i say enough how thrilled we are to have tonight's guest author here at theodore books. jeff nussbaum was a senior for president joe biden and a partner at west wing writers. the premiere strategy and speechwriting shop in washington, dc. he has also led or co-led speechwriting at the last four democratic conventions sitting

in conversation with nussbaum tonight is store owner and former congressman steve israel, a author in his own right, representative opened theodore's books in 2021 and just held a lifelong dream. he served in the us congress from 2001 to 2017 as well and was most recently appointed by president biden to the president's committee on the arts humanities for. almost every delivered speech there exists an undelivered office that these second speeches provide alternative histories of what could have been, if not for scheduled changes, changes of heart or momentous turns of events in undelivered. political speechwriter jeff nussbaum presents the most notable speeches the public has never heard an examines the content of these speeches and the context of the historic moments that almost came to be. nussbaum considers not only these speeches tell us about the past, but also what they can inform us about our present on behalf of theodore books, i

would like to welcome the author undelivered, justin nussbaum and moderator former congressman steve. to. you got the memo on how to dress in. all right. welcome, everybody it's so good to see you. want to acknowledge two very special friends who are with us tonight. new york state senator kevin thomas is with us. senator, thank you he's given a few good speeches in his day and somebody that we're very proud that i've spent a quite a bit of my with and that is judge hector lasalle who is with us. judge thank you so much for joining. welcome to welcome to oyster bay hometown of theodore roosevelt, who gave a few good speeches his life. right. jeff, you've got to give a speech. right? write a speech as and by the

way, how about a big heart for chloe and our whole team for, everything that they do. chloe mentioned that i left congress 2017. it was always my dream. open up a small bookstore with several rules number one. the only time you do think or pointing is words on a page number two. no fighting, no screaming, no sound bites, no invective, no partizan, sniping. the only thing we care about is that you come here with a curiosity and that fulfill your curiosity in the form of a book. and it has been a delight. do this and i thank them. our neighbors and oyster bay for their support just before talk about the book. i'm curious so you were a speechwriter for president biden? i was so how did it work? he like wake up in the morning and he says, you know, i think i want to give a speech about ukraine. and he just pops into your office and he says, you know, give me a speech about ukraine

and you bang out in 15 minutes. and then he gives it that pretty much. exactly. yeah, that's exactly right. so i describe myself writing for for president biden as being like a session musician for a band, already released 20 albums. right. like no one really wants to hear your new track. and so that that's sort of how worked writing for president biden which he has a record right he has a long record there's little in this world that you're going to present him with that he hasn't seen some version of. so when it comes time write a speech about whatever the issue is the first conversation is really figuring out where has been in the past on this and or at least where he is in sort of his his personal values architecture and starting to and apply that to the current situation so you're almost rare you almost never starting from a fully blank canvas you're always starting from where is he

personally this issue what has he said and done in the past and now let's figure together what is the next iteration of that? the other thing that's changes with the presidency as opposed to the vice presidency, being a senator or being a member of congress is the scrutiny is intense. so. ultimately, every speech belongs. the president that's said in the white house, there's an incredibly rigorous review there that may or may not existed for the previous occupant of office, but you know, it can look it gets looked at by research for fact check, by legal for for, you know, any hurdles, you know, the various policy counsels want to take a look at it and when they're done with it, the president gets it again and, basically says, well, now i can't see what story i'm supposed to be telling here anymore. and so he takes it. it takes ownership back again and makes it his one more time. was there a particular speech that you wrote for him that really stands out? yeah, i'm because everything

such a team effort, because everything is ultimately his. i wouldn't name a specific i wrote, but i'm happy to tell you about a specific speech. i did not write consistent with the theme. yes, exactly right. so i even though i had worked in the senate i worked in the white house previously, i started my career with al gore, i, i'd worked in the senate for tom daschle, who's democratic leader of the senate. but i had never met joe biden until i was hired by then senator barack obama to write for and travel with whoever he picked to be his vp. and so at that, in 2008, i was asked to write three speeches for three potential vice president picks. at the time, it was tim kaine, evan bayh and joe biden. those were the names i'd been given and when word came down that it was that joe was the guy i was introduced biden. he looked at me, crossed, looked skyward and said, i've been in the senate than you've been alive. and that was and so so i did not

