sleep. i know see us getting out from under this. now that the car is efficiently becoming an appliance and that is why we love old cars and will be sticking around with old cars but i am afraid as a culture it is probably going. .. tell. someone pointed out that there

is one model camry that contains more american parts and labor than the g patriot. it is an international economy. we want it to be an international economy. it is entirely old-fashioned to regards these things as not being international. gm and chrysler are going under, that is not the end to the american car industry. the focus of the american car industry is going to be here. it has increasingly been moving here over the years. the japanese car's headquarters are here. once we get chinese cause, their headquarters are likely to be here, the design facilities are out here, this is going to be the detroit of tomorrow if it isn't already. the factory part of detroit will be scattered around in the south and in small towns. that is not a bad thing. still, what worries me is -- not

worries, but i think it is inevitable, that the car as we knew it and loved it has morphed into something far more complex and not as much fun and probably safer and more efficient and better for the planet and all that crap, it isn't a car and i don't see us going back on that. sort of like cuban cigars, there's one upside to a electing this obama guy, i am not happy about electing obama, i think it is a socialist, what is the upside? trade with cuba, i can get my cigar is back. i love cuban cigars, then i find out that the fda has taken over tobacco, like cutting me off at the pass, i will get these cuban cigars that they won't have any nicotine in them. if i wanted to roll up a big wad

of plant and smoke it, i have grass clippings, i have recycling bin, i have stuff left over from the tomato garden that i could roll up and smoke but i was glad to see in the newspaper that they're going to ban banana flavored cigarettes. now that i have heard of it, now i want one. i am glad we got that out of the way. there was a menace to america, banana flavored cigarettes. anybody else? anybody who would like their book signed, i will be right here and i will be glad to do it, thank you all very much for coming. [applause] >> p. j. o'rourke is the author of 9 previous books including

eat the rich, all the trouble in the world and republican party reptile. he has been a free-lance writer for numerous magazines including playboy, vanity fair, the new republic and harper's. he currently writes for rolling stone and the atlantic monthly. for more information, visit p.j. o'rourkeonline.blogspot.com. >> every weekend, we have the best nonfiction books and authors on c-span2. afterwards, writers and artists, visionaries from the garden of eden to today. the history of the world teresa collection of 600 short stories, he talks with colombia university professor john dingus. also sunday, books on the economy, former investment banker john talbot opposes a myth about the recession and what it will take to recover.

and j. richards on why he thinks capitalism is the best way to ease poverty and protect the environment. also this weekend, the end of overeating, david kessler explains how americans programmed by too much sugar, salt and junk can control their eating habits. there is a lot more books and authors this weekend on book tv. our web site has the entire schedule and great new features including streaming video, archives that are easy to search and simple ways to share your favorite programs. booktv.org. >> outside magazine correspondent steven rinella recounts the history of the american buffalo, from its centrality to the lives of native americans to the sizable reduction of its population from forty million to a few hundred by the late nineteenth century and its usage as a symbol of america. this event, hosted by tidal wave

books in anchorage, alaska, is 40 minutes. >> thank you for coming out tonight. i want to read a little bit from my book and show some slides. when i showed the slides, i will need somebody to hit the button. i need a nearby volunteered to handle that for me. i don't need much introduction, i will read from the beginning of the book, a couple pages. this begins with a quote from a guy, and novelist named powell. he has no idea he has done this, he said one time in passing, they have the huge, giant head, the oddball design of a billiard

ball. in the past week, i have become a buffalo, sort. the perfect specimen has the circumference of a baseball cap with full blair's. it is as dense as a gingersnap cookie with the color and texture of old cardboard that has been wet and dry out again. i am talking about buffalo dung, what is left of vegetation after passing through the digestive circuitry of north america's largest native land mammal also known as the american bison. they burn with orange colored flame surrounding a whole black center, offering good heat, not many sparks and blue smoke that smells like nothing you expect it to. i did my face in the smoke and pick of the odors of cinnamon and cloves, pumpkin and sometimes the smell of walking into a battered after someone smoked a joint. if i were to leave my buffalo chip right now it would take me half an hour to stop my way

through what separates me from the river, a fast flowing towards of glacial runoff that trails 14,000 foot peaks in south-central alaska. if i toss a stick in, it would drift through 3 miles of canyon before dumping into the gray squirrel of a much larger copper river. it would flow south, past a couple of small villages and dozens of fish traps that are dragged out of the banks by their owners to save them from the crushing flow of winter ice. after dodging past canyons, the stick would enter the gulf of alaska outside prince william sound. as the crow flies, that is about 80 miles from here. along the way the crow would cross a 2 lane highway, and any manner of coyotes, grizzlies, wolverines and moose, and a few wandering buffalo. earlier in the morning, there

