What motivates great Americans with Ron Chernow

0:00Whenever I speak to would-be biographers, I always say to them that the choice of subject is a little like marriage. If you pick the right person, nothing can go wrong. If you pick the wrong person, nothing can go right. Hey, everyone. It's Adam Grant. Welcome back to Rethinking, my podcast with Ted on the science of what makes us tick. I'm an organizational psychologist, and I'm taking you inside the minds of fascinating people to explore new thoughts and new ways of thinking.

0:33My guest today is biographer extraordinaire Ron Chernow. He's an expert on the craft of illuminating the lives of towering figures. It's the most exciting job in the world because you start out with thousands of pieces of evidence and then gradually, almost like in the old-fashioned photographic development, you see the image starting to emerge. And that's where I think, you know, biography becomes as much art as science. Ron's work has deepened our understanding of the men who made history in America. He's won the Pulitzer Prize in Biography for his book on George Washington, and he's written meticulously researched bestsellers about Ulysses S.

1:08Grant, John D. Rockefeller, Alexander Hamilton, and now Mark Twain. You are one of the great biographers of our time. How do you decide who you write about? And is the goal to inspire another Lin-Manuel Miranda musical part of the process? Well, I think we can safely say that none of my books is going to inspire another Lin-Manuel Miranda musical. No, actually, the choice of subject, as a biographer, that's the single most important choice that I make. So much flows from that decision. And so what I've looked for is not simply people who had colorful or fascinating lives. I've looked for people who really created the building blocks of American culture.

1:53And I think also I have something of a contrarian streak. What happens in history is that a consensus forms around someone's image. And if I feel that that consensus somehow is missing something, that to me is very, very tempting to wade in and take another look at this figure. Arthur Schlesinger once said history is an argument without an end. And so there's always need for another biography, another take on these major historical figures. That's fascinating. So where do you get the sense that something might be missing or wrong? Well, you know, in the case of Alexander Hamilton, for instance, almost all of the books up until the show portrayed, Jefferson was this saintly figure and Hamilton was this, you know, villainous character.

2:42And yet the more I read about him, not only was it far and away the most dramatic personal story of any of the founders, but his accomplishments were really second to none. And so that was a good example. It was interesting, Adam, because when I decided to do the Hamilton book, all the average person knew about Hamilton was that he was on the$10 bill and he'd been shot by a guy named Aaron Burr. And he had become the least known of the founders. He was fading into historical obscurity. And so it's been delightful between the book and the show. He's become everyone's favorite founders. That was not the case when I decided in 1998 to write that biography.

3:24One of the things I'm really curious about in terms of how you work is, as a psychologist, I find it hard enough to get to know a living person. How in the world do you get inside the mind of someone who's no longer alive? Well, I'm basically a documents purser. And so with all of the people that I've written about, there were thousands upon thousands of letters and diary entries. And I immerse myself into this to give you some idea. This may sound masochistic when I describe my working methods. I put everything on four-by-six index cards. And by the time I sit down to write, I have approximately 25 ,000 cards, which then I arrange in these index card boxes to actually work out the flow and the narrative.

4:08There's a certain kind of, what do the Germans call it, fingerspitzengefühl, you know, a fingertip feel for it, that you have to, almost like an actor, be psychologically projecting yourself into the mind to get inside the skin of this person. In a sense, you're doing this like a true scientist would, which is instead of starting with a hypothesis and then looking for, you know, for facts to confirm it, you're actually collecting all the facts and then forming and reforming hypotheses. Yeah, and I think very, very important is just to completely open yourself up to the experience of what you're finding.

4:45I'll tell you an experience that had a profound impact on me. When I was doing my biography of John D. Rockefeller, it was the first biography of Rockefeller where the author had access to Rockefeller's Standard Oil correspondence. And I was going up every week. I would spend two or three days at the Rockefeller Archive Center north of New York. And I imagine when I started going through Rockefeller's papers that it was going to be full of startling revelations. Instead, every letter that he wrote, it's about two or three lines long. A typical letter would be, dear sir, received yours of the 27th, would proceed with all due caution, signed John D.

