fast and the number of women readers of comics is much more slowly. .. appearance of comic books and made a television not seem so horrible. comics are worse than the bottom of the worse and it's very slow

climb toward respectability which heartily when anywhere with no holds barred, things in certain underground comics of the 60's and 70's perhaps began for the climb up in the u.s. very slowly in the 1990's with art spiegelman and then since 12001 perhaps a larger home growing sensitivity that comic art is a real form of art and can be taken seriously as a form of art, nevertheless, there is a "new york times" list of graphic books which now appears best sellers which has appeared only two months, first time ever, sometimes it is at the bottom of the list but the rest of the list is entirely batman orval bachmann in other words non-fiction category of comics is pretty darn small and too much of it is by harvey and

myself. [laughter] so we are very much hoping that this kind of comic will be a gateway drug for young people to go ahead and read the books, but also that the art which is made by comic artists would be taken seriously as a form of art and understood as such and appreciated as such and it may overcome the great difficulty which is these books are expensive to produce because you have to pay artists. writers don't have to be paid if they teach some place and generally are not paid. artists me to be paid and secondly these books don't cost so much because they can't have a heavier price themself been over someone. these are serious disadvantages but at least in terms what critics are beginning to say we seem to be going some place. >> i think that especially younger and readers are

enthusiastic for graphic novels, and they have sort of gandy cultural and critical legitimacy allyson beck -- becktell's book was a finalist, will persepolis -- people are reading them. >> that certainly is true. >> this book is only $23. you people in the front, took a look. a seriously that seems unbelievable reasonable to me. we have got to open this up for questions, and they are meant to be questions, not first comic book you ever read. you asked to any questions. i'm telling you, you sat up there five minutes last time. [laughter] i'm sorry? to the microphone.

i appreciate you, you were great last time that you can't monopolize the microphone. >> i was hoping one or all of you would comment on the difference between the way that the book like this book portrays nonfiction verses the way that perhaps the culture is becoming abscessed with reality through reality television. >> that is a wonderful question. >> this is a more honorable and respectable way -- >> it's not reality and the cold reality television -- when these people go on these ridiculous races around the world, what does that have to do with reality? [laughter] you know, i don't know where they get that from. they show people getting mad at each other and yelling at each other all the time and, you know, it's like conflict all the time. you know, i mean, reality is, you know, just, you know, going

home and eating supper or something like that. [laughter] >> american splendor complaining about the cleveland indians. >> you had made a quote he said there's no such thing as an ordinary person however within the books you highlight people's ordinary lives with, you know -- >> how do you define an ordinary life? >> exactly, that's kind of a segue to her question if there is no such thing as an ordinary person would do you gauge as extraordinary in ordinary and then on top of that, to parts, sorry. do either you, harvey or paul feel that you are romanticizing the working class as far as turning it into this is how it should be looked at instead of like harvey, eating dinner is the reality of the job? >> i think that, you know, what i would like to do i am not a

jogging to put so-called ordinary people ahead of so-called extraordinary people will, but i would like to seek them who, you know, the same level. because everybody -- there are all kind of essential jobs in society and very few people get credit for doing these jobs. >> you should never mistake celebrated with extraordinary either. i don't know how good of a singer britney spears is. she might be a great singer. but i saw paris hilton on david letterman last night and people were like you were extraordinary, for what? laughter, and i think it's subjective, the whole view but don't mistake -- i think too often we mistakes of the credit for extraordinary and that is unfair to all but concerned. go ahead, paul, what do you think? >> i think if you go through the

book and read carefully any number of the people you could say why don't they drop their job and go to another, why do they stay with a miserable job and there's no easy answer to that. there's also some business executives and others that are by no means favorably treat in their own words. you know, they actually think highly of themselves, but the reader doesn't think they do very much with their hands coming to his or her own conclusion and studs was taking a straight on. you never have this sense of studs talking town or engaging in false uplifting and i am hoping not to have done that through my editing process and i will think harvey did that either. there is inclination to those underrepresented and this also comes from my social history world to discover the lives of latino farm workers that nobody has been willing to talk about before or the other cases where

so-called hillbillies' from appalachian who are not thought to be articulate unless the appear as horrible murders or johnson or wherever the usual portrait is and to let them speak for themselves. that may be a form of room anticipation as possible, but mostly i think to hear the voice and straight out, not to hear them through some other means or interpreted by us is a victory for ordinary life and for the perception of ordinary life in a far more space way than most literature. >> well put. no more questions? go ahead. stand up. >> welcome harvey and paul, you guys have done three books including the sts book so i am wondering what are you working on now other than being a defense like this?

