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Episode 222: Catherine Grace Katz on One-Word Distillations, the Thrill of Research and 'The Daughters of Yalta'
133 Plays4 years ago
"It's when you get stuck and you start to realize something's not right. It's usually because you're wrong," says Catherine Grace Katz, @Catherine_Katz on Twitter.
She is the author The Daughters of Yalta: The Churchills, Roosevelts, and Harrimans: A Story of Love and War. It's published by Houghton, Mifflin, Harcourt.
Follow the show @CNFPod.
This show is sponsored by my editing services! Head over to brendanomeara.com for show notes and to email me to start a dialogue.
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Transcript
Introduction and Sponsorship
00:00:01
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00:00:16
Speaker
Hey C&Evers, this episode is sponsored by me. That's right, if you really want a shred, you hired Joe Satriani like Kirk Hammett did back in the day. You know he's Metallica's lead guitarist. Come on, you knew that. A coach gives you tips, pointers, but more importantly, holds you accountable for when the work gets hard. And believe me, it will.
00:00:40
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Coaching sessions with me for your essay or your book include Skype calls, transcripts of those calls to refer to later as notes. I think that's pretty cool. Detailed critiques of the work, email correspondence, and the knowledge that you know you've got somebody in your corner. Email me and we'll start a dialogue. If you're ready to level up, I'd be honored and thrilled to serve you and your work. That's when you get stuck and you start to realize something here is not right. It's usually because you're wrong.
00:01:09
Speaker
And you need to go back and do more research to figure out why you're wrong, where this piece of information actually belongs, why it belongs there, and only then can you move past the impasse. And I think that that is something that I would encourage all people who are writing history to think about.
00:01:31
Speaker
Well, hello there, CNF-ers. I'm Brendan O'Mara.
Guest Introduction and Podcast Promotion
00:01:35
Speaker
And this is the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, the show where I talk to badass people about the art and craft of telling true stories. Serving up Catherine Grace Katz. She is at Catherine with a C. Underscore Katz with a K.
00:01:53
Speaker
on Twitter. She's the debut author behind The Daughters of Yalta, The Churchills, Roosevelt's, and Harriman's A Story of Love and War. It's published by Houghton Mifflin Hockwood. Love this book. Love this book, man. Gotta get it. Get it. We'll get to that in a moment. I want to make sure you're subscribed to this podcast wherever you get them. I hope I earn your subscription, and if you're feeling kind, leave a review on Apple Podcasts.
00:02:22
Speaker
The podcast needs those to kind of stay alive. It just withers away to a lifeless skeleton without him. So by all means, please do that. Helps me out. Helps to show out. Helps you out. It does. In the end, it ultimately helps you out.
00:02:41
Speaker
Trust me and keep the conversation going on social media at cnf pod across the big three Show notes to this episode and all the other 200 plus. Oh my gosh, that's a lot Brendan Amera comm Where you will be able to also sign up for the monthly reading recommendation newsletter just sent out a dynamite one yesterday on October 1st and
00:03:05
Speaker
You just missed it or maybe you didn't. First of the month, no spam can't be in it. And these newsletters, they go up to 11 by the way. So get a load of this sort of an abridged bio of Catherine from her website. Catherine Grace Katz is a writer and historian from Chicago. She graduated from Harvard in 2013 with a BA in history and received her master's of philosophy in modern European history.
00:03:34
Speaker
from Christ's College, University of Cambridge in 2014.
Catherine's Background and Influences
00:03:40
Speaker
She's currently pursuing her JD at Harvard Law School. I don't even think she's 30 yet. I mean, that makes you want to puke, right? Not really. The Daughters of Yalta is her first book. Unbelievable. Just an unbelievable talent. Massachusetts, of course, that's my home state. You know what we say about Havett, the wicked smack guy.
00:04:01
Speaker
We talk about her time growing up in Chicago, writing a dissertation on modern counterintelligence, okay, all things Yalta, and of course, her bookshelf for the apocalypse. Some real doozies on there, I think you're gonna dig it. So stay tuned for my parting shot, formerly known as my long-winded intro, only at the end of the show now, if you think this is long-winded, wow, imagine what it used to be. But first, here's Catherine Grace Katz.
00:04:35
Speaker
Think of maybe what books you know you should read, but maybe you haven't read yet or you might never get to. Oh my gosh. Well, there are so many books that I would love to read and just mountains of them if I had all the time in the world. It's like that episode of Twilight Zone where the guy wants nothing more than to sit and read, and everybody disappears. It's just him alone in a library, and then he breaks his glasses. And so that's kind of the worst nightmare of somebody who loves books.
00:05:05
Speaker
But I mean, even just thinking of kind of the Churchill FDR World War II canon, there are so many books that have been written about this subject as secondary sources, but then the writings from the individuals themselves. I have read a number of Winston Churchill's books, for example. I have not read all of them. I would love to be able to spend more time reading some of his lesser known works, like his novel, Sabrala, which I've never had the opportunity to read.
00:05:30
Speaker
And then also just kind of thinking about books I wish had been written. I wish that we had an FDR memoir of World War II. The fact that he died April 12th, 1945. We never had the chance to have that book. So that's one that I really wish existed that we could read.
00:05:45
Speaker
That's cool. Of course, there's been innumerable stuff written on FDR and everything. To your satisfaction, has there been anything that at least comes in a biography form, of course, that at least comes close to what might be some sort of FDR-adjacent memoir-ish kind of thing? I think one of the books that gets closest is
00:06:11
Speaker
Robert Sherwood's book about Harry Hopkins and FDR and their friendship. It was written very shortly after both FDR and Harry Hopkins passed away. And so very sadly, we don't have a memoir from either of them. And so I think that this one in a sense is kind of speaking to us beyond the grave with one who the author, you know, was one who had worked with them for years. And so I think that's the closest we can get to it. And it's a really wonderful book that people have an opportunity to read it.
00:06:39
Speaker
Very nice. So you grew up in Chicago, correct? Yes. Nice. So in growing up around Chicago, what did your folks do and what kind of kid were you? Yeah. So I grew up just north of Chicago, actually in the town where they filmed Home Alone and Ferris Bueller's Day Off. So kind of always loved being from a town that was part of a couple of iconic movies. That was great.
00:07:02
Speaker
Neither of my parents were writers. My mom is a fantastic writer, but I was not, but she did professionally. I was really lucky to grow up with a mom who had the hardest job in the world of being our mom, but she's wonderful. And then my dad worked in finance. And so we'd have great conversations that would kind of range all subjects from finance to world affairs to history. And it was just always a really lively conversation with my parents and my younger brother and sister.
00:07:29
Speaker
And so I think in some ways it had very quintessential Midwestern childhood, but also come from a family where people are just hearing a very naturally inquisitive and curious about the world. And it just leads to wonderful conversations and exposes you to so many interesting things as a child that have really stuck with me to this day.
