you go into the west bank during the first intifada and then you go back for the second intifada. i am wondering if that was intentional and also why did you decide to go back there and do the going to visit somewhere else, because after palestine you went to bosnia. what brought you back to palestine as an totally unrelated question what to did you think of bashir? >> i liked bashir. the narrative from the israeli soldiers point of view is completely valid and it is interesting to me. i like the fact, i actually really like the fact that some people might differ, but i like when it went from animation to live footage because it somehow, isn't about israeli soldiers, their memories and their problems with it but it finally gave it back to the palestinians who were actually the victims there and i vitiated the way that was done. and your earlier question was about-- why i went back.

i generally do story solely based on what i feel compelled to go and do. i've might never have done another book about the palestinians but the second intifada happened, and i was going to do this magazine piece with chris hedges. that was probably a limited sort of thing and it might've ended their if the hanunis part of his article had appeared. i might never have done this but once i got cut, suddenly something just went off in me. i thought, i have to go and resurrect this because those people are still alive. ..

you're glasses are bigger, and adjusted by seeing you your whole face is a little bigger. >> i may have changed glasses. >> sometimes i think the figure of the debate to yourself sometimes it is a curmudgeon's kind of even goofy figure like you know he may make like the image you had before of the journalist and you're the one who stands up and says the iraq

war would happen. is that intentional to caricature yourself in a way because i have noticed that about your placement, or just talk a little about how you place yourself into your work. >> if you read all my books which i'm sure you have -- [laughter] if you see the first one, palestine, the first one that's journalism ayman that, too. he will see eye of a bumbling character. i often don't know what i'm doing. i'm getting into trouble. all that is true. what you have to realize in those days especially i was relatively inexperienced, i was scared, i just came up with this idea how my going to get any stories just getting into a taxi and going to place is getting out of the taxi and letting people descend on me saying what are you doing here and then saying i don't know, tell me what's going on. it was very sort of organic and

i show a lot of that. i'm in a much stronger more prominent figure in the palestine book to read any book subsequent to that i think become a little more experienced in the kind of think in this last book it is much less of the bumbling that goes on. every now and then i will show bumbling, in the wrong way when there's bullets flying. i mean you've got to show the bubbling. [laughter] but generally speaking i wasn't -- i had become more professional. i know what i'm doing a little more so there's no need to show anything that doesn't exist. i think i was portraying myself accurately may be using it humorously in the first book but there aren't that many moments in this book that exaggerate aspects of my character. >> [inaudible] what was that decision to place yourself --

>> the reason i put myself as a narrator in my story is a simple one because like many cartoonists especially from 20 years ago probably today it looks like, too, i was doing autobiographical comics so when i decided to go to the middle east and do a story about what was there it wasn't such a stretch for me to think of it as i will draw my experiences in the middle east. i didn't even think about it so i was always strongly myself into the story. that has an advantage realize now because you can write more about personal interactions with people. the reader can meet the people i meet and i think develop some affection toward them as i was able to and that is often based on personal relationships which unfortunately most american reporters you will find no trace of that adel and their stories which i sorry for them they can't really some of that stuff.

>> appear in the front is the microphone. >> thanks for coming. >> i bookseller in the neighborhood and i heard about the book a while ago and then i got an early copy of it and i've been waiting to hear some kind of outcry from people who generally cry out about any book that seems to be critical at all about israel and israeli actions and certainly bookstore articles that uncover such ugly happenings. i don't think your book is so ambivalent that it hides the fact that these were atrocities. and i wonder considering what happened at the lead cut to shimmy carter when he wrote the

book on the apartheid and what happens to people when they take on this kind of incident with this kind of -- i don't think you're critical. negative ensure fair but it would be seen by a lot of people and a lot of people i have seen raise hell as being just a calumny and you'd be attacked. i've been waiting to see that and i haven't and i wonder if either it is just me that i haven't noticed this if you have in fact been excoriated by all kind of defensive supporters of anything that israel does or if the fact that it is a comic allows the people who would usually be so organized in their ferocious response to dismiss and say it's just a comic book. nobody is quick to take it seriously. >> i think i felt that i didn't

