all right let's talk about you know just jump right in and tell us a little about yourself well i've always been interested in politics and history and the presidency and anything that really has to do with the past a started i guess at the age of five when my mother bought me a president's book and it just blossomed from here on in the you know i work out literally the book i literally word out from turning the pages so much i memorized everything there was to know about the presidents of their wives know the most part my first love absolutely is history in the presidency and congress and i love the way that you know all these details about everybody like you say about their wives and their dogs yeah so tell us about like ok with the book that there's three volumes there are there will be the  everything else but tell us where to get the title from such a creative title and you know you're lucky to get the website though yeah and i was lucky to come up with a title also i was trying to find something that would be a positive and negative because that's really what the book it's about the wonderful people people who have necessary for whatever reason of a better word messed up on occasion people have given us reason to laugh in some cases frown and say how did they get to be where they all were they were but i was really wanted to track in a title that was going to impact everything that was going to bring in something about the good the bad and the ugly so to speak so statesman was actually the easy part because that's when you're coming up with reputable terms and terms that you want to fit i think that's a lot easier than with one or two exceptions you generally had to have been in office between those twenty eight years either you either had to have been elected after one hundred sixty or left office before nine hundred and the reason is  that's really a transition from kennedy to reagan that's really the period in the two presidencies that i think are not only most known but they think most impactful so i started out just on the world stage and people who are known people who are  so now ok so how did you start like ok you know you knew what you wanted to initially get you knew the time period that you want to stay between so what happened how did you get out and how long did it take you to do each story it tells about that well it's funny i started right for a website called the moderate voice and it was we were just concluded the presidential cycle at that point it's two thousand and twelve cycle and he wanted people to write about national affairs about current affairs but he really needed pieces on anything any thing contemporary anything that might make it interesting his goal was really and i save his his name is joe gandelman he's a lot of sort of the moderate voice he really needed people just to get people to write stories that would get people talking so i at that time had brought a book of congressional anecdotes and it just told some great sort stories and great short humorous tales about people who just really made official washington laughing and i ended up writing  one or two of those anecdotes and then if i found my desire to write because that's what i am i found my desire just to look up a little bit more facts and get some more background about the person so one thing led to another  figured it wasn't going to be enough to write necessarily the anecdote that was going to make people laugh and i wanted to explain a little bit about the people so that certainly took up a lot more time and research and i had anticipated but one thing after that  figured in my passion for that i started writing a little bit more and more and more and i said well i have to include described have to include back i finally i just said to myself you know what i'm going to turn it into a book great idea yeah it does make me laugh thinking about it because i that only because it was originally supposed to be one volume and then it got to be so diverse so broad with the stories so many people were famous yet other people were not so i found that in order to make it effective i was going to have to i could possibly do just one and then in turn i figured there was no way i could limit it's just two so at the end of the day i decided to have three separate categories one the more semi well known figures people who might be whose names might ring a bell with people but they wouldn't necessarily be household names that would be volume one volume two would be the people who wouldn't be known at all but they have stories that are just so fascinating and just so delightful and stories that should be so well preserved that would be number two and they'd all be members of congress volume three i finally decided to just make exclusively to the governor governor suite or shaper states who do obtain notoriety if not for good reasons corruption etc hence the term statesman that mischief maker say and that's  really what that was all about i just love your brain i mean i'm watching you and thinking about how considerate you are and thinking about all this this is a great story ok because you've got to hear how much work he went to make sure the stories are accurate the background each of them don't forget somebody and then turn around and say how can i separate these out so that everybody gets like you said in the right place with the courtesy of the information regardless of their statement or mischief maker so tell us about the experience  reach out to find out the information but the whole thing how did they take it from beginning to end well if i could just tell you reaching out to the families was a book in itself i could actually i actually thought about when this is finally done completely about writing a i was practically in tears one of my regular waitresses and she said to me you seem a little bit subdued what's wrong i'm like i literally just tried calling about ten family members of about five different families and i couldn't reach a single one of them either they you know i used obituaries to get in touch with them because not them obviously but their family