microphones for your questions as to get in the last portion of the program but while you are lining up i want to ask elizabeth to tell me about what did you interview the number of people who were close to speak to his first administration and the first half and second-half, what did they tell you about him either on the record or off the record, what impression did i have of him and what did you learn in talking to those people? >> there were several, he had a loyal staff which again was sort of puzzling because he never paid any attention to them. [laughter] the man never had a staff meeting, he never held a cabinet meeting ever. so the way he ran illinois government was completely puzzling. it wound up he really was running particularly at the end of running it from a speaker phone in his living room. not only did he not go to springfield which the operative much know, he didn't go to the

office in chicago either. the troubled his staff to put it lightly and they said it was almost as if have some real psychological problem. i talked to enough people who mentioned this to me that i finally went and talked to several psychiatrists who never good enough psychiatrists so they wouldn't want give a diagnosis of because i haven't examined him but they did appoint a toward the male clinic definition of a narcissistic personality disorder which is someone who has an overall need for attention and has to be in the middle of things, much of which is to cover up a basic lack of self-esteem and many of his staff members really thought this fit into a tea because they remembered so many of the times when they couldn't get him out of the office or at of his house which is most likely, to go to an event or a political event,

to talk about his policies and he was so passionate about. he didn't want to go. he just didn't want that kind of confrontation with anyone that would challenge him which makes you wonder about this basic lack of self-esteem our basic lack of self-confidence. but they said when he did go he was fabulous cover he always turned around the room. so they were just as troubled and puzzled by it as everybody else and i thank you have to say he is a man who had his demons and we saw them play out in illinois. >> that is a pretty serious thing to talk about to discuss whether someone is mentally ill and the governor overstate. for, on the other hand, is the sort of a garden where i any real politician made bad moves along the way? >> adel think he is a venal politician, he is a very likable guy if you can get it out of this house. [laughter] i do have a master's degree in

social work but i'm not going to work for rod blagojevich but i do think this narcissistic personality disorder, it is not psychotic, not schizophrenic, it is a personality disorder. i think some kind of diagnosis like this could be used to interpret many of the blagojevich's actions. right now as we made the book this whole national media tour which is becoming a political sideshow, every defense attorney that i have spoken to things in this is just crazy. and you're going to be under indictment you're supposed to be home as the judge told of preparing for trial. you're not supposed to be going public at every opportunity, but he just can't live alone and his press secretary tony and the saddest thing is going to be when he was out of office and no longer able to talk to the press because he knew that adulation

and needed to be on stage. he could let it go and as we have seen he can't. >> he is allegedly or supposedly writing his own biography or autobiography right now. are you looking forward to reading data? [laughter] i wonder if you are thinking he has the inside and self knowledge to write his own autobiography. >> yes, i am looking forward to reading it. i can't wait to see, i know how hard it was to write a book so i can't wait to see how he does. i think you'll be interesting in terms of how he says other illinois politicians because he certainly is in a position to sell a lot about what goes on in springfield particularly with michael maddening -- madigan and, as far as how much insight it has we will see if he has a ghost writer. >> a question from the audience. >> first of all, it was great to listen to you, but i was wondering i agree with the observation of him being very

opportunistic and i was wondering can you put this in context of the rest of illinois politics. do we just look at blagojevich's as a case of the rod blagojevich or how does this fit into the rest of of state chicago politics and obviously when has gone in the governor's office, is this just an illinois affliction or what is going on here? >> i do have a chapter in my book devoted to the history of illinois political corruption. can i just one chapter? [laughter] >> it could have been a lot longer. there is no doubt we live in a state that has a strong sordid history of political corruption stemming 1853 governor madsen on tuna thousand dollars in script which he found he -- he said he found in a shoebox which goes along to paul paul who kept all his ill-gotten gains in a shoebox and i thought was funny when i reread the some of the store is about paul powell 21 to

get his license plate to the secretary of state he wrote a check to paul powell. [laughter] it turned out a lot of those checks really did go to paul powell and it goes on and on. four of the last governor's will wind up in jail so there certainly is a long history of political corruption, but i do think i would like to patrick fitzgerald said when he said this was pay to play a on steroids with rod blagojevich so he did manage to take into any level. >> the question when talking about the answer to this and the previous question is whether blagojevich is going to try his harper valley pta moment as somebody put it, we're wondering when he gave his speech of the end of his impeachment trial whether he was going to stand up there in the harper valley pta song when a woman says i may have done the wrong but you and you and you can maquis did that. >> some of that but only a little taste of what my,.

