Candice Millard

Candice Millard tells intimate stories of great leaders, digging into their most vulnerable moments to reveal their true character. She is the author of "The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey", about TR’s harrowing adventure in the Amazon.

Transcript

Candice Millard (00:06):

Every once in a while, you go along, it's like, okay, normal person, normal person, and then—boom. God, where'd that guy come from? Or that woman? You know, these are kind of once in a century, once in a generation characters.

Ted Roosevelt V (00:22):

Welcome to Good Citizen, I'm Ted Roosevelt. Our guest, Candice Millard, like many others, wrote a book about Theodore Roosevelt. But hers, "River of Doubt," tells a fascinating story that even I didn't know. It's not about his presidency and it's not about our national parks—instead, it reveals a death-defying expedition through the Amazon jungle, full of both dark failures and momentous successes. But it's not just an adventure story. It's about leadership, character, and the love between a father and a son. We touch on what she has learned about leadership, what qualities and characteristics our country could use more of today. We also talk about why she hasn't written about female leaders. The answer may surprise you. I hope you enjoy this conversation. I know I did.

(01:19):

Well, I'm really excited to be talking to you because you've written four phenomenal books, but the first one—your first book ever was on TR and his journey down the "river of doubt." And I'm really curious how this book found you or how this story found you, because I've read quite a bit about TR in my life—not surprisingly, maybe—and candidly, I didn't know anything about this story until I read your book.

Candice Millard (01:44):

Right? You're not alone. So I was working at National Geographic at the time. I was an editor and writer there and living in Washington, DC and was going to move to Kansas City. I had gotten married, my husband has a company here, and I was looking for an idea, something I could write about and something that I could really sink my teeth into and really feel passionate about because I knew that it was going to take years of my life. And I was having lunch actually with a friend of mine who wrote a book called "1912," James Chase was his name. It's obviously about the election that takes place right before this expedition. And he said, and I told him I was looking for a book idea and he said, have you ever heard about this trip that Theodore Roosevelt took down this unmapped river in the middle of the Amazon?

(02:27):

But because this took place after his active political career, not many people had paid much attention to it. Usually you get a couple of pages, maybe about, oh yeah, and then he went to the Amazon. So I went back and I started researching it, and my poor husband was a victim here because I was literally calling him every 10 minutes, like, "oh my God, this is incredible." Roosevelt nearly took his own life on this trip, one man drowned, one man was murdered, they left the murderer in the jungle to certain death— it's just insane. And it's set in the richest ecosystem on earth, just this unimaginable story that gives you all kinds of leeway and all kinds of opportunity to talk about bigger ideas.

Ted Roosevelt V (03:16):

One of the first takeaways I had in reading the book was, it's hard to imagine how poorly planned this trip was, given that it was a former president. Was there something about that that was compelling to you? Because it's in contrast to I think what a lot of people think about when they think about one of the great leaders of the 20th century. The trip was sort of a disaster from the start.

Candice Millard (03:38):

Absolutely, and it is, it's in stark contrast to Roosevelt's character and everything he had done before then. He had gone on many difficult, dangerous expeditions, and he had been extremely careful in his planning. Roosevelt had had almost two terms as president and he thought he was not going to run again. He goes to Africa and he sort of anoints Taft to be his predecessor. He's really unhappy with what Taft is doing, and he decides to run again. He did what was predictable to everybody: he split the Republican vote, he put a Democrat, Woodrow Wilson, in the White House for the first time in 16 years, and he was shocked. This was Theodore Roosevelt. He doesn't lose, right? He is beloved. I mean, he got more votes than Taft, even as a progressive party candidate. So he had always had depression, and the way he would fight that was to throw himself into these very difficult, very dangerous expeditions. So he had done that again and again and again throughout his life. So this time though, he's unhappy, and so he says he gets this opportunity to go to South America—just on a speaking tour, right? And he thinks while I'm there, I'm a naturalist, I'm going to do some collecting, so I'm going to let somebody else take care of all the planning this time, which is a terrible idea.