he did not want my of his first speech at the convention is as vp nominee and. instead in what became really one of the more moving and, powerful moments of my career, he had me write work with his son beau, his late son beau. i'm beau's introduce notion of joe and interestingly, he us work together. and when that speech became a one of the one of the powerful moments of the convention, that's what sort of earned me the entree into into writing for the father. so what what a thrill that must be when are watching a president of the united states read words you crafted. tell us about what like. well, i did the thrill i mean, first of all, the words are his, right? yes. he's you know, so there's even almost a little discomfort. not too much discomfort, you know, talking about what goes on behind the curtain. but i think what's thrilling that you realize how much the

words mean, not always to the entire national but but there are going to be people for whom that really resonates. and i think, you know, you talk about speeches i've written some of my favorite ones to be involved with were the ones that of would fly under the radar a little bit. you know you know, pride remarks at the white house and those as opposed to what are considered message those remarks are tend to be considered ceremonial and they get a little less scrutiny because. it's a reception or something of that nature. but when you do it right and, you see tears in people's because they something about their journey is being acknowledged by the president at states like that, you just get immense satisfaction from that. and it absolutely down whatever cynicism you brought to the office that day. let's talk about the book, by the way. we're going to converse for about 20, 25 minutes, then open

it to your questions and answers here. the rule, however, because our great friends at c-span book tv are with us. you have a question? wait. somebody to bring a microphone over to you. okay. so make me don't don't blurt out your. i know these are new yorkers and you can't wait to. ask your question or make your speech, but wait for somebody to bring a microphone over to you so that it can be properly recorded. let's talk about this amazing book. i love alternative histories. and in fact, one of the best alternative histories ever read was by a former speaker of the house newt gingrich. he writes, alternative history about the civil war. what would have happened if something was different? there's a wonderful book called for want of a now about what would have happened to the american revolution based on a now what what how would the trajectory of history have been changed and your book really is just stirring alternate history. i just want to read one paragraph that i think sums up the book and then ask you a

question. you say growing up, we all learned about martin luther king jr dream, but what if the march on washington had taken on a different tone and tenor? what if john lewis the fire is speaker of the day, had proceeded king by declaring that, he could not support kennedy's civil rights bill for it is too little late in quotes. what if king had kept his dream to himself and had taken the stage on the steps of the lincoln memorial to declare that there would not be, quote, normalcy never again, unquote. both of them went to bed the night before the 1963. march on washington was prepared speeches that did just that. today, we don't have to consider what would have happened if the d-day failed. with bad weather leaving tens of thousands of allied troops to be massacred on the beaches of normandy. but dwight eisenhower did, and he prepared apology for it. why is it important for us to understand those speech that were not given? well, first of all, you should have done the audio book that

was great. i hear, i was in a recording studio. and by the way, the audio book is fun, too. you should buy the physical copy, and you should buy it here at theodore's. but but the audio book, we had actors read for some of the undelivered speeches, and so the audio book almost resemble as a podcast, as much as an audio book that said, if we'd done it four months later, we would have, you know, gpt or generative ai to actually actually read these speeches. but i love this question because i did do a talk to a bunch of like serious historians and some of them said, are you concerned that you may have helped write an alternative history? and i sort of it never struck to be concerned. i think only a certain subset of the population is deeply concerned about alternative histories. but for me, what what was important about that idea and one of the things that was fun is an alternative are sort of you imagine how events have played out differently and these