>> we are waiting for the buck. >> the question is will he do that but is he going to put this into, that seems to be his version. everyone does this all along. >> absolutely and i thought he was much too harsh. i thought the speech before the senate when it there were about to engage him and throw him out of office was masterful. and showed what rod blagojevich, the talent of what he could have been, a terrific speech i thought. but i think and i believe the lot of it. i do have to say that i was a bit disturbed when the illinois reform commission which just had all these new reforms coming out of what happened to rod

blagojevich, patrick collins had his reform commission and was chief prosecutor in the george ryan case and they did a magnificent job, these reformers are all before a state legislature which is now adjourned without passing hardly any of them. they did pass some and/or watered down so i was beginning to believe rod blagojevich was more of an exception then maybe a and now willing to say after had a dismal performance of the legislators in passing any of these reforms to try to change to the culture in illinois. >> his argument is that he had to raise all this money because he had to go around this entrenched power structure in the state and general assembly which wasn't going to bunt. >> and there is some truth to that. michael madigan did not want to have a rod blagojevich pass in a tight meaningful legislation, primarily because you wanted to see his daughter lisa madigan wind up becoming governor which you very well may so there were entrenched interests that he was trying to go around, but, on the

other hand, he did absolutely nothing to for any political relationships with any of these people that might have gone some of the legislation passed. >> but he did have an alliance with former senate president jones which actually made it complete paralytic gridlock is being built at the time because nothing was moving either way back exactly and i did interview him for the book could still have very angry about what happened to rod blagojevich and characterize the of his men as a political lynching. so he did have some support in the senate in springfield, what it was still, he made no attempt to really to have any kind of relationship of of the and one of total anger with michael madigan. >> confrontation. >> about the ethics of the landfill. shouldn't have been stopped on its merits? or was it stopped when it should have gone ahead?

>> as a good question. i think there were some questions about the landfill, but in the end after the illinois epa said it down, there were then a more hearings and they reopen it and eventually did pretty much get a clean bill of health. >> it seems to me the question and that was not so much and the same thing is true with a lot of the things that blagojevich wanted to do but how he went about doing it can i did anybody ever heard him to leave the house and go to work? and a lot of jobs moving to a home you have to show up, but just be there. >> yes he was rich and leaders to leave the house and go to work. his press secretary told me this amazing story that he would go over there every morning to go over the day's events and it was his job to drag him out of the house and get into some political event if we had to be there to make a speech or

whatever, but even though he lived four blocks away and go over there every morning he never was invited into his house. so he was sitting in his car for an hour or to try to get the governor out of the house to go where he wanted to go so he didn't want to leave his house. >> is there a doctor in the house? [laughter] >> i wonder how much of what has gone on has to do with how much we would like to believe or the politicians say, i wonder if either of you were surprised how blagojevich became from the beginning in a way that was inconsistent with the things that he said. a lot of of us feel that we knew ahead of time that that was going to happen. >> you know, if we knew it and the voters knew, they elected him again, so apparently we did not hear enough. i was surprised at the extent to our early the corruption began

and the whole plan per raising money began really when he was running for governor, that many of the seeds of this as fitzgerald called the criminal enterprise began even before he took office. >> we have time for one more question. >> the way i see it as a person who has lived in chicago since 1974 as a member of the media here basically feeding into his madness -- he loves to be on tv and have his name written in the newspapers except living in chicago has become almost impossible what as members of the media could you do to sway and make a better for us as citizens of chicago who want to remain in the city to get a better life in the city of chicago with the way things are falling apart, politics aside? i know i said hola. >> i'm not quite sure that is our job as a member of the

media. [laughter] what we're trying to do is to bring in as much information as we can as to what is happening in government and somebody said to me what happened in the media, why did you tell us about this? well, i then had a lunch with the tauscher to iraqi who is the sun-times reporter at the federal building who said, you know, i rode 457 stories on what was going on with rod blagojevich so i think we may take some of the blame, but i think we are trying to do not as much information as we can into what is going on in state, local, county and federal government and put it out there and then it does have to be up to the voters to read and respond. >> unfortunately we have given the governor another hour of air time. [laughter] just what he wants on c-span. this is the book, "pay to play", by elizabeth brackett and i urge those of you here to come out and made elizabeth and have her sign a copy and those of you who are watching to order or buy it from your bookstores.

thanks a lot for coming out. elizabeth brackett. [applause] >> thank you for attending today's discussion and supporting the chicago tribune commitment to literacy. a book signing will take place in the arts from, as you exit the room to you're left is the first room on you're left. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

de [inaudible conversations] dave: [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] author elizabeth brackett, correspondent for pbs newshour with jim lehrer, her new book is "pay to play: how rod blagojevich turned political corruption into a national slideshow".

