. Now Studio B we--we built for redundant purposes, just in case we had more productions going on, and we also decided to make it the primary studio for BOOKNOTES productions. And one of the biggest advantages for the production over here is the addition of robotic cameras. It pretty much eliminated the need for a person to actually stand behind the camera and to operate the camera and just enhanced the feeling for the guest and the host that it just be a conversation between two people without the--the technology getting in the way of the production. The cameras are operated from the control room by one person--all three cameras are operated by one person, and with no other human beings in the--in the studio, it just makes it even more simple as far as the actual feeling that--that goes on with the interview.

ROBIN SCULLIN, BOOKNOTES Producer: We'll go down this hallway and, as you may have known, this is a 57-minute interview.

Unidentified Woman: Yes.

SCULLIN: The author comes to C-SPAN and we meet them and just bring them back into what we call the greenroom. I find it's very important to tell them this is an hourlong conversation. There are no stops or starts. There are no second chances, but there are no interruptions, either. So I think those subtle pros and cons, if you will, are important to tell. Even the most experienced interviewee needs to--to be reminded of--of, you know, `This--this is the way we work here.' And I also tell them that--the basics, as viewers would know who watch BOOKNOTES, that Brian, the host, holds up the book in the beginning and holds up the book at the end just so that viewers can see the cover. Oftentimes, he'll hold up the book and show pictures. Sometimes we prepare what's called a still store of a picture in advance, or a series of pictures, if there are a lot of pictures in the book, because the pictures often bring the book to life.

(Excerpt from BOOKNOTES taping)

BETSILL: Three, two, one. Their mike's in, cue.

Lady MARY SOAMES, AUTHOR, "WINSTON & CLEMENTINE": Two marvelous, very loving and very lovable people.

(End of excerpt)

SCULLIN: The control room for BOOKNOTES is two-tiered. The director is sort of the heartbeat in the first row. Behind the director and in that series of people is the producer and the associate producer. And then I sit right to the left of the associate producer, watching the program, taking careful notes if there's anything, as I mentioned before, to follow along as to whether we're gonna go to any photos.

(Excerpt from taping)

Lady SOAMES: Really, I think that one of their--one of their late marriage anniversaries, I think that was taken in the '60s.

BETSILL: And--and clip their mikes, Bob.

SCULLIN: Well, that was the fastest hour we've had here in a long time.

Lady SOAMES: It's what?

SCULLIN: The fastest hour we've had here in a long time.

Lady SOAMES: Really? Was it all right?

SCULLIN: Yes. All of a sudden, it was two minutes left.

Lady SOAMES: Oh, right. Really?

SCULLIN: Really. It just brought the--all the letters to life.

Lady SOAMES: It was so nice talking. He--he really got me going.

SCULLIN: If you want a second hour, if you want to know more, if you're frustrated that the time has run out, that that's a real sign that the--the BOOKNOTES and the author have--have opened up to you.

Lady SOAMES: Thank you so much.

SCULLIN: Like C-SPAN, BOOKNOTES has its own mission of sorts, and it's a very simple mission. The books that are considered and that are on BOOKNOTES are non-fiction. They are hardcover, and many of our authors write a lot of books. David Halberstam comes to mind. He has written, oh, probably 15 to 20 books. But no matter how big a historian you are or how many books you write, you can only be on BOOKNOTES once. It's a one-shot deal. And I think that was done at the beginning of the program just in a s--in--in a sense of fairness.

SCULLIN: The other part of the selection process that's very important and involves a little extra outreach is to the University Press market, to try and get a sense of what a professor's writing about and what history is out there that's not being done by the "big" publishers, that doesn't have a big display in Barnes & Noble or at an independent bookstore, what books are sort of quieter books, written by professors that still are little gems.

(Music plays and montage of books and authors shown)

Announcer: C-SPAN's look back at the 10 years of BOOKNOTES will continue. "Booknotes Life Stories" is a new book based on 10 years of C-SPAN's BOOKNOTES programs. It contains a collection of essays about the individuals who influenced American policy and culture. Inside the book, stories of American patriots by writers from the 1700s, such as "John Adams" by Joseph Ellis, "Henry Clay" by Robert Remini, and "Sojourner Truth" by Nell Irvin Painter; from the 1800s, "Ulysses S. Grant" by Geoffrey Perret, "W.E.B. Du Bois" by David Levering Lewis, and "Marcel Proust" by Shelby Foote; and in the 1900s, "Whittaker Chambers" by Sam Tanenhaus, "Katharine Graham" by Katharine Graham, and "Lee Harvey Oswald" by Norman Mailer. "Booknotes Life Stories" is now available in your local bookstore. All proceeds go to the C-SPAN Education Foundation.