5:26Rockefeller. And there were thousands, there were tens of thousands of these very brief and completely mysterious little letters. Well, I remember I came home from one of these trips and I was having dinner with my wife and I was saying this book is going to be a full-blown disaster. She said, why? I said, because these papers are not yielding anything. This man, he was running the biggest business operation in the world. This man has trained himself to write every single letter as if it might someday fall into the hands of an investigative committee or a prosecutor or a district attorney. He was running this vast, the biggest business enterprise in the world.

6:05And he was running it through all of these winks and nods. And I'm getting angrier and angrier as I'm telling my wife. And her smile is getting broader and broader. I said, why are you smiling? This is a disaster in the making. And she said to me, she said, what you're describing is absolutely fascinating. She said, you're kind of trying to go behind this man to discover these things. But the story is staring you in the face. And what it taught me was that even when we're trying to hide, we reveal ourselves in the methods by which we try to hide. And there was actually nothing that taught me more about his personality than this fact that he had trained himself to write all these letters without using a proper name.

6:49So that was a wonderful lesson for me in terms of follow the story where it leads. And it may lead you in a much more interesting place than the one that you had originally expected to go. It's such a great insight. And it tracks for me with one of the most powerful lessons that I've learned in psychology, which is people will often say, why would you trust what people say about themselves? Of course, they're motivated. They're trying to create an image. I'm like, yes, I want to learn how they want to be seen. And that teaches me something about who they are. One thing that's interesting, I think, interests you with your background in psychology, is that I find with all of my books, I've tried to create a coherent picture.

7:30But that coherent picture is made up of very heterogeneous elements. And it may seem counterintuitive, but this is the way that we know people. Because, you know, we have friends or family members, colleagues. We've seen them in a lot of different moods and a lot of different situations. We're hearing rumors about them and gossip also may, you know, contradict what we think we know. But somehow our mind is able to process all of these disparate elements into a portrait that works. And people are inherently contradictory. We understand that, you know, we know that. And so readers, instead of being thrown by that, actually find it more convincing because everyone they know is as contradictory and confused.

8:16as the person you're writing about. It goes with the territory. That's a relief in some ways to know that, you know, even after pouring out 700 pages about a person, you still feel the contradictions. Yeah, and also what happens as a biographer, you're peeling away layer after layer after layer. I would always say to people, you know, I knew more about George Washington than Martha did. You know, I knew more about Hamilton than Eliza did, etc. But after you've peeled away all the letters, you never get to the bottom of it. Even someone as chatty and verbal as Alexander Hamilton or Mark Twain, for that matter.

8:57There's always a secret corner to the life. And, of course, the silences. It's not what they want to tell you. It's what they're trying very hard not to tell you about. You know, you don't have the luxury as a biographer of putting your subject on the analytic couch. I mean, for instance, one thing that I found interesting, all the books that I've written about in terms of a surprising consistency is that all my subjects have been men. All of them had fathers who were difficult and distant and domineering the three Ds. And so that was something that surprised me when I saw that trend. And in all of those cases, almost without exception, they never talked about their fathers.

9:50The father was a figure of fear and hatred. In fact, John D. Rockefeller, when he became the richest world of men and his father was money mad, must have driven his father crazy, Rockefeller pretended that his father was dead when the reporters asked me. I mean, he literally edited his father out of existence. Mark Twain, can't get a chattier figure than that, had this very cold, distant father. And he left two comments on his relationship with his father. One, our relationship amounted to little more than an introduction. And the other comment was, we existed in a state of armed neutrality. You know, if he suddenly came back, I think that would be the first thing that I would want to ask him about.

10:35because, you know, the shadow of the absent father is always there. Washington's father died at 11. Poor Grant had this very pushy, domineering father who was always pushing him forward against his will. But I think that what happens is I started thinking about this consistent strain in my book was that by having to protect yourself or push back against a dominant father, I think you become maybe more precocious. You become tougher. In a number of the cases, you know, the teenage son became the father of the house. So they're kind of precocious in that way. But it's an interesting parallel, isn't it?

11:19It surprised me when I saw it. It is interesting. And it's obviously not what I would recommend if you want to raise a high-achieving child. but there is something to be said for that kind of adversity. But just as we're thinking about this compare and contrast exercise, when you think about Washington to Hamilton to Grant to Rockefeller to Morgan, are there other commonalities or differences that have really stuck with you as you've studied them? It's a good question. I mean, one thing that I've learned is that there are certain figures in history, some of them I've written about, where you feel from the beginning they're built for success.