and we will continue shirley with our coverage of the "chicago tribune" printer's row book fest with discussion on the sojourner truth and it t.r. m. howard. we'll be right back. >> us for university press in 2009 has several new titles coming out, susan ferber, a senior editor with oxford. what are some of those new titles? >> how be thrilled to, we have a range of new books and i thinki will talk more about political ones that have political implications today. real enemies, i realize there's a lot of talk about a conspiracy theory and use them on the internet -- this is an author who spent time looking at what this conspiracy there remain for american democracy and how does the fact there have been conspiracy theories over a long time since world war i, what does that mean about americans and what they think about their government and do they trust government. it is a book that looks at pearl harbor, looks at fear of using

government, it looks at what happened after the kennedy assassination with huge literature, on that and it comes up to 9/11, it's a wonderful read in something that i think unfortunately will never go away. this is an author is but a lot of time and used that for her research. >> what comes naturally. >> what comes naturally i am thrilled to say is winning two words of this conference call with his father worked for 20 years on the book about miscegenation law issues, then she thought which he started it was a reliable and topical issue and she thought by the time to finish it shouldn't be so unusual anymore. and shouldn't be something that people still have an issue about, this is above that travels from the civil war right up to the present and those of the many different groups that have been defined as non-white and the laws that have been made and against all sorts of the union's and love relationships and the society and how people got basically taken to court and other people just what their race was. and she tries this into a

marriage today so it is a very topical but in the sense that the propositions in california really are that much different than looking at what miscegenation laws about. >> peggy 11 award from the organization? >> she won two awards, one of holly prize for political as editions of political history and she won the laurence levine prize for a beloved historian who passed away a few years ago for the best book and cultural history. >> who is shea? >> peggy is the beekman a professor at northwestern history and university of oregon and she is a professor of a domestic studies, this is our second book and she -- it is a labor of love of. >> the day wall street exploded. >> what could be more topical, this is not about the economy today, set in the 20s when there was i to make a real explosion down on wall street. this is the first book, mr. nouri book and a wonderful storyteller, beverly gage is a professor of yale and she wrote this to talk about america and the age of terror.

she started it well before 9/11 so this is not a book that was inspired to write because of current events in europe is something to talk about was happening on wall street at this time it is a detective story. >> finally one of the book we want to talk about, the wilsonian moment king and the wilsonian, is an example of a new generation of scholarship, this is a methodology and what is really exciting to me is there's been a division in history between people who study the u.s. in people the senate the rest of the world so people will focus on countries and focus on individual topics. this is a person who actually is part of this new generation of international historian, he looks at president woodrow wilson's ideas that came out of the paris conference and ending whirled were one and wilson was spending a whole rhetoric about self-determination and nationalism and giving colonial peoples the hope that they too could form their own nations. so he takes these wilsonian ideals and looks at how they traveled in different countries

and led to uprisings the following year in many nations. china, korea, egypt and india. those are always some of the countries involved in this book because similar evidence or in palestine. this author reads a lot of languages and spent time in all those countries doing archival work to embrace an intellectual and political history and it's really global history. this is a first book and also won two prizes so i'm extremely excited about the wilsonian moment. >> for the title come from? >> the wilsonian, something the offer at think believed represented the spirits of the age. billy gilman is an import moment in american history but also in moment was really gave rise to a sense of hopefulness that there would be any future coming out of the ashes of world war i. >> susan with oxford university press, a couple of their new titles. >> we're at the 2009 book expo american booksellers convention in new york city, at the booth

of blum's perry and walker books, the family of books and i'm here with peter miller. peter, what you have coming out this fall? >> the most ambitious and exciting is the one over my soldiers is a graphic novel. we don't who normally publish is but we decided to do this one because this is an historical biography of bertrand russell and as crazy as that sounds it is an interesting novel of ideas and the two people behind it are mathematicians and computer science experts so they decided to sort of a approach the idea of the foundation of mathematics and the lice -- the life of version russell as told in comic-book form because to them when a big idea of what he was pursuing was actually as a heroic and the life and death as anything you find in a super hero tail and so it is a book that's been getting a lot of attention before this convention

and a lot here. we have been getting a lot of from the galley and everybody seems to be excited to embrace this medium for that particular subject. >> what else you have coming out? >> the other interesting work of nonfiction in the fall is in this book called age of comfort here she is a scholar who takes a look at the time in the late 17th century when public life became sort of interior rightist and places like recite which is lawyer the 14th grade creation was not built for comfort and all, it was built in enormous blunder and public events and grand year, but these are not private spaces at all. this was all men to be lived in the open. after louis the 14th dies and his son takes over, there is a movement that because new