00:07:46
Speaker
And in the acknowledgments to Daughters of Yalta, you commend your mom for reading you hundreds of books as a kid. Yes. We spent so many hours doing that. Yeah. What sticks out in your mind, certain books that really resonated with you that might have planted the seed eventually of you taking up the pen to write your own book? Yeah. Gosh. Well, my favorite memories as a kid are of my mom reading aloud to us on the porch in the summer.
00:08:13
Speaker
And I have a younger brother and sister. My brother is four and a half years younger than me, and my sister is 11 years younger than me. But despite the age gap, she would read to all of us together. And you just kind of, the younger would too, just kind of elevate their reading and listening ability to the story, which was a lot of fun. She read Harry Potter, the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the Little House and the Prairie books, Anne of Green Gables, fun picture books like Eloise. She's the world's best Eloise reader.
00:08:39
Speaker
Um, and, uh, fun British children's classics, uh, so many Beatrix Potter books, things like that. And so I just really grew up in a house where reading was a part of everyday life and it was a shared experience for all of us. And, you know, to this day when we're all home for Christmas, my mom, you know, we'll still had a read a night before Christmas allowed as we're hanging up our Christmas dockings, which is a lot of fun. And so it's just something that we all share as a family. And I'm really lucky to have grown up with that as such an integral part of my life.
00:09:10
Speaker
That's crazy, the age difference between you and your youngest sibling. My sister is about 10 years older than I am, so that age difference, it's almost like you have completely different and disparate childhoods in a lot of ways.
00:09:24
Speaker
Yes and no. I think we were really close and perhaps it is because we were so far apart in age, but my sister was always the best excuse to go ice skating or go sledding when you were too old to do it and it wasn't cool to do it anymore and just say, oh, my younger sibling wants to go. I have to take them. That was good fun. We're still really close today.
00:09:44
Speaker
That's great. And it's a lot of those books you mentioned, books that kind of take you somewhere else, take you to a different time or even a different world. And you having studied history in so many ways, that's a way, even though it's true, it takes you to different worlds. Is that something that kind of made that connection that being a historian, it allows you to go inhabit another world that's different from your own?
00:10:13
Speaker
Oh, absolutely. I mean, sitting and reading, whether you're reading to yourself or reading aloud, it allows your imagination to run wild. And one of my favorite books that we read when I was little, and then I read to myself again, when I was older, was Anne of Green Gables. And, you know, she always talks about things providing much scope for the imagination. And I think being a reader and being exposed to a wide body of literature and even, you know, pushing yourself as a kid to understand things that are perhaps beyond what is kind of targeted at you, at your reader level,
00:10:41
Speaker
It expands your mind in ways that pays dividends going forward and I just think leads to a much more enjoyable and interesting life and helps you notice the details in the world around you, which is especially helpful in some really difficult times like we've had this last year. And so I'm grateful to have the gift of an active imagination in those kinds of moments.
Passion for History
00:11:00
Speaker
And you graduate from Harvard in 2013 with a BA in history. So at what point do you get the history bug?
00:11:07
Speaker
I think I've always had the history bug. I can't remember a time when I didn't love history. And again, a lot of that is thanks to my mom and the kinds of books that she loved and history that she loved. She loved the story of Henry VIII and the tutors and lots of British history and Victorian era history. And so we just had a lot of great conversations when I was little about those moments.
00:11:31
Speaker
And some of the books that I love the most, you know, I mentioned Anne of Green Gables, Little House on the Prairie. And I think it was really the little house that transfixed kind of my historical imagination. And I remember coming home from school as an eight-year-old and putting on what I thought was, you know, a calico dress and a bonnet and pretending to plant my crops on the living room rug. And so I think part of that was, you know, from what I had read. And then also my grandparents, I was very close to my grandparents.
00:11:57
Speaker
grandfather would have been 100 this year. He passed away three years ago. I wish he was here today. He was in the Navy during World War II and I always enjoyed asking him to tell stories about his experience growing up as a boy in Montana and then coming east for school and joining the Navy. And I think I was kind of the self-appointed family historian from a very young age. So that plus my early reading and then movies that again my mom loved when I was little
00:12:26
Speaker
like The Sound of Music and White Christmas and The Great Escape, just being that really rich, vibrant World War II aesthetic and the sound and the stories and that era of history and the fact that it touched so many lives, I found just fascinating from a very young age and so that was the history that I was most drawn to.
00:12:49
Speaker
That dovetails into what I was going to ask you next. If there's a period of history that particularly latches onto you, so like that World War II era, of course, has a personal connection, of course. Aside from that, is there another era that really just fires up your antenna of curiosity?
00:13:10
Speaker
Most of my work in school as a historian and history student has been 19th and 20th century Anglo-American history. But I love the American Revolution. I love the Victorian period in England, but World War I and World War II have been what I had focused on largely in school. And I often find myself drawn to those stories as the ones I'm most excited to read, not exclusively, but I am very keen on that era and kind of keep coming back to it.
00:13:41
Speaker
It's so rich and so tragic to both of those wars, especially World War I. It's just such a meat grinder to quote Dan Carlin's hardcore history, the way he characterized that war in his podcast. But it was just such a horrible brutality, horrible slaughter of so many people in that war. And it should have been the one to end all wars, as they say.
00:14:06
Speaker
Exactly. But I think that both of those wars, no one was spared. Everyone's life was changed. But in the midst of great tragedy, you also see great heroism of ordinary people. And I find that quite inspiring. I mentioned one of the movies I loved as a kid was The Great Escape. And I was just so fascinated by the enduring ability to go on and to continue to fight in new and ingenious and creative ways, even though you're stuck behind barbed wire.
00:14:34
Speaker
and largely out of the war and the way that you think about it traditionally, but just the imagination that some of these people had in the face of adversity and the sense that regular people asked more of themselves than they knew that they could give and succeeded in so many ways is something that, you know, it's much like the music of World War II and that whole big band era where a lot of it is very much in a minor key and you have minor chords, but yet the melody on the top that transcends is a positive one.
00:15:01
Speaker
But you can't have one without the other, and that is what makes it so iconic and really touches your heart. And some of the literature that comes out from soldiers or veterans like a Kurt Vonnegut or Joseph Heller, and even going back to Hemingway, if you like. Unfortunately, it's almost exclusively men. But are there writers or novelists who seem to have really
00:15:27
Speaker
hit on what those eras are about, some other ways that you are also consuming this while not actually going to say primary text to write dissertations. I remember reading a novel that was written during World War II and it was very tragically unfinished because the woman who wrote it was killed. It was written by French women. It's called Sweet Française.
00:15:50
Speaker
is by Ifan Nemirovsky, and she just is writing about the times in which she's living, but with this clarity of mind, almost as if she's somewhat removed from it and kind of having an out-of-body observation and the characters that she creates, reflecting the very complicated emotions of the era on the one hand. It's dealing with horrible tragedy, but then also the lighter moments in everyday life that people cling to. And I think it's one of the most beautiful stories I ever read, and it's one that I recommend to many people.
00:16:19
Speaker
And you wrote a dissertation on modern counterintelligence. Tell me a little bit about that. That sounds incredibly fascinating. Yes.