>> he wishes me to speak. [laughter] which is curious since i am the editor and he is the speaker. we have been starting work on a book called yiddish land and i am a gentile from downstate illinois and i stumbled into the yiddish world history and start interviewing and ended in communities with yiddish native speakers of all socialism. they adopted me as a grandchild and i was eager to adopt them as grandparents and i fell under reading yiddish poetry and so forth. for harvey the first language was yiddish, so what is the story of that 800 years that isn't entirely gone but which has an enormous richness and a huge impact in american popular culture that is rarely recognized. number two, harvey has been writing about jazz close to 50 years and everybody knows how police and his writing is, so what we want to do after that is

do a comic about jazz and various kinds of ways. it is a fabulous idea of somebody will offer some money we will do it. >> this is a precursor, please, sir. >> thank you. i want to honor you guys for bringing this form to something more powerful. i learned an awful lot from studs terkel and the thing i learned to do best is how to be curious and a way that left space for the person curious about and i hope that your book helps us learn better. thank you. studs was as other panelists know him at it closer level fabulous personality and you could hardly think of not looking at him when you are in the same room as him, but just the idea that you have raised

that he ceases to be the standard of attention by his own determination and the other person has the kind of space, that is the remarkable thing. let me connect with one more matter. frequently there are these breakthroughs in communications and mosul frequently but it's happened the last few centuries and most often there is a period of ten or 20 years when all kind of so-called amateurs come in and like the first newspapers were the first radio station thank you the retial was taken over by the monopolies or the first days of live television when studs had studs' place on local chicago and to the local degree about the webbs' well and by throwing comics and we go through each one of these cases and after the beginning phase and these areas or corporatized and formulas are set and then it is people who are grinding out

the material expected of them and they don't have room for creativity. i discovered probably only when i began working on comex again after the lapse most people growing up thought the comics were written, john and everything else by the same artist who often wasn't acknowledged and we learned later in life is like a assembly line. that is the way that d.c. and comics are produced. you might write or do something else but it's just a job to come in and spend your hours and so on and so forth. we are in that phase now without work comics. that is what is exciting about it. it is probably because there is such little money and nobody wants to take it over and there is no indication that anybody wants to take over but there is enormous amount of excitement and especially artists under 30 there is so much more on the web and harvey can talk about some of the stuff he's connected with on the web, i am not, that is

larger in volume than anything in printed form for obvious financial reasons. but it represents forms of expression and especially young people finding forms of expression, creating new forms of art which is altogether remarkable and hopefully we will point the way towards a new way of seeing the connections of art and life. >> this question basically is for harvey and studs, where they gave people a voice that normally didn't have a voice. and to preface this i grew up in cleveland ohio so when i read american splendor i don't see you getting the ordinary person eight weeks but i see you giving an entire region, the city of cleveland itself and i was wondering if you look at in retrospect in hindsight america's splendor, do you look at your work and see it as giving a voice to this larger

region or individual person? >> maybe both. like one of my concerns is to make people feel better about themselves to not feel bad about themselves because maybe they don't make as much money as the other guy but cleveland is not, it's not that bad to live. [laughter] you hear stuff about the river catching on fire and stuff like that but i mean there's nice stuff about. >> i grew up there, i loved it. >> i think it's okay. it's decent and people are fine. and yes, i have concerns. i'm actually writing a book like a graphic novel will have --

about cleveland and also like talking about great experiences on hand like when i was a little kid and i listened to the 1948 world series and the broadcast assets will over the p.a. system and the indians won. [laughter] it's been a long time since cleveland has won a championship. [laughter] they bombed out like lebron james didn't make it to the finals of the nba championship having the best record in the league. but i guess if you know about the cubs -- [laughter] >> thank you. ladies and gentlemen, harvey, paul, he elizabeth, me, studs. thanks for coming, by this book. [applause]

>> thank you for attending today's discussion and supporting the chicago tribune's commitment to literacy. a book signing will take place in the arts room as you exit this room to the left, it is the first room on your left. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> harvey in pekar and paul

buhle discussing their book adaptation. this concludes live coverage from the 2009 "chicago tribune" printer's row it fast. you can watch the entirety of the booktv coverage from the 2009 "chicago tribune" printer's row starting 11 tonight eastern and watch tomorrow at noon eastern for the author interview and call in program and debt. this month the guest is bill ayers former member of the anti-war group the weather underground. >> john catipano is editor-in-chief of illinois press. what books does the university have coming out this year? >> actually all of the posters on the table top display, these are all brand new books and as you can see we have a series of books coming out african-american history including this biography of sojourner truth, a biography of

t.r.m. how word. >> who is t.r.m. howard? >> he was actually a conservative civil rights advocate that doesn't get the sort of attention and respect he should but was instrumental in moving forward a lot of black agendas in the south. >> and why did you decide sojourner truth needed another biography at this time? >> the author has a new and unusual angle different from some of the ones published recently and is a substantial biography so she touches on new material that other people haven't treated in the past. >> what other books would you like to point out? >> well, let me see, cafe society, which is the story of the josephsons and they're sort of night clubs and new york city where there was an inkling of the races back when that wasn't done much.

it is a very readable kind of book that sort of gives you the picture of the time, the era and the people who frequented places like that. >> and what is the focus of the university of illinois press? >> we published heavily in u.s. history with specialization in african-american history, labor history, women's history, ethnic history in general particularly latino history and american music. >> how is the business model for the university press changed in the last couple of years? >> our print runs are shorter and prices are going out as a result because the market is soft. we are selling fewer copies of books and it's difficult. >> jovana is editor-in-chief of university of illinois press.

