next, douglas preston talks about the search for an ancient city in honduras in the lost city of the monkey god, followed by financial target man david nixon on how to level america's economic playing field in the great equalizer. and wrapping up our look at the new york times nonfiction bestsellers, it's the book of joy by the dalai lama and desmond tutu and peter well opens the hidden life of speech area and some of these authors have been on book tv on c-span2 or in the near future. watch them on hdtv.org. >> we take us now to the point where i believe there was ray clark was married three times. there's another life between when he finally gets married and i'm sure that had a level of entry so that gives us an idea of what happens, they diverge again before they come together. >> what's interesting is at that moment in time in the 60s, there was both very

committed to mcdonald's from different perspectives, joan threw her husband and raleigh. and franchise and several other stores that they opened in rapid city and ray of course holding this huge company with what's important to point out, a man named harry sonneborn who is critical in coming up with a formula that helped mcdonald's get on good sound footing which was to aim own the underlying real estate of the mcdonald's. and he was the real business minded person was going into different communities and helping convince people who own the land and it's time for us to imagine just how like the landscape was then because it's different than it is now. so these are people in places where there was very little else going on and so hattie went in and helped negotiate bank loans and broker deals with real estate owners and both of these mcdonald's and ray was much more the hamburger guy whereas harry

was much more the high-minded finance guy. so that's going on where bill is helping her husband but they confuse somehow the involved with each other and i'm pretty sure it's something to do with one of ray's early hires was a world war ii pilot who owned a little something and ray and harry and june martino who was early on their integral. super integral to the whole other book, and it up living in florida, i won't go to harsh here. but, the early mcdonald's court team would fly around the country and look over heads of the churches and schools and identify parcels of land somewhere along the way, ray stopped in rapid city and joan was seeing him somewhere. so a relationship evolves.

he was desperate to marry her. she almost married him in 1961. she didn't and married one else. he divorced his first wife, married someone else, not to give away the entire story but in 1965 when mcdonald's went public and ray became wealthy as well as those closest to him, that was when he was married to his second wife so joan was still in rapid city when ray life's lotto during the ipo of mcdonald's and became instantly worth something like $33 million on paper which is huge in that time. were going to go ahead and race forward. you have to read the book to get up from 1965 to 1969 which is a critical year because that is the year that they finally get married. >> yes, joan. >> what kind of wedding was it? it's pose divorced and they have a big wedding or was it a little small thing? >> it's very quick and it was small and it was at the j and r double arch rent.

which was this spectacular ranch property that ray bought right after he struck it rich in 1965 in part because all of them, he was extremely wealthy and this was a beautiful piece of property but also because that was where he headquartered what was known, what became known as crosstown dixon so it was both a little bit of a raucous room for mcdonald's but it was also at a retreat for ray and jane, his second wife when he divorced jane his second wife in order to marry joan, it was very convenient that the place was allowed to stay a double arch rent. from california in california. seen sideways or they been to the central point in california, it's sort of a closer to la version of nappy and sonoma valley, is beautiful. it was power country and ray, in his second wife lived in beverly hills so it was an easy weekend resort, >> so they get married in

1959, there is this woman that he has interested in four years, and residents, perhaps they both thought it would be having waited so long, it was for ray because ray helped out that he was complete, he had everything. mcdonald's had done well. he was a celebrated businessman at a time even now when celebrity ceos and they are a dime a dozen, they're still interesting. the fact that a ceo would be so media savvy and friendly was very unusual and he was a perfect or racial browser story. milkshake machine salesman becomes multi millionaire. with selling hamburgers, it was a fantastic story. because there are a lot of people who were dubious about this, it didn't seem to make any sense.

this seems again so obvious to us but back in the 60s, wall street in particular was expanses of this idea until the stock went public. and kept going up, this was over the years but he was extremely happy, ray was and they landed in chicago which was where he had started his, where he lived his whole life. but joan quickly discovered that ray was a difficult and attempted to us person which he may have been aware of over the years but he recognized that ray had a serious problem with drinking. and it was only two years after they married that she threatened or did file for divorce. and then almost as quickly as she filed for divorce, she mysteriously decided to stay in the marriage. and that's where her sense of philanthropy really began because instead of staying in the marriage and just being

what she could have been with was much younger spouse of this extremely wealthy man spending money on all kinds of balls, she decided to start a charity which she called operation court which was crock spelled backwards and crocs mandate was to help families of people who drank. and this again was a time when people didn't talk about this sort of thing very often. eddie ford hadn't even come out, wasn't even on the map. so the fact that joan was so moved by her experiences with al-anon which some may know is this sort of core companion to aa which of course helps people who do drink, that had been around and that was enormously successful but in the 70s there were a number of people working to figure out ways to more aa for other purposes as well as address the larger issues which is how the

family was impacted and joan was front and center at that. she used the money earmarked for charity at the croc foundation and she would convene people at this particular ranch where she had married ray in 1969 and just got together the great minds who were thinking about that and who were eager to figure out ways to develop these systems what she found is she didn't just do that which would have been terrific enough. she was very active in creating media so all these years she'd seen mcdonald's grow and grow thanks to the use of mass media. as we all know they are terrific merchandisers today, that's nothing new. i was dating back to the earliest days of the business and joan borrow that for her work with alcoholism addiction and made movies area she produced a play. she produced a public service

announcement using the best animator at the time in the country. she published books and she got dear abby or with the help ofthe pr people from mcdonald's and she got dear abby to write a couple pamphlets she published and they were deluged with requests . they touched a nerve and it's so exciting that someone with a high school education was able to do such formidable work. >> watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> c-span was created as a public service by america's cable television companies and is brought to you today