(Graphic on screen)

Those Difficult Issues

SWAIN: People who watch BOOKNOTES probably see that authors reveal a lot, sometimes surprising themselves in the course of the interview. And if you ponder a bit about what--what the chemistry is that makes that happen, some of it is owing to the darkened intimacy of the BOOKNOTES set and an hour conversation. We do everything we can to make it feel as little like a television production as we possibly can. It is a one-on-one extremely intimate conversation in--in the dynamics between the host and the author, and television just happens to capture that.

(Excerpt from March 1997)

Mr. LEONARD GARMENT, AUTHOR, "CRAZY RHYTHM": Well, it was a--it was in--in Grace's case, it ul--ultimately turned out--turned out to be a killer.

I knew from a long walk and talk we had Christmas--Thanksgiving night that she sort of made clear that she--she said that she was not going back to any hospital. You--the--what the sequence of possibilities after that were kinda closed away from my thought, and--and she began to--with the bad weather and the c--and then the same, you know, family is always--is one of the sad things, it's sort of--sort of--it's--it's the same, home is the same. It's good, bad, it doesn't change that much--Philip LarkenLarkin poem. And I--I could sense there was real trouble, and we--we scheduled an appointment--I arranged an appointment for family therapy; that is to go to see a psychiatrist that we all--that we knew, a ver--a very able person. And we were supposed to be there--the date was for a Friday, 4:30. The kids were there, I was there. She had--she said she had certain other things in the morning that--to do in--shopping and some other--and, of course, when--when we were there, she didn't show up and we--she didn't show up. She never showed up.

(End of excerpt)

SWAIN: BOOKNOTES takes the stress away and allows authors to relax, get over that adrenalin rush of `five-four-three-two-one, you're on-camera, go,' and commercial break happening in a few minutes, and be themselves. They write about heart-wrenching human experiences in their books. It is difficult to talk about them in stressful environments, where you've got this and you're--got three minutes to talk about the main subject of your book, and that's it and I want it--people to buy my book so they'd better hear what I think about topic A, and not so much about me. Our hour long format, once again, allows you to move beyond topic A to the individuals.

SCULLIN: Christopher Dickey wrote a book about growing up with his father and all sorts of experiences, and it was called "Summer of Deliverance." And his father's a famous writer, and he had talked about it in the book and he had talked about the importance of becoming close with his father before he died.

(Excerpt from September 1998)

Mr. CHRISTOPHER DICKEY, AUTHOR, "SUMMER OF DELIVERANCE: A MEMOIR OF FATHER AND SON": Staying at the Georgetown Inn, yeah.

Mr. DICKEY: Yeah, and what you have to know is that this is very soon after my mother had died and I had desperately wanted him to quit drinking then, and had held him in my arms after the funeral when he went i--when he had the shakes, and he had promised me he wasn't gonna drink anymore. And I had quit drinking, and I thought, `OK, maybe we can--we can build something here.' So then I was supposed to meet him at--at Georgetown--at the Georgetown Inn, and I went to--to pick him up--to meet him at the hotel, and I waited in the lobby and waited in the lobby, and he didn't show up and didn't show up. And finally, I got them to open his room and I went in, and he was passed out on his bed.

(End of excerpt)

SCULLIN: There were elements that he admitted to us that--after the taping, that he had never gone into before, that I don't think anyone can quite explain why, other than there's the opportunity and some authors who have been maybe alone in a room, writing this book for so long, it comes out.