Dissertation on WWI Postal Censorship
00:16:28
Speaker
So I have always loved spy novels and intelligence related history. I think it's fascinating. And so when I was at Cambridge, I was working on this dissertation about early counterintelligence practices in the modern era of how we think about it today, kind of surveillance by the state in times of war.
00:16:47
Speaker
and looking specifically at the British postal censorship program, which they devised during World War I to read the mail coming in and out of the country to try to find enemy aliens in their midst and who could be a spy and who was planning an invasion. And so you have this massive operation where they're reading all this mail that's coming in and being sent abroad. And it ends up causing a bit of a difficult relationship between Britain and the United States.
00:17:16
Speaker
kind of the sense of a gentleman doesn't read another gentleman's mail. In the US, you had this emergent debate about the right to privacy in a way that it really hadn't emerged yet in Britain. And so you have not only kind of the origins of the practices themselves, but also the reactions and responses and criticisms of that type of counterintelligence practice in a systematic way, which is really only possible in Britain because of the kind of data collection that they had begun to do
00:17:44
Speaker
with the creation of the National Health Service, which is the early conceptions of that, collecting data on people beyond just birth, death. It's the first time that they really were able to understand the population on a more granular level. And surprisingly, Winston Churchill was very involved in this as Home Secretary. I did not set out to write a dissertation that was focused on Winston Churchill.
00:18:10
Speaker
certainly did not have the level familiarity with him during the First World War at the outset of that that one does about his time as Prime Minister. But it was a fascinating project and it was one that was taking place as there was a lot of criticism about counterintelligence practices going on in the news in our times and it was something that it was fascinating to work on kind of with that in the background.
00:18:32
Speaker
Now writing dissertations for academia is sort of a different kind of muscle, different kind of writing practice than the book that you wrote here with Daughters of Yalta that it's more kind of a, you know, of course it's history nonfiction, but it does have some narrative thrust to it. So did you find it hard to navigate, you know, the more narratively driven book that you've just written versus some of the stuff that you, you know, did as a graduate student?
00:19:01
Speaker
I actually found it very freeing to write in the narrative way, rather than a more of an academic tone. I really enjoyed writing academically, but I remember when I was at the beginning of this project and I was speaking with my senior thesis advisor, Neil Ferguson, and he said, you know, writing a book is not like writing a dissertation. So just have that in your mind when you set out.
00:19:23
Speaker
And to me, it was really a lot of that reading that I had done beyond academia, reading so many novels, reading classic literature, and just understanding how the nuances of narrative arc and form and tension
00:19:36
Speaker
And having the chance to explore that in a way that you can't quite get into the personal details as much in the academic sort of writing. And so for me, it was something that I'd always wanted to do and hadn't had a chance to do in academia. And so it was around that it was new to me as a writer, but one that I had enjoyed as a reader and one that I was very excited to explore in creating the narrative myself.
00:20:00
Speaker
I'm not going to pronounce her first name because I'm pretty sure I'll butcher it. But in the acknowledgments, you credit Ms. Dilibert for the best writing advice you ever received. So what was that advice? Yes, Joya Diliberto. She's a wonderful friend and a wonderful writer. And she told me that when she asks her students in her writing classes to think about their projects and what they're working on, she says, first, describe your work in a paragraph.
00:20:30
Speaker
then describe your work in a phrase and then describe your work and what's at the heart of your work in one word. And so she asked this of me when I was having coffee with her one day and I was kind of, you know, too deep into the details and kind of needed to step back and see a broader picture to get myself out of a rut. So she asked me what one word it would be that would define this book. And I just at that moment, realizing it's relationships.
00:20:59
Speaker
This is a book that's fundamentally about relationships between these fathers and daughters, among the fathers themselves, among the daughters themselves, the relationship between nations at this very critical juncture between World War and Cold War. And relationships are at the heart of everything that's taking place in that story, whether it's kind of the lofty realm of diplomacy, or in the much more personal conversations that are taking place behind closed doors with the people who you're closest to. And that
00:21:30
Speaker
to me was the best advice I received throughout this whole process and one that I will keep in mind forever as I go forward and write more stories. That's often something I love talking to writers about. Once you get past the honeymoon period of starting a new project where everything seems possible and it seems great, you're very green and loving the process. Then you start hitting the middle and you start hitting some roadblocks and that friction that comes with being stuck in the ugly, messy middle.
00:21:59
Speaker
of the research or the writing or the rewriting. So when you are in that rut, of course, you use this tactic of really trying to find that arrowhead focus. But also, just over the course of your writing and your research, when you were stuck, what were some ways that you used to power through to get to the end? Well, what we were discussing a minute ago about zeroing on this word relationships was something that really helped me as I was sorting through the
00:22:26
Speaker
Enormous amount of information and material that I had and beginning to construct the narrative of the story but the other thing that I found really useful as I was writing and You know when I get to a place in the story and sometimes it's just not working and you're not sure why and I kind of yeah, I think this is probably my past experience as a financial analyst coming through but you know when you're working on an Excel model and you put all the information in you've got your
Historical Research Challenges and Methods
00:22:55
Speaker
your tables and columns and when everything is right and you have all the inputs correct and they're all linked together, the information just flows through and it's just this beautiful cascade of numbers. I think history is very much the same way. When you're correct about the way things happened and the order of information and the relationships between people, the story just begins to flow through. But when you get stuck and you start to realize something here is not right, it's usually because you're wrong.
00:23:22
Speaker
And you need to go back and do more research to figure out why you're wrong, where this piece of information actually belongs, why it belongs there, and only then can you move past the impasse. And I think that that is something that I would encourage all people who are writing history to think about. I do think there is a correct way it all goes together. We're not going to know exactly how every moment of every day was in history, but I think in certain instances we can get pretty close.
00:23:48
Speaker
And it's, you know, in those moments where there's a gap or something's in the wrong place where it doesn't come together in a natural flow that it would if it was all assembled, the pieces in the right order.
00:24:00
Speaker
Yeah, and more research and more reporting usually leads to the great luxury of having stuff to throw away and leaves you with just the great goal that you've been able to pan for. Conversely, it can also be a way to productively procrastinate by just saying, I need to just do a little more research or a little more reporting. How do you keep from staying on that treadmill and having the wherewithal to step off and say, like, Catherine, you've got enough.
00:24:29
Speaker
get writing. In an era that like World War II, it's very easy to research forever. You could try to read every single book that's ever been written about this subject and about these figures, and you would never get through that in a lifetime. The primary sources, the secondary sources, it's an overwhelming amount. For a story like this, which is really focused on a very short period of days,
00:24:54
Speaker
It helps in a way to channel your focus to getting the most important information about those days themselves and then building out the narrative from there of the backstories of the figures that you're writing about earlier influences kind of the aftermath of the story, you know, not in as much.