both through that when i did my first book, palestine, because at that point comics were under their radar. no one was paying attention, and i sort of missed any criticism. occasionally i get a letter or something like that. with this book i guess i'm a little surprised, too, the lion also sure of the facts of what i'm doing, and that's -- that gives me heart. i don't think -- if you put this book demonstrates, too is i do tend to give voice to palestinians because i don't think they have had much voice in the american media but i don't sugarcoat palestinians, and i feel it's important to do that. it's important to do honest reporting. i don't know if that's the reason why i am not being attacked or if i am -- their screen to be a tax happening. i do know that i was reading some hard criticism of my work that seemed unfair sort of free

leading my images do not see images and things like that and i simply stopped reading of that stuff because i don't want to play with my mind in a way to read it doesn't do any good. people often ask about media bias when it comes to this issue and the truth is i can't say -- it's hard for me to determine if it is media bias, but when i notice is people will steer away from it because they know it's going to get people upset which is unfortunate. people who might have something to say they are just afraid of the issue and i guess i don't want to be afraid of an issue like that. >> we've got many more here. there in the middle of it in here in the second row. >> i guess i just wanted to ask earlier you mentioned how looking back into history like this and the specific event that

perhaps it will help us today gain some insight so i wanted to ask given in a situation in palestine, the massacre that happened last year in gaza, what is it that you hope for this book when it is out there and people are reading it and discussing it? >> well i hate to see it but i don't see the book changing the world. it is about historical episode whether i write it or not, gaza is going to be blockaded. hamas is going to be in control. those things are ongoing and will continue. what i do hope as people get a sense of the palestinians. when i first started doing -- one of the reasons i got involved in this is when i was in high school and thought of palestinians as terrorists because -- i realize not the only time i heard the word palestinian was with the word

hijacking or bombing. there was never in the context provided. i basically have to educate myself in that. it seemed for a time we were getting to this point we began to hear more palestinian voice is, but now since mo war qtr happened or is ongoing once again it seems like palestinians -- there is a broad brush stroke painting them as terrorists again especially in gaza which israel declared an enemy entity. and i think what i hope this book can do is give a face to these people. they are not all terrorists. there are people trying to get on with their lives and people who've had a hard history because then perhaps we can become in the thick about the situation. i mean there can be some understanding of the other and i think that is what historians should strive for is to make us

understand those things we don't understand or that we are afraid to look at. i hope that is what this book does on some level for the reader. >> let's go to the side. we will start in the second row and into rows behind him ahead of them over there as well. right here in the second runway and then let's work our way back. >> i was wondering what your next project is going to be. i have seen i think in harper's a piece about the printing of iraqi military or police force and i wonder if the was a bigger project you are working on. >> i was in iraq for a few weeks with a marine unit, but it seemed like i never got a big, compelling story. there were episodic stories and that is candelight treated them. i basically did to stories. i could do more but i may not. i just did a piece about, for

the virginia quarterly review about african migrants trying to get to europe. i'm from malta so i went back to malta and that is where a lot of migrants have landed to read a lot are under detention there and i told you the migrants, what it's like for them and then i talked to the maltese because i can speak the maltese and they think of me as one of them. they would say what they wanted to say sort of the mom politically correct version of it and government people. that is what i have done recently. and in the future i'm kind of planning to go to india relatively soon to do something about poverty. after then i might do something funny i think i need to. >> there and there. >> do you draw people when they are in front of you? do you take pictures and the does that make them

uncomfortable? >> i generally ask the person after the interview tonight to get a picture of you? in some cases people didn't want to be identified and what i would do is a quick sketch that didn't identify the person that made me feel like i didn't come up with the image out of whole cloth. maybe the shape of the fact that they are wearing a headdress of some sort. that is how i handle that. [inaudible] -- afterwards to put into details? >> pardon me? >> do you elaborate to make a final image of them? >> not the ones that are taken from the photographs. the ones i'm trawling i don't want to identify because they didn't want their picture taken so i drew them basically like the shape of the head is the right way or maybe they were able ball or something that would make me feel like a kid that's got an element but he won't be identified. >> in the rows behind on the far

right. >> thank you. can you hear me? the artwork is nice, beautiful art work. but i quote you on the show on w. adc. your presentation is very nice. but you leave a lot questions on answered. the people i noticed before someone asked you for genre into the category of the book. you said its a graphic novel and i don't know if ever did your nose with a graphic novel is as opposed to a comic book. so why you chose that forum for such a serious topic, i know the graphic novels are usually for adults and cover serious topics as opposed to comic books. also the idea that this is a nonfiction i assume you are presenting this as long fiction and a decision elite comic-book