(Excerpt from June 1995)

Mr. DeWAYNE WICKMAN, AUTHOR, "WOODHOLME: A BLACK MAN'S STORY OF GROWING UP ALONE": Eight years old. That's a picture of me that was taken in the third grade. It was the picture that I carried to the place of my mother's employment on the last full day of her life, and I offered her a package of pictures. You know, back in those days--back in 1954, when you were s--when you had your school picture taken, the schools trusted you to take the pictures home with a little sheet, and your parents could look at the sheet and determine which combination of pictures they would want, and then they'd drop a check or some cash in an envelope and send--and return the unwanted pictures back. That was a choice that was offered me that day. I took those pictures to my mother's place of employment, and she said to me, as I recall--after suggesting that maybe we didn't have the money to buy them, she said, `Let me discuss this wi--with your father.' And those pictures were found scattered about the front seat of the automobile in which my parents were found in the early hours of the morning of December 17th, 1954, after the murder-suicide.

(End of excerpt)

(Excerpt from July 1995)

Mr. JOHN HOCKENBERRY, AUTHOR, "MOVING VIOLATIONS: A MEMOIR": I was in this car and I know I was hurt pretty badly. I was conscious the whole time. And I was scrunched up in the back seat, and bleeding from my head and I had some trouble breathing because my ribs were broken--a bunch of ribs were broken. And I put my hands down, as you naturally would--you're kinda crouched in one of these American-made car back seats, where they don't have much in the way of leg room. And I put my hands on my knees, and nothing. It was like they were somebody else's knees. And at that moment--and I describe it in th--in the book--that was the moment that began this other journey in this other body.

(End of excerpt)

(Excerpt from November 1997)

Ms. IRIS CHANG, AUTHOR, "THE RAPE OF NANKING: THE FORGOTTEN HOLOCAUST OF WORLD WAR II": "The Rape of Nanking" is one of the greatest atrocities of world history. In December of 1937, the Japanese swept into the capital of China, which was then Nanking, and within six to eight weeks, they butchered, raped and tortured hundreds of thousands of Chinese civilians.

(End of excerpt)

Ms. CHANG: I still have problems looking at it. That's a woman who's been impaled after she's been raped.

Ms. CHANG: This, again, came--came from China and...

Ms. CHANG: ...it--it was--it's--it's--i--it came from the Chinese archives.

Ms. CHANG: That's a picture of a woman who's been gang-raped and she--as you can see, she's been tied to the chair so that she can be raped whenever the soldiers were in the mood for it. And, again, I mean, I--I have a hard time even looking at these pictures even now.

(End of excerpt)

(Graphic on screen)

Personal Lives

SCULLIN: There's a reason that BOOKNOTES interviews sometimes take a very personal direction. I think it's, hopefully, obvious to anyone that watches it that you can catch your breath a lot of times on BOOKNOTES, and the format is very patient.

Ms. NOA BEN ARTZI-PELOSSOF, AUTHOR, "IN THE NAME OF SORROW AND HOPE": I will tell, as I saw it, the story of my grandfather, the man, the human side, because there was a lot that has been said about Yitzhak Rabin, the politician, peacemaker, soldier, prime minister, and nothing has been said about the man.

Ms. ARTZI-PELOSSOF: That's right.

Ms. ARTZI-PELOSSOF: I hate them.

Ms. ARTZI-PELOSSOF: 'Cause they're ugly. Just because.

Ms. ARTZI-PELOSSOF: They're small, full of freckles, and they're fat.

Ms. ARTZI-PELOSSOF: Because they're really similar to my grandpa's.

Ms. ARTZI-PELOSSOF: Same--same sa--shape, they're a bit smaller, I guess, but--because they are really small--but--and he--yeah, but they're like his.

(End of excerpt)

(Excerpt from October 1997)

Ms. ANITA HILL, AUTHOR, "SPEAKING TRUTH TO POWER": The tumors were very painful and, on a normal day, I would start out in some amount of pain. I--to start, I'd feel like OK in the morning, but with some pain. And by the end of the day, on a normal day, I would have enough pain that I--I would take pain medic--cation. Now none of those days were normal at the time of the hearing, and certainly, during the testimony, there was so much stress that I was in--in incredible pain by the end of that day and the days that followed.

(End of excerpt)

(Excerpt from January 1997)

Mr. HENRY GRUNWALD, AUTHOR, "ONE MAN'S AMERICA": Well, looking at you now, I see the outline of your face. It's a bit of a blur. I am not sure that I can see whether you are, at this moment, smiling or frowning or something in between. I can see the outline of your suit. You're holding something, which I take it, is a book. I know that because you held it up before. Couldn't identify it exactly now.

