maybe 1200 murderers attributed in its history where that is@ú3ñ enemy number one the and the outfit of these days. >> we would love to open this up for questions. please go to the microphone and be on television. again i want you to both hold up these books. these are not just great, you know, crime books, these are wonderful narrative tales by the both of them. yes, sir. >> testing, testing, is this -- >> these c-span people don't screw of around, of course it's

working. [laughter] >> this is for mr. coen, and as an aside before the neighborhood was testified actually lived next to joe lombardo. >> is this what you're talking about? >> he was the nicest guy. he babysat my children. >> what page are you on? [laughter] >> this may be the early nineties, right? give dollar bills to all the neighborhood kids and everything like that. >> he never left, everybody knew who he was. >> a lot of the guice move to the suburbs, he said the restaurants, coached baseball. >> it's just kind of funny and i don't know if he personally pulled the trigger but i always kind of had a theory especially about, you know, the very violent choices. if they were not in this and played so to speak, right, what

they just the serial killers? is this like an of for them psychologically do you think? >> i don't know if some of these guys would be serial killers, some of them would make very great businessman. >> it's all business, you know, kill someone business but once you rack up the numbers and some of these or sadistic are they thinking we need to call to make this work i was wondering if you have any theories in that regard. >> i think like any organization of any size there's lots of different kinds of people that are in it and the guys who are really running it and are the smart ones i think they've done all sorts of things with their lives for whatever reason they went down that path maybe it was a family thing but if they were enterprise they could have done a lot of things three other ones were just the mosul guys, the had gif guice. >> that's a really good point, some years ago with my colleague

maury pos lee we wrote a book about the most prolific hit man named harry holon, who -- did someone just clap? i thought i heard someone clap. [laughter] we paid his murders at about 41 and he was very good at and i don't think he developed a taste if after 20 murders they said harry, we want you to go run a race track in last vegas, you can't kill anybody any more i don't think that he would have gone, on, let me tell people. it was a job. and i think that is what it is for most of these, even as proficient as they might be it's not that they get like they are going to get a blood lost and need to kill. >> a guy like nick, that is what i was trying to get to earlier,

you expect a hit man is going to be a hit man. this was a guy that was trapped in his life and didn't want to do it. the last thing that he ever wanted to do is be involved in this kind he was afraid was going to be him if he screwed it up and ran it was going to be him. >> some of these most interesting what you call it prolific serial killers if you took away the mob in goal i'm wondering if tony for example -- >> most serial killers it is some sick sexual but never wear for these guys is literally you are in the way. but >> [inaudible] -- they are psychopaths and the counterfeiting business and newspaper business. >> some of these guys made sure of the murders were nasty and gruesome, but some of them wanted to send a message.

so they only have to do one a year instead of ten. if you use the ice pick everyone figures out we are going to do what we are told. >> if i could ask is there any particular influence that you have, crime writers come any classics or you have a blueprint of sorts or recommended reading i guess? >> you know, my own influences growing up i never read that much fiction. i read biographies and history and part of made this so attractive to me is a project was because i felt as a journalist i almost felt i had a responsibility to preserve it for the city so i didn't want to write and lawbook only people who filed a mob would be interested in a wanted to write a history book. >> the best journalism reads like fiction so i wondered if you had any -- >> i will speak for jeff and say

that -- [inaudible] >> when i was a kid i probably read tolken. >> you want to get back to that mic >> i don't know if i am correct in my thinking or my thinking about everybody in this room, but i know if some of us felt we could get away with things that we can't get away with we might tend to do those things. i just wonder did you notice any mentality, these people had to have a mentality to think they could just do this and there were you know, we don't do things because we are concerned about doing the wrong thing and getting caught. i mean what was the mentality of these people they felt they

could go do these things. >> art is a good extent of the mentality. in his case, she first got into crime as a way to get money fast by robin from the parking meters and i don't even think he thought of that as a crime because he took the money, went to the grocery store and all of a sudden there was food in the house and i think that sort of set the stage for what would happen later on. counterfeiting in particular is a very interesting crime because people who do it generally feel no guilt whatsoever. and part of the reason for that is when you make money art would say i love the act of making this money. it's creative, it's mine, i made this and it would come off the press and it is almost like a sexual russia and so i think that gratification reinforces this and then when you get to the point where you have got piles and piles of this money

and he's selling it or passing it off and people are taking it as real and he started falling into the feeling that this is real and he would also give a lot of the money away. his charitable thing was a baby because they hippie's shopping malls passing 100-dollar bills getting $90 back and change and they have a trunk full of goods so they go to the salvation army, the church and once a therapist asked him, you know, he was having a session and the therapist says art, i think that you gave all this stuff away to make yourself feel less guilty about the crime that you were committed and he says yeah, you know, you're a therapist, you would think that and that would be true if i ever felt guilty in the first place. >> a think some of the guys and jeff's bouck and mog guice and traditionally, the have traditions of helping the

neighborhood and bonding kids for the issues that want to take boxing lessons and putting a new roof on the church. >> there was an odd example of guilt and consciousness whatever kind. i remember one episode in particular where there was talk about where they were going to open some sort of a porn shop or whatever and jolie goes out to the site and realizes it's two blocks from a church and says its not going there and they had to get an alternate site and then nick especially west for not -- was torn off on one of the murders date planned for months and months was the killing of a civilian businessman who wasn't in the outfit, he paid street taxes and a plot to blow up his car on the tollway, and i won't get into what it took to do that, but it was a long series of tests and stealing the, barring the identical car to figure out how to get into it.

