Biographer says Alan Simpson still going strong at 80

After six years of writing, longtime aide to Senator Alan Simpson, Donald Loren Hardy, published "Shooting from the Lip: The Life of Senator Al Simpson."

Hardy told Bob Schieffer "it would have taken three years except that the Senator was living faster than I could write, at age 80."

The book is based on Simpson's carefully written, six-thousand page, 19 volume diary chronicling his life - although the diaries focused mainly on his time in Republican leadership in the Senate. "I told Al that I had to tell the truth," Hardy told Schieffer. Hardy's goal? "I tried to figure out what caused his volatility," and he points to anecdotes from Simpson's family history to discover that. One such incident involves his grandfather shooting a banker over a bounced check.

Hardy served with Sen. Simpson for his entire time in Congress, first as press secretary then as his chief of staff. As the only person to read all 2.4 million words of the diaries, Hardy explained "it wasn't just a matter of putting down the schedule, he put down quotes, moods, he'd come back from the White House and put it down, he'd go over and see Gorbachev, go see Saddam Hussein in Baghdad, put it all in the diary." And Hardy didn't leave the bad parts out. Simpson did fact check the book, but didn't have any editorial control over it.

Face to Face is a midweek web show for CBS News' Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer. Each Wednesday, Schieffer sits down with a newsmaker to talk about the news driving the week, and the interview is featured on CBSNews.com/FacetheNation. This week, Bob interviewed Sen. Alan Simpson for Face to Face, and then sat down with his biographer.