speeches show you the first couple of steps down alternative path and they're not imagined. they are real. they just weren't taken. but me. the through line i found in book is that in we think that things happened the way they happened because in retrospect there was an inevitability it. and one of the things i, i came across chapter after chapter example after example, that things didn't have to happen the way that they happened. outcomes very frequently rest on a razor's edge and it's people the positions they have and the best decisions they're capable of making that nudge things one way or another and those nudges or sometimes outright pushes can make a huge difference for for a community, for a company, for a country and for the world. and in this book, we have several examples. you know, as you say, that the world could spun off in a dramatically different and civil the civil rights the march on

washington 1963 marches is a really prime of that right. if that's if that march had been remembered for the nightmare and not the dream, it would be a very different thing, because one of the things i spend some time, i'll stop filibustering here in a second, but i spent some time laying out what washington was preparing. national guard units had been called up the the baseball the senators baseball game had been liquor licenses were suspended. neighboring police departments were deputized to be washington, d.c. police. one writer joked that i think it was norm who was the quarterback of the then washington redskins, was a national guardsman and seeing him surrounded by his unit, one writer said it's the most protection we've seen him have all year. and but the was the city was ready to erupt and forget that that was the context in which this peaceful march then changed and minds because it was so inspirational. but if it had leaned into that tension, which lewis might have done, and king have done, you

get a very different coming out of it. let's talk about undelivered speech that sparked your. yeah take us to that moment 2000 nashville, tennessee election night right so i was working for al gore. right. if all comedy comes pain. this book may also have come from pain. so working for gore was my first job. i was kind of kid, speechwriter, and election night 2000, nashville al gore has three speeches prepared a victory speech, a concession speech, and then a modification where we explain that has won the electoral college, even though he has lost the popular vote. now america since learned that an electoral college win still a win. but at the time, we felt like that demanded some explanation and that. you know, florida goes to gore. we think he's won because it's too close to call. we don't know goes to bush. we think, well, where are you. so i'm in memorial plaza, veterans memorial plaza in downtown nashville.

it is a sort of mr. rainy night. so as rain of starts up, people retreat to bars, restaurants around and and i was sort out of the action right like election nights are weird like once all the calls have been made, the doors have been knocked. there's really not much left to do except trade and traffic and rumors. what are you hearing? you know, and interestingly, i have a friend whose, mom lived in palm beach county, florida, who kept calling me, saying something's wrong with the ballots. and i was like, whatever. so but then, i mean, this is pager days, not cell phone days. so our pagers start going off, return to headquarters, come back to headquarters. and that's when we realized the first thing they said is, is anyone a lawyer and bar certified in florida. and so the plane was ready to go that night did go that night. and many of the first court motions were filed by a wonderful friend of mine named erwin, who was one of the few lawyers who happened be a florida lawyer.

so but those speeches were lost, dropped them somewhere. they got lost somewhere. and i went back and i looked everywhere for them. i even talk to the teleprompter that night to find out if they were still in the machine. i mean, and they're but it set me on this journey to say where in history not just political history, military history, pop culture history, where outcomes were so in doubt that you actually had drafts accounting for two potentially very different let's talk about to dress for different outcomes with a different president. i found this to be so fascinating and so topical. so we have as we have this conversation, president trump has a 37 count indictment in florida, indictments in new york, maybe some other indictments pending. and his response has not been in any way, shape, form an apology or a concession he's doubled down. and then we read this amazing moment with richard nixon in the white house where has to decide,

will step down. will i resign or will i stay? take us through that. and the speeches. and so i in that i try remind readers that most of us who think of nixon we kind of think of a shadowy, sweaty vaguely evil guy and first thing i try to do is remind people that he was incredibly persuasive. and early in his career, he gave one of the most important speeches in american history that's called the checkers speech, where he was in danger of being off of eisenhower's ticket as vice president. and he delivered a speech that feels very relevant today because it was derided by the people who heard it as sort of a financial striptease as he kind of laid his finances. and then very famously said, you know, there's one gift we've received. we're not giving back. and it's this dog checkers. the kids love it. now, most of that speech was a lie. he hadn't met the dog at that point. the dog didn't arrive at the