00:25:10
Speaker
detail just because the nature of this type of narrative. But you have to just, I love going through the primary sources, relying on those for the real details rather than combing every secondary source that has been written, of course, doing a large amount of research for secondary sources to familiarize yourself with the subject. And I'm very fortunate having had this background in this era, both undergrad and grad student, that I had done a lot of the background secondary reading
00:25:37
Speaker
to be able to do this project already prior to starting. But I think you just have to cut yourself off and accept that you're not going to see everything. But there are things that are much more important for you to see. There are other things that would be nice if you could see them. There are other things that are tangentially related, but you for whatever reason just have a really personal interest in them. And those are the things that are the hardest to keep yourself from focusing on when the heart of the story is something different. And so it's kind of those tangents that are very tempting to go down
00:26:07
Speaker
that you're like, all right, I have to save this for the notes. It doesn't belong in the main body of the work. And so it's, you know, sometimes you need somebody else to come along and give you a kick in the pants and say, you know, that's really fun, but it's not the most important thing in the story. So save it for the end notes.
00:26:22
Speaker
Right, right. And speaking of process and, you know, with respect in regarding your research, you know, how do you go about organizing that research when you have essentially, let's just scratching the surface, you have like six primary main figures, the three women and the three, the big three, so to speak.
00:26:42
Speaker
So when you're curating your research and putting out the troll net, so to speak, to pick up all this stuff, how are you going about organizing it so you can access it later? So I initially, when I started working this project, thought it was going to be a biography about Sarah Churchill and focused on her and that her wartime experience would just be part of the biography.
00:27:03
Speaker
However, as I got into the material, it became more and more fascinating specifically with her life during the war and the opportunity that she had to travel with her father as his aide to the Tehran Conference in 1943 and the Yalta Conference in 1945. And despite the fact I had studied Yalta on numerous occasions in school, I did not realize that she had been at either of these conferences, nor that Anna Roosevelt and Kathleen Harriman had also been at Yalta.
00:27:27
Speaker
And so I found this fascinating, but because I had initially been working just in Sarah Churchill, I had done a huge amount of information. I had done a huge amount of research on Sarah at the outset. And so for me, it sort of naturally broke down that I kind of did the research about each daughter in sequence.
00:27:44
Speaker
And I kind of see them as a Venn diagram with, you know, Sarah Churchill and Anna Roosevelt, kind of the two outer circles, and then Kathleen Harriman in the middle, because her family was very close to and kind of worked somewhat on behalf of both of them during the war with her father's role as the one liaison boy, and then the ambassador of the Soviet Union. And so moving from Sarah and then to Kathleen, and thanks to the Churchill family, I was able to get in touch with Kathleen Harriman's sons, learn about her life, and through her family, I connected with Anna Roosevelt's family.
00:28:14
Speaker
And so it just sort of naturally happened that I moved daughter by daughter in this story and that they had very large amounts of primary sources, but heavily concentrated on this period because of who they were writing to and the awareness that they each had, that they were living through a truly historic moment that they wanted to record, which I found fascinating. And so it helped me that they had this presence of mind as they were living through the moment to take
00:28:43
Speaker
such pains to record what was happening and that the material naturally lent itself to being very concentrated around the series of days. So that was very helpful. And working with primary sources, you can't take them home with you from archives, so spend a lot of time photographing them, saving them, organizing them to then look through them in more detail at home.
00:29:06
Speaker
And it's, you know, you go out to the archives and you try to gather as much as you possibly can. You have your eye on certain collections that you know are going to be the most important to your research. But then some other more tangential collections, which are papers of people who were other participants at Yalta, who were friends from home, other relatives. And so trying to collect as much of this and then comb through that, you know, once you have this frenzy of collecting and gathering and saving and sorting from the archives and then processing for me that worked out best to do at home.
00:29:37
Speaker
And in speaking with Larry Tai, the great biographer in his most recent books about Joe McCarthy and his long shadow, he talked about the pressure of getting access and almost exclusive access to the recent
00:29:53
Speaker
treasure trove of McCarthy archives and the need to deliver on that access. Similarly, you had pretty exclusive fresh access to a lot of Sarah's stuff and I imagine other people.
Access to Archives and Responsibility
00:30:09
Speaker
How did you process the pressure you were under to deliver on the access you were granted with this great material? Yes. One of the things that's really important,
00:30:20
Speaker
to keep in mind as you're writing history like this and you are able to have access to remarkable collections, usually because of the kindness and graciousness of the family and the descendants of the person that you're writing about. And all three families were incredibly helpful, generous with their time, allowing the access, time to interview them, but then also trying to maintain a bit of a distance as you are the historian, as much as you enjoy talking with them, you want to make sure you give each party equal balance in the story,
00:30:49
Speaker
And I am so grateful to these three families for, alongside their very generous access to the information to never constraining me in what I was going to say about their relatives. And that's something that was one of the best parts of working with them. And I really appreciate.
00:31:08
Speaker
It was very exciting to be the first person to go through Sarah Churchill's archives comprehensively. The story started for me when I was asked to write an article about Sarah's papers as they were being opened for the International Churchill Society, which is made up of the Churchill family, scholars, and other professionals who want to encourage study of Churchill's life and times and encourage people to go into public leadership today. And so it was because of being asked to write this article that I first had the chance to see her papers
00:31:38
Speaker
But then after that, after the story, you know, began to come together for me, the family kindly allowed me to also see Sarah's sister, Mary's papers, and those were not available to outside researchers beyond the family at the time. It's great to see the correspondence between sisters. Kathleen Harriman, she passed away in 2011.
00:31:57
Speaker
And after she died, her sons found a box of her letters to her sister from her time in London and Moscow during World War II. And she had never talked about the war after she came home while she was raising her children. They knew very little about it, much like many members of the greatest generation. She just didn't talk about it. And so it was only after she died that they realized there was this treasure trove of letters. A few of the letters she had included in her father's papers in the Library of Congress.
00:32:23
Speaker
But it was far more extensive than the Library of Congress collection would indicate. And so the chance to get to know them and to see her papers comprehensively and her scrapbooks and her diaries and, you know, her activities, it's really quite something just to see the life of a young woman who is the same age as me living during World War II, having these incredible responsibilities, having more access to Staun and his inner circle than any American woman in history.
00:32:52
Speaker
and just trying to think about what that would have been like. That was a very personally meaningful aspect of the research for me. And I love late in the book, I think it's in the final chapter or so you write that, like many women, each of the three daughters found that the war allowed her a brief moment to engage talents that might have gone unrealized and to work in roles that would otherwise be close to her. Sarah in the WAAFs,
00:33:17
Speaker
Kathleen is a journalist and Anna is a White House aide. So in which ways did their strengths and their backgrounds there manifest and really cast them in the best possible light and really shine their strengths at the Yalta Conference? Well, each of them had remarkable skills that lent themselves very well to being at Yalta and participating in this level of diplomacy.
00:33:45
Speaker
Sarah Churchill was an actress before she joined the WAFs, the Women's Branch of the Royal Air Force. And so she had this actress's deportment, which served her very well, especially in dealing with all the complex personalities and the tensions and the underlying currents that were kind of in the background at Yalta. And then her technical knowledge and expertise as a WAF, she was an aerial reconnaissance intelligence officer.