are 20 of them in this valley, one of them, a female, is lying just uphill from me with an arm's reached, probably 600 lbs. of bone, another 400 or 500 lbs. of meat. when it fell dead after i shot it it slid down the steep slope and crashed into a bunch of trees. i have been working on it all day. i opened the carcass from the underside of the tail to the gym before removing the and trail. i pulled the hide away from the upper half of the carcass as if i were slowly turning down the covers of a bad. as skin over the ribs and paunch, over the shoulder all the way to the animal's spine. if you touch the base of your own neck and feel the shakes running up your backbone, you are feeling the natural processes of yours thoracic vertebrae. on the buffalo they can be 20 inches long. they act as a mooring post for

tendons that support the animal's:head. the honda gives the buffalo its distinctive look, it's front heavy, bulldozer, shouldered appearance. i have been doing this for several days and i can eat all i want. i bring the high in place to keep the carcass from breathing too solidly. there is an orange color not like the bag you see on the. wild plants are rich, the same substance in care. the heat of a fire liquefies the fat and leaves it floating in the oil of my hand. hard candy and all the wrappers came to the surface. whenever it becomes rendered out, i picked it out and blow on it until it is cool and crispy. the film canisters full of the tape. when i was crossing a river or standing in the rain or snow, the salt got wet. escaped a chunk out and grind it into the greens between my

fingers. with a bit of salt, it tastes like pork rind but much better, it tastes milder. so begins the story. 2 primary threads, what i spent looking for dessert. you will see on this image, it happens right where you see the fog come down to the clear area on the left hand side of the river. it is a peculiar story about how these animals are in the mountains and in a way it encapsulates the entire history of the species. it is hard to guess how many of these animals wherever around, but maybe there were thirty six million or so, thirty $2 million at this time of european contact.

that number is down from sixty million. people think there is political reasoning, like it won't see as bad, but the go to number for a hundred years was based on an observation by colonel dodge who dodge city is named after. one day he was on the arkansas river, he started counting a herd of buffalo and it took a couple days and he heard from some friends who saw the same thing. he figured they were probably trailing in a wedge shaped, so he made the calculation that he must have been looking at four million of them. then he looked at a map, if there are four million here, there are probably 15 of these areas spread around north america, and sixty million buffalo. now the number is thirty

million, how much land, when people rated cattle and sheep. at the end of the civil war the number is down to fifteen million and between eighteen 72 and 1882, that final fifteen million was reduced to less than 1,000. people recognize this as a problem too late. the animal was saved by ranchers who thought it would be cool, there were none around but they did, like bits of scraps and lots of supply and demand. once people decided to start saving them, they had breeding programs and one of the most important ones was in montana. people were trying to save them from genetic things, pretty soon they hit a couple thousand of

them and everybody declared the problem solved, nothing more to do, so they started slaughtering the excess. it made some people uneasy to see this going on after the government sanctions so the guys in alaska, hunch some around here, they saw there were not enough game animals in alaska so they inquired with the natural advisor read, you can have 17 if you pay for shipping. they put them on a train, shifted by rail to seattle, 17 by barge, put them on a train or a truck and ship them to delta junction. they all lived which was better because the national bison range shifted 4,000 in transit. no one knows why.

they made it up here in 1920, then they hung around until farmers came into the dull thud junction area. they put one on a cargo ship, dumped those, put them on a truck and let them go, this was carried out by the fish and wildlife service. you just open the door, everybody runs out and you see what happens. then just leave the door open and they hang around. from 1950 to 1960, there were rumors they had been killed off by wolves or bears. you would see them walking down the road, and people realized

they had shored up they had reproduced, 200 of them. severe winters knocked the heard down. they're not an indigenous animal unless you count being indigenous as 4,000 years ago. some people think they were in alaska and sold 300 years ago. that seems like bogus information. it comes down to one skull that someone found in anchorage that was recovered behind an archaeologist's home. it was radiocarbon dated at 250 years ago. the problem is i live with a geneticist in oxford at oxford university who analyze that skull and she told me in no uncertainty that the animal had never stepped foot alive, she thought it came from the great plains. that is the evidence that they were here at the time of

european contact. they gave out 24 premise. people don't even show up. there are a lot of access issues roof. can we jump to the next picture? that right there is a harris in buffalo. just a gratuitous image that i like to show. you can see the orange is fat. the animal weighed -- you can take certain measurements and calculate weight, 11 or 12-year-old based on growth around the horns. probably 1100 lbs.. counting the skull and hide which i consider reusable, 700 lbs. of usable parts. all i have left, i will share

some later, i have this box, the oldest recipe known to man. it is a preservation technique where people would dare try buffalo meat. it would render fat and pulverize the meat and for the meat over it. it is the ratio of instant oatmeal. it keeps forever. someone hit a rock with a plow and people obeyed buffalo hide sack that contained 70 pounds of it, perfectly fine and a double. mine is 3-year-old. it tastes as bad as that made it. it is not meant to tasted good, it is meant to be archival. it is proven to be that so far. i never eat more than a green but i eat a little bit now and then. i will jump ahead of the image here.