(End of excerpt)

(Excerpt from August 1995)

Mr. ANDREW SULLIVAN, AUTHOR, "VIRTUALLY NORMAL: AN ARGUMENT ABOUT HOMOSEXUALITY": Yes, though very uncomfortably.

Mr. SULLIVAN: Yes, incredibly uncomfortable, not around women. And, in fact, I loved going on dates with them, but then there was that, like, unbelievable panic and fear towards the end of it that I'd have to kiss or, like, do something else that I--I couldn't--I mean, if you were told to go on a date with a guy when you were 17 and you were--you were able to go through the motions and have the dinner and everything, but then you knew you'd have to, like, kiss him, I mean, I think there'd be a moment when you panicked; you just don't want to do this, OK? And it's exactly the same. It's hard to--it's the same--the truth is, you know, growing up gay is the same thing as growing up straight, essentially. You're the same people. We're the same people. We have the same feelings.

(End of excerpt)

(Excerpt from previous program)

Mr. JIMMY CARTER: This is about my sister, who was an avid motorcyclist, who was a hostess for a bunch of rough motorcycle drivers who would stop at our house on the way to--to Daytona every year. And--and when my sister died, the bikers came into Plains and stayed with her--at her bedside for several days before her death. And--and--and during her funeral, they formed a--a motorcycle cortege in front. There were 37 motorcycles, one Harley-Davidson--they had to be Harley-Davidsons--so one in--one in front and then 36 behind it. And on her tombstone there in Plains, there's an inscription, `She rides in Harley heaven.'

(End of excerpt)

Mr. TOM BROKAW, AUTHOR, "THE GREATEST GENERATION": Well, Brian, you're not gonna believe this, but we met the summer before I moved there because my roommate at a summer camp where we were working as Boy Scouts had her picture in his trombone case. And he would open up the trombone case every night and take out the picture of this girlfriend, Meredith Auld. And I'd have to stare at the picture with him and he'd kinda look at it moonily. And then midway through the summer, she wrote him a Dear John. We wrote a withering reply to her. And I had no idea that I would be moving to Yankton, and my parents came to me at the end of that summer--we worked in construction--and said, `We're moving to Yankton.' And I thought, `Well, I know, really, two people, I know my roommate and I know this girl in the trombone case.' And I went to the swimming pool the first weekend I was there and there was this lifeguard who was the girl in the trombone case.

(End of excerpt)

(Excerpt from November 1991)

Mr. JAMES RESTON, AUTHOR, "DEADLINE: A MEMOIR": Writing a book is a--of--of memoirs is a funny thing, and I think it's an unavoidable thing, that when you come to the end of the book, you've come to the end of your life story and you--it's very hard not to feel that you've come to the end of your life.

Mr. RESTON: Having said that, by the end--the final chapter is Love and Hope and here I cribbed a--a--a little verse from Alfred Duff Cooper, who used to be head of the Admiralty in Britain. And he said--and this is a reference to myself and my wife. `We will not weep that spring that be past and autumn shadows fall. These years shall be, although, the last, the loveliest of all.' And that has proved to be true. You see, young love is marvelous, but old love, that's the real jewel.

(End of excerpt)

(Graphic on screen)

The Things We Learned...

Mr. A. SCOTT BERG, AUTHOR, "LINDBERGH": Yes, the picture up above walking with Lindbergh is the superintendent of the New Jersey State Police, a man named Colonel Norman Schwarzkopf.

Mr. BERG:The colonel is--is dead, but his son, the general, lives on, needless to say.

Mr. BERG:I even went to talk to the general just to--General Schwarzkopf was not around during the--during the crime, but I wanted to see what it was like to grow up in the Schwarzkopf household. What--did that Lindbergh crime loom? Did it linger in the house? And, indeed, it did.

(End of excerpt)

(Excerpt from January 1997)

Mr. DAVID BOAZ, AUTHOR, "LIBERTARIANISM: A PRIMER": Alan Greenspan.

Mr. BOAZ: Well, Alan Greenspan became very close to Ayn Rand when he was a young man in New York, was a great admirer of her philosophy and personally close to her and contributed one or more essays, I think, to one of the books that she edited that were mostly her essays and some other people, and I assume that he still maintains that admiration.