Ted Roosevelt V (05:01):

What do you think TR was looking for on these journeys or maybe just sticking with the river of doubt?

Candice Millard (05:07):

Well, again, so if we go back in his life, each time he's throwing himself into these difficult, dangerous expeditions to prove something to everybody else, but mostly to prove something to himself. He went to South America thinking he was going to go on a collecting trip like he had in Africa, and it wasn't until he got there and the foreign minister of Brazil tells him, Hey, yeah, you could do that. It's actually not that interesting, but if that's what you want to do, or we have just discovered the headwaters of this river, we have no idea where it goes. Which would you rather do? And again, this is Theodore Roosevelt, so of course that's what he's going to do, even though he knows very well that they are not at all prepared for anything like that.

Ted Roosevelt V (05:52):

Was there something that he needed to prove to himself at this point? I mean, this man's been president of the United States twice. His history is unbelievable. This isn't the first time, as you referenced, that he's explored remote places in the world, but he has just suffered what is a devastating loss in the 1912 progressive as the head of the progressive party, and this is hard to get into the head of somebody who's been dead for a hundred years, but because you've spent so much time in this space, I wonder if you had any insights in terms of what is the emotional thing that he's looking to get to in doing this that drove him.

Candice Millard (06:25):

To him, this was just irresistible. Again, this is the headwaters of a river. It's not on any map. It's not on any map. Nobody knows, and you don't know what's going to be around each bend. Right? Again, this completely plays into his character. There's no way he was going to resist something like that.

Ted Roosevelt V (06:43):

At the end of the day, it imperiled his life to go do this journey, and there's great scientific reason to do it. I can see the adventure in it. I mean, how old is he on this trip? I mean, he's 60?

Candice Millard (06:54):

No, he's 54 when they leave, he turns 55 on the trip, and he dies at sixty. I mean, I'm 55 right now. That seems awfully young. And it was obviously because of this trip, he never, never fully recovered.

Ted Roosevelt V (07:11):

It was the moment where he basically asked to be left behind, he asked for a lethal dose of morphine, I believe, because he's become a burden on the trip. You've talked in the past about this idea of leaders at moments of vulnerability or extreme stress and seeing their character come to light a little bit. Was that a moment for you as you were doing this exploration where you thought, this is a story that's telling us something about TR that we didn't know before?

Candice Millard (07:42):

Yes. Often when we are talking about somebody like Theodore Roosevelt or I also wrote a book about Winston Churchill, any of these larger than life characters who seem almost mythical to us, they don't seem kind of real. But to me, I do think that you see somebody's character much more clearly when they're struggling, and that's also when we can connect to them, because not many of us have led nations or armies or gotten entire nations through a war or through a great depression or something, but we've all felt loss. We've all felt failure. And these people, again, they are human beings and they too have those same emotions so we can kind of understand them better and we can see them for who they are. I wrote a book about James Garfield, our second president to be assassinated, and he called it the Bed of the Sea.

(08:34):

He said, when someone's in a situation like this where they're struggling, everything is stripped away and you can see them for who they are. And that's, I think, absolutely what happened with Theodore Roosevelt. It's really interesting. Everybody thinks about him as this kind of crazy cowboy and this hunter and things, but again, he's 54 years old at this point, just turned 55. He's a more thoughtful person. He's still just as vigorous and ambitious, but he's more thoughtful. He was incredibly kind to the camaradas, the Brazilian porters and paddlers, incredibly respectful to Rondon, who's Brazilian co-commander. At one point, they only had one chair, and he refused to take it because Rondon didn't also have a chair. His son, Kermit, and George Cherry, the American ornithologist, had to watch him all the time because he was constantly giving his food away. So he had actually brought with him this lethal dose of morphine, and he had brought it on every expedition he had gone on because he said he never wanted to endanger the lives of the other men in expedition if he was too ill to go on.