form illustrated. you also used words. use it to cover topics you are compelled to do but you didn't go into what exactly elaborate on why he would be compelled to do the topics. you also interchange words like artists, journalists, historians. i'm not sure what your background is. i don't know how you describe yourself or this book. i don't know if you are a comic book artist like stanley whose name is leader with you are a professional journalist, war journalist with that type of investigative training. i can tell you that i am a son of auschwitz survivors, and auschwitz, one of the things you struggle with in this book is the period of time that has elapsed since the serious story happens, the part of history happened and because of that long time period you struggle

with trying to make an indelible mark in history of a true event that happened in time. it's very emotional for me because i live every day with the effects of what happened 70 years ago to my mother as a young child and they chose her from one line to the next. we sit now in a building where i walk around and i see, thank god, jewish names on walls that donated for this building out of the ashes of the holocaust. there are countless documentary's in the world today addressing the denial of the holocaust. we have a leader of the country close to 30 million people, mahmoud ahmadinejad as an official policy of very advanced country whose more than half its population is under the age of

30-years-old denies the holocaust. >> with full respect let's stay on the subject of the books and ensure we have enough time for everyone to ask a question. >> people deny the holocaust and people say for example the number was, the amount of people killed in the holocaust. they talk about if they were involved or knew about it to get of the population knew about it. all of these things have to be documented in the washington, d.c. holocaust memorial museum. there is a high standard of proof 70 years later for me to turn to someone ignorant of the facts and say that this happened or not and even today ironically the nazis, the germanys record keepers on everything. so i am asking you tonight what standard of proof did you use? to set before you start to and is really brigadier general. i didn't know that person.

i talked to them on the phone. you said you couldn't get spoken to gaza. they have one border. i don't know if people are aware they have one border that is egyptian controled -- spikelets allow cbs the seventh to respond because that is a fair question. >> from 67 of those on the egyptian control. did you document that period of time? how are you advancing peace with this book? >> thank you. okay well, this book is about a couple of incidents that to place in 56. it is in no way meant to take anything from what happened to the jewish people or what happens to the israelis. i would not do that. i do not deny the holocaust or anything like that. this is not about that. this is about something that happened in the 50's in gaza. the evidence i have -- what pointed me to the story is a u.n. document that alleges

large-scale killings. and i want to see and speak to the people that were there to see what they had to say. there were other bits and pieces you could find. there was a u.s. guy in charge of the u.n. mission in gaza at the time who talked about people being shot down in cold blood for example. there is the story of the israeli soldier who talks about coming and talking about a human slaughterhouse and i talked to many people in separate conversations and i'm convinced of the story. again, that does not in any way take away from what you feel, what your mother went through, with the jewish people have gone through in no way does it do that i think. >> thank you. there is a question here in the second row and then back a few rows behind. >> the first book on palestine, what did the people -- you might have been able to talk to people

than about what they thought of your book. i was just curious what they thought of it. >> i actually took the book palestine with me on the trip to this story. and i would show it to the people i was kringen interview including older people and the open the book and they got it right away but i was trying to do. what was kind of interesting was the saw the pictures of the refugee camps and guess that's our lives. and that would have been difficult if it was a book in english, just a prose book. if i did given that to them they wouldn't have got it. it also helped to show my work because they would be asking fishable questions that focused on some aspect like let's say we were running downfield what was the field like? was there a cactus in the field? was it empty? i would ask those kind of questions and showing the but made them understand why i was asking those questions.

>> there was a question a few rows back of. okay we will come and go for this week. >> can you tell about the way that you draw it yourself and caricatured yourself and choose and change yourself under the pen? >> okay, the way i draw myself and a lot of ways it's kind of accidental. when i first started doing this kind of work, first palestine cannot as a series of comic books and when the first comic book cannot win noticed that there were both the jews and arabs who didn't like the way i drew them. there were comments about it and i heard of one palestinian plea right who saw it and tore it up when she saw how i drew. i do not mean to fin.