they have a bomb in the car and a triggering device in a car parked near the ramp where they know leave it on and he just drives and to arrange and the car disintegrates. well, that morning their wife took the child to school so they had this situation where the wife and eight young boys get in the car first and even testify about that at the trial that is one of the few times that nick paused and almost broke down because i think that he could accept telling people who were tied to the outfit or haven't paid their debt or whatever they were if it wasn't nick it was going to be somebody, so he would do it, but to have two innocent people almost get it is something he couldn't handle. he would have been willing to go himself verses those two. >> go ahead. we will take a couple i think. >> related to the first question

this gentleman previous question you talked about the criminal mind set and how you think and how these guys well this is okay but from your perspective both authors the good, bad and the ugly attributes of that you saw may be a lesson or something particularly that struck you that you would share with the rest of us. >> the lesson i guess i've learned a lot of this from our, the arrogance and greed that develops when you start doing this for a long time it ultimately leads to your downfall as a criminal i think there is absolutely nothing about crime that will have a positive affect on your character and there's a lot of activity in the world that will improve you as a human being but i don't see anything in crime

and that's going to make your life better other than put money in your pocket because the effect it has on your relationships is devastating because we're taking a whole group of people and sweeping them into your criminality and i think criminality is ultimately about longing and not telling the truth and conning people and i think by doing that ultimately you call yourself and that's the lesson i saw, all of the lies are told people around him and to himself to keep doing this was so destructive and i think that was the number one thing i saw, tell the truth. [laughter] cynically these and gentlemen, the art of making money, family secrets. thank you. [applause]

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

[inaudible conversations] >> jeff coen author family secrets is a reporter for the tribune and kersten is a writer for the rolling stone and men's journal. coming up next after a short break the final event from "the chicago tribune" printer's row festa this one features comic book writer harvey pekar and paul buhle on the late studs terkel's book, working.

guy mcpherson is a professor at the university of arizona and author of living with fire. professor mcpherson, is there policy? >> particularly if a lousy enough flexibility for considerable variation how we treat places on the landscape. so, excuse me, yes, we still have policies that are broader but enough to encompass all acres but there has to be enough latitude so that we recognize

california is not the desert is not counted for forest. >> what are the benefits and negative sides of fire breaking out into summers of the west? >> sure. the benefits include advantages to any number of species that involved in the presence of periodic fire. and for most ecosystems in the west united states, fire was a prevalent and frequent occurrence on a landscape, so all species and fire prone systems devolved in the presence of periodically this catastrophe as we like to call it these days, without fire they go extinct as some point so fire is great if we are interested in maintaining biological diversity particularly elevations there are really dry or not really, really cold. in the tundra and the desert fire didn't happen historical so it is extremely detrimental when

we do have fire in the systems. we have fire in the desert now because it brought in a lot of fuel and mullan native grasses, exotic grasses that provide the fuel that wasn't present. now when we have five years in the desert it is devastating for the species because they evolves in the absence of fire. >> what do you want people to take away from your book living with fire? >> well, that fire is neither good nor bad in effect for 100 years we've been treating fire as mostly bad. for 80 of those years we treated it as always bad. smokey bear was carrying the message of the day. and we also want to get across the idea that fire has its place in almost all of landscapes and north america particularly western north america. fire has its place. it occurred they're very frequently. so let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater as it were in throwing out fire or on the other hand introducing fire into all systems where it wasn't

present. fire occurred at a specific season and frequency and intensity. we need to pay attention to those things if we are interested in maintaining biological diversity. >> what do you teach at the arizona university? >> and honors class called sustainable living, ecology and human experience and i spent most of my time teaching a course called poetry inside out. inside the jail and also the juvenile detention facility and outside in line of verse course of the high school we have this public conversation that lasted the entire semester about sustainable living. >> by mcpherson professor at university arizona his book is living with fire. this summer book tv is asking what are you reading? >> sinner majority whip, dick

durbin, what are you reading? >> the post american world i think will be a good one, my friend david kessler has wrote the end of your eating which i clearly need. there are two sports books i like, red and me and the yankee years by joe torre will be good and when i get into the bookstore i always discover something else. ♪ >> to see more summer reading lists and other program information, visit our web site at booktv.org. the book tv bus is traveling the country visiting bookstores, libraries, festivals and authors. you're are some of the people and places we visited. >> we are with boris bradley in