(09:38):

And that's what happened here. So they're on this river, it's just packed with rapids. It's incredibly dangerous. They've lost canoe after canoe. They're in these hauled out tree trunks, right? They're starving. They can't find food. They're losing food. And at one point they get to these falls and Rondon, who spent much of his life in the Amazon said, there's no way we can get over them with these canoes. We're going to have to strike out into the jungle. Every man for himself. Roosevelt at that point was so ill, he couldn't even sit up, and he doesn't want—he knows all these men will try to carry him through the jungle. And so he calls George Cherry, the ornithologist and Kermit, his son, into his tent, and he said, you go on. I'm going to stay here. And they understood what that meant.

Ted Roosevelt V (10:25):

I mean, it's such a touching moment that it does bring up one more question because I saw you reference it in an interview before that some of the challenges, the health challenges your daughter was having helped you see the Kermit Roosevelt relationship on the river of doubt a little bit differently, and I don't know if you'd be willing to speak to that.

Candice Millard (10:43):

Yeah, I would. So I actually was pregnant with her when I was finishing the book. I had to go in for a sonogram and they found the tumor. They saw the tumor in the baby. It was the size of an egg, and so I had to have her that day. When I finally—because I had to have an emergency c-section—when they finally let me go, I'm sitting in her hospital room and she's connected to all these wires, these blinking lights and things, and I'm trying to go through these proofs of this book that I've spent years on. This is my first book too, my first opportunity, and all of a sudden I saw it so differently. I saw this story so differently, and I'd always looked at it as the story of adventure, the story of natural history, these great men going into the Amazon and surviving somehow.

(11:32):

And then I suddenly realized, this is a father and son story, and we didn't talk about that. But the only reason Roosevelt didn't die in the Amazon, didn't take his own life, it was because of his son. He realized the best way to save his son was to let his son save him. And all the men respected Kermit, he had been the first one in to get out the canoes out of the river, to lead them, they trusted him and respected him. When he said, we're moving forward and I'm taking you with me, Roosevelt realized, okay, that's the best way to get him out alive is let him take me with him. I can picture that moment. It was just this complete change in my understanding of what Roosevelt was going through on the banks of the river of doubt.

Ted Roosevelt V (12:24):

I mean, there's something just unbelievably poetic about this idea of sacrificing yourself and then having to not sacrifice yourself to save everybody.

Candice Millard (12:32):

I never could have seen it that way had I not been watching my own child struggle to survive.

Ted Roosevelt V (12:40):

I really appreciate you sharing that story with us. And you mentioned Winston Churchill as well, and your book on Winston Churchill, which is phenomenal. What is it about these two men? Because they're very similar in personality. They both have quintessential leadership qualities, and in particular, I guess confidence in knowing the direction in which things should go. That confidence can be inspiring and it can bring a country together, but at the same time, it can be reckless. The two stories you wrote about Churchill and Roosevelt both highlight moments of some recklessness. Is there something about that relationship between confidence and recklessness that attracted you to these stories?

Candice Millard (13:18):

I think that they were personally reckless. I mean, certainly, and I completely agree with you. I think Winston Churchill and Theodore Roosevelt are very similar: willing to take any risk, to succeed, to gain power, and they think to help others, but they're not going to risk other people's lives. And that's what was going on here with Roosevelt. But I also think, to me, what's really striking about their leadership quality is that yes, they're very confident and they make a decision quickly and they're very, very confident about it. And that is actually reassuring usually to the people following them, right? Winston Churchill, so when I wrote about him, he was 24 years old. He's in South Africa, he's on this armored train, he's the only civilian, he's the youngest by far—they're attacked and he takes over. And not only does he take over and start giving orders, everybody listens to him and they do what he said, but both Roosevelt and Churchill, it's not just their own confidence, their own courage, but it's contagious. Other people then feel, okay, he believes in me. He thinks that I can do this. So now I think that I can do that. And obviously both men did that, not just for the people, not just for their family, the people on their expeditions, but for their entire countries and sometimes the western world. And so it was this unbelievable contagion of confidence, of courage, that really makes things happen. And I think that's absolutely true of Theodore Roosevelt.