i come from the what they called bigfoot school of drawing from the american underground and i drew everything in a kind of grotesque and funny way. i soon recognize because this is journalism and i should try to draw as representational is possible and as i mentioned earlier i never learned how to trawl fishermen body i just sort of pulled myself that way over many years. at some point someone said everything looks real but your character still looks the way it did before. and i realize i haven't even paid attention to that. that wasn't so important. and i left, basically left it. i look better now the real draw myself i don't look so bad now. [laughter] but in some ways that is how we think of myself. >> we will be the judge of that. >> there was a question on the far left. i missing a left here. >> i notice from your speaking

at your very logical and fact oriented and with a sort of aversion to the emotional content of the people you're interviewing i picked it up that when a person was breaking down and crying and so forth you sort of shut that off. now we don't know how much you know about psychology of memory and emotion, but the truth is science of the mind shows emotion is the most dominant part of the human mind and classifying things. in order to be constructive, have you ever thought of taking studs terkel's advice in interviewing, showing how your very human being and to our

fellow and from a doctor of psychology really savvy, one of the most savvy i've ever met she said she indicate to by her behavior it's okay to break down. it's okay to show me i'm a human and her behavior and speech would indicate i m eight stupid human being just like you and it's okay to show me that your human side. as far as graphics sometimes the reality -- the meaning for the actual experiences -- to reali for them is the emotional content. absolute incredible terror. as far as graphics have you ever thought of doing thumbnail sketches of a variety of different thumbnail sketches and bouncing it off against your

subject, who you are interviewing? what edge image captures your feeling, your understanding commodore emotional understanding of what happened to you and what you saw? with an explanation in the book this is an expressive. this is not a realistic view but the most expressive subject related to. >> i think that's an interesting idea. so maybe i will approach something in that way, historical episode. sometimes i would try to take a paddle out and try something wesleyan dustin and correctly. i disagree you say i have a version to people's emotions. when i noticed with these people is when they would breakdown i told them they didn't have to continue. generally speaking they did.

almost in every location except that one episode they pull themselves together and been told their story. but emotional -- if you are suggesting i have to show myself and my emotions, maybe you're not, but i wouldn't do that. i would rather the reader has the motion and not me on the page. they say the a motion of the person being interviewed which isn't to say i don't have emotions doing this. this was difficult stuff to draw. >> i want to make sure we leave time for you all to buy books and if you like and for the joe to sign them. i don't know what time it is. >> you are at one hour and 20 minutes. >> let's go to that. joe will be here. platts thank joe sacco for being here. [applause]

>> the book is "footnotes in gaza," right back there published by the folks at metropolitan books. thank you. >> speed sacco is the author and illustrator of the safe area palestine which won the american book award and the fixer and other stories. this event was hosted by the brooklyn public library. for more information, visit brooklynpubliclibrary.org.

did you know you can view book tv programs online? go to booktv.org. type the name of the offer macbook or subject into the search area in the upper left-hand corner of the page. select the watch link. now you can view the entire program. you might also explore the recently on book tv box or the featured programs box to find and few recent and future programs. mary caldwell crosby, the writer for usa today "newsweek" and health magazine presents the history of an illness known as sleeping sickness which claimed millions of lives during the early 20th century. davis kid booksellers in memphis tennessee hosts this half-hour event. >> thank you for having me

tonight. i am especially happy to be here at davis kid in memphis. it is one of my favorite book stores and i usually hear choosing one of my kids down the aisle so it's nice to be here under more professional circumstances to mind. i thought i would start tonight by answering the two questions i always get asked for and i discussed my books. no, i'm not a hypochondriac. [laughter] and secondly i like writing about these stories because to me they are much more about people than they are about disease. i am one of those people that if there is a natural disaster happening in the world on the include to c-span for days. i know i'm not the only one and i think what really draws us and is not the tragedy itself of these disasters, but more just the hope and a miracle of survival that we look for. that is what inspired my first book the american played about filthy durham about one-third of it took place here in memphis because i really wanted to show what a yellow fever epidemic was

like a close. but when the epidemic in memphis in the one season killed more people than we lost at pearl harbor and more than we lost on september 11th. our most recent devastation both earthquake in chile recently and then also the one in haiti -- eda right now has a death toll of about 300,000 yet the 1918 fluke between 50 to 100 million lives. so what i've always been interested in is showing how these epidemics at one time in history or very much like these natural disasters. compared to the 1918 flu the disease i write about in this book seems mild even though it did affect and killed almost 1 million people about 5 million people worldwide came down with. and i'm going to do a short reading tonight from the prolonged because it really explains how i first learned of this forgotten epidemic and why i chose to write a book about it. the prologue is entitled inside.