00:34:10
Speaker
And so her job was to look at photographs that had been taken by reconnaissance pilots thousands of feet in the sky and to look at, for example, ships that were in a harbor and looking down at them, it's hard to tell what they are, but then knowing exactly what type of ship it is based on the shadow it's casting and looking at a field and seeing trampled grass and understanding what was troop movement and what was just some cattle grazing. And so she had this very detailed knowledge of the developments of the war
00:34:37
Speaker
And one of the most interesting things from her time as a WAF, she came home for a leave one weekend to see her family. And it was right before Operation Torch in Mediterranean in North Africa in 1942. And so she and her father are talking about it. And he says, you know, at this moment, go sailing X number of ships. And she says, actually, Papa, you don't have the right number. It's actually this many. And so she has this very, very detailed knowledge of the war, of the development.
00:35:07
Speaker
And as they have transpired over the course of the last three years, four years, that she is able to take this both natural ability that she has as an actress and a really beautiful gift for communicating with the technical knowledge. Kathleen Harriman was a war reporter. So she has this observer's eye. She has been covering press conferences in London with the exiled leaders from, for example, Poland. So she understands a lot of the very,
00:35:37
Speaker
tense relationships at Yalta, especially between the Soviet Union and the Western Allies. But then when she moves to Moscow, she knows her father as the ambassador won't have time to learn Russian. So she learns Russian on behalf of both of them and really becomes his assistant ambassador. And she knows everyone who's there. She knows the Brits from having lived in London while her father was a lonely son boy.
00:35:59
Speaker
She knows the Americans, they are working on behalf of the American State Department, and she knows the Russians and the Soviets because she's been living amongst them. And so this deep knowledge of individuals there serves her very, very well. And Anna Roosevelt had been an editor, so she also has this great professional capacity, having spent some time working with her husband as the editor of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper. And for the last year, she's been living in the White House since her father's aid. And so while she's
00:36:28
Speaker
a little bit less experience than the other two daughters, she does still understand kind of the backdoor politicking and the idea of some people should have access to the president. Who are those people? Who takes priority in that delicate dance of not ruffling feathers, but making sure what the policies and agendas that need to be advanced are. And so they each have very unique skills in addition to being people that their fathers can trust implicitly.
00:36:55
Speaker
Yeah, in the case of Anna, even if that means kind of going behind her mother's back to allow a, you know, a sort of backdoor relationship, if you will, between Lucy Mercer and FDR. Yes, that definitely, oh my gosh, Anna Roosevelt finds herself in some really difficult position in this period of time, largely
Significance of Yalta's Location
00:37:15
Speaker
because she's carrying this burden that her father is not well, and she's trying to do everything that she can
00:37:21
Speaker
for him to save him, really to save his life so that he can make it to the end of the war, both as a service to the country, but also to keep alive the father that she loves and has finally been able to establish this close relationship with him that she hasn't had since childhood. So it's both in the pursuit of a larger mission and one that's very personally important to her.
00:37:43
Speaker
And this made me – I didn't know where Yalta was, so this book made me just go online and look at a map. And as soon as I found out just how incredibly remote it was, especially for the Western Bowers to get there, of course, I was just like, holy shit. This is – it was just like what Churchill said. He's like, if I gave you 10 years, you couldn't find a more –
00:38:05
Speaker
you know, inconvenient place to have this conference. So I was like, so what did you find out? You know, what was the significance of Yalta as the location for this conference for the big three powers of Russia, Britain and the United States? I feel like the location itself is almost a character in its own right because it is so the texture is remarkable. You have this palace that was
00:38:30
Speaker
the Romanov summer palace where it was really their family retreat right on the Black Sea. And so you have these ghostly echoes of happy times of the Russian royal family. But then the Soviets take over, they murder the Romanovs, they're in charge there for, and then until World War II and the Nazis come through and check them out and just completely ravage and ransack the whole area, which had already been suffering for years during the famines.
00:38:59
Speaker
created by the Soviet government. And so you have vestiges of what once was one of the splendid places in the world, which is now just decrepit and decaying. And it's just incredible to think that you look at the summits that take place between world leaders today and everything is so planned out and well organized and security is at the highest priority. And just to think the conditions that these leaders were willing to put themselves in, not even physically being there, but just getting there.
00:39:27
Speaker
flying was a huge risk. One plane goes down on the way there, another one gets shot at. And so you're flying through still enemy occupied territory, you're getting shot at. Can't really access if I see because they're still landmines. And once you do get there, it's just so remote and so unfamiliar. It's incredible that you think about security that the American and British delegations would have agreed to go there. But it also speaks to the power dynamics of the relationships between the Soviets and the Western allies at this time.
00:39:56
Speaker
FDR and Churchill recognize that they need Stalin a lot more than he needs them at that point. He's not willing to leave the Soviet Union. He says it's because his doctors advise against it, but really he just doesn't want to leave his security apparatus. And so if they want to meet with him, they have to play on his terms. And so they make this enormous truck, especially for Roosevelt, who is dying at the time. And just to think about what it would take to get there and kind of Roosevelt being at the farthest reach as he could possibly be in order to respond to Congress's requests and needs and
00:40:27
Speaker
to place a signature on items that are sent to him within the time allowed. It's just the courier systems and the food transportation and the personnel that have to go into making this voyage is just astounding.
00:40:42
Speaker
Yeah, and I love that you make this comment that Russia was a land of extremes and contradictions, a place where perception often had no relation to reality. And that seemed like such an astute observation and very well reflected in who Stalin was as a person. Yes. I mean, he could present as this very genial host who had a twinkle in his eye and a sense of humor.
00:41:05
Speaker
He was someone who loved American cowboy movies and he didn't speak much English, but he didn't say phrases like, you said it, which is just really funny coming from someone who you know is also a dictator and whose actions and direct actions led to the deaths of millions of people. And so reconciling is this monster of history with this person who can be quite genial and jovial is really jarring. And to see that reflected in the letters and diaries of the three women who were there
00:41:33
Speaker
It's fascinating to see that they appreciate this duality and yet in his presence he has a certain magnetism which is so much larger than he is physically as a person who is quite small, unattractive, he's horrible yellow teeth and a shriveled arm and you think about this cult of a personality and he certainly has that.
Stalin's Personality and Tactics
00:41:54
Speaker
He was such a, you know, the one, one instance too, where he's trying to, trying to be, you know, jovial and genial, but it's actually quite chilling is when he introduces his NKVD, you know, Czar, you know, Beria, there are Beria. And he's just like, this is my Himmler. As if like the Western powers are going to be like, wait, you're going to compare this guy to Heinrich Himmler and expect us to be like, oh, that that's awesome. Right. It's just, it's so jarring. It's, so it's kind of everything that he says, it's almost like a double take with it where he sounds
00:42:24
Speaker
very friendly and jovial, kind of on the surface level, but everything underneath is undercurrent of a constant threat, which is kind of not just in his own person and personality, but with the people who surround him. And you think of the Soviets and the Russians as kind of, sometimes what they're doing, it just seems too clowny to be taken seriously. Like, oh, this would only happen in a James Bond movie.