Ted Roosevelt V (14:58):

Talk to me about why Garfield comes. How does he hit your radar screen and become somebody that you want to focus on? And before you even answer the question, I just have to give this anecdote because it literally happened last week as my daughter came home from school, and every day my kids come home from school, I ask 'em, what's something interesting that you learned today? And she said, oh, I learned that Garfield died, not because he was shot, because the doctors kept sticking their fingers into the bullet hole.

Candice Millard (15:24):

That's great!

Ted Roosevelt V (15:26):

And then, as I was doing research on you, I discovered that that was your insight.

Candice Millard (15:30):

It's absolutely true. She's right. She's so right. So, James Garfield was, I think, very different from Roosevelt. He was quiet, he was modest. He didn't want to be president. He was sort of thrust into this position, but he was equally brilliant and had a heart to match his mind. Our last president born in a log cabin, his dad died before he was two, he didn't have shoes until he was four, but he put himself through college. His first year, he was a janitor and a carpenter to pay his tuition. By his second year, they made him a professor of literature, mathematics, and ancient languages—while he was a sophomore in college. He became the president of the college when he was 26. When he was in Congress, he wrote an original proof of the Pythagorean Theorem. He hid runaway slaves. He was a hero during the Civil War for the Union Army.

(16:24):

He was instrumental in bringing about black suffrage. So he was just this extraordinary person, and I believe would've been one of our great presidents if he hadn't been shot just a few months into his first term. So what brought me to him was Alexander Graham Bell, and I stumbled upon this fact that Bell tried to help save Garfield's life by inventing—it was basically the first metal detector, to try to find the bullet in him. He probably would've been fine. The bullet didn't hit any vital organs, it didn't hit his spinal cord, but his doctors kept inserting unsterilized fingers and instruments in his back, and it was a horrible death, as you can imagine. Again, it was this incredible leadership. I mean, he meant so much to our country. So Lincoln had been assassinated 16 years earlier, and that obviously had deeply divided our country. But Garfield's assassination brought the country back together in a lot of ways because everybody thought, this is our president, north and south, and he was the president of pioneers and immigrants, he was the president of freed slaves and former slave owners. So this was a shared sorrow, a shared tragedy. Again, very different personality from Roosevelt, but the same kind of magnetic leadership.

Ted Roosevelt V (17:40):

Yeah, I mean, I think the tie that binds at least your first three books—and actually probably all four of your books, but we'll get to the fourth in a moment—is that they're all relatively untold stories. I know Winston and the Boer War is maybe a little bit more told, but you really bring it to life in an amazing way. Is that the sort of key ingredient, is here's this sort of very interesting person, and there's a component of their story that you don't think has been told, which is certainly enough to write a book. Are there characteristics, qualities that you're looking for in these subjects?

Candice Millard (18:12):

Well, it's absolutely that, for sure. I mean, I always say I don't write the cradle to grave biography. I find a moment in this person's life or a couple of people's life, the shared moment that I think is very illuminating about that person's character, but also about that moment in time. It has to kind of fit on a larger canvas. It takes me five years, five, six years to work on these, so I can really— I go to where these stories played out. I do a ton of research. I mean, really, I don't start writing until the final year. So it's years of research and then figuring out how I'm going to tell the story. So I spend an entire year, you should tell your daughter outline, outline, outline when she starts writing because you have to understand how you're going to tell the story before you get into all the things like pacing and word choice and rhythm, all those things that you hope will make it enjoyable to read.

(19:13):

But if you outline, you can also have things like foreshadowing and cliffhangers and all that, and you're not playing with the story at all. I mean, if you see in my books, I have a huge note section so you can see exactly where I got everything. I love it when people say, oh, this read like a novel. I love that. I want it to, but I want them to know that it's completely factual. But also in order to do that, I have to have a wealth of primary source material, just like drowning and letters and diaries and newspaper accounts. And I've been very fortunate, and it's not something that has been a criteria, but I've just kind of lucked into the fact that each of the people I've written about are incredible writers. So Theodore Roosevelt was just an incredibly beautiful, prolific writer, and that's just a gift to me because I can just quote from him all day long and it makes me look good.