11:56They have a drive and a discipline, a focus, maybe a brilliance. And I think that one quality that I see in common is there was a clarity of vision. There was a single-mindedness of purpose, of an ability to focus on a goal and then harness all of their energy to achieve that goal. And not only to have that clarity of vision, but to be able to communicate that to the people around them. And it's been interesting because I know we both have been interested in leadership. And one thing that I've seen again and again is that in terms of leaders, courage is contagious and fear is no less contagious.

12:39Well, this is personally interesting in part because I have a vested interest in the life of anyone named Grant because people assume we're related. I did joke before our son was born that I was going to name him Ulysses. It's a good thing you didn't. Yeah, my wife was not enthusiastic about that at all. But your commentary about his vision, I think, helps to explain a little bit why he wasn't that much of a standout as a cadet, but became a great commander because he seemed to be a better leader than a doer. If that's the case, why was he such a mediocre president? We think that the skills of a great military commander would also lend themselves to being successful in the White House.

13:24Grant in the Civil War, he perfectly meshes with his historical moment. There's a desperate need for generals. He's been in West Point. He's been in the Mexican War. He's trained all of these people. So he meshes perfectly with his moment. He meshes very imperfectly with his historical moment when it comes to his presidency. What do you think prevented him from being a greater president or a great one? Well, Grant was very naive. He was very innocent. Mark Twain said that he was the most lovable great child in the world. And he's the only person that I've written about whom I would describe as naive in certain ways.

14:06It's one of those things that I was never able to fully figure out because when it came to his evaluating, you know, other generals and officers in the Civil War, He was extremely shrewd and insightful. He knew them. He knew their history. And yet when he got into the White House, I guess that it was an environment that was unknown or alien to him. And he seemed to be completely blind. But I have to say, you know, I think partly because of my book and partly because of other books written on Grant, he keeps rising now in polls of historians. You know, he was last, I think it was up to around number 22.

14:41He used to be in the bottom three with maybe Warren Harding. It's an ongoing conversation that we have with history, and it's very kind of nice, and people pick up a biography, and they open themselves up to the possibility of seeing this person in different terms. Let's talk about opening ourselves up to a different view of Samuel Clemens or Mark Twain. I'd love to hear a little bit about how you chose him, And based on your earlier comment, what did you have a hunch that we've gotten wrong about him? I said that I chose people who've created building blocks, you know, of American society. And I think that in terms of our culture, he was absolutely indispensable.

15:25He wrote about people in the heartland. Here was this kind of, you know, wild, throbbing energy in small towns and rural areas across the country. He wrote about ordinary people. He wrote using the vernacular of those people. Twain once said that he didn't write for the cultivated classes. They could go to theater and opera. He wrote for the masses. And one of my favorite Twain lines is he said that fine literature is like wine. My writing is like water, but everyone drinks water. So I think that he infused this new democratic spirit into American letters whereas, you know, American fiction had been very much dominated by kind of, you know, Eastern seaboard elites up until that time.

16:13And so he opens up, you know, a vast continent. But I think some people are very, very surprised, as I was, that he spent 11 years of his life outside the United States. You know, he was the most worldly and well-traveled American writer by far. Well, I think it might be fair to say that you never really understand a place until you've stepped outside of it and seen it from a distance. One of many, many surprises about Mark Twain was that even though he immortalized this town and immortalized his boyhood, he almost never went back. It was as if he wanted to preserve all those memories in amber.

16:53I think that his nostalgia was less for place than for his own boyhood. And it was such a happy boyhood. Boyhood almost ruined his life. He was asked in later years if he would like to live his life over again. He said, I would like to relive my youth and then drown myself. You know, like adult life was a disappointment after this, these boyhood adventures that nothing could ever quite match. Oh, that's brutal given how accomplished he was as an adult and what an interesting life he led. It's funny. I think that Mark Twain in many ways fits the stereotype of the funny man where there's an underlying sadness.