>> book tv is asking what are you reading? >> david keen founder and president of the american conservative union. what are you reading? >> when i am not reading about fly fishing which is what i spend a lot of my time doing i am reading a lot of political books and novels. the most impressive book that i have read in the recent days is amity shlaes's book the forgotten man which is to read interpretation of the depression years and roosevelt administration and i'm also going back and reading things i read a long time ago but haven't recently like the road to serfdom by frederick hayek and as your viewers know in his book the commanding heights said the decision to publish the american version of the road to serfdom back in the late 1940's by the "reader's digest" may have been the most important publishing decision of the latter part

>> are there other authors, contemporary authors from the past you would recommend to conservative view worse? >> i always recommend charles murray who has got recent books and there are a lot of policy books and those are important for people interested in those specialties. today i am trying to read a number of these authors and forgive me if i don't remember their names but you've got all these books on the sort of high-tech communications revolution, the internet and although some of them by my friends on the left as opposed to folks i get along with most of the time i am one who tries to read everything i can get my hands on and i recommend that everybody else and when i am traveling i read a lot of novels, a lot of mystery novels and things of the sort and one thing that i think is important is even in an age when you are

looking at your computer screen, the feel of turning pages in the book is something that is hard to surpass. >> before you founded the acu who were some of the philosophers of that you read and felt attuned to? >> it's interesting because if you go back a lot of people will mention fredericks book the road to serfdom. actually the most early important early book that i read was a different book by frederick called the constitution of liberty and interestingly, i was involved in politics and i read goldwater's book and others at the time, but i went to high school in wisconsin and the school library had ordered the constitutional liberty thinking that it was a book about constitutional interpretation discovering that it was upon its arrival it was by hayek and abbas and

consistent with pc to wisdom of the day decided to essentially ban it and not put it on the shelves and the library in new i like to read and was interested in politics and gave me the book and it was probably the most influential book i had read up to that point and maybe even beyond that and i have still got the book. >> for schedule information and descriptions, long gone to booktv.org. you can click on the viewer input tab and e-mail, tell when you were reading and when you think of our programs. book tv bus is traveling the country visiting bookstores, libraries, festivals and authors. here are some of the people and places we have visited. >> corydon nichols was the 19th century journalist and social reformer who was especially interested in women's rights and in particular she brought the women's rights movement west to

kansas and california while her sisters stayed in the east. >> tell about your book. what is it about? >> it is the life and times of clarita nichols. her life against the 19th century. she was born in 1810 in vermont, died in 1885 in california and spend the rest of her life moving around between those two coasts. it's the story of. a woman who is very involved in various political movements at the time, temperance, women's rights, antislavery. she was a gadget -- budgetary in and involved in the movements of the 19th century so it is a story of her life and a portal into the whole 19th century because through her eyes we kind of get a different point of view than we get through the other histories that have been written of that period. >> what is your favorite story?

>> my favorite story perhaps clarita nichols and 1852 she was invited to address the vermont legislature and she was terrified to do so, women speaking in public wasn't done, women didn't speak in front of mixed audiences and to in paris her one of the members of the convention decided to present her with a pair of men's trousers because women were accused of wanting to wear the pants and they were going to embarrass her afterwards by giving her this pair of trousers. unbeknownst to them and edna knowing what was coming up next after she finished her speech, she turned white to the man about to present her with a pair of trousers and said something like though man who like to tease when an about wanting to wear men's trousers, they would stop doing that, the women but stop doing that, once men had

stopped wanting to own a women's skirts. >> holcomb clarita nicholses and one of the first names that come up when people think about women crusaders? >> i think the only names anybody ever knows in this area are susan b. anthony and elizabeth cady stanton. if you go deeper than that you don't know anyone but it's like the founding fathers. we don't know the names of two of them, we know the names of many of them and the names of generals in the civil war. it's women's history hasn't gotten a fair shake it should have gotten and it's beginning to get -- it hasn't gotten the same kind of coverage. history has been written with the idea of laws in mind and borneman have a different story to tell so there are not very many women and that the original antebellum movement who are well-known besides the two mentioned. >> in your opinion of what clarita nichols think of women's

rights today? >> good question. i would say she would think we have come a long way in certain areas. certainly educational and vocational the women have come a long way. they are involved in the professions and slightly involved in politics, although only 16% of the congress these female and she wouldn't like that. she would have think that would have gone a lot farther. i think she would be appalled at some of the media images of women. i would think she would not be thrilled with that. >> the book is "revolutionary heart," the life of clarita nichols and pioneering crusade for women's rights diane eickhoff, thank you for joining us. >> thank you very much. ..

c-span: stephen ambrose, author of "d-day, june 6, 1944," you say in the preface that you have taken eight trips to the battlefields, over omaha? >> guest: oh, yes. i lived there one summer. i walked every inch of the beach. i went swimming, pretending to be a soldier and charging ashore through the surf. i wanted to climb pointe de hoc, but i didn't do it. i really wanted to, and i gave it