my grandmother was 16 when she fell asleep. what she remembered most from those weeks was the witness and emptiness, not like snow or fresh paint caused by the complete lack of anything else. the same way fall can consume everything in its path. she also felt cool like the summer nights when she slept with a bowl of ice in front of the famine. everything seemed cold and vacant and white. she could see herself present in the room but she wasn't herself, she was published some how smooth off like a statue. she tried to lift her arm but it wouldn't move to the issue concentrated and tried again that felt as though her arms, hands, legs and feet were no longer connected to her brain, no longer accepting demand. at that point she became frightened and overwhelming claustrophobic fear seized her. she was a statue. as though her mind could only take so much of the stress she began to pull away teetering on the edge between a trim and wakefulness. finally, her mind told her she was only dreaming to it was only a nightmare and she felt relief

flushed with like a winter breath. she began to feel the bed sheets on the skin and since the light from the east would window. she struggled to come out of the treen and open her eyes the the wouldn't happen. the feeling something terrible was happening, the taste of the nightmare remained. the figure was 1929 and the tire virginia and her family had no way of knowing she was joining millions of others suffering from a strange global pandemic. a disease that would change medicine itself but vanished from medical history. a disease that would close to a million people and leaving thousands more languishing in mental institutions for the rest of their lives. an epidemic of nearly a century later remains a mystery but could strike again. virginias mother spoke to her in that column of voice used for bloody chins and ankles in her room was filled with a doctor's voice is what was most frightening was the uncertainty in their voices. they didn't know what caused this in a healthy teenage girl and course they didn't know how to stop this and this week. her temperature was taken several times and not on the

chart risch she felt the doctor's hand against her risk and on the order we along her neck and then over the course of the days and weeks she for the doctors pronounced her dead three different times. each time she listened to her parents week and heard him make plans for the viewing and their terri hail. she couldn't even tell them they were wrong. this was by far one of the strangest diseases will has ever seen. it began in the trenches of world war i on the western front in france one impervious and dr. started seeing patients coming to the field hospital house wallace paris who wouldn't wake up. they were not in a coma he just simply couldn't make them up. about 60 or so patients are left that way. at the same time on the opposite side of the war in vienna in a psychiatric clinic in urologist was seeing a patient alive and with similar symptoms. they were brought in. they couldn't keep their head up. they fell asleep in their chairs. rains brought children who had fallen face first into their

dinner plates and if that wasn't bad enough, a whole plethora of new unusual symptoms started arriving. there was an epidemic of hiccups, unusual tics and disorders coming in, obsessive compulsive disorder, to its center. a higher incidence of schizophrenia, hysteria. even a case of someone dragged in baking the doctors thought to torture them. another woman said she had been impregnated by god to reveal all of this was happening at the same time in this one clinic and a doctor named constantine recognized the one some from among all these patients and that was this week cycle was off. they couldn't stay awake. this epidemic continued to move throughout europe and he did publish an article on the subject. he named the disease encephalitis with large cow which means literally the swelling of the brain that makes use the beets. at the same time the parisian dr. was published in the paper they were not able to discuss it or even come their cases they were on opposite sides of the

war which stunted the information spreading about this disease. it did not stop the disease however and it did move on to london with the troops from there and first they thought it was some kind of new chemical warfare used by the germans then it hit the one city in the united states from which all american troops were departing and arriving, new york. by 1919 this disease crossed the globe. what the doctors were finding when they did autopsies on the patient because at this point it's close to 40 or 50% of the patient's body and without ever waking. they found damage to the midsection of the brain, the part that controls sleep. they also started looking through medical history to find other epidemics that might have happened. nearly all of them were connected to a great flu pandemic and the had been occurring for hundreds of years. sleeping beauty was written shortly after, the series of sleeping sickness epidemic in england likewise rip van winkle was written shortly after a sleeping sickness in england and washington irving was living in

london at the time. the epidemic that began in 1916 is by far the longest epidemic that left the most tragic survivors and it is considered the worst in history. the disease went one of two ways and a patient called it because it was damaging specifically the basil dingley within the brain triet i will try to make this as simply as i can. basically it was acting as the switchboard with in the brain and so the message is going through we are becoming static. in the cases of adults and children they were having very different effects. in the adults the messages that were getting static and stunted or the messages about movement. and so the most prevalent disorder and what became the hallmark of the disease was parkinson's and parkinson's disease had been around for over 100 years and like today it was a disease associated with advancing decades and life. people usually caught it in their seventies, eighties, nineties. it became so prevalent at this