17:36And in fact, you know, we have this image of the man in the white suit smoking cigars, dispensing witticisms. But he was a very volatile personality. There was a lot of melancholy under the surface. He didn't say life was comedy. He said life was a tragedy with comedy distributed here and there in order to heighten the pain and magnify it by contrast. It's quite a statement. But I think that he was a case, kind of a classic case of someone of kind of a depressive personality who was constantly relieving that stress and anxiety through humor. And the humor is always there right until the end of his life.

18:20He's somebody who had a quip for every occasion, for everything that happened. Well, that goes to one of the things I was wondering about, which is after doing a careful study of Twain's life, what do you think are the qualities that most propelled his success? That's a good question because it's an almost sort of manic creativity that is pouring out of him. You know, he was very, very lucky that we know him as a writer, but he's first a printer. Then he's a steamboat pilot. Then he's a miner. Then he's a journalist. Then he's a novelist. Then he's a lecturer. You know, then he's an investor. Then he's an inventor and kind of goes on and on.

19:00And I think that he had this need to kind of transmute all of this experience. into fiction and story. You know, he's a tough nut to figure out, but one of the things motivating him was that he loved what he called notoriety and notice. And I think his unbelievable facility with words and language and storytelling was one way that he drew the attention of the world. But, you know, the other figures that I've written about in history, there was this kind of clarity of vision and there was this single-minded pursuit of a goal. That's not Mark Twain at all. In fact, I did speak to a friend who was a psychologist and I was describing Mark Twain.

19:45She said, oh, attention deficit disorder. He was disorganized. He himself said that he would go to these volcanic extremes. He would go from mood to mood. And I've made a point of never in the books using modern, you know, psychiatric language. One, I feel uncomfortable analyzing people in that way at a distance. And also, I think that our categories fit us. They may not fit, you know, a Victorian man. But I think that there was some truth to that because everyone particularly who saw him in his early years said that, you know, his room would have papers everywhere and cigar butts and, you know, pipes and ashes.

20:31He just would kind of live in the midst of this chaos. He always said that he was very, very lazy, and yet he left behind 9 ,000 letters, you know, 50 notebooks, hundreds of unpublished manuscripts. People just know him from Tom or Huck or Life on the Mississippi. You know, he published two dozen books, somewhere between 1 ,000 and 2 ,000 magazine articles, gave thousands of lectures, gave thousands of interviews. It was really kind of an embarrassment of Richard's story from this man who claimed that he was lazy, but he had this mind that was kind of a hive, you know, like a buzzing bees, buzzing with these words and stories and images.

21:16He did have a lot of trouble with insomnia. I think it was very, very difficult for him. And his problem was he said in order to write, he needed to smoke. And then he would smoke 40 cigars a day. And then he couldn't sleep at night. So then he would try to drink himself to sleep. The classic mistake of insomniacs. It does strike me that if Twain were alive today, he would go viral every day. And people would be logging into social media just to read his latest quip. Absolutely. What do you think he would make of our current vices and virtues? What would his commentary be on our time? Well, I think that there are a few places where he's really important today.

21:58You know, one, we're having an ongoing debate in terms of what constitutes patriotism. And, you know, Twain said he was driven up the wall by the saying that was common in his time, my country, right or wrong. And he said that this is sacrificing our most valuable asset. He said, you know, our country, we should always support and our government whenever it deserves it. So I think that that's important. I think he's also he was infuriated by the hyper partisanship of his own time. He said that the partisanship had become so extreme that if the Democrats incorporated the multiplication table into their electoral platform, the Republicans would vote it down at the next election.

22:45So he saw all these people marching in lockstep. And I think kind of my third area where his views are very important today have to do with the press. And the press is constantly under siege. And he felt that as a humorist that he had a very important role. He said that irreverence is the champion of liberty and its surest defense. And then one of my favorite Twain lines, he said, the devil's aversion to holy water is a light matter compared to the dread of a despot at a newspaper that laughs. And so I think he really was functioning as the conscience of America. He himself wrestled with this idea of being outspoken.

23:25And he said almost in so many words, the need to make a living and support a family makes all of us cowards. And he felt that there were a lot of different issues that, at least in the early years, he was not speaking out on. because of that fear. You know, so in a moment where there's fear of people speaking out, I think that he sets an important example of someone who showed a lot of courage. My God, you know, in his later years, he opposed the American occupation in the Philippines. And he made this speech. He said this at a banquet. He was the Toastmaster. He said that Our soldiers are marching with disgraced musket under a polluted flag.