(End of excerpt)

(Excerpt from October 1996)

Mr. MIKHAIL GORBACHEV, AUTHOR, "MEMOIRS": (Through Translator) I've read many of the books by your writers: Theodore Dreiser, Scott Fitzgerald, to say nothing of Mark Twain and Jack London. And I could go on and on. And I read them. I read more than one book by each author. If I started reading Jack London, I wanted to read all that he wrote.

(End of excerpt)

Mr. EMORY THOMAS, AUTHOR, "ROBERT E. LEE: A BIOGRAPHY": Oh, I say he's 5'11".

Mr. THOMAS: Yeah, tiny feet.

Mr. THOMAS: Exactly. Tiny, tiny feet. The--there's--I have no--no--no explanation for that, but it's--it's true, and you get--I can get these numbers from Edward Valentine, who did a sculpture of Lee. He was supposed to do it from life, and he did take the measurements while Lee was still alive. And one of the things he measured were those feet.

(End of excerpt)

Representative NEWT GINGRICH, AUTHOR, "TO RENEW AMERICA": Oh, I got an F in an English course one time that I just couldn't do it. It was Southern short stories, and I failed. I mean, I just failed. I got an F once in a political science class for having missed most of the final because I was off doing something political. I mean, I just--there were periods of my undergraduate career when I was fairly irresponsible.

(End of excerpt)

(Excerpt from May 1996)

Mr. PAUL GREENBERG, AUTHOR, "NO SURPRISES: TWO DECADES OF CLINTON-WATCHING": Right. With the approbation of my publisher then, Ed Freeman. And I wasn't sure exactly when, and thanks to the good people at the Pine Bluff Public Library and going through editorial page after editorial page, to the best of our knowledge, the library staff and mine, we were able to bracket it at September 27th, 1980, during that gubernatorial campaign. That was when, on a Saturday edition, we referred to Bill Clinton as Slick Willie. It was in connection with his having him--having painted himself at a Democratic convention as being in the long line of reform governors that had followed Orval Faubus, which put him in the line of Winthrop Rockefeller, Dale Bumpers and David Pryor. And we were aghast and horrified at that because even then, we thought of Bill Clinton as a trimmer, a compromiser, rather than a forthright spokesman for reform.

(End of excerpt)

(Excerpt from March 1994)

Mr. JAMES McPHERSON, AUTHOR, "WHAT THEY FOUGHT FOR, 1861-1865": 1864 when he ran for ur--for re-election. Yeah. That's an extraordinary fact because back in 1860 when he ran for the first time, the opposition party got about 45 percent of the vote, and one can assume that that would include at least 40 percent of the men who then enlisted and--who could vote and then enlisted in the Union army. So for the opposition vote to go down from 40 percent or 45 percent to 20 percent during the war means that this war experience really transformed the soldiers into supporters of Lincoln and his war aims.

(End of excerpt) Ms.

ROBIN SCULLIN, BOOKNOTES Producer: I think certain authors from either different parts of the country or who've had different background than other people in America, if they include details in their book, either lists or phrases that are explained in the book but--you know, if you're watching BOOKNOTES and you haven't read the book, you're not gonna pick up on--on what the author's--you know, what kind of atmosphere or what kind of, you know, regional flavor, or whatever the--the word may be, the author's trying to create.

(Excerpt from March 1998)

Ms. MOLLY IVINS, AUTHOR, "YOU GOT TO DANCE WITH THEM WAHT BRUNG YOU": Gummit.

Ms. IVINS: That's the way Texans say `government.' `Now that gummit'--you know, `we've got to get the gummit off our backs. We've got to get the gummit off our'--you know, that's the way people talk. I just write the way people talk. I don't invent this stuff.

Ms. IVINS: Bidness.

Ms. IVINS: That's exactly the way Texans say the word `business.' Bidness.

Ms. IVINS: Near--when--I'm--I'm not sure I could say all anymore. We've got a lot of Texans who've moved in from somewhere else, but it--almost anyone who's--who's a native will say that, bidness.

Ms. IVINS: Sumbitch is not a--a dirty word in Texas. It's not like SOB. A sumbitch is the Texas word for `fella' or `guy.' `Well, he's a good ol' sumbitch. And then that sumbitch said to me, he said'--and there's no--there's no offense intended.

(End of excerpt) Ms.

SCULLIN: It's really trying to discover where the author's coming from, and if an author writes a certain sentence, what does that mean or have--have we interpreted this the way the author meant it? And sometimes, no, the meaning is completely different than what you would think, hearing the language.