technologies are coming in and domestic life is changing, that suddenly things are starting to be designed around the idea of comfort. everything starts to get turned into a sort of secondary private area and at first i is a privilege metaphor because it does retrofitted by lou the 15th and his mistresses and the women in his court to create two worlds, the world that is public and the world behind. things are introduced such as the sofa and a flush toilet. the private bedrooms. suddenly with that comes the idea of having a private life versus a public one. >> this is an important work of scholarship that tells of a completely new way, not just a book about design but in a form a moment in european history. >> the tenth anniversary of the bloomsbury press usaf and bloomsbury press was originally based in the u.k., was the

decision to startup. the u.s.? him mack well, i think at that point they were growing up significantly in the u.k. and and fell like they needed an american presence and didn't want to just sell the rights to a lot of their books to publishers in the u.s.. in the u.s. is one of the largest markets in the world for a book publishing so they were taking that next up, there were the publisher of harry potter in the uk so i think they took that opportunity this and establish a foothold here. in a very small way 10 years ago and now it has grown considerably and george tipson who is the publisher can talk about the various how it has expanded in those 10 years and the different divisions that and now encompasses. >> also joining us the publisher from bloomsbury press, what is the difference between bloomsbury press and that bloomsbury press usa. >> bloomsbury press is a small imprint devoted to serious

nonfiction. we have history, politics and for events, economic science in the kind of thing. so it is much less general and more focused than the general audience in general interest. >> what you have coming out that you are excited about? >> one book is this one called half moon. henry hudson, the september is the 400th anniversary of hudson's discovery of the river that bears his name and his exploration of new york harbor and that was an adventure that really changed the course of history in north america. it was a very daring forge for a lot of reasons. the first one being that he was supposed to go completely in the other direction and commission sale to china over the northern coast of russia and he sort of took a left turn and came to north america and send which led him to his discoveries. his exploration of the river. the author dove hunter is a terrific writer and researcher

and also a sailor so he has done his own forensic navigation and redrawn the map that plot hudson's voyage to give us new insights into what that trip was really about. >> finally we are joined by george tipson, publisher and director of walker books. celebrating its 50th anniversary. what is walker books and who is the founder? >> walker and company is a division of bloomsbury usa fountain in 1959 by sam and beth walker, it was a completely independent companies until january 1st of 2005 when we were acquired by bloomsbury so we are a division of bloomsbury along with bloomsbury press and the main division, we are one of them. >> how long have you been with walker books? >> i have been with it since 93 as the publisher of walker and then begin the publishing director of bloomsbury usa last summer so that is a much more recent development that i have been involved with walker for the past, what is in now, 18 --

15 years. >> so what books are you excited about this fall? >> a couple of walker books, a book called an artist and treason, he wrote a book of two years ago that was a success and is about the greatest hitter in american history but one of fleet complex man named james wilkinson who was a revolutionary war hero. the tilt -- the youngest general in the continental army to became the leading general and american army of the same time he became the age of 13 in the spanish speakers service and was a spy for spain for the next 20 years of the same time he led the american army but the amazing thing was every president you work for, washington, adams, jefferson, madison all knew that he was a traitor and a captain in his position for a very strategic reasons. it is a fascinating untold story and on . and then another biography of

and on number of fascinating figure in history, and joanna, queen of naples, sicily and jerusalem, the only clean, the only woman to rule in her own name in the 14th century. she was every bit as dynamic ever as a list of the first of england. rolled over a glittering court to in naples, had an incredibly turbulent time in as a very revealing look at the 14th century through the lens of her life. >> finally there's something on your catalog coming out this fall. >> on the bloomsbury list a book called amount down iceland, that i think is going to be a fascinating way into the economic crisis have tennis last year. this is the story of a meltdown of iceland, the economic collapse of the country and we will publish it on a one-year anniversary on october 7th, and is a fascinating inside story of greed and, over rage, all the things that happen in this country happened in iceland but they're understandable in

microcosm. and i think that is what is owed to make the story so fascinating. >> you have been with walker since '93, how is the publishing industry changed since then? >> well, it has changed in almost every way and yet it hasn't. i would make that sound contradictory, but the marketplace has changed enormously obviously. in 1993 even the chains are not as dominant as they are, amazon had been invented in. and the price clubs and warehouse clubs and the airport's shops that's also the above survey sold practically none so the number of outlets for books has multiplied geometrically in the last 15 years. in terms of the publishing, it is still all about getting good writers to do good work, and then finding media outlets for them. the meeting has changed a lot particularly in the last five years, there are fewer outlets for printing reviews in the classical ways of promoting both severally decline.