train station as a gift where he said it did, but it didn't matter. it was really the beginning of personal grievance politics. so that was sort of the first parallel with trump, which is like, i'm just working stiff. and the elites are coming after me and, you know, i bet a lot of americans you feel the same way and the speech resonated amazingly well because when nixon left stage kind of muttered i lost up because he forgot to give the address. the rnc headquarters where he wanted people to mail letters asking him to stay on the ticket and people still found the address and they wrote by the hundreds of thousands. so we set the stage with a nixon who really believes if can just talk to the american people and they can him as he is he can hang on because he did it once before. and so he prepares speech that is quite similar, basically saying here's the against me. i've looked at some of it, it's not great, but but i'm just playing it straight.

and i know that in impeachment would be challenging, but i need to stay on for the following reasons. we've had president assassinated. we've had a president, you know, in lyndon basically drummed out of office too much upheaval just for stability. you know, i need stay on and and so he he kind of plays that out and that this will be a painful process but but basically wants to say we to get past a place where pure heated politics just drum someone out of an out of office and what's interesting when he ultimately chooses resign he basically uses the same justification it was sort of a in search of a decision the justification was stability the rule of law and yet that ultimately became his his resignation but it really was very unclear up until the 11th hour which decision he he would

go with. and there's a very poignant moment, the interaction. president nixon and the speechwriter with a speechwriter gives him the resignation speech. and as i recall on it, this is the speech i hope you would give god will help you. yeah. yeah, right. yeah. and it's exactly that. and ray price, who was the speechwriter, was basically using the draft to try to influence the president. and so he there's this beautiful sentimental memo he puts on the top of it, which is exactly that, you know, like and may god bless you with this decision. one of the extraordinary privileges that i had was servant john lewis, who talked about him. and, boy, when lewis stepped up to the stepped into well, to give a speech, we clung to every single word on both sides of the aisle. but you talk the book about restraint as an important tactic and strategies you so john lewis

exercised restraint in his speech on the march on washington goldman at her sentencing exercises restraint, she could have gone much further, could have been incendiary. but she decides that she's going to exercise some restraint. do people color and women have to in their show forbearance and restraint others the short answer, yes and and that's sort of a painful short to give. but the reason that answer yes is because it comes down to persuasion. and one of the things i was very struck with looking at the speech john lewis didn't give in that chapter and by the way so lewis was in early twenties. he's become leader of the the snick, which is the youth activist wing of the civil rights movement and. he doesn't really love the idea of the march on washington anyway. feels like it's become very

corporatized. and he says, i don't want to march in washington. i want to march on washington. and if i'm going speak quote, i'm going to put some sting into it sting. and he really does. and the last line of the speech, he doesn't give is wake up america, wake up. and one of the things i talk to folks i work with and write about all the time is when believe something. so it is almost inconceivable to you that someone could believe something different. and so you basically want to your instinct is take them by shoulders and say, wake up, see it my way. and yet the goal, a speech is to persuade and wake up is something that alienates and you have to find a way of meeting your audience where they are and bringing to you. and that's ultimately decision emma goldman made and it's the decision john lewis made and lewis made it under duress. martin luther king begged him to change his speech and he said

no. and martin luther king said, john, it doesn't sound like you and. lewis kind of clapped back at him and said, yeah. martin it sounds like us, meaning the young people who'd really been in the fight. similarly, emma goldman's lawyer quit because was hell bent on, giving a defense of from the courtroom where. she was about to be sentenced to ultimately a year in prison, potentially more years if she had given the speech. you want to give and she decided she would bring more people to her cause by a sympathetic being sent to jail, as opposed to someone who used their last words of freedom before stint in jail to incite people to more, more violence and and lewis ultimately made that decision too, which is rather than confront america with his lived reality, he would explain to america his lived reality and instead say, so if this offends you as much as it has offended me. join us as opposed to wake up.