Ted Roosevelt V (20:09):

As I think about the books that you've written and where you found various interest points, are there people that you see today that you think are leaders of the caliber that we had previously that maybe sort of have these characteristics that are compelling and appreciate and gravitate to?

Candice Millard (20:31):

Well, not really. And that's not to say that they don't exist. I mean, for one, I live in the past. except for my own family and friends, I live in the past, and so I have never and will never write about a living politician or character. I live for letters and diaries and things, and people don't really write those anymore. And so there's just not that much you can get out of a tweet or a text or even an email. I mean, it just doesn't feel, have the same sort of gravitas as when you pick up a pen and you write. And so I would say it's not so much the timing, it's these are kind of once in a century, once in a generation, characters. Every once in a while— you know, you go along, it's like, okay, normal person, normal person, and—boom. God, where'd that guy come from? Or that woman? They're just unique.

Ted Roosevelt V (21:27):

You talk about Garfield's assassination, kind of bringing the country together. We had a moment two years ago with Covid and it seemed to divide the country. Are there things that you see or would like to see that you think might help unite a country that feels particularly fragmented at this point?

Candice Millard (21:46):

To me, and I live in the Midwest, and I grew up in the Midwest. I grew up in Ohio. I live in Kansas now. My politics are very liberal, but a lot of people I know, obviously from my childhood and now, they're more conservative, but they're good people on both sides. And to me, what we're lacking is just listening respectfully and giving people the benefit of the doubt. If you say, oh, this person, for instance, voted for Trump, they must be the devil, or they voted for Biden, they must be the devil. You're never going to get anywhere. And obviously this is not a new insight, but normal human decency a lot of times and just calming down, just calm down and listen and be respectful, and we can get somewhere together. We're not always going to agree, but we can move forward. That's my hope.

Ted Roosevelt V (22:42):

Well, I would just completely echo and agree with that sentiment and this idea of listening and even vulnerability from leadership, the sort of sense of, maybe not say it this way, but I'm doing my best. We don't have all the information right now, and I'm not sure what that looks like today to have that type of leadership where somebody is leading with listening, leading with vulnerability.

Candice Millard (23:07):

Right. I agree. I mean, many, I guess every president, I hope had advisors, right? And I know for instance, I know that Obama had a lot of historians. He had a group of historians who advise him, because I know Doug Brinkley and I know he was one of them. And to me, that's so smart because again, as we all know, we're doomed to repeat history if we don't know it. And that's the greatest value of history, understanding it. And so if you think, oh, I already know everything I need to know, or there's nothing, I mean, it's so foolish. So in that way, I think educating yourself, listening to all sides you can, and then having a plan, that's the kind of leader I think we need. And I know that's the kind of leader that Roosevelt was because he was constantly educating himself, constantly. Not only did he write dozens of books, he read every day. I mean, he read just kind of mind bendingly huge numbers of books.

Ted Roosevelt V (24:08):

Candice, I don't know if you've spoken about this publicly, but what are you looking at working on now? I know you had a book come out in '22, so maybe you're just taking a breather, but do you ever stop? Are you always looking for the next story?

Candice Millard (24:21):

Well, the great thing about my job is that it's what I want to do. I always think, I can't believe I get paid to do this, and my kids make fun of me because I literally have no hobbies except reading. I mean, I am terrible at crafts. I can't cook. I just like to read. If I have time, I'm just reading. So my next book I'm very excited about, it's set in World War I in occupied Belgium, and the two main characters are women this time, which I've been trying to do forever. But the hard thing about writing narrative nonfiction about a woman is that other people weren't writing about what they were doing. I mean, women have done extraordinary things, obviously throughout history, but other people weren't writing about them. But anyway, this is about mainly these two women, a British nurse and a French school teacher, but also there's a Belgian architect, a priest, a minor brother and sister, prince and princess, and this kind of loose network comes together to hide Allied soldiers and help them escape through the border with the Netherlands until they're all betrayed and rounded up by the Germans.