right and because that was the only way i had to do it and i could not literally find people either the numbers that were listed on four one one which is supposed to be modern up to date they'd be disconnected they'd have somebody who moved in some cases the numbers were just completely wrong or in many cases they weren't listed at all and i was so despondent at that point that i'm like and this was in october of two thousand and fourteen i said to my self you know i don't feel that i'm ever going to get this done i had to get permission for these cover images that you see there about their beauty some house miraculously squeezed about twenty six so i had to get permission from each of the family members and i couldn't  though i was able to find somebody who knew somebody and also had them as well but it didn't start out that way i just can't imagine on their side of the family you know they're like ok this person probably has passed or they're not interested they're retired or whatever and basically you know there's this guy come in and tries to find out the story and it's like no i don't want to share it but you were i had very little of that around and everybody because they wanted to talk to you because of the way that you care about the person and i think they showed that they sort of i was genuine they might have been a little bit suspicious at first you know how what is interesting with my father i had one person grilled me like you wouldn't believe but once i actually showed him see i had the benefit for the most part of having the pieces written already so once i was able to fax them or email them i cover and the piece itself they saw how serious i was and then they'd say you know i let me just try to get you there are some things that need to be added to and i'll help you there are some tales that you don't know some tales that people would like but once we get going on that then you know i think this will be the absolute perfect piece amplification that's really the word i'm looking for i just love that i think it's just so great and i also think that you know like you said some of the people may not even know the story books they're so important for you know for you to be speaking in universities colleges students history interest you know and just such a great but tell us a couple of like one of your favorite stories ok well  guess one of my favorite story would have to be somebody like bob bakker who's actually profiled in the second volume he's a texas congressman he'd always wear both ties he'd bicycle from the capitol to the white often he was a very extraordinarily brilliant lawyer but his goal was really he was a quite he'd be a profile in courage without question because he was a liberal representing suburban houston now we know how republican is now at the national level at the time it was a little mixed but it was still a loyal country and he said of the commerce committee which of course regulates a number of different areas and industries but that's all country but he wasn't afraid to go after big oil and say that you know he wants richie to be more efficiently and efficiency use more efficiently and see a promoted more efficiently and he earned the wrath of the oil industry and they finally ended up taking him down  did lose reelection but he was just a very special brilliant purse and he had a mind like many other people did not because he was such a skilled boy or you know things today of some of the alan dershowitz and the famous lawyer he actually had that kind of mind you know he died right after the clinton lewinsky affair literally affair but he didn't think that bill clinton should have to say this is according to his daughter he didn't think that bill clinton had to say anything because he didn't think that anybody's personal transgressions were anybody's business whether the public policy demands or whether the polls demanded it whether congress demanded it he really didn't think it was anybody's business in any way whatsoever so i thought that was kind of neat and i thought that was something i was grateful for the stories like that i thought really made the book feel like when you actually heard that from the daughter did you go back and read you what you had written that in there was always room for amplification and that's and by the way i tend to talk fast so if you need to give me a speeding ticket i know where i can see that happening but there was always room for amplification and i mean i always many of the things that i got were from my personal books online of course because that's how research is done but there's nothing like picking up the phone and having actual conversations and once i talk to these people there it was just impossible to let me put it this way i'd be disappointed if i wasn't going to if i didn't have the expectation of having to go back into a recession or a correction or an addition and then i wouldn't accomplish what nearly what i set out to do another good story i had one person julia butler hand say and a congresswoman from washington one of the first women to gain actual power she had a chairmanship of the appropriations committee subcommittee on appropriations i believe she was the first they call the cardinals and her son this is her son who actually told me this said that she was she was a very tough person to work thought that she was going to be pushed around because she was a woman they had another thing coming one person the chair of the committee was a guy named george mason from texas and he didn't really look too kindly on a woman being on her committee you know he was  old school hillbilly country and he'd said to her once julia you know you're going to have to trim your committee budget by about two hundred million dollars and she's like you know i don't know how i can do that but you know she got to work and the next day she came back she's like i cut a little a little there and she's like mr chairman i met your request we were able to trim the budget by two hundred dollars and she said to him he said to her she julia that's wonderful how you would you do it where did