24:06Well, the audience gasped in shock. They were really horrified. You can imagine how difficult in the middle of a war it was to oppose government policy. So he increasingly was willing to stick his neck out. I wonder how much courage that really took in the sense that he'd amassed a lot of cultural power. It would have been pretty difficult to cancel him in his day. And some of that power came from being contrarian. And so it was expected from him. Was he really putting himself at risk? That's a good question, Adam, because I think that it's really the last 10 years of his life when he becomes the most outspoken politically.

24:47So I think that one has been such a beloved figure to so many people. and then he kind of made a transition into a much more controversial figure. And I think that that can be for anyone, no matter how rich or famous that person is. I think it'd be a very difficult transition. I think that makes sense. Yeah. Now, coming back to the theme of laziness, one of my longstanding favorite Twain quips is never put off till tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow. The day after tomorrow. What I didn't know was that he wrote that making fun of Ben Franklin's aphorisms. Yeah. Also, I think what people don't realize in terms of all the Mark Twain quotes was they were created as Mark Twain quotes.

25:34He started when he published a novel called Puddin' Head Wilson as the epigraph to each chapter. He printed one of these aphorisms. and he was certainly mocking Ben Franklin because he felt Franklin had produced all these sort of do-gooder quotes and he would do these quotes that started out sounding like do-gooder and then they would have this kind of, you know, wicked tale, this wicked twist. So the other question that raised for me is Twain is alive at the time that most of your other subjects are. He has a relationship with Grant, Rockefeller, Morgan, And what did you learn from looking at sort of Twain through their eyes?

26:19Well, I mean, the most interesting relationship is the one with Ulysses S. Grant. And there was a lot of stuff that I have in the Mark Twain book that I wish I had had in the Ulysses S. Grant book. Because at first glance, Twain and Grant seem to be complete polar opposites. You know, Twain has fought for two weeks in this Confederate militia and then retreated. He made all these jokes about his own cowardice. He said, I knew more about retreating than the man who invented retreating. You know, and then he comes upon Ulysses S. Grant, who was a genuinely courageous and fearless person. But the two men form a bond, which is quite remarkable because Twain is really getting to know Grant in this deep way as Grant is dying.

27:05And Mark Twain said that Ulysses S. Grant was the greatest person he ever knew. and then he makes this beautiful statement because he was watching Grant throughout this illness and death. He said, manifestly, dying is nothing to a really great and brave man, which was just a beautiful tribute. And he thought that Grant, this is interesting because, again, talking earlier, you know, Adam, about you go in and there's a consensus, there's a stereotype about people and one of the stereotypes from the Civil War was Grant the Butcher. And yet Mark Twain said that But Ulysses S. Grant was the kindest and sweetest man he had ever met.

27:46Wow.

27:51In our last few minutes, I want to do a lightning round if you're up for it. Okay, first question is, what was the biggest thing you changed your mind about on Twain or any of your other subjects? I think the thing that most shocked me really was his business life. You know, he said, I must speculate it is in my nature. And he fails at one business after another. There is no learning curve. And Mark Twain could have led a very beautiful, serene, placid life. He makes a fortune from his book royalties, his lecture fees, marries an heiress. But it's just one self-inflicted wound after another. Wow.

28:34That's the tragedy. Wow. Such a misapplication of intelligence. Yeah. What is the worst advice that Mark Twain gave? Mark Twain's story is not an inspirational tale. It's a cautionary tale. And the lesson of his life is, when you're hurt, let it go. Oh, that's such an important lesson to learn from him. Yeah. Okay, thinking ahead, if you were going to write a biography of a great American woman, who would be on your radar? Well, the three who would interest me the most, and I would have done them if they were done well already, would be Abigail Adams, Harry Tubman, and Eleanor Roosevelt. And I have to say, because I've been criticized for years, people saying, Mr.

29:18Chernow, why don't you do a woman? In this book, five of the six main characters are women. There's Twain. There's his wife, Libby. There are three daughters. And then also his secretary, Isabel Lyon, who's a very significant figure later on. So that was actually one of the pleasures of doing this book. I got to, you know, write extensively about the women characters. And you can see in the book their influence on him. This is not just a story about Mark Twain. Yeah, I thought it was kind of one of the great stories in terms of a marriage because his wife, Livy, is, you know, she's very prim and proper.