this is one of my camps when i was hunting. that is my lucky coffee cup on top of that pile. that is a pile of buffalo chips. that is enough to cook dinner, have a little bit after dinner and cook breakfast. you had to find the dry ones, the perfect density. i want to jump ahead and show another image. this is a strange looking photo, the child is so misplaced, it was taken on the plane in colorado. it is estimated that families cross the oregon trail, there is a woman named fanny kelly,

shipped over buffalo jetblue judge she had a slave. part of the attack, his head was closed and open with a hatchet and her husband was left for dead. one of her children was killed, of her children crawl off in the bushes and she was taken prisoner and she wound up in what many historians -- she was rescued and ransomed back. she was a great proponent of cooking buffalo chips. when she wrote her memoirs -- it

really worked. people tend to no, you saw dances with wolves and you know the honda and there's something about cooking. 2 things that everyone knows. on the texas plains, you can think of the extermination of the buffaloes having occurred in 2 phases. at these time of european contact, arranged more than any other time in history. a guy ran into one in present-day washington d.c. in

north carolina. there are great herds, someone's on 4,000 in national tennessee. most of those were killed off hunting for food, doing limited amounts of hunting. in 1871, they only live on the great plains. the only place since there has been a perpetual population of buffalo. in 1871, it is very a elastic. on the phone side of the industrial revolution, it wasn't used the way it is now. it is all ledger. people started putting in

orders. when i mention phase one i mentioned hunting for me but 1.15 which was going on, native americans hunted buffalo and sold them to white people. the roads usually were taken with the hair on. they were animals who were hunted in the wintertime, not many white people got into a. you could sell a rogue for $5. the demand wasn't great. there were advanced techniques, doesn't matter when you're going to -- that was year round. also, railroads came across. lot of access that came across, humans come in and allow them to go out. a guy named jay bright more, he killed 20,000 buffalo in 6

years. three $50 for a mature cow, you can build a house for $300, he could get a prostitute for $5, that is an enormous amount of money. people are so blown away by the effectiveness of a slaughter that they attribute it to some sort of evil or cultural vendetta. it is a great way to make money. they really had no idea what they were up 2. in 1882, it was said that many people had settled in the city, were just hanging around, waiting for more buffalo to come out, they were convinced there were millions more in canada. the animals never showed up and many of the people in miles city

sold their guns, and were shocked. i will jump that again. another gratuitous photo of a man who was scalped outside of dodge city, kan.. they were hunting and trying to make money, they were absolutely complicity in destroying a way of life for people. they were treated like marauding enemies. this guy got off lucky. they would take buffalo hunters and want to make it so that there afterlife would be as miserable as possible. they would often stuff their

testicles in their mouth, they would remove your digits. sometimes they would draw a drawing of the buffalo hunters depicting the ways through. they would take draft animals. and they would shoot the hawks and corner the front and back. you would find animals missing their legs. the comanche probably killed this gentleman here. a lot of our indian wars took the battle of little bighorn which was in many ways, a fight between buffalo hunters and

historic enemies and people who went under custer. let's jump ahead again. this is the day i got interested in buffalo. i was interested, 9,000 feet above sea level. we had this trail mix we made, put it in the river. it liquefied the chocolate. we had just gotten done and we walked up the hill and i found a buffalo skull. a jenna sized piece of bone was sticking above the bun. my brother kick that the bone. the spinal column passes through, i am going to jump ahead again and show another

skull. i am not standing here smiling, we don't have a great reference point. this skull is much larger than the one i found. this is the ice age version of the modern buffalo, giant bison. sort of discipline or practice morphology where you can take a buffalo skull, make -- you measure the distance between the eye sockets. i kept measuring those measurements and coming back with the way it could be really cool, so i took it to have it tested. she took a graham of bones and extracted the genetic line, went for a bunch of siberian yak. it might be something really

old. you can get ancient dna from things, reliably, up to 80,000 years old, then it gets a little sketchy. she called me up, disappointed, saying it was a modern version of the animal. i sent another grab of bones to miami, fla.. i gave them $700, they wrote me a letter saying they could tell it with 99% probability that the animal died between 1660, and 1960. they knew it wasn't after 1960 because it had no carbon from atmospheric nuclear weapons testing. radiocarbon dating will never be applicable, we have huge levels of carbon that in 10,000 years no one will radiocarbon date. it will be a bygone discipline. i called and complained because for $700 i should get be