(Excerpt from February 1994)

Mr. NATHAN McCALL, AUTHOR, "MAKES ME WANNA HOLLER": A redbone is a light-skinned black woman.

Mr. McCALL: It--it's a street term. It's a street term. It's--it--it--you know, we come in all complexions, you know, from--from blue-black to redbone, redbone being the lightest complexion black person that you can imagine. And so it's just our way of describing, you know, a--a very, very light complexioned black person.

Mr. McCALL: Jonin.

Mr. McCALL: Jonin.

Mr. McCALL: Yeah, J-O-N-I-N. Right. It's a--it's a term that we use to mean joking. You know, in our community, you know, where I grew up, it--you know, it's a big thing to be able to jon on somebody. You hear people today call it ragging, to jon on somebody. Another term is playing the dozens, where you get two people together and they make fun of each other just for fun, and it's an art, you know. It would be--it's a competitive art. It would be like if you and I sat here and we were to start jonin, then I might hone in on your tie, you know, and you might look at my turtleneck and say, `Where'd you get that funny-looking turtleneck?' Then I might look at your shoes and say, `Well, look at those shoes,' and then you might take my bla--you know, my jacket, you might hone in on my jacket. Then I'd say, `Well, what about your funny haircut?' you know, and--and we'd go, you know, tit for tat, you know, and people, i--you know, it draws a crowd. And people would stand around to see who could jon the best.

And if you got the best of me, then somebody in the crowd might take you on and you would have a jonin session. And you'd s--you'd take it from the top, you know, and he'd say, `Well, you know, look at that funny shirt you have on. That's--you know, you bought that shirt from Sears, you know,' and you might look at him and say, `Well, no, actually, your mama bought me this shirt.' And so sometimes if--you know, sometimes it was very friendly. Sometimes it would get really vicious. Sometimes, you know, you had guys who would jon each other so hard that--that one person might get mad and want to fight.

(End of excerpt)

(Graphic on screen)

BOOKNOTES 10th Anniversary

The Biography

Ms. SARAH TRAHERN (BOOKNOTES Producer 1990-1995): Biographies, I think, are my favorite types of books we do on BOOKNOTES. They're successful because they're very pointed. People can get a sense about someone, and--and particularly when an author writes a biography, they have immersed themselves in the lives of another person.

(Excerpt from September 1998)

Mr. JUAN WILLIAMS, AUTHOR, "THURGOOD MARSHALL: AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARY": Marshall was very, very dismissive, did not think much of Malcolm X, thought that he was, you know, pretty much a pimp and a drug runner and didn't think that he had mu--done much to change America. When they had meetings, when they were together, he said most of the time they were spent calling each other names, sons of bitches and everything else. There were times when he felt threatened by the black Muslims and by Malcolm X; that Malcolm X would call him some half-white son of a gun and things like that, and that Malcolm X was always in conflict with pe--with people, with establishment, with leadership.

(End of excerpt)

Mr. STEPHAN LESHER, AUTHOR, "GEORGE WALLACE: AMERICAN POPULIST": (From February 1994) And he grew up with that tradition, a tradition of insipient dislike, if not downright hatred, for the North. The sense that the North had imposed poverty and ignorance on the South following--during and following the Civil War. He grew up and he read books that I read, textbooks in school, which talked about the sins of carpetbaggers and scallywags--a great deal of hyperbole, but that's what he learned in school as a kid.

(Excerpt from February 1995)

Ms. LYNN SHERR, AUTHOR, "FAILURE IS IMPOSSIBLE: SUSAN B. ANTHONY IN HER OWN WORDS": She had a bad right eye. He right eye she had some problems with in childhood. I think we might refer to it as a wandering eye today. It has a medical name. She had some surgery which made it even worse, and she--she had a touch of vanity to her. I mean, one of the things I discovered about this woman is that she just wasn't this prim, proper, uptight lady that we think of, or this--this very dour profile on the one-dollar coin. She--she had great personality, and she was quite vain about that wandering eye. You will almost never see a front-on photograph of her. She always would turn her head. And--and that's why we have all those profile pictures of her.

(End of excerpt)

(Excerpt from June 1997)

Ms. SYLVIA JUKES MORRIS, AUTHOR, "RAGE FOR FAME: THE ASCENT OF CLARE BOOTHE LUCE": There, she's 20 years old, just married to--about to marry George--George Brokaw.