Ted Roosevelt V (25:30):

That's so exciting. I also just want to put a pin or flag that point you made about the lack of primary sources on historical women. It's sort of one of those, oh, of course that's true. But I had never really thought about that in the context of the challenge of bringing more female stories and women's stories into the historical narrative is that there is this sort of systemic bias of not having the primary sources in place that make it a little bit challenging. Exactly. We ask everybody on this podcast two questions, and one of 'em is what people, our listeners can do to sort of make the world a better place or make their lives a little bit better. And yours might be read a book. I don't want to steal your thunder if that's what it is, but I'd be curious, given your subject matter expertise in having written about these really prominent leaders, what you might advise our listeners to do. Well,

Candice Millard (26:27):

It probably sounds cliched, but to me it's kindness actually. And that's what I've seen again and again, and that kind of goes back to what we were talking about, about listening to people, about being respectful to people. My son, he's 15, he just got his Eagle Scout. He's very excited about it, and it was interesting. He had to write kind of a reflective essay, and he was talking about what he wanted to do with his life and what he had kind of learned this far in his life. And it was the importance of kindness and not just like it'll have this kind of ripple effect, which it does, and how you feel about yourself and the kind of person you are and the kind of person you want to be. And I always think if everybody could just sort of take a breath and when they get upset about something or they feel offended or ill-used or whatever it is, I know that it sounds easy and cliche, but it's actually not particularly easy, I think a lot of times. And I think it would have just a tremendous, tremendous effect. I think it would be honestly transformative.

Ted Roosevelt V (27:38):

I mean, I love that. I absolutely love that answer. The other question that we have is, is there an organization that you think our listeners should check out that is particularly doing great work?

Candice Millard (27:50):

Oh, there's so many organizations. That's interesting. So to me, so I have just, if you don't mind, I'll just say something personal. So my second daughter was born with neuroblastoma, which is a type of childhood cancer. One of the many, many things I learned, she's, by the way, she's graduated from high school this year, we're incredibly lucky. One of the many things I learned from that is how little support childhood cancer research gets, because if you look at all the people getting cancer, it's a relatively small group, and so pharmaceutical companies aren't putting money into it. Unfortunately, the government isn't putting money into it. And so there's an organization called Band of Parents. There's also Alex's Lemonade Stand. She's, there was this little girl who herself, she had neuroblastoma and she started this lemonade stand to try to raise money for research. And unfortunately, she ended up dying, but her organization lives on, and those are the ones that matter the most to me.

Ted Roosevelt V (28:50):

That's another excellent one, and thank you for bringing that up, and thank you for sharing that. I just don't think there's anything more trying than having a not well child. So congratulations that things have worked out, and I'm glad to hear it.

Candice Millard (29:00):

Thank you. We're extremely lucky, and I have all the gratitude in the world, as you can imagine, for doctors, nurses, research scientists. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I mean, they're doing God's work.

Ted Roosevelt V (29:14):

Candice, thank you so much for doing this. It was a great conversation. I'm excited for your next book, really, genuinely.

Candice Millard (29:21):

My pleasure. Thanks so much. It was a pleasure meeting you.

Ted Roosevelt V (29:26):

I want to thank Candice for talking with me. Her passion for history is contagious. What really interested me was to hear how history and her personal life intertwined how her daughter's health struggles opened her eyes to the relationship between TR and his son Kermit. It helped me, and I hope you understand Theodore in a new, more personal light. It's just another example of how, as she says, history has a lot to teach us, and she made a great point. Make a conscious effort to pause, listen, and more importantly, be kind. I know I can benefit from that advice. And if you haven't read "River of Doubt," get yourself a copy. Thanks for listening. Be sure to follow Good Citizen on your favorite podcast app to hear more inspirational conversations like this one. Good Citizen is produced by the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library's content studio in collaboration with the Future of StoryTelling and Charts & Leisure. You can learn more about TR's upcoming presidential library at trlibrary.com.