00:42:48
Speaker
But it's because the lack of imagination that one who's not, one who's grown up there, we just wouldn't have to think, oh, they would go to the lengths to actually bug the paths in the gardens to overhear what people are saying. You have to have that creativity and the experience of imagination to think how you might be manipulated in ways that you're just not going to see coming.
00:43:11
Speaker
One of the more riveting set pieces that you did in the book too was just this set piece on the history of the Crimean Peninsula and how it's just been one of those places on earth and there's a few of them scattered around the world that are just bludgeoned.
00:43:26
Speaker
by war and territorial disputes and it's just over and over again. Maybe you can speak to that because I found that just really riveting and interesting to get a little deep dive on the history of the Crimean Peninsula itself. Right. I mean, this is a place that's at the crossroads of empire. This is where the largest empires in history have sparred for centuries and always will.
00:43:51
Speaker
going back to the Crimean War and the Charge of the Light Brigade that is happening just that happened just down the road from where they are in this beautiful albeit crumbling facade of a palace. And so you have not only the immediate death and destruction that is the result of World War II, but also the Holodomor, the Soviets imposed famine through collectivization on the people living in the Crimea
00:44:18
Speaker
You have ethnic groups like the Tatars that had been deported by Stalin and Beria. And so you have this place that has not only been just ransacked by war, and it's just as soon as they are able to pull themselves out of the death and destruction and rebuild, they just get run over again, whether it's by invading enemy powers or by the controlling government itself. And so you have so much tragedy that just lays over this really interesting geography, which changes so dramatically.
00:44:47
Speaker
just within expansive a few miles. And it's something that's very palpable to the individuals who are there. Some of the military figures, they want to go out and make an excursion to see where the charge of the Light Brigade took place. They go with maps and military histories to see this in person. And so each of the people who are there, they have this very personal connection to the sense of place. And it's one that affects them not only as they're living in their own times,
00:45:17
Speaker
really connects them to the lives and the tragedies of the people that have gone before and in a sense fills them with some hope because you see these people who keep trying over and over again and hoping for a better future and I think that's what they're all trying to accomplish at Yalta.
00:45:32
Speaker
And the fulcrum of the Alta Conference had really hinged on Poland, and Stalin calls it the corridor to Russia. It's where Napoleon Hitler just used as an open door to try to barrel through to Moscow. Of course, it's what drew Britain into the war when
00:45:51
Speaker
when Nazi Germany declared war on Poland and they came to their defense and so forth. So maybe you can speak to just the significance of how Poland was really the fulcrum of this conference.
Poland's Role at Yalta
00:46:07
Speaker
Yes. So Britain had gone to war in defense of Polish sovereignty from the outset.
00:46:12
Speaker
and the Polish government has been in exile in London since the very beginning of the war. And so they have this very personal connection to the Polish leadership and also the sense of duty to make sure that the reason they went to war, that is honored at the end of it. And so for the Brits, it's a matter of not only the security of Europe and the world and a peaceful future, but also making good on the promises and the sense of honor that they have to their colleagues at home. For the Americans,
00:46:42
Speaker
Poland is less of a priority. There's a certain moment where FDR, someone callously says, this isn't going to make a difference in domestic politics. But there is still this obligation of being a great democracy that you have to try to guarantee a democratic outcome in Poland, which has suffered at the hands of the Nazis and the Soviets in equal measure during the war. But the Soviets are determined that
00:47:07
Speaker
when the war ends, that they will have friendly neighbors on their border. Because as you mentioned, this has been the avenue through which the Soviet Union and Russia before has been attacked. Not just during the Soviet era, but during the Tsarist era, Napoleon, he advances through the plains of the Polish region. And so the Soviets are determined, kind of even though they're saying, yes, yes, of course, we want free elections. We want the people of Poland to have a representative democracy that they, the elected officials that they have supported themselves.
00:47:35
Speaker
But they're determined that the government in Poland is going to be friendly to the interests in Moscow. And there is really, at the end of the day, not that much that Churchill and FDR can do about it because the Soviet Union has boots on the ground across Poland. And any difference there really would have had to have come in decisions made much earlier in 1944, 43, and even 1942. And so it's just this tragedy that you can see coming that you know that the outcome is not going to be
00:48:05
Speaker
what you hope it will be. And we know what happened after the war with the Cold War and Poland spending the next half a century under communist influence. And just it's one of the heartbreaking aspects of writing this kind of history. You can see the writing on the wall and just see the hopes being dashed one conference session at a time.
00:48:28
Speaker
And circling back to the three daughters, of course, with Kathleen, I'm sorry, Catherine, I'm blanking, Kathleen or Catherine.
00:48:49
Speaker
So with her, like she had as kind of as a journalist, but also a pseudo, you know, ambassador, if you will, or sort of the wingman to
00:48:58
Speaker
She is on the she's in the catner cayton forest where the where a number of polls were slaughtered at first thought to be by nazis but later proved to be the you know some mission of you know the soviets.
00:49:16
Speaker
The fact that she was able to witness that and then report back, I was just really sort of impressed with her and her observations and then her ability to step back from it. It didn't seem like it affected her much, but I imagine it did. Yeah, so Kathy is a really interesting personality. She has on the surface this kind of very flippant, casual manner. She's very humorous. She has a lot of self-deprecating humor. But for her, it's also a defense mechanism about a lot of the
00:49:46
Speaker
horrible tragedy that she's witnessing. She arrives in London with her father when she first comes over as a journalist. It's during the blitz. She's seeing this destruction all around. And as a reporter, she's writing about things like pilots who have been fighting in the Battle of Britain and just the horrible burns that they're suffering when they're shot down and miraculously clinging to life, but really just disfigured and maimed. And it's just a horrific experience for a young woman of just all 24 years old to have to confront.
00:50:14
Speaker
And so she then can, because it's a time of war and she really is seeing it from the front row view, for better or for worse, her relationship with her father, which in many ways is very ahead of its time where they are almost like colleagues more than parent and child. And he relies on her and trusts her implicitly. But that also means that she's placed in situations to see some really excruciating and gruesome and tragic episodes of war.
00:50:41
Speaker
And so, for example, you mentioned the Katyn Forest and just thinking about what would it be like to be sent by my parents to be kind of the official American witness to this crime against humanity and the murder of thousands of Polish officers. And then to try to sort through the information about are the Soviets telling the truth? Did they kill the Polish officers? Was it the Nazis? Meanwhile, everyone there, all the Soviet officials
00:51:08
Speaker
want to show her all the evidence and the details personally, because she is the ambassador's daughter. And then to have to come back and report to her father, whose name not only taking what she tells him into account, but also the broader relationships of the allies. And it's just a huge amount of responsibility that she carries on top of witnessing some just horrific, unspeakable tragedies. And so she does have this very lighthearted sense about her in her writing,
00:51:35
Speaker
But that is somewhat kind of the only way that people could get through horrific experiences like that.