Ms. MORRIS: Yes.

Ms. MORRIS: Yes. Her--her--her collection at the Library of Congress turned out to be larger than most presidential collections that the library holds, because I think, as we said, "Rage For Fame," she knew she was going to be famous from--from childhood. And so she kept every scrap of paper that was sent to her and copies of all the letters that she sent out.

(End of excerpt)

(Excerpt from July 1990)

Mr. DENTON WATSON, AUTHOR, "LION IN THE LOBBY": That is 1957. Oh, yes, that's a very memorable picture. That was taken after the all-night filibuster by Strom Thurmond, Senator Strom Thurmond, against the 1957 Civil Rights Act. Senator Thurmond was the only one on the senator--he broke an agreement not to filibuster the bill, and Clarence Mitchell and, for a while, Mrs. Thurmond kept his company up there in the gallery until she got tired and could not, you know, stay the whole course, but Clarence Mitchell stayed the course.

(End of excerpt)

Ms. DEBORAH SHAPLEY, AUTHOR, "PROMISE & POWER: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF ROBERT McNAMARA": (From March 1993) I compare him to the Flying Dutchman because the Flying Dutchman dared nature in the legend and--and was cursed by God for having tried to sail around the Cape of Good Hope against the storm and was cursed to sail forever because he had been too bold, and there's a lot of hubris in McNamara, and--and in a way, all of this global travel has such a restless air, as though there's no place he can come to rest because he's still so controversial in his own country. I won't say he doesn't have a home in the United States, because he's very well-respected by people in the arms control community and the international banking community, but, in a sense, he doesn't have a home, I think, until he comes to terms with us.

(Graphic on screen)

BOOKNOTES 10th Anniversary

The Memoir

Ms. TRAHERN: The memoir books are a very interesting category for us on BOOKNOTES. They're not straight autobiographies, but they're often written by prominent public policy officials, such as General Norman Schwarzkopf, former presidential adviser Clark Clifford, former defense secretary Caspar Weinberger. And while they don't write about their whole life, they usually write about chapters of their lives.

General NORMAN SCHWARZKOPF, AUTHOR, "IT DOESN'T TAKE A HERO": (From November 1992) The night before the war is about to begin, at about 11:00 or 12:00 at night, I did what most people do. I sat down and wrote a letter to my family. I wanted them to know at that last minute that they were important to me, that--that they were the last thing that was in my mind before this terrible war started. I don't know why, but, you know, it's--it's amazing how many people I've talked to who did exactly the same thing.

(Excerpt from November 1995)

Mr. DAVID BRINKLEY, AUTHOR, "A MEMOIR": Well, I'm almost embarrassed to tell it because it's--I hate to talk about it. He was running for president, traveling the country, and I was traveling with him part of the time, not all the time, and until I began to notice it--this is when television was much newer and more--much more of a novelty than it is now. And I was on the air every night then, and wherever I went in those days, I drew some kind of crowd, of curiosity seekers and so on. And then Rockefeller was not a terribly strong candidate for president. He was rather weak, in fact, and did poorly when the voting began, but in any case, during the campaign, I began to notice and he began to notice that I drew--that more people gathered around me than gathered around him, which told nothing except that I was on television a lot and he was not. But it was embarrassing to him. He was running for president and I was just an ordinary reporter.

(End of excerpt)

(Excerpt from June 1994)

Mr. DAN QUAYLE, AUTHOR, "STANDING FIRM": You'd be surprised on how I was just able to block that out entirely. First of all, if I would--if I'm up late at night, I watch "Nightline." I don't watch Jay Leno or David Letterman. I--I prefer to watch "Nightline." So I really--I didn't watch these shows. You really don't have time to--to watch them. Furthermore, if you do and you sort of dwell on it, you're not gonna be able to do your job, so I just blocked it out.

(End of excerpt)

(Excerpt from April 1994)

Mr. PETE HAMILL, AUTHOR, "A DRINKING LIFE: A MEMOIR": Well, I didn't. I--I don't say that as an--as an--an assertion that I'm particularly proud of. I always think that, `God, I--I never had the imagination to do this,' or something. Whatever it was, I just couldn't get it. I co--you know, I--I was--I was one of those people, and I think there are many who are--who are sort of born secular, you know.