time with this epidemic that the average age of onset was 32-years-old. it continued to about 36-years-old during the late 1920's and then it took decades to once again be considered a disorder that was associated with advancing years. you may have heard of the book awakenings written by oliver sacks or seen the movie, robin williams actually plays him in the movie. and he encountered a group of these extreme parkinson's patients in the late 1960's. he was a young neurologist who never learned about this disease and he found them in a comic hospital. they were all appearing to be catatonic for the most part. they couldn't speak, they couldn't move, they were wheelchair-bound and what he found was looking for their medical histories they had all been survivors of the sleeping sickness 40 years before. so he decided that this was some kind of extreme form of parkinson's that have literally frozen their muscles. they could no longer move and

the breakthrough drug was also the, the same one commonly used today. he tested on the patient and it is a jury tragic he was able to awaken the patients, they awoke for the first time in 40 years and saw family members for the first time, this book, what, got to know the doctors and sadly they were not able to maintain the levels to keep them that way. each one of them ended up going back into this kind of frozen in prison and state. if that is not the worst, then certainly the case is with the children could be even crueler. the brain damage, the swelling in the children was also damaging the basal ganglia the messages that it was stunting were those to and from the frontal lobe, the frontal lobe in particular doesn't finish growing until our early twenties suffer the child in their brains were pluggable when it started swelling and the damage was different. the frontal lobe contras personality, the emotion,

inhibition and stopped short of the development in a love of those areas. for the children that parents described them as sweet normal children when they fell asleep and when they awoke they described them as monsters. they said that they had developed all kind of severe personality disorders. a number of them went violently insane and some attacked siblings. some tried to call their parents and some attack people on the streets so as a result most of them ended up being institutionalized as many as 70 per cent of children who have this disease have severe personality disorders. obviously when trying to decide how to write this book it plus a challenge to figure out how to cover the spectrum of so many bizarre and tragic symptoms so many of the patients had so what i ended up doing is bernanke into seven case studies, seven different patients you get to know personally and also the

doctors that in and out of all of these stories a group of neurologists that are the ones trying to track and understand this disease and eventually develop a vaccine for. so the story is about the positions and today we think of medical investigators. when you picture than you think of the cdc, bio safety levels and the medical investigators i wrote about in this book and my previous book or doing the same kind of research on disease that are just as lethal and dangerous. they did them in regular labs in a formal clothing and then they even tested the disease, they tested the vaccines on themselves and infected themselves with the disease at times. so they were very -- it was heroic bredesen for the doctors. the doctors in this story are like fred, a neurologist, noted neurologist the only neurologist ever treat helen keller. he was also trading the owner of "the new york times" for what were disorder.

there is also smith a psychoanalyst and friend of freud. they continued to correspond throughout this time and he was treating some of the most famous patience and new york including mabel dodge and members of the algonquin roundtable and even treating the mayor's mistress who would arrive in the limo once a week. and it was also the story of josephine, she was a victory urologist, vaccine researcher. she also was a public health official at the time 15% of the medical students were women. and this is a fascinating time in studies win a world war i started they were still wearing the leather helmets amazingly enough. by the end of the war the switch to steal but nonetheless there was a lot of brain damage done both physical brain damage giving irreligious a chance to understand mapping the brain better and damage to the psyche helping pave the way for psychiatry. it was the beginning of zero

surgery. the first generation of neurosurgeons at the have no one to train than they were trained by general surgeons because there was no one who could teach them and there was an interesting anecdote i found from one of the surgeons in new york he would travel from hospital to hospital carrying his medical bag of instruments and he was at bellevue performing surgery on a patient, on a woman who was awake in the middle of the surgery and halfway through she stopped, she was from the south and she said do you mind if i light a cigarette and all the doctors looked and shrugged and said to go, go ahead. that's fine. fortunately sanitation has come a long way since then in the hospital. [laughter] one other thing i found fascinating about this time was that the brain study combined with the brain and mind. these doctors were referred to as zero psychologists. that would change. now we know the brain is considered the realm of the urology and the mind is within

