The Third Story Podcast With Leo Sidran

David Maraniss has a motto: go there. What he means is that when he’s researching one of his books, whether it’s a biography of a person or the history of a place and time, he believes that in order to fully understand the story, he has to go to the physical location. Not, like, just for a weekend. He really goes there. He moves in.  But there’s another meaning behind the phrase “go there”. He moves in, not only to the space, but also to the nuance, subtlety, complexity of a life, of a time, of the history, sociology, feeling of his subject. He gets totally obsessed. He says he can’t write a book about something if he’s not obsessed with it.  Fortunately, throughout his career, he has managed to get obsessed with plenty. He’s written many celebrated biographies including books about Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Al Gore, Vince Lombardi, and Roberto Clemente, and books about social, political and cultural importance (like Rome 1960: The Olympics That Changed The World and They Marched Into Sunlight: War and Peac