you get the savings and she replied stoically from your district that just means they were characters so to speak a little bit of eccentricity a little bit of style that started every day less than conservative style shall we say but it doesn't necessarily encompass scandals i'll give you one example of the scandal if that's ok and characters was shakespeare many times he actually absolutely forgot this is a very rough person spare no prisoners but he actually forgot a couple of times conveniently that he was no longer on the shakespeare stage he was now a member of congress but because he was so entertaining he was to be asked to preside over the house how entertaining was he he come on to the house for wearing his cape many times but just not only that i mean the cape in the moustache he was a character in itself and when he was and he literally usurped the defense secretary for citing his demands and saying we need the bags and we need we need this we need that we need the defense department to come out and finally he said to the people you know when a debate when the stage goes on a little lon and goes on a little too long you know it's time to call curtain so he just always used to states mentality nobody would really cross him because he controlled the purse strings so that's really what he did find scandal later in his life but he wasn't  really particularly notorious for scandal it was more his personal style but you want to talk about scandal a guy named wayne hayes and that name is probably more on the if it's certainly a household name to people they don't necessarily know why and that's deposition he would literally in those days be responsible for not only room use in the capitol but employees in which case he'd sign the checks of every single employee which is why they wanted to they were afraid to cross him but he and he was ultimately he finally get married to somebody else and she'd say for lack of better words to use a technical term so i still have to consider sleeping continue sleeping with you and she'd say well let's see how you do he actually assigned her a phone number five five he had to resign from there people still voted for him they said to him and this this was a case that this was a case with so many of my stories because they they really were their communities you know hayes was part of ohio i mean daniel flood was part of wilkes and you know once the ethics committee got involved with that when they finally unfortunately had to leave office just in a zinger stories and just told so well it is interesting what you said there about so many times that when the case that they were mind of a person there was a gentleman well there are two stories one is claire angle that may be a semi household name of not really that's one of the reasons i wrote the book because people should be preserved who aren't the i tell people that these aren't about the kennedys or the reagans or the nixons these are about the people in some cases who helped make them what who they were and who helped shape their presidencies and some in some cases but there was a gentleman named claire engel from california he was elected  in the famous class of one nine hundred fifty eight where which saw about twenty do democrats take office you know is the eisenhower recession a six year itch so to speak and he took office and he helped in many ways shepherd the civil rights act interaction but a tragic thing happened as the civil rights bill was coming into final passage and everybody knew it was going to be a matter of time but claire engle had a race with time he was diagnosed with a brain tumor and by the time the civil rights act was ready to be taken up after months of debate and months of countless amendments dilatory tactics he literally did not have weeks to live his face was all that swollen and he knew that but he was about to miss what could have been a crucial vote you know you get sixty seven votes for cloture it got seventy one but he was going to take any chances so they wheeled him in and when the clerk called his name mr engel he couldn't speak at that point so he pointed to his  was one of them one of my story one story that was absolutely heartwarming and this is a prime example of not knowing about somebody until you actually spoke to the family a guy by the name of bob gave me foreign policy experience he took on a great deal he was so skilled and so it's right on foreign affairs that when he gave a speech on the senate floor robert byrd who became majority leader years later he was a long time senator a colleague of mickey listed in his book as the top one hundred most compelling speeches that he's heard on the senate floor but he was also just a wonderful human being nothing was ever about him i said you know your father when it comes to foreign affairs doesn't stand out because you know he's overtaken by the way morris is and the billfold writes why is that and he goes well you have to understand nothing was ever about gail mcgee he always wanted to do things behind the scenes he never cared about who's got the credit and then people told me that you'll understand my father always had a saying their father's always had a saying you'd be surprised at what can you can accomplish if you don't really care who got the credit wow that is so i would not be able like you said i you have to finish the book and just to make sure that these people were not forgotten specially not late or already down to almost a minute and half left religion i emulate just let your story is i just on behalf of that's my publisher brous and i'm also doing what i can see promoted and it's also available on barnes and noble and amazon although amazon sometimes frankly takes a while to update the new volume because i did a few additions when i found out that i had more room when you know because in this way i was told that this was going to be seven hundred pages and that there wouldn't be this one the volume two came out too and there's no accident for that nine hundred ninety eight pages because i absolutely couldn't go over a thousand they for watching have a great week