brian: don ritchie? mr. ritchie: i would probably go back to find some of those senators i've been writing about for years. i would love to have henry clay at the dinner, and i would love to have huey long at the dinner. i think the conversation would be very sparkling. there are a lot of other orators. alvin berkeley of kentucky, a famous storyteller, and many others whom i never had the opportunity to meet but i have read about. brian: richard baker? dr. baker: i would like to have daniel webster, and i would like to have john quincy adams, not only because they are from my native massachusetts, but because they were people who really knew how the senate and the house of representatives worked in the second quarter of the 19th century. and the third person i would like to have is robert c. byrd. people often said about senator byrd that he would be as at home in the 20th and 21st century or in the 19th century, and probably the 18th century, too. he had the demeanor, the air, the gravitas of a senator. i w

brian: don ritchie? mr. ritchie: going back to the nixon impeachment, i did a oral history with floyd riddick, the senate parliamentarian, who was there during the nixon situation. in the interview, he told me he planned for how the senate would hold a trial for richard nixon. one of the things they were going to do was bring a tv to the chamber, because you can't have the impeachment of a president without the people being able to walk, so they had to change -- watch, so they have the rules ready to go for this occasion. then of course, president nixon resigned. when i did that oral history, i thought, this is counterfactual, a history about something that didn't happen in the past. interesting, but not that important. of course, in 1999 when the senate was good and ready to hold a trial for a president, everyone was going back and reading the interview about how they were going to modernize the 1868 impeachment rules to get ready for a 20th century impeachment. so you never know when a historical document

brian: don ritchie. mr. ritchie: currently, i am reading "american revolution by taylor. a reinterpretation of the as a seriesolution of civil war wars. it is a fascinating account of things that -- making me look at the american revolution very differently. i and the co-author of a high school history textbook, so the textbook covers everything from the very beginning of american history up to the most recent events, and you have to keep going back to re-examine the early chapters because actually, history keeps changing as historians do research and uncover new truths and find out things and ask different questions that were asked maybe a generation or two ago. taylor is a brilliant historian changing the way we think about the revolutionary era. brian: mr. baker. or dr. baker, excuse me. mr. baker: i am reading broad rnow's biography on ulysses s. grant, and i'm reading it as an e-book because if i had to see how far i have ago, i might get discouraged, but once you get into the book, there's nothing discouraging at all. it is a model book for anyone who aspires to be