than a 300 years than of time. he explained the reason he couldn't tell me, then i read in the paper about what can be learned from a single buffalo skull coming from high elevations. in utah, he said he had the same thing, the same exact carbon date i had. there is a statistical probability that this skull from an animal that died -- the analytic's job is to get results, not interpret them and he explained to me the stigma, there's a 66% chance that mine was a live around the time of george washington. i haven't determined what that means. when i think of the title of my book, american buffalo, i think of my animals -- fitting that name pretty well. i want to show another image.

i am not the only guy who likes buffalo skulls of lot. this was taken in my home state of michigan in a place called the 4 carbon works. michigan is one of few states that never had buffalo in it. they were in ohio, illinois. probably a matter of time. after we extracted everything we could extract, the only thing left was bones. most commonly, fertilizer. and we collect the bones on the great plains with st. louis, chicago, detroit, and send that fertilizer back to the great plains. the soil is very aesthetic. they would make fine china with

good buffalo bones. and burned at inside that filter. they will clarify sugar and wine. when buffalo bones began to run out, people began digging up indian burial grounds. they had historically run hundreds of thousands of buffalo off of clips. there is a place in wyoming called the buffalo jump, there is a bone bed hundreds of feet in diameter and this would suggest native americans over the course of a few decades killed 20,000 buffalo in the same spot. a bonet cotton plant in st. louis processed seventy million buffalo carcasses. this is more than ever existed

at any time. was that exhaustive. there was a point when a guy, did you could not find a buffalo bound that you didn't realign. guys like to pick them after rain, sold by weight. this picture was taken during the bone crisis. it is all skulls. i make a point in my book that the man looks like exclamation point at the end along sentence about destruction. this is still in business. what they do is make bone ash. when you watch a movie with a lot of oil like beverly hillbillies, men in black, you're probably looking at the product, they made bone ash and vegetable oil with. so you have and financially safe thing to demonstrate.

they are still around. let me jump ahead. this photo is called the aftermath, taken in canada. hide hunters would usually kill 40 a day. he would go out in the morning at daybreak and shoot for a couple hours, usually limited by how many skinners' he had and if it is called the carcasses would freeze and if it is hot, they would be hard. a guy in montana killed 210, one day. i never heard of anybody killing more than 210. other guys claim 160, 170. buffalo bill cody got his name above the the shooting contest where he killed 181. that is what it would look like

before you picked up bones. this is my favorite buffalo related place in the world. it is called wild horse or a toyo in new mexico. it was destroyed by a flash flood in 1908. the guy who lived nearby was named george make junk and he moved to new mexico to work on a ranch. i like new mexico because they sided with the union. you got a job working at their ranch after the flash flood. he was in this area, and 16 watched out fences. he recognized buffalo bones are much bigger. he spent his life trying to get

somebody to look at them. he looked at the museum in denver, no one would come and look, he died about college in. he was drinking with a straw because he couldn't lift his head. someone finally came out and had a look and they found the buffalo were from an ice age animal which we now call the bison. there were a lot for jekyll points stuck in their spine and between their ribs. to that point there was no proof that man existed here during the ice age. it was almost like when copernicus proposed the notion of i heliocentric universe. because religious controversy. any religious figures attacked the finding because it was preposterous that it could have been native americans here 13 years ago. they ran into a herd of bison at a time when the mexico had

glaciers, there were no cities anywhere, no agriculture, people lived in groups of 10 or 20, you would likely run your whole lifetime and not run into someone you didn't know. the animals had never seen a human being before. they walked, 23 of them, into this canyon until they were crammed in a spot the size of the bed room. and it rained down on them with that level, before the bow and arrow. they hadn't been processed, no cut marks on the bones. when used in an animal used usually takes the tale, it was in november. and now, the thing about these bones is archaeologists often credit him with having solved this religious crisis, so he

became a pilgrimage site to visit his grave. we will jump ahead and buy will show you his final resting place. that is where he now lives. someone stole his tombstone. in that graveyard, which was, colonized by prairie dogs. i commented about all the animal bones everywhere on the ground, i pointed to when and he told about the finger bone. much of his fellows are on the surface and no longer have a some training existence. behind him is the location of the wild horse or royal. jump ahead. this right here for a long time was the most mass-produced image of a buffalo ever.