29:50You know, she had to teach him when he wrote an angry letter instead of sending it to put it in the desk. It even reached the point where they had this system of cards at a dinner party, like, you know, red card meant, why don't you stop monopolizing the woman who's sitting to your right? A blue card would mean, are you going to sit back and say nothing all evening? You know, so she's constantly coaching this. She has cards to signal appropriate behavior to him? Yes. Wow. And he never learned. And the three daughters used to sit on the stairs kind of watching this. They called it mother dusting or father.

30:26Oh, that's amazing. But he never learned. And she was very socially skillful. He was not. And she really gave him a life. Oh, that's fascinating. Okay, what's a question you have for me? You know, with all of your psychological training, I'm very curious about your analysis of Mark Twain. I don't know if you want to kind of pin a label on him or a diagnosis of something. I'm really curious how you reacted to the character. Well, it was interesting as I was reading the book because the first thing that came to mind was maybe manic depressive. And I'm not qualified to diagnose, let alone from a distance.

31:08But the patterns felt familiar in that way, the extreme highs and then kind of the lasting lows and the repetition of those cycles. The other thing that had crossed my mind is, as I was reading about his reluctance to comment on his own greatness, I actually wondered about covert narcissism. I think there was both a tremendous sense of insecurity that comes through in your portrayal of him, but also an extremely high opinion of himself that he's able to conceal for the most part. But it just made me wonder a little bit about, okay, is there an inflated but fragile ego that's constantly seeking, you know, I don't know.

31:53Actually, well, you know, one of my favorite Mark Twain quotes, as he said, good breeding consists in hiding how little we think of other people and how much we think of ourselves. And actually, the vanity, he himself was constantly talking about his vanity. And it was very hard for his family when my favorite Mark Twain story is that the middle daughter, Clara, pursued a career as a singer. And so when she had her first recital in Connecticut, you know, she was torn whether to invite her father or then to invite him up on the stage. She finally decides to do it. And, you know, Twain comes out with her at the curtain calls.

32:32And he starts telling the audience about the first time that he ever appeared on the stage. And he talked for about 15 or 20 minutes. And all of the press coverage afterwards was about Mark Twain talking about his debut as a lecture, you know, to his daughter's aunt. But that daughter, Clara, felt completely smothered by him. She said that she was reduced in social situations to Mark Twain's daughter. And she had a very kind of revealing sentence. She said, you know, we would be at a party or reception and father would come in and she said he would flood the room with his talk. So he was a difficult person to live with.

33:12He had a, you know, an adoring and long-suffering wife who knew exactly how to handle him. But I think with the daughters, saw father as this magical figure when they were young, but he could never make the transition to dealing with them as they were maturing and became adults. adults. So there's this strange blindness, I say, somewhere towards the end of the book, that it was a tragic blindness that he had. And it led him into all sorts of disasters that he should have foreseen coming, which he couldn't. I think that's a great cautionary tale for all of us to be better than that. Yeah, that someone who's so brilliant could be so blind.

33:53Ron, this has been great fun to learn about your process and also just to experience the curiosity and the fascination that you have with other people's lives. I feel very, very lucky because I get to project myself into people and lives much more interesting than my own. Well, I'm grateful that you choose to do it. And I think it's a great way for all of us to gain more insight and more empathy, too, for the people around us. Thank you. This has been great fun, Adam. Thanks for having me on.

34:51produced by TED with Cosmic Standard. Our producer is Jessica Glazer. Our editor is Alejandra Salazar. Our engineer is Asia Pilar Simpson. Our technical director is Jacob Winnick. And our fact checker is Paul Durbin. Our team includes Eliza Smith, Roxanne Hilash, Banban Chang, Julia Dickerson, Tansika Sung Manivong, and Whitney Pennington Rogers. Original music by Hans Dale Su and Alison Layton Brown.

35:19I think just to have to fall back on your own resources at an early age was important with all these people, because all the figures that I've written about, they felt a tremendous sense of responsibility for the fate of their followers or the country, whatever. And so I think that that started early on with being the surrogate father in the family. How's that for a piece of armchair psychology for you? I will not object.