so that was really i thought the really interesting takeaway from those speeches. two more questions and we'll open up to your and then jeff is going to be here to sign copies of the book. let's talk about apology speeches. i mentioned dwight d eisenhower writing the speech, apologized for what could have been the massacre of d-day emperor hirohito in japan writing a speech apologizing for the horrors of world war two. take us through those speeches. yeah, apologies are really interesting. and we talked about this a little before when we were busy coordinating our outfits the evening the there is some evidence now sort of scholarly evidence that you should never that an demoralizes your supporters and emboldens your detractors never apologize and

it's really tough to see that because and you see a lot of people in elected elected officials and other business leaders absolutely taking advice. right because people short attention spans people things blow over. but part of why i highlighted these apology speeches, even though in one case it didn't have to be given, and in another case, an emperor hirohito prevented it from being given, is that there's such examples of the importance of taking responsibility eisenhower in this very short speech that he's written in. and he misstates it. he only takes time to go back and make one edit and the edit he makes is he has written the have been withdrawn and he crosses out and writes, i have withdrawn the troops. and then at the end she writes and the decision was mine alone. he underlines mine alone writing for those of us who remember our grammar, he is gone. the passive voice. the troops have been withdrawn to the active voice i have

withdrawn the troops and it reminds me of this quote i find from president grant in the chapter where president grant says, i am a verb, i'm a verb, and i love it because leaders are action takers and eisenhower was a verb and by the way, this was part of eisenhower's tradition of leadership is before every engagement battle he would write he would imagine its failure apologize for that was his way of kind of pressure testing pressure testing his own plans but i just loved it because it was it was so direct years later he was asked about it and he said if it had failed, it was my failure. like what i going to do, hide from it. my career have been over and i had to be ready to accept an emperor hirohito similarly saw people and to call them friends is an overstatement. he was the emperor didn't quite have friends, but he saw his wartime leaders and counselors, execs for things that he was deeply complicit in. and he was heartsick, even though being the emperor doesn't really allow you the liberty of

being heartsick. so he tried very hard to apollo and take responsibility and and we the americans would not let him do that because we feared that losing emperor would mean that the japanese army and citizenry would rise up and fight against. we so desperately wanted his seal of approval on occupation that we wouldn't let him apologize and show fallibility fallibility. last question from me, and this is personal. i was thinking when i read your book whether i ever wrote two speeches and i did and it was on my votes on the war in i was about 80% sure i was going to vote for the war, but i still had 20% of me saying, just vote it. and i actually brought two speeches. when was time for me to speak on the floor? one on why i was voting yes and one on why i was voting no. one in one pocket wanted the other because i still wasn't

quite sure you had similar experience. you worked for senator tom daschle, who also had two speeches, correct. can you take us through that? on on on the authorization. was this and this is a really one for me. and this was i mean, it was similar to the nixon only in that it was justification in search of a decision. and so i mean, i went back and looked in south dakota, which is where tom daschle's from. you know per capita, more people enlisted, more people died in all the war. so we sort of told the story that. south dakota has always had a disproportionate price for america's defense for engagements in battle. and and ultimately, i mean, i remember everything about that speech. i remember where i was sitting. i remember what the weather was like. i remember the lighting in the office. i remember because i'd gotten edits from someone and, i couldn't figure out how to use the track changes. i remember and in writing the book i went back and looked at it and i didn't remember a single word.

if you had showed it to me blind, i would have said i didn't write it. who wrote this? and it brought to mind how robert kennedy talked about jf during the cuban missile crisis, where we have a chapter his two speeches, an airstrike speech, a blockade speech and anyone who was involved in the speech, everyone was involved in airstrike speech, denies, denied later having any knowledge of it. so all the people who wrote and we identify in the book who wrote most of it say it wasn't me and i for the first time i understood it because these things are so difficult. the moments or moments so heightened, the decisions have such that that if you go in a direction that in retrospect you wish you hadn't you the mind robert kennedy once said you know our minds doing some funny things to us and your mind does do some funny things to you. this is a must read. it is an extraordinary history that is based on what really