00:51:41
Speaker
There's a I love the observation you made with which Sarah makes where she sees these porpoises in the sea and the gulls from above, you know, feeding on this feeding frenzy on these fish. And it was just so symbolic and emblematic of the slaughter of the two world wars, but specifically World War Two being the main backdrop. What was that like coming across that which was so vivid and metaphoric for what was actually taking place?
00:52:12
Speaker
It is. It's absolutely metaphoric. And Sarah is a beautiful writer. She has this incredible lyrical quality to her words, and you can see her father's writing ability reflected in her. And I really think had she been born, maybe even 10 years later, that she could have been her father's successor in politics. She expresses herself so eloquently in a way that captures not only what she's seeing, but the feeling of what she's seeing in a way that
00:52:40
Speaker
resonates not just with kind of the day by day accounting, but the much more kind of emotional experience of being there and being at her father's side. Sarah made my job so easy. There's nothing easier to write than passages about Sarah and her observations because she is just such a multi-layered person and one who is writing transcends the just mundane reporting of one's daily experience
00:53:09
Speaker
And it's, you know, in moments like that where you're reading through her papers, you know, what she can express in 10 words, somebody else couldn't possibly capture in 100. And so to see these vignettes reflected in her papers, I think, gosh, I feel like everything she said ended up in the book just because that's how beautiful and important her words were.
Outcomes of the Yalta Conference
00:53:29
Speaker
And of course, the terms of the ALTA Conference are almost immediately violated by Stalin. Do you think that, I mean, we're postulating here a little bit, but do you think that Churchill and FDR were naive in hoping that Stalin would uphold the agreements, or do you think possibly they just fully expected this all along? I think that there's definitely a sense that
00:54:00
Speaker
the Soviets being in control with the Red Army, especially in Poland, there's really only so much that you can do unless Stalin's willing to concede on something and he's just not going to go against his self-interest. And so you can see when Churchill's on his way to the conference, he has a huge amount of trepidation. He feels this enormous weight on him, this sense of, you know, just almost doom, this impending doom. And he tries to shrug it off and move forward and be productive. But I do think in the back of his mind that this
00:54:30
Speaker
fear is there. And that's why he's so desperate to convince Roosevelt to present a very united front between the two of them in their conversations with Stalin, because the balance of power has really shifted towards the Soviets by this time. And Britain is extremely weak. They know they're going to emerge from the war with the empire largely dismantled the shadow of what they once were. The Americans are significantly more powerful. And so it's really only kind of through Roosevelt that Churchill can assert some of these
00:54:59
Speaker
issues that he feels are very important. Roosevelt, however, it's not that he thinks that Stalin is going to keep his word, it's that he thinks that there are higher goals that transcend kind of specific agreements such as Poland. So by forming a peace organization in the United Nations and by bringing the Soviet Union into the international community, issues like that can be mediated in an international peace organization format to head off issues before they start. And that this broader imperative transcends
00:55:29
Speaker
a single conflict between two countries. And so it's kind of this broader sense of purpose that he feels that he needs to guarantee before he leaves the conference. And as really what he sees as his legacy, he wants to succeed where Woodrow Wilson has failed. He doesn't believe that you can have eternal peace, but he does believe that there can be peace for 50 years. And this is the last
00:55:53
Speaker
project that he truly wants to bring to fruition before the end of the war and before the end of his life.
00:56:01
Speaker
And earlier you said this book was really about relationships. And in what way were the relationships that Anna and FDR, Sarah and Churchill and Kathy and Avril, in what way did those relationships strengthen the hand that maybe the Allied powers or the Western powers had at Yalta?
Leaders and Their Daughters
00:56:25
Speaker
I think that for each of the fathers, having someone there who in the midst of the back room, dealing in the underhanded and undercurrents that are running through the conference to have somebody that you can trust implicitly and to express your deepest anxieties and concerns to behind closed doors, perhaps with the Soviet bugs listening in, but in front of an audience that you know only wants to put your best interest forward to be able to
00:56:53
Speaker
sort through the complexities and the concerns and kind of the elements of conscience before going into the conference room. And it helps you kind of put your best foot forward. And I think for each of these daughters, they were that person for their father. We all have in our lives someone who plays that role for us, who you express your deepest concerns to and helps you work through problems and things that you're afraid of. And
00:57:17
Speaker
It's not in a way that you can point to exactly what it is that they do that makes them so important to you, but we all have this person or people who are indispensable to us in those moments. And so I'm really glad to be able to give that role a spotlight and a bigger sense of appreciation because it's not just about these three daughters, but really about who that person is for every single one of us.
00:57:38
Speaker
And of course, they weren't allowed into the plenary meetings, so to speak, but they were allowed at the table at sort of the closing ceremony and there were untold numbers of toasts over the course of that massive dinner. And of course, Stalin, at the close to the end, asks the women to give a toast and that was put at the
00:58:01
Speaker
the feet of Kathy. And like you said earlier, you're about the same age, you know, roughly. And if, you know, if someone of Stalin's nature and you are tasked with this toast and said, you know, Catherine, you know, it's your turn to toast and you've got to do it in Russian. What do you say if you're in Kathy's shoes? Well, I think Kathy walks a very fine line. Kind of she is expressing her appreciation for the opportunity to be there and the hospitality of the Soviets
00:58:31
Speaker
And having spent the last 10 reviews in the Soviet Union, she knows that there is a difference between the regular Soviet citizen and the Soviet Union. And she also knows it's not her place to ruffle feathers. And so she can express appreciation to the Soviets at large for the great length to which they have gone to make this conference a success. And they truly did. They put an enormous amount of effort and resources into making it possible to have this conference.
00:58:56
Speaker
Not all of it was positive in what they did. There were certain bed bugs and things that were kind of falling apart behind the scenes and the lack of bathrooms, but they really did go above and beyond. So as a diplomat, it's not her place. She doesn't have the security clearance to be there debating these issues that they're talking about, even though she's very well-informed about them in the background. But to walk that fine line of speaking on behalf of these three women who have this remarkable opportunity to be there,
00:59:22
Speaker
and really genuinely expressing the appreciation that she has for these people who she knows has been working so hard. This is something that she can do and it can express genuinely. And I think she does a wonderful job of doing that. If it were me, it'd be very tempting to make a bit more of a statement that perhaps reflected my opinions about the geopolitical arrangements. But I think as a diplomat, you have to accept that sometimes that is not your role and that's somebody else's role at that conference.
00:59:50
Speaker
And you're all working on the same team on behalf of the greater mission. So just trying to keep that in mind. Who's the good cop? Who's the bad cop? And how can you assert soft diplomacy in ways that are not perhaps recorded by every historian, but are crucially important nonetheless?
01:00:07
Speaker
It's kind of hard not to think of Donald and Ivanka Trump and the Russian-American relations these days, echoing back
Family Roles in Politics
01:00:15
Speaker
to Yalta. There's a congruency there that I just caught on, too. Yes. I mean, you saw Ivanka Trump at the G20. She's kind of in some of these meetings.