this is black diamond, the model for the nickel. in 1913, the u.s. mint, got tired of cohen's with the roman theme. they have the sculptor named james earl frazier, who was born the year of little bighorn, they hired him to make something distinctly american. so he went to the new york's central park menagerie and sculpted this animal and put him on the buffalo mcclendon came the most mass-produced image of a buffalo ever. when the coin started being cranked out, whoever owned this animal, the caretaker in central park decided it was getting too expensive to take care of black diamond, so put them up for auction. then he put it up for private sale and got an offer of $300 on fourteenth street. he wanted to get $500 so he got 304.

he ticket to a meatpacking place, processed the animal and sold 1,100,000 pounds of meat off of it. 25 presses are cranking up the image every day. he hung it in his office until 1918. no one knows what happened to it after that. people who are into collins really want this head. when i was trying to find out what happened, i went to the bronx zoo and i met with a historian, he was telling me when he first took the job in 1980, day he got a call from a guy who said you might be interested because i have black diamond's head. the reason the guy called was a mistake because his memoirs got

mixed up. the guy called mistakenly. but steven johnson didn't write it down, didn't know what he was talking about, later, when he realized he had black diamond's head, he never found the phone number. so the skull is out there somewhere. but it is a national embarrassment, it would be like if you put guantanamo bay on a coin now. i'm going to skip ahead. this is land in montana owned by ted turner. ted turner owns more buffalo than exist in a while. there are 500 today, 5 ended thousand in north america today, 96% are privately-owned livestock. people have them because they're into the hobby of owning them or their marking them for meat.

i can't propose that as a problem because private collectors save the buffalo from extinction because they provided a nucleus heard to breed them more. but the thing is interesting is all the mistakes we have made with different animals and my children's life time we will no longer have the polar bear and we will certainly no longer have hundreds of species of birds and many mammals. there's nothing we can do to bring them back. by having 500,000 buffalo out there, it is a curious situation where we could have as many wild ones as we once. they are inconvenient to have around, they can cause a lot of damage, they can't work people. buffalo in yellowstone park will and more people than grizzly bears combined. we can always look and say all we have to do, not even metaphorically but literally, is open the gates and we can have as many as we want.

i want to show another picture here. this was taken in june, after i hunted in the mountains in 2006. i want to go back in that area and watch the animals. these animals here, between 30, and 40 miles from the nearest road. it is quite likely that i was the first human their calves had seen. it is also likely i'm have been the first human that the adults had seen. you are looking at an animal that carries a cattle disease, they probably carry bovine tuberculosis that they picked up from cattle and they most certainly have a lot of genetic problems. there are only 3 herds in north america that have no internal retrogression. yellowstone and ted turner's branch.

there's always a debate with buffalo. we have had debate about whether we should bother saving them all or let them vanish and drive indians onto reservations, whether we should call them bison or buffalo. now there is a debate about the notion of disease free, genetically pure animals, there's a movement that suggest we get rid of anybody who has cattle disease, and start all over again from scratch. it is funny because all the ones we're talking about that are genetically pure, don't act like buffalo as much as these guys act like buffalo. they're not wild, they don't get to go where they want to go. if i own a buffalo next yellowstone park, it steps on my land, that is not the case here, not the case of these animals. it is important to keep in mind that we need to adjust our

definitions of wildlife and this notion of this genetic purity and disease free thing gets out of hand, we are going to take another step back, and be less close to restoring these things in an ecological, not just genetic, way. anybody have any questions? [applause] i answered everything. thank you very much for coming. >> steven rinella is the author of the scavenger cuisine. he is a correspondent for outside magazine and his writing has been in several publications including the new yorker, men's journal and the new york times. more information visit the