the domain of psychiatry. and then this was also a chance for american medicine. the lake. coming before world war i medicine haven't been highly respected for regarded. most american doctors went over to berlin, vienna, paris or london to study medicine further but world war i factor all of europe and had crippled all of their medical research so american medicine and these doctors in new york in particular saw this as a great opportunity to make new york the neurological center of the world. they have an enormous psychiatric institute side the new york neurological institute built at the same time to the it was incredibly impressive and state of the art. part of what made that possible was one of the case studies i follow in this book. it was jpmorgan's wife who contracted the sleeping sickness and died of it and jack was so distraught he donated an entire floor of the neurological institute for the study of this vaccine. there was so choked involved in this disease there was hope for

the doctors and vaccine research if they could develop a vaccine for this than it is medical immortality. there was a lot of hope associated with new york that really helped position itself as a neurological center so much hope among the patients these patients had a very dark future ahead of them. this disease became a sort of to headed beast because when it started it was the acute case is more like my grandmother people who became sick with a fever and infection. they fell asleep on the encephalitis did damage and they might awaken healthy enough for believe they had survived this and then over the years or even decades later distorted to develop the physical facilities, the parkinson's said in and they could see it happening and slowly feel themselves starting to freeze up so there was a lot of hope among the patient that during the 1930's if they could develop this vaccine that they may return to a normal life. unfortunately this hope is not materialized it is one of

medicine's failures we are never able to do a lot of vaccine. they were never even able to establish what was causing this epidemic. and so i was really interested and wanted to know how this got lost to history over nine dozen articles were written on the time of the epidemic. it affected 5 million people worldwide and clear the anyone who had the disease one to someone who had the disease the effect of it would haunting and it left all of these people in institutions for decades. one reason i think it may have been forgotten is it is a failure and medicine does not tend to immortalize its failure. i also think it was the time per go in which it happened. it was the 1920's, the greatest technological lead vance said that america and the world had ever seen and one generation which had gone from horses and carriages to cars, skyscrapers, airplanes, people in their homes turn on a switch for light and a faucet for water. the radio was in fort use, telephones were in every household, appliances and within

medicine we had discovered viruses, bacteria, vaccines for developing and as we know 1929 hit and there was a stock market crash, drought and an unprecedented economic depression that followed. so i think what may have happened to this epidemic is this simply got lost in the brightness of one decade and the darkness of the next. the last case study in this book is a little boy named philippe. he was an english patient who went into the hospital after a case of an infection he had a fever of some kind. his parents to come to the hospital in the 1920's. he was still there 70 years later and they believe philip was the last survivor from this epidemic. he died in 2004 and his family donated his brain to science in hopes that they could finally figured out something with this disease and prevent it in the future. it is a medical mystery that has never been solved. there are still cases today.

it occurs sporadically throughout the world and more than people realize because it's not taught routinely in medical school. doctors are not taught how to diagnose or recognize it. it has a disparate set of symptoms it's very hard to pinpoint a particular diagnosis so that makes all the more frightening. they have two theories what may have caused it. it did have been connected to the flu which would make a lot of sense. histories largest sleeping sickness epidemic following the largest flu epidemic and throughout history these hundreds of years before the flu epidemics seem to be followed by cases with neurological complications and personality disorders. it is also eckert of doctors even since i published the book that came out they work here in memphis at st. jude and they are studying the connection between this disease and the flu. manly flew researchers and their interest wasn't so much in the

2009 h1n1 which as you know is the swine flu. their concern is the one before that, h5n1, ev and flu, it is very very -- journal went. so many people who focused on the h5n1 looked at the high death rate. this group of doctors is focusing on what happened to the patient survived it and finding a lot of these patients that did survive with the flu or defaulting personality disorders, near a logical competitions and parkinson's so they believe there could be a strong connection between the jury went flu strain and encephalitis lethargic. they also believe this is an immune response. if that is a case then flew fire risk affect someone and then with the individual. a certain group of people in society would start to overreact. their immune system would overreact compared to other people and that would make it appear as an epidemic because

this wasn't a contagious disease it was shadowing infectious diseases. another group of doctors is working on a similar fate. i spoke with this doctor. he's in australia now but i think that he additionally started his work in england and believes it is associated with the strep bacteria. there has been talk about a similar condition like that today. and he thinks the brain cells as he expanded brain cells are similar in their appearance to bacteria cells especially this strep a. he believes it is mistaken identity and a case the body's immune system starts attacking the brain cells instead. eight really to complicate it even further we also know that most people who die during the 1918 flu died of bacterial pneumonia, not the flu virus and the most common bacterial is also strep a. so really both sides of this argument have a very valid

