is instrumental in the election of the first black aldermen in chicago. talking about all of the anti-lynching campaign is as successful she has defended blacks pretty successfully and the debt to remember coming across her book where sheik wrote notes and one year before her death she is running for a state senate seat and illinois, one year before she talks about going to a negro history week miti with her dog -- daughter and discuss a a book by the father of negro history and she knew him.

and she says i walked away disappointed that my name was not mentioned in the contributors as the and 17 campaign. this is extraordinary more than racism or sexism broke then i look for other -- brothers she was left out of history by many of her peers and progressive fears. phillip at the books of jane addams, e.b. dubois, talking about black women, reformers, she is left out. this is a whole other issue. was it significant this campaign was fought? yes. all the evidence is i came to the conclusion that excuse me i have our dues that are killing me. [laughter] she is so transgressive even

among reformers. and so i have never time, largely because of her class ideas. there really believe they will get together and solve the nation's problems. we also believed in a laboring class insurgency and had a different idea of poor people so that is one mission leadership issue. another issue and frederick douglass died and wells had been very successful in this campaign mainly because she had gone to england twice, and great triumph in the british isles after shelley's there no one can ignore the campaign in a more. anti-winching legislation is passed even from the southern

states and it is beginning to go down. said after the death of frederick douglass ida b. wells should have been the leader of the black reform and civil-rights movement barely booker t. washington emerges in the vacuum and one reason why she was never permitted of course, is because of gender mainly and she tried to get the torch passed to frederick douglass who she was close to pay he would not give her that. so she is so i had a first time in the so many ways. that is the price you pay when you are ahead of the time. wish you would have loved the sixties and i think her campaign provides the foundation for the protest movement. and i think she is enjoying politics right now. [laughter] >> the more modern

civil-rights movement told is starkly through me and. was that an accurate portrayal [laughter] to that you just asked me? [laughter] >> it is it is obvious, a sort of the obvious ideas around sexism and patriarchy but there is a little more complex idea as well. that can i get into the weeds? a question of nationalism but let me say very quickly, i was at a conference for women years ago and i was around israeli women, algerian women, a palestinian women, and this was a period of time when women had said j. hard time in the movement once civil-rights more often to the black power movement. the idea that women are behind

and men are in control and all of that and i was talking about this to the women and the israeli woman said that is happening in your country to? the palestinian said that is happening there two? and all of these places of course, in this one period time a kind of leadership and it is a definition that has a lot to do with the late 19th century based on the icon of the 19th century. of the male patriarchy is controlled and you know, the role of women to have children for the revolution or to have children to maintain the culture of the nationalist movement. that is the other side of it. and this is a very nationalist

movement in the 19th century. >> i have a question of like each of you to tackle but how do choose a subject for your workout you know, you have with upon a subject that will result in a fruitful biography? >> with my publisher ups the ante. [laughter] the way that i chose the subject in 1993, i wrote a book about john kennedy which was very successful. there for things poured been on me to write about other presidents, other presidents, and i thought i have learned of what president's action they do. i did do more.

if i wrote about one more president, ironic they my daughter is john barack obama's staff and in the white house. [laughter] and i always had a yearning. believe me nobody was having the right about scientific figures. [laughter] but i was fighting over it. and i wanted to reject. i have something to say about politics of the day. >> for me is a pretty embarrassing process. i am writing a novel but i am looking for something else. often i have a few ideas and mr. researching of them, i

like to read, it is always fun but goodness come at some point* a certain excitement over takes me and it often turns out there is something in the material that i just part to stumble on. so i get chosen by the topic at some point*. i felt that walt, his personality, it has finally started working on me and then was the real discovery of this project which was i have these two brothers who have a very interesting relationship but the mother was the sole of the family. the mother had been written about as walt whitman's embarrassing smug mother, and the illiterate mother back in brooklyn. abbate went to the archive and

i found hundreds of letters that this islam at emitter mother had written. [laughter] and not only letters but a long stream of consciousness extremely funny and perceptive letters. she was writing to her son who was a nurse dealing with amputations and walt would write her mother, i have to tell you about a soldier i saw yesterday, i cared for him his wound already has gained three he will die. he is beautiful like a god. i combed his hair, i watched him and could barely hold back the tears i am so sad. she would write back and talk about much din is $0.32 a pound and then there be a paragraph saying walt, you can write me about the soldiers, understand that you love them and it is a