(End of excerpt)

(Excerpt from September 1995)

Mr. PIERRE SALINGER, AUTHOR, "P.S.: A MEMOIR": She did. He did.

Mr. SALINGER:I did, because she was my mistress before she fell in love with Lyndon Johnson. I forgot to say that.

Mr. SALINGER:I didn't--I have never named anyone else, but the same person happened to be a mistress of mine as well.

(End of excerpt) Ms.

SCULLIN: I think that biography and autobiography are--are very telling about--in essence, you can study all the public policy and kind of wonk books you want, but if you have someone who can bring people to life.

(Excerpt from June 1995)

Mr. ARMSTRONG WILLIAMS, AUTHOR, "BEYOND BLAME": Oh, Senator J. Strom Thurmond. This is a--this is a story. When I was 16 years old--16, a kid--my dad and I--because we had to read the papers. There was an--an a--an announcement in the Marion Star, Mullins Enterprise, a Senator Strom Thurmond was speaking at the Drydock Seafood Hut, which was in my hometown. And so I showed it to my dad. I said, `Dad, Senator Thurmond is--is right up the street.' It was about 10 miles away. I said, `We've got to--we've go to go. We've got to go.' So my daddy took off. He said, `Well, get dressed. I'll drive you.' It's the kind of father I had.

So we went to the Drydock Seafood Hut, and by the time we had arrived, the speech was over and the senator was coming out. And I saw him and I just--because my daddy taught us to be proud, and I walked up to him and I said, `Senator Thurmond, my name is Armstrong Williams and I hear that you are a racist.' Oh, God, I thought my father was going to bop me in the mouth. Really, I did, because he had this look. And then the senator laughed and we talked and he chuckled there for a few moments. He said, `Well, you seem like a bright young man. Why don't you just send me your resume when you graduate from high school and then you make a determination of whether I'm a racist or not.'

(End of excerpt)

(Excerpt from July 1997)

Mr. FRANK McCOURT, AUTHOR, "ANGELA'S ASHES": First of all, I always wanted to be a writer, but I didn't know that I wanted to write about this--this lane in Limerick, this slum, because anybody who comes from those circumstances doesn't want to write about it. You're ashamed of it. You--you don't have any self-esteem. So I--it wasn't until I--I somehow began to gain some approval or acceptance from my students in New York or from friends of mine. In social circles, I started talking about growing up in Limerick, and I suppose some of the stuff I told was amusing and they'd laugh and--because the whole--poverty is so absurd. Some of the stories I told them were so absurd, they'd laugh and they'd say, `You should write this. When are you going to write it?' Well, I'd been hearing this for years, `When are you going to write a book? When are you going to write a book?' A--but no more insistent than the little voice in my head, `Write the damn book.'

(End of excerpt)

Mr. McCOURT: I haven't had time to reflect on it since last September, how to be--because I've seen--I kno--I know people who are public because they used to hang around the Lion's Head Bar in New York and I knew Pete Hamill and people like that who had been public for years and years and years. And I'd see them come and go and I--and I'd--I'd be on the periphery of that crowd. And I--the--I was as--what they call in America only a teacher, only a teacher. They're journalists and writers and poets. I'm only a teacher. And I was re--I--I ca--I was always on the periphery. In a sense, I was like my father, an outsider. Now people look at me, `Oh.' They look at me. It's like Ralph Ellison's book, "Invisible Man." Pe--the people don't see you until you--I wrote a book. I taught for 27 years and nobody paid me a scrap of attention. Then I write a book about slum life, and I'm an expert on everything.

(End of excerpt)

SWAIN: C-SPAN is here because we want people to be a part of the national dialogue on public policy issues. For us, books is another avenue to do that.

Mrs. HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON: Thank you, Brian. (End of excerpt)

(Excerpt from 1997)

Mr. JOHN BERENDT, AUTHOR, "MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL": Thank you.

(End of excerpt)

(Excerpt from 1995)

Ms. MONICA CROWLEY , AUTHOR, "NIXON OFF THE RECORD": Thank you very much. (End of excerpt)

SWAIN: There is a vein that has been tapped and hasn't yet been replicated on the Internet or on other television channels, and as long as we are able to deliver something to our audience that fills their interest in--in books of this nature, we ought to keep doing it.