compelling research. they just don't have any answers and the concern is certainly if there is another pandemic or three went strain we could see this happen once again. tonight i'm going to just in bohm this last point that throughout history we continue to see the sleeping sickness mysterious epidemics that are right in the 1600's was 1700's, surprised the contemporaries in 1916. it supplies to doctors through twenties and then surprised oliver sacks in the 1960's and it begs the question that if and when we see this disease again are we going to be as unprepared and be wilder says those who came before. i would be happy to answer questions now for anyone who has them. thank you. yes. >> what is the status of the vaccine [inaudible] >> that was not to leave the

aldopa treatment. they do have the aldopa treatments today. if there is a 70 cents encephalitis lethargica a try the aldopa and also steroids to see if they can slow the immune response. the vaccine they were never successful with. detroit a couple of different but to real and viable vaccines and they were never able to get them to wor also i mean the studies were stopped short. they lost their funding during the depression. >> have you uncovered any relationship between this disease because forces were used greatly during the first world war and some in the second world war. [inaudible] >> and other researchers looking about as well, the encephalitis and at the and several items that came shortly after this in

the 30's. i don't know if there was a connection between the equine encephalitis and world war i and this one but i do know that encephalitis lethargic of their passing it to animals and medical research they took human blood and passed through an animal and were able to produce different types of encephalitis so there could be a connection. >> [inaudible] >> its vital? i didn't realize that so it's more like the insect born with quest mile. >> it's carried by mosquitoes. >> someone was asking me on a radio interview the other day to read i'm not aware of other cases of encephalitis like this one where they think it is purely immune response to infectious diseases. the most common are like we are talking about, fire will, by various insects, mosquitoes, west mile. that is also the case with japanese encephalitis and st. louis encephalitis i mentioned. i should clarify this is not in any way connected to the sleeping sickness in africa. that is another question again.

that was spread by a parasite. this doesn't seem to be spread by anything other than another disease. any other questions? >> what kind of research is going on today? >> for this, not a lot to read the seem to be doing more of the research in england. i think they were hard hit by this epidemic as was the u.s.. most major cities in the u.s. had seen sleeping sickness but they've been following it there. that is where most of the researchers the studies i were reading came out of england. there are some here to read a lot of researchers overlap with the 1918 flu studies. some of the researchers at work will get the archive to brain tissue from the 1918 fluke have been looking for encephalitis evidence in those patients server has been cross over in america and in these studies in england.

>> where are the epicenters of the primary source material? >> i was surprised when i started researching to find there wasn't a book anywhere on the subject to recall oliver sacks awakening was the closest i found so most of my free search was under a plea in new york since i had planned to set the book most of the book set in new york. i mean we dealt with the original medical records, so it was both fascinating and sat in that respect. the new york academy medicine and columbia health science library books contained just boxes of medical records and at that time the doctors kept a lot more extensive and personal information about patients which enabled me to develop these as real people and characters because there was so much information and most of the medical cases. but then again a lot of the files were destroyed. i would like to have seen more but when the decentralized a lot of the institutions in the 70's they destroyed a lot of the medical files.

other questions? anyone else? okay. thank you. [applause] >> mary caldwell crosby is the author of the american plague di on told for story of a yellow fever the epidemic shaped history. her writing. several publications including usa today, "newsweek" and health magazine. davis-kidd booksellers in memphis tennessee hosted this half-hour evened. for more information, visit daviskidd.com.

what is it like to write a book with a supreme court justice? >> festival is an honor that we had quite a few debates as we went along. the reason we wrote the book together is we have a very similar philosophy of writing and advocacy but when we got into the book we had disagreements, so there are debates in the middle of the book which are kind of fun. we've just done the audio book that we've read in october back-and-forth. he would read a section, i would read a section that the sections in which we had disputes we would have our arguments back-and-forth and so it was a lot of fun working with him. i would say justice scalia is not at all the way that the public perceives him to be. in my view he was surprisingly

humble to work with and he acquiesced a good bit of the time when we disagree. >> how did you get hooked up with him? >> originally i was interviewing all of the supreme court justices on their views of advocacy and writing and i have written a number of books on the subject. so, i invite him to collaborate with me and he accepted. it is as simple