>> Rep. Bob Latta: I choose to read "American Moonshot" by Douglas Brinkley for a couple of reasons. First, Douglas Brinkley hails from my district in Harrisburg, Ohio, and second I was at a meeting that he spoke at, and I was very, very fascinated to hear him speak on the book. It also brought back a lot of memories of my youth of the American Space Program. And it's really important for several reasons. First, I remember as a very young student, they would take all of our classes and we'd all go down to the school cafeteria, and we'd go down and we'd watch on the one black and white TV set in the entire school, the mercury missions of those astronauts blasting off. And then after that it was watching the Gemini missions and then the first walk in space by [inaudible], and after that it was watching the Apollo missions, and then of course then [inaudible] with Apollo 11 with Neil Armstrong being the first man, and also from Wapakoneta, Ohio, being the first person to ever step foot on the moon. So, when you're reading this book, you go through all of those details again from the history of how we got to where we are, but all of the things we had to overcome. It is so important, because again, Americans didn't give up. There were a lot of obstacles that were there. There was a lot of different conflicting ideas of how they should do things, but the details in the book are great because it also shows exactly what America is going through to get to that point. And as we watched them through the shuttle missions and the talk now we're going to mars, [inaudible] go into space, but when you think about all the different things that occurred because of the space program, all of the different devices that we have today because of the space program, all of the ingenuities but the technologies that we have. When you think about the computers that we're on that first lunar landing, they're made up in a cell phone today, but we've advanced. But we did it because we've had all that experience by going to the moon, and so, I highly recommend for people to read "The American Moonshot" by Douglas Brinkley. It's a great book. I highly recommend it, and I'm a firm believer that we have to be out there reading all the time. So, enjoy a good book today. >> Don Boozer: I'm Don Boozer, head of the Ohio Center for the Book and affiliate of the Library of Congress, basically in the public library. Our mission is to promote books, reading, libraries, and literacy in Ohio. And I'm here with Douglas Brinkley, professor of history at Rice University, CNN presidential historian, and author of numerous books, articles, and essays, and we'll be talking about Professor Brinkley's "American Moonshot: John F. Kennedy, and the Great Space Race." Welcome, Professor Brinkley. >> Douglas Brinkley: Well, thank you for doing this. >> Don Boozer: No. Thank you very much for taking the time to talk to us today. Before we delve into your book, I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about your connection to Ohio. You were born in Atlanta. What brought your family to Harrisburg, Ohio? >> Douglas Brinkley: Well, my father worked for a company, Owens-Illinois, which is headquartered in Toledo and is now headquartered in Harrisburg, Ohio. So, we moved from Atlanta when I was very young. Moved to Harrisburg, and my mom became the high school English teacher for Harrisburg High School, and she was head of the English department at the high school, and we moved into that incredible town of Harrisburg on the Maumee River where it was a very idyllic childhood. I got to ride my bicycle everywhere. We'd go all along the Maumee River fishing. We were able to just have a really great time when I was young, and I think the fact that Harrisburg's a historical town. Our main statue [inaudible] and then of course we'd go out to Fort Megs, and I would read all these historic markers. I used to be fascinated that the underground railroad had come up in the Maumee or that Theodore Dresier, great novelist had lived in the area for a while. I then went on my own to go see the home of Sherwood Anderson that had [inaudible] and [inaudible]. And so, it's my home place and it connects a lot to the book "American Moonshot: John F. Kennedy and the Great Space Race," because I was in Harrisburg as a boy when Neil Armstrong famously went to the moon and said that line, "It's one small step for man. One giant leap for mankind," and I swelled with local pride because I knew Armstrong had grown up in Wapakoneta, Ohio, not that far away. >> Don Boozer: That actually leads right in my next question. I was going to say how did growing up near Neil Armstrong somehow influence your view of space exploration? >> Douglas Brinkley: It was a big deal for me. There used to be these things called Major Matt Mason that I don't think anybody will hardly remember, but I used to do a moon scape in my house and then set up how it would be with astronaut, rovers, and lunar modules and the like. And so, I then started collecting plates and glasses, pens, anything to do with the Apollo Program. It also -- John Glen had become an early hero of mine from Ohio, and when he ran for president in 1984, I was just