fascination, there is nothing wrong with that. i a understand she would encourage him and hearing that from his mother really would book him up. she would do the same thing with george you would write to her very, very frankly about what he was going through in the war. the mother, i had no idea i would come upon her and read her letters which have been ignored by many may's dollars not only ignored but it irrigated. so i feel the subject chosen the. >> you said you wrote the history of ida b. wells before you wrote the biography is that typical? how do generally do you come upon a topic? >> when i was reading my first

book which is about black activist women wells popped up in the center of my pages and said these other women are fine but she grasped my imagination in a way. and would not let go. i could not intellectualize it then but i have always had questions about american culture, race, gender, her story is so central day she essential i think that is what i went too intuitively provide a look at it but the opportunity to see america it in the late 19th and 20th century transforming itself into a modern industrial power and struggling with these anxieties around race and gender and sexuality that all

of these great moments of course, during the 20th century and it is looking to the eyes of a black activist like ida b. wells is extraordinary because she takes the full measure as a true progressive reformer in the truest sense of the word and she takes on everything like labor, suffrage as will o by it is all based on what she learns about the country and a culture through lynching. and what that really means. she sees flinching as the rosetta stone of race relations. what she does is under tangles to understanding what is happening not just with race but sexuality, class and gender roles and her discourse is unlike any other. and it is unique in this period.

so she has to take everything into account. know when she can ignore, and no group to ignore, the movement that can be ignored, as she is also the activist but just not intellectualizing it or just writing about it she writes superbly but also is mobilizing people. she is a figure that tapped me on the shoulder, come with the family will enjoy at. [laughter] >> i have one more question i who prejudge you address said rhee will open up the microphones. how do each of you structure your work works to complete your research before you set out to right or right as you go? what is your work flow like to put together a book like you did with walt whitman?

>> gosh i do not have a good answer to that. [laughter] what is compelling about this subject, parts of it dictated the structure. it becomes a questionable most telling the natural story. sometimes the editor will read it and say this is quite complicated and very untraditional but it is really not because i set out to do something that was formally invented. >> did you feel you have all of europe materials assembled before you sat down to write or did you figure it out as you went? >> and had to continue to do research but pretty much. i set in a chair and read for two years at the end of those two years i have a bunch of

old fashioned notebooks in which i made notes. and then i realized one day it is getting so voluminous seven have to start taking notes on the notes. then i realized that is where madness lies. [laughter] so really the next day i wrote it because it frightened me. >> i am curious to your process but has that changed over the years? are you still doing it the way you initially did? >> the first piece i wrote was a magazine piece for "the new york times" profiled with john lindsay the mayor of new york and for some reason i thought real writers were all educators and engineers so real riders data all in one sitting. [laughter] so when i learned more about

myself i set up a system that i get up early in the morning, usually about 5:00 and right 1,000 words per day. and then i become a human being. the first time the phone rings or one of the kids runs through, i know i am finished. with that part of my life then i think about teaching or other things there are essentially easier. similar to robert, i do probably spend one year or two filling those crates from office depot chronologically. a lot of chronological right thing is that easy way out. i often take it. even if you are right thing the 800 wordbook the structure is the same as a good joke with the foreshadowing and finally at the end everything becomes clear and

chronologically it works particularly with the presidential books for every second of their presidents' day is recorded and everybody who has contact with them but it is the high point* of their life see if you go 30 years later to them, they remember what happened. so basically i right before there is anything easier to be done in the hours between 5:00 or 8:00 or 9:00. >> duet until you have to do something else. i think one of the most important things i have learned, i took a film writing, it is a film writing weekend in new york city and that was really important because i learned there is so much going on in this period

of course, in life that the only way you can do with it is it in the scenes. that is all i constructed the biography but you cannot tell people this happened and that happens. so that was a way to begin to construct and get a sense that you hope you also see what is going on but not just read what is going on at the same time. >> let's see if there are questions from the audience? you need to go to a microphone. >> richard reeves, why is there so little written about science? of leu process question if you

are writing about people who are mostly dead what do feel with a conflicting points of view how do trust the information? >> the answer there is little being written about science and i agree about that is the, there are two reasons, one is there are three few people who understand it. there are very few women and a science writers. and the sec and come with the perception is that the public cannot follow this with post mccann ago ernest rutherford was really the transition figure. but when we grew up all of us in this room if you owned the

automobile you could open the hood and try to fix it. you worked on a typewriter could be broken fixed with a paper clip nazi open the hood and you have no idea god knows inside a computer. [laughter] so we have not developed the cadres of people who can write about the new science and most publishers figure unless it is abraham lincoln or the atomic bomb no one is interested. [laughter] >> good afternoon i almost feel as if i know you personally per or have been keeping up with you over the years i first saw umc on college student at the time.