01:00:27
Speaker
pictures coming out of her discussing issues with the elected leaders. And it really brings to mind this question of what is the appropriate role for the unelected family members of an elected official to play in their public duties, especially someone like the president. And you do accept that at the end of the day, even the president is going to want to talk to their family in confidence and try to weigh matters of conscience with these people who are always there for them. But when does it go too far?
01:00:55
Speaker
And you see the women like Sarah and Kathy and Anna. And in a way you wish that these women had more of an opportunity to be official diplomats in their own right because they were so capable and so bright. But then you see kind of the flip side of that of Ivanka Trump is a very capable individual, but she was not elected. And so what is the right sort of balance to strike? What's the right role for the first children?
01:01:22
Speaker
Sometimes they'd be very useful to have involved because they're very smart and capable people, but other times they may not have the experience to be able to do it. And so it's kind of this question that I think we should ask ourselves, especially as family has been such an important part of this election discussion throughout the last couple of years, and especially this month.
01:01:39
Speaker
And as we
Catherine's Favorite Books
01:01:40
Speaker
kind of wind down here, Catherine, I'd love to ask you, what are some five really indispensable books for you that you reread, go over again, really inspire you? It's something I usually call a bookshelf for the apocalypse, these kind of books that you keep in your backpack, even though it's going to take up spot of food rations, but you would rather have these books. So maybe you can shine a little light on what those books would be for you.
01:02:07
Speaker
Sure. I think the first one would be Amer Tolz, A Gentleman in Moscow. It's one of the best novels I've read in recent years, and I have read it probably three or four times now. I love this book, the writing. It's one of those where the language transcends the words themselves, and it's a wonderful story. Second, probably Jane Austen's Emma. I love the characters in that. I love the humor and the wit, and it's just a story. It's very close to my heart.
01:02:37
Speaker
To Kill a Mockingbird is another book that is one that I cherish and would definitely want to have with me, you know, for the end of the world. One that was a childhood favorite, Anna Green Gables, I mentioned earlier. It's just such a fantastic story and there's just so much about Anne that makes everyone smile. And gosh, fifth
01:02:59
Speaker
Maybe Andy Weir is the Martian. I feel like if it's the end of the world, you can get a lot of inspiration for how to survive. Mark Watt may be the astronaut and kind of science your way through a lot of problems even when it looks most bleak and maintain a sense of humor along the way. Yeah, science the shit out of it once you get to it. Exactly. I didn't know if I could say that on your podcast. Oh, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Science the shit out of anything that comes your way. That's great. I love it that the historian picked five novels. I love it.
01:03:28
Speaker
I read a huge amount of fiction in addition to nonfiction. And I think that, you know, it's something that, you know, no matter what genre you can be right, you can appreciate both.
01:03:41
Speaker
Oh, for sure. Like one one can really inform the other. I read a lot of when I can, when I love to read a lot of fiction and then sort of apply that. I'm like, OK, well, how can I do the research and the reporting to kind of elicit this kind of mood, but keep it verifiably true? So that's that's the such a great tool of fiction, for sure. Yes. One book I would throw in if you want a great book about the craft of writing history. David Reynolds, In Command of History, Churchill Fighting and Writing the Second World War. It's about Churchill writing his World War II memoirs.
01:04:10
Speaker
and just the production behind that. And you don't think often, you know, what does it actually take to write about your life through one of these intense periods and to have been the person leading the war effort and then to write about that after in a way that only Churchill can. And it's the team of people who are collaborating on that to bring it into fruition. So that's a fantastic book. I highly recommend it. And it's one that I think is underappreciated in the canon of secondary sources about Second World War and specifically Churchill.
01:04:39
Speaker
Oh, that's awesome. Well, Catherine, this was such a great time to talk shop with you. It's amazing that this book is your first book. It's an incredible testament to your skill as a researcher and a writer. So I thank you for the work, and I wish you the best of luck with it. Thank you so much for having me today. I really appreciate it, and this was a lot of fun.
01:05:08
Speaker
What did I tell you? Wicked smile, right? Thanks to Catherine for all the time. She gives a lot of time. And thank you so much for listening. It's amazing that you still show up for the show. I show up for you, and you show up for the show. Pretty cool, right? As you know, linking up to the show on social media is a great way to get digital fist bumps from me and to build this CNFing community.
01:05:31
Speaker
That's just at C&F pot, wherever. So we're in a new month, aren't we? We've got about 90 days left in 2020. I know we all want to take the proverbial magnet to the hard drive, but before you think about that, consider leaning into the work and finishing off this year with a flourish, man.
01:05:53
Speaker
You could say we're entering Act 3 of the movie. As Harvey Dent said in the dark, night, the night is darkest before dawn. Shit looks grim. Could get grimmer if you follow me. But what are the things we can control? And what work can we put out into the world? I hope to bring you the audio mag by the end of the month. It's coming together. I know I keep saying that, but it's a lot of work.
01:06:22
Speaker
For that, I plan on maybe passing the hat around. Consider throwing in a few coins. It's great seeing these essays come together. It was one thing to see them in print, but to see them come alive with the authors reading them, it's like, all right, all right, this is cool. I'm digging this. So anyway, I'm also flirting with the notion of starting my own independent monthly online magazine.
01:06:48
Speaker
Because I already don't do enough bullshit around here, right? It's basically gonna be, if I have my way, 100% listener, what's listener? Subscriber supported. No ads. One long feature investigative piece per month.
01:07:06
Speaker
It's basically the Atavus magazine, which I love, and say we're Darby, and she's been on this show twice. She's the editor-in-chief, and of course, Evan Ratliff. He is the founder of Atavus, and he was on this show a while ago in his book. The Mastermind came out a year and a half ago or so.
01:07:22
Speaker
Anyway, but I kind of want to use that model, but just in Oregon. And this is, I don't know, I feel really good about it. And I'm so shitty at the business side of things that it's probably dead in the water already. Great attitude, right? But I really like the notion of independent ad-free journalism that is in service of the reader, not beholden to advertisers to keep the lights on.
01:07:48
Speaker
So I don't know, let me know what you think. I plan on calling it Spotlight Oregon. This state is huge. And there's a hundred lifetimes of stories to tell. I know there are. And maybe I'm the guy to at least start chipping into that. Especially with all the newspapers, the corporate media just scarfing up all the papers in Oregon. And I think this area and this state kind of creates something that really speaks to the
01:08:15
Speaker
speaks to the to the people and is delivering the stories they want to hear without all that BS without being bombarded with with ads and pop-ups and those stupid ass sponsored stories with provocative headlines and you'll never believe what this woman looks like now I hate that stuff hate it anyway
01:08:40
Speaker
Build up the subscriber base, then maybe hire another reporter. Not looking to get rich. Just make a living. Leave a mark. What do you think? Don't tell my wife she'll not be happy I want to try something else when this podcast isn't exactly living up to its potential. Shh. Anyway, I don't know. We'll see. But for now, if you can't do interviews, see ya!
01:09:59
Speaker
you