all about John Glenn becoming president even as late as John Kerry, when he got the democratic nomination in 2004, I was hoping he'd pick Glen as his vice-presidential mate. And so, I fell into the lore of NASA. I wasn't alone. They did a great job of reaching out to young people through talking television programs, people like Walter Cronkite. I then read Issac Asimov and Ray Bradbury books, and so, I was under the spell of the idea of going to the moon and Mars. >> Don Boozer: That's great. It sounds like you had it all planned out with your moon scape and all that sort of thing. >> Douglas Brinkley: I did. I did. Drinking Tang which had nothing to do with it, but they advertised like it did. But I was so proud when they built [inaudible] in Wapakoneta, and I just went and brought my kids there just a couple of years ago. >> Don Boozer: Oh, that's great. So, I know that writing a book takes a lot of time, a lot of commitment, so what drew you to actually write this book? What made you want to write about this particular topic? >> Douglas Brinkley: Well, I'm a professor of history at Rice University which is in Houston, and the whole LBJ Man Space Center in Houston which used to be owned by Rice University, and so, our archive and my library at Rice is filled with NASA archives and documents. And in addition, just a short drive from my campus were all the oral histories of NASA. They all are deposited in at the University of Houston at Clear Lake City, which is right at NASA. So, meaning right in my own backyard, I had a trove of primary source material. Secondly, where my office is situated at Rice, I'm right by the football stadium, and that's where John F. Kennedy famously came on September 12th of 1962 and laid down the most amazing speech about science and progress and space exploration when he said, "We chose to go to the moon not because it's easy but because it's hard," and our campus is very proud of that fact. That really occurred there, and so, it made sense for me between the Ohio connection, Rice, having NASA in my backyard, that I would do this, and then in my mind was the 50th anniversary was going to be coming up, the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 with Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins. And then the fact that I actually got to do the official oral history interview of Neil Armstrong for NASA. >> Don Boozer: I remember reading about that in the book. Yes. >> Douglas Brinkley: Yes. And so, then that was like wow, I've got the Armstrong interview and all these other things. So, I went for it. My publisher, Harper-Collins, agreed that it was a good idea, and so, you have "American Moonshot." >> Don Boozer: That's great. I had a question too about the fact that you have -- you released a young reader's edition too. Why did you feel it was important to release specifically an edition for young readers? >> Douglas Brinkley: Thanks for asking that question. I deeply regret I didn't do it with my other books. I kept -- I did a book on Theodore Roosevelt and conservation, and when I do book signings people say, "You should do one for young adults. It's be so good for, -- a kid isn't going to read 900 pages on TR, but if you did one for young adults, it'd be amazing because we'd teach them about land stewardship and proper ways to fish or hunt or live in the outdoor world or be an environmentalist," and so, I decided to give it a whirl with this one, and I did because I don't know how much juice I have left in my tank in life, but in future books, I hope to be able to do a young reader's edition with them. And my only regret is that I didn't do it with some of my previous books. >> Don Boozer: That's great. Yes, I was interested to compare the adult version and the young readers version, between those two, and I think you did a great job trying to pair it down near the essential information. >> Douglas Brinkley: It was hard. It was a very hard challenge, but it was worth it in the end because now I love signing it when I was pre-2020, when things started -- our national train went off the tracks, but in 2019 I was doing book signings so I loved signing them for young people. It makes me excited that they might read that and get excited not just in space exploration, but engineering or perhaps -- >> Don Boozer: And even history too. >> Douglas Brinkley: History. All of it. I just love. I'm a teacher at heart. I mentioned my mother was a teacher and I'm a teacher, and I realized I could get to young people through a different kind of book. >> Don Boozer: And so, I think you talk a little bit about it in the book, but what are your memories of that actual first landing on the moon? >> Don Boozer: Oh man, as I'm getting older now, I realize there may be the most seminal public moment of my life because nothing has compared to it to me. I was so geared up for it and the excitement. It was the wee hours and my mom let me stay up late, and I would switch my sleeping habits, and then I created like a tent with the TV, pulling the cord so I could sit outside and maybe see the stars while I was watching it. And it just meant everything to me at that point. There was no moment. I mean, I