author's website at stephenrinella.com. the public affairs imprint is part of the perseus books group and at the book expo america's this year, public affairs is doing something different, susan weinbergers the publisher. wenner you doing here? >> the group decided to take up the challenge to publish a book in 48 hours, which led from the opening day to today. if you want to stop by and celebrate, the addie at is to showcase a lot of things that are happening in publishing. one is that the way electronic files and formats and all the different printing technologies, how much is changing and opening new opportunities in publishing and bookselling. the other one, continue and intensify the collaboration we're doing with other companies, there are lots of companies with lots of new ideas

that can be very innovative and when we announced we were doing this, we felt we would ask them to help and we found many of them came to us before we had a chance to call them. we want to help. we have over 20 companies participating in this project with us. >> let's walk over here because you have a whole schedule of events going on that you have done and you have a story board here. >> the first thing we had to do is have a good book. the way we created this book was through outsourcing. we started website, we spent a month inviting people through all kinds of social networking mechanisms, inviting people within the industry and outside, people all over the world to contribute to the book. we have had contributions from new zealand, japan, all over the united states, it has been a really fun process. what is the -- >> what is the book about?

>> the first line of an as yet unwritten sequel to any book ever written. it could be something like call me, is malcolm moby dick's guide to dating at sea, or they run out the worst of times, a tale of 3 cities by charles dickens. we created the idea. at 4:00, we started the editing process of organizing these. we also said to the director, we are not sure how the book will come out so we need a few covers we can look at, and pick the best one when we have contributions and comments from people at the show. >> when you pick a cover, is that one of the first things you do? >> no, but it is one of the first things you do when you're getting ready to publish. that is when you know what the book is. it is an important marketing

tool, it is the clothing that the book wears in public. we never send about naked. >> we have 4 covers up here. why did you decide on this one? >> when we put these 4 together, we got a lot of comments, but the thing i love to watch when people looking at covers is their visceral reaction because once you start talking about a cover going into it, people in bookstores don't discuss the covers, they have a quick reaction which is am i going to pick this book up or pass it by. when we have these 4 covers of here, everyone went to this one. >> why? >> we asked people that. they said a lot of the comments and sequels are from older books, and they loved the elegant and literary look of the cover and the twist of the electronic reading device. some people got it right away. some people did get it until the second look. they may enjoy more because the

cover had 2 steps. this one, we felt, was going to fade. these 2 were fun, but people really gravitated to the books on this cover. we had people join us in a cover meeting, we had the sales director and other booksellers, people who came by and they gave us their comments. we sent the covers out on twitter at the same time and got response from the people who had been following the project. and this was a very unanimous choice. so that was a collaborative process and we decided this would be the cover. >> we have a finished copy of the book here and 2 things, an introduction by jeffrey not inburg and clive turtle. >> clive turtle is the editorial director of public affairs and he is talking to the author, a linguist at university of california berkeley, they came

up with the idea together. so clive edited the book and we have jeff if he would write the introduction. jeff has written several books, public affairs, here's a comment there, he seemed to have the right touch for it. >> let's take a page and see what we find and you can explain it to was. as i lay and dad and dying? >> there were a lot of zombie contributions. and a lot of contributions from certain authors. i don't know if i have got that right in front of me, but i know we had some people who had that information. do you have the sheet of the most people title? >> i do not. >> what are you working on?