you are very welcome. [laughter] you did a great job on that by the way. also said documentary of debbie bd ball which is excellent. i want to ask you, had you feel about ida b. wells being the precursor of the generation of the 1960's that believed in bearing arms cracks there's a tendency to jump from slavery to the 60s and it skipped over which is a terrible injustice as far as i am concerned and lastly, ida b. wells what was the conclusion of marcus garvey? let me begin with marcus garvey.

she liked but young black nationalist leader. soleil tim because he was a grass-roots leader that the people actually made him the leader or superimposed by others she did worry about the boat scheme at. [laughter] she knew she would get in trouble with that. and it is very interesting lucky into the military intelligence files, you realize that the military intelligence started following marcus garvey because he was hanging out with ida b. wells. and also one conclusion says marcus garvey is a dangerous erase agitated but it ida b. wells is more dangerous. but i'd love bishop turner he was one of the few men, besides her husband to really defended hurt and very critical periods of her career.

and of course, turner was the immigration mess in the 19th century, a bishop, a methodist bishop, and believe blacks need to go back to africa as well. and a radical and also believed as you mentioned, taking up arms coming this is quite a radical position at the time as you can imagine. but wells lot, by the late 19th century certainly, that there was no reason not to defend oneself. she herself bought a pistol after writing the first anti-lansing editorial. and what is interesting she is a great victorian so the contrast makes for a wonderful character she famously said in

her discourse around anti-wrenching she says first of all civil disobedience the south reconstructions depends on self labor in the north capital we can start any of it coming into the south we can have a revolution but civil disobedience did not work for pushy famously said a winchester rifle should have a place of honor and every black called. [laughter] and believe the search of a, and was born out eventually after world war i, the stories that we don't hear very much in the mid this summer after world war i in 1991 of the biggest rise since was in chicago where ida b. wells was living at the time.

that tens of the right period because for the first time in chicago, the first time in the riots hundreds are taking place in this period of time where blacks are being killed by chicago is a place that fights back. chicago is a place that the blacks are armed. and in this begins though whole idea of the new radical may grow as you mentioned is now a forebear of the '60s. thank you for the question. >> this is a festival of books that are you tempted with the other research you have done for other forums talking about the new documentary's or are you tempted?

also against science it is linked to mathematics and ordered to interpret that for people who are not mathematically oriented you have done an extraordinary thing and how can we do more of that for our kids? and last question of how do do a biography of a living person versus someone who you have the entire story done? >> desai as part -- the science part i believe children should be taught math is not an abstraction nine, it is a tool. i did it with my kids but if anybody did it there are museums where rutherford

talked and at cambridge. the amazing thing about them is that most of his experiments are about this size. they look like music boxes or something. the reasons he was a great teacher was not because he had great rhetorical skills but because he connected math with something that you saw work. the simplest example is the way friction is taught so math in the abstract is very difficult. i had not thought about the question but as part of the answer i feel for better or worse but i think for better is we do not have to train mathematicians as much anymore it in our society because they are being replaced by mathematicians from

korea, india, up. i teach at usc down the road. and the engineering school and the mass and the biological sciences as well, are very, very heavily asian americans of that like many things in america, we have outsourced math. we know the people on wall street cannot account worth a. [laughter] >> living people verses dead people for lack of a better word you have any thoughts on that? vermette. >> [inaudible] the. >> the answer is definitely

yes. you have a story that is exciting to right thing you naturally begin to imagine dramatizing it if it is that kind of thing. and it doesn't have to be a competition or a categorical choice you can only go down one road. i think any story that has human themes that are powerful and are moving can be dramatize. i think to dramatize the life of brother fired i don't know. have to read richard's book. i do know with the whitman's i do trace them back they lived in very modest homes they were a family of