think it defined my childhood. I was the right age. I mean when you're eight and a half, I was when we went to the moon, and I had just, just got my first sea legs about history and things, and I knew this was an epic thing, and the media was drumbeating it. And so, it stands out as a childhood memory to me. >> Don Boozer: Oh, that's wonderful. I'm curious too, do you think there was anything specifically American about that endeavor with John F. Kennedy? Anything that sort of that almost had to happen in the United States? >> Douglas Brinkley: It was all-American. That only the United States could have done that in that era because why we won World War II is because of our great industrial and engineering capacity that I've written about in battles at D Day or Iwo Jima and other places during the war, but really we won it in the homeland at our factory system. We won it in places like Norfolk shipyards or San Diego. We wanted auto factories that made [inaudible] Willow Run up in Detroit. We want it in cities like Cincinnati or Cleveland. The point is that we really had the infrastructure of how to do big projects well during World War II, and we became very enamored with science in the 1950s and 60s. In 1960, scientists were picked as Time Magazine's person of the year. Our country believed that science would help us with all of our problems and they were also referees of issues. It doesn't exist anymore. Today we talk about climate change while people, "Which scientist do you believe?" You talk about medicine, "Which scientist do you believe?" It was a little more that we believed the majority of the science community back then, and then we lived, and I love that our country has a feeling about can doism. We can do things. We can build the Panama Canal. We can be the first in flight. We can mass produce the automobile. We can build the Eisenhower Interstate Highway. We can build the Saint Lawrence Seaway, and we could go to the moon. It was part of our national DNA that being an American meant getting things that seemed unfathomable done. And Kennedy was nothing if not a student of history. He really was this historian, John F. Kennedy. He started dabbling as a journalist, but what inspired him in life is reading history books and as president, he had the imagination to realize this could be my presidency, the things I would like to be remembered for beyond having to run the cold war. Behind the battle with the Soviet Union. >> Don Boozer: With other things on his plate at the time; yes. >> Douglas Brinkley: Yes. Berlin Wall going up or, you know, the Cuban missile crisis. Obviously, presidents have crisis, but Kennedy wanted to be remembered for ocean exploration and space exploration. And in that he chose those as his two special things, and there's a [inaudible] that [inaudible] space -- I mean, excuse me, Kennedy and ocean exploration. I'm trying to do a little of that work right now in a book I'm writing called "Silent Spring Revolution: John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and the Long 60s Environmental Movement." >> Don Boozer: That's great. We get a teaser. >> Douglas Brinkley: Yes. In the library when that happens. >> Don Boozer: There you go. To finish out this, speaking of books, was there any book that really you feel had an influence on your life since we're talking about books and libraries? >> Douglas Brinkley: When I was little I got very enamored by all the Dr. Doolittle books of Hugh Lofting, not just the movie, but he had a series, the writer, Lofting, had a series of books that I just gobbled up. But then I went to things like Mark Twain, "Tom Sawyer," or "Huck Finn." I used to imagine the Maumee River as being that. I've had a little bit of a health scare recently, and it causes you to reflect on your life, and I wish I would have done more to clean the Maumee River. It just kills me that my childhood river is so dirty and polluted, and if I can get the energy later, I'll try to do something. >> Don Boozer: Well, there's your next project. >> Douglas Brinkley: Yes. Well, I believe a lot in keeping rivers and lakes clean, and I love Lake Erie, and I love the Maumee, and I want it to be always -- people able to do recreational activities on those bodies of waters and not turn them into places that become dead zones. >> Don Boozer: And it gives people a connection to the environment and they really feel a responsibility for it. >> Douglas Brinkley: Yes. I've been writing a little bit about blue mind. Just getting out on Lake Erie. Going out to Put-In-Bay and getting the breeze from the water and being able to fish. It's just a way to really connect life, and I love Ohio, and anywhere you grow up you're sensitive to and that area, I just wish we could do more in the conservation front. >> Don Boozer: Well, Mr. Brinkley, thank you so much for taking the time. I really do appreciate you talking with us, and we're looking forward to sharing your book with as many people as we can. And have a great afternoon. >> Douglas Brinkley: All right, and I'll be back when the Cleveland Indians are back, I'll be back. >> Don Boozer: That sounds good. Thank you very much. >> Douglas Brinkley: Bye. [ Silence ]