with you working on? >> i'm working on the digital audio edition. so i am waiting for a final audiophile from michigan, from our audio studio and i will do that right here in the booth with head phones and once i'm ok with the model of low demand that our vendors know that hon. music is in overdrive, then they can put their files on their sites and we will have an audio edition. >> you already recorded an audio edition. why in michigan? >> we have a great relationship with the studio. he has done good work for us. he is fast, reliable, and he was willing to do it in one day. he got us the final by this morning. he read it himself. he is an audio book producer and

it is the downloadable -- by any people who distribute those. >> will this be available on kindle? >> it will be on every format that is, which includes sony reader and everybody who jumped in and said we want to offer this book. for many of them, i believe you could buy it today. >> how important our ebook to your business? >> they're very important because they represent growth and innovation and a way to continue reading in another form and format. the books right now are small percentage of overall business but the potential and how they add to the choices readers have about when and how they want to read a book is significant for us. and in this world where everything is happening so quickly, we have gone books out in thebook format faster than in

prince. the latest book on the financial crisis, we released it as an e book and it took 5 weeks get the physical book out. but the message was so important and time sensitive that we let readers have it as an evil first. >> what is the schedule of events? >> we're showing all the things we're doing today, the second day of publication which will end at 4:00. we had the web site created at the booth, we created a reading group guide, this was a great meeting where we had librarians, reading choices, that helps groups organize. >> is that something you do on a normal basis? >> we do it for a significant number of books and the lot of publishers do, it is a popular way not only -- it helps teachers and librarians, we have a couple librarian's join us for this meeting and we had some

great ideas for a reading group based on book the sequel, but that brings in a lot of interest in reading and ways of talking about books and people -- what they remember and how they matter. we had teachers say we're going to use this as a class assignment, we talked about suggesting to stores that they put a lot of classics are around it. we see this as a very collaborative project, a fun thing for everyone to have and a role to play. the meeting at 1:00 will be very interesting. that will be our decision, how many to print for the general public. we are talking about we have some orders for the book in the system, we are talking to other retailers, people are hearing about the book, and we are going to have to as often, with imperfect information, how many copies to print and how we can get them out. our goal is to have finished physical copies of the book distributed by june 15th.

we are very aggressive, you couldn't do it that quickly but with this project, we believe we can do it. >> to you ever decide know, you're not going to print any copies? >> inaudible we have already decided to publish. that doesn't happen. people have talked to me about a business model where they say why do we launch a book as an eagle first, see how it does, then bring a copy. that is another publishing model some people are talking about that we as a traditional print publisher, we have not gotten there yet. at 3:30 we will have a question and answer was of a participants who are participating with us and any booksellers who want to come and ask questions and learn more about the project and then we're going to open the champagne. >> behind you is clyde, we want to introduce him. what was your role?

i am the editor of the book. so my role is the front end. we dreamed up the idea with a public affairs officer, and with my colleagues, we sat down and looked at all the submissions from the web site and decided how we were going to select them and arrange them with in the book. so we did that, we saw how they all ran out. we moved a lot of material around, we found we were a little short. that happens when you design pages through a database. in the end, we had 144 pages and we had proofread them twice. it was the proofreading job from hell, because not only were we doing it in a convention center with a lot of distractions, but

many of the sequel variations on a theme that it is hard to keep track of whether you have seen this one before. >> the web site is up and running? >> the web site is up and running. we have to close contributions for the printed book on thursday because for the sake of the project we wanted everything to take place within 48 hours. so it is shut for the purpose of the book, but if you want to contribute on the web site, you can contribute. >> so if you could bring up the final website, this has been a 48 hour project to produce this book. in a longer-term project, what would you do differently than you are doing here? >> we would probably give people a little more time to do the task, we are truly publishing this book. everything we do for a book, we have done for this book, but we

don't often say everybody do it at the same time. if you try to do every book as quickly, people might get tired. we would not keep them from 4:00 to 11:00, we would let them do it over a few weeks or something like that. it is impressive what we do, all the things that are really necessary for publishing a book. >> we want to show the web site, book the sequel.com, you can see the web site, thank you very much. >> every weekend, booktv has the latest nonfiction books and authors on c-span2. afterwards, writers and artists, from the garden of eden to today. ..