the book room of the linda hall library in kansas city, missouri. at the authors reception for the kansas city literary festival. please tell a little bit about the linda hall library. >> the linda hall library is one of the world's great libraries of science, engineering and technology and in fact we think the collection here is as strong as any library in the world in our areas of subject coverage and would cover all areas of science, engineering and technology. this includes all of the recent monographs and journals and publications in the sciences as well as all of the old publications, the rear and historical materials in the science and engineering. >> please describe the room we are in now and tell about the book fault. >> we are in the rare book room. this is where people come to consult and use the referenced material we have at the library. at the end of the room we have the rare book fault, a climate controlled, secure area where we

can keep the books and preserve them for future generations. they are safe and the environment is such a well-preserved paper and bindings and make them last several generations more. >> and you selected five pieces for us to look at. can you describe each of them? >> these are some of the favorite books in science. they are some of the most significant books in all of printing and literature. the one in the middle is the first edition of nicholas copernicus's book on the revolutions of heavenly spheres. this is a book published in 1543 and nuremberg, the place of publication given right on the title page. the authors name, nicolai copernicito, a here. and right in the center is a little blurred written to the reader, the perspective wire of this book trying to convince the reader to buy it, explaining why

this would be of interest to you if you were and an astronomer or and mathematician because it has got the new list and the disinformation. and at the end it says there for by this book, read it and enjoy. what you would enjoy way if he were to read this book which is written in latin is copernicus description of the new universe, the description of the solar system, which was the universe as it was understood in the 16th century, which places to masson at the center instead of the earth which all astronomers and mathematicians sought before copernicus so this was the beginning of the modern understanding of the sun centered universe. >> and the next selection. >> other books on the table include this one by galileo, who was one of the early defenders and supporters of copernicus idea of this on centered

universe. galileo wrote this book, one of the early scientific books in 1610, published in the ns and he called it the siderevs. galileo didn't invent the telescope but he was clever enough to make one himself in the end of looking at the stars and planets. among the things he saw were the moon or the moon's that circled jupiter as he describes here and decided to name the medici in stars after the family of tuscany, cosmo medici was the grand duke and his name is given here on the dedication. and it was a method of gaining favor of political favor and patronage, he calls the stars

the medici stars as he describes in the observations. among the things he saw or observations of the moon. so these were engravings based on gallegos's original drawings that he made after he looked at the telescope for the first time. he did this in 1609 commesso next year and 2009 we will be celebrating an anniversary of the publication or observations of giglio and use of the telescope for astronomical purposes. galileo was and of course the only one to look at the marin. he may have been the first one to use a telescope but the book on this side of the table is from the 19th century, when telescopes' had improved a lot, and there were two scientists in england who published this book on the moon, based on their observations with the telescope. but although they could

photograph the moon, they couldn't take a detailed observations with their telescope and photography, so they made a model based on their observations with the telescope and then made photographs of those observations. so this is the fault of copernicus named after the author we start with with very detailed observations that look like they are actual photographs of the moon but in fact photographs -- the book behind it is the same century as galileo. this is isaac newton's famous principia known by the third word of the title of the full title is mathematical principles of natural philosophy. and this is a book represents newtons idea of universal gratification or his three laws of motion people learn early in their schooling and physics and

math. this was published in london in 1687, and has the imprimatur, the sign of london and the too, is written in latin because that is the international language of science and that newton felt was important for expressing his mathematical concepts. the illustration shows the path of a comet to if it were affected by universal gratification and the sort of problem that started newton on this path to write this book. early on in the book there are the discussions of the axioms or the laws of motion. although the foundation for the rest of the book.

and then to change gears a little bit to show there's something besides physics and astronomy in our library this is another landmark book that would celebrate an anniversary next year. this is the first edition of charles darwin www.lindahall.org or the full title as it was known on the origin of species by means of natural selection. this was published in london in 1859, so next year we can have the 150th anniversary of the publication of this book which happens also to be the 200th anniversary of the birth of charles darwin. so we will be having a lot of darwin celebrations next year. those are the five books we selected today. among all the books in the library to put out and give you an idea of the kind of things that are here in the history of science collection part of the science and engineering library. >> for more information about the booktv bus, visit our web

site at booktv.org/booktvbus. book tv wraps up live coverage of the 2009 "chicago tribune" printer's row fest with harvey pekar and paul buhle, author of the comic-book series debate causey race this blunder and they discuss their book the obstacles working a graphic adaptation. [inaudible conversations] >> okey de okey. we are done. we've got to go. >> welcome to the 25th anniversary "chicago tribune" printer's row that fast. we would like to give special thanks to the sponsors and partners who helped make this possible. a few notes. please turn off your cellphone italy other electronic devices. flash photography is also not permitted. today's program will be broadcast live on c-span2 book

tv. if there is time at the end for question and answer session we ask you to use the microphone located at the center of the rooms of the home viewing audience can hear the question. if he would like to watch the program again note eckert coverage will be aired saturday evening beginning 10 p.m. central standard time. please welcome the moderators, elizabeth taylor and rick kogan of "the chicago tribune." [applause] ..