could have happened, that would would have happened, but what could happened. jeff nussbaum, thank you so much for writing notes on deliver the never heard speeches that would have rewritten history. it can be for you can purchase it here you can purchase it at w w w theodore books bookscan. and let's open this up to your questions. raise your hand and wait for chloe to bring you a microphone if you have any questions. who's got the first one in the back. so we've about a lot of speeches, obviously, but what was your favorite and why? oh, thank you. it's a great question. what was what was my favorite and why add to favorites, a very obscure one that the editor wanted me to leave out. it was governor altgeld who was a governor of illinois in the late 1800s who pardoned the haymarket prisoners these were people who had been jailed and

several of them had died jail on on really trumped up charges having to do with the the haymarket riots and altgeld said i'm going to do the right thing in consequence his be --. and he pardoned them knowing that he would unleash, you know, just unleash vitriol and that's what happened. and he was basically drummed out of office for doing it and denied the dignity, giving his farewell address and and farewell address basically had this language where he was going to say, i did it. it was the right thing to do because because there's no sort of greater criticism that can be made of a public man than to say that he held office all his life and never did anything for humanity and. i just think it's such a powerful statement, and i'll give you one one other that really on a new life. upon rereading and it's in the book the last chapter is different than all the others. it's last words. it's speeches people were working on when they died, so they didn't know that it would

be their last words. and we have franklin roosevelt and albert einstein and pope pius the 11th and john f kennedy and and weirdly against a across time and geography and language. they're all really talking about the same thing. they're talking about what it take to live in peace. and kennedy's particular, when you read it, people to people know that it exists. they see it often as a foreign policy speech because he has this beautiful passage about america we need to be the watchman on the walls of world freedom. but when you look closely he's also saying and he devotes about the speech to the watchman also has to look inward. and he talks a lot about domestic extremism and misinformation and and have to wonder reading the speech if he and he was starting his reelection campaign and he was very popular and 70% approval rating by some measures at the time if he had articulated the danger of domestic extremism misinformation in reelection

campaign the same he articulated the danger of a missile gap in his first campaign. would we be living in a different america now, having been more sensitized to the risks from those things are the question. yeah how did you get into speechwriting. i. i started speechwriting i didn't know that it was a job less a career. right. the tv show the west wing didn't exist, so there was no like it wasn't like, i want to be rob lowe, you know. and by the way, years later, i got a chance meet rob lowe, and i showed him my business card, which like had the same title that he had on the show. west wing. i said, you've done more for this business card and hence my dating life than you will ever ever know. but. but it wasn't know it was. it was really a very quiet behind the scenes thing where people fell into from all different walks of life. in bill clinton's speechwriting shop, you had a historian and a pollster and a consumer safety

advocate. and what united to all those people was really a love of translating, right? translating policy into how it impacted people's lives so and so. i applied for white internship. i didn't know what office i was applying for, but to try to get my application noticed, i did make point of describing that i have two sisters, my middle sister, when we were very young, got to go into the oval office and upon leaving she was at the time, so she wasn't really responsible for this. she had wet the rug in the oval office and so my essay was very few people get a chance to make a mark in the white house. i just want a chance to improve upon the one my sister already made and they, like grabbed and they're like, throw him in with speechwriting, right? throw them in with the wise --. but my early job job was what we called how to hell duty. in other words, how the hell did he know that? and my job and this was for al gore was to figure out where he

was going later that week or that month and find out something that would be deeply meaningful, even if superficial, to that audience. that would make them say how to hell did he know that? and so find the score of the local high school football the friday night before or i'd find the intersection where everyone gets caught up in traffic so that when he inevitably arrived late he could say, sorry, the motorcade stuck, you know, at the to 13 railroad junction. i, we'd go, oh happens to me and right like that you know it seems like a cheap political trick but it actually to something in speechwriting right if you look no logos pathos an ethos ethos is really characterization and and how to help us characterize a speaker as someone who took enough time to know this little thing about my life and audiences kind of instinctively well, maybe i trust him just a little to know something else about my life, to so loving, doing to heal duty was my introduction. i got the internship, i got put on how to help duty and that

really sparked this love helping people find connection with the audiences. and through that connection, getting license to explain to them what they were doing and why. i want to acknowledge judge maureen, which who is with us, your honor. thank you. it would be better judges here. so, yeah, everybody be in your best behavior, please. yeah. like the question of. yup, yup. the microphones, i swear to you. okay. how does one research and delivered speeches? oh, thank you. yeah, there's nowhere where you can go and say, here's the library of undelivered speeches. and for me, it was part this obsession that began on election night 2000. and i'd find breadcrumbs in different places. so where in new york? i saw like a new york history that said, you new york came so close to bankruptcy under mayor beame that he even had a speech prepared. and so i thought, okay, now who would have that speech? and i found his former press

secretary who said, oh, maybe i have it in the attic. and he looked and he didn't have it. and i found his communications advisor and many of these people would later become kind of luminaries of new york names. this is, you know, the howard rubenstein, others. and everyone sent me to someone else until they finally sent me to the lawyer who had prepared the bankruptcy filing. and he said, oh, i have the city's filing. if you want to take a look at that, you can. and i sort of i was sort of defeated was like, sure. i guess if i can't find the speech, this will at least be something to show that. it almost happened. and as he was showing to me, his assistant opened this old dusty cabinet said, i think i think i have you're looking for. and so i had in my hands the only copy of mayor abe beam declaring new york bankrupt each was a similar journey and so there was no one way and there were a lot that defied so i, i that president carter had a

speech prepared for the failure of the camp david and i talked to the person who had drafted it and he described the scene. carter was looking at it on his desk and went and that's right. when the agreement kind of got cemented and they just swept everything off the desk into box. and i found that box at the carter center. but the speech wasn't there. so some some defied ability to find them, but it really was this fun adventure. find each one. and then i well, if this just is my obsession fine, i'll write it down and maybe couple of people be interested and it's been so gratifying to find that, you know, others have enjoyed it as well. so so when you went to the begin when you began your search really after election night 2000, it was just where else has this happened? where in military history, where in political history? even in the in the book, we have moonlight the of the movie moonlight. remember they called la la land the winner and he never got to give his moonlight speech. and so we found moonlight speech.

you know, we're in pop, too. these things happen as well. he's going to give us. okay, we're going to take this final question, chloe, if you would bring the microphone over and then chloe is going to give you instructions on how to acquire a copy and have it signed. please is there one or more speeches that you were involved with that has really made and impact on the country. oh, i i hate it. i'm going to finish this conversation with a real dodge, but i'm going to dodge question because i think, you know, certainly there are are freighted where people to leaders not you know as as sources of information as explainers as patriarchs patriarchs and matriarchs to sort of remind us who we are and what we're about and i've been really lucky to be involved in some of those. but but ultimately, saul, saul and with a with a prolonged

apology for sort of breaking the speechwriters oath here. but you know, the speech ultimately belongs the speaker and you know, the same way you don't celebrate sheet music, you celebrate the musician. maybe we do celebrate sheet music a little for talking about composers. but anyway, the speech belongs to the speaker. so i've just been very lucky to have had career that's put me in the room with a lot of people i admire who are in positions to make decisions again with with with values i tend to agree with and the best they can and those to make a difference. one of the best history books that i have read in a long time, i commend it to your attention have another began for just now. thank you you for his contributions chloe all right. thank you all so so much for coming tonight. if you would like to purchase a copy of undelivered, we have them up at the front counter. if you already have your copy, we're going to start designing. you can go ahead and line up right over here. okay. all right.

esteemed as malcolm to the 74th national book awards ceremony. tonight's host is levar burton, renowned actor, producer and literacy advocate whose decades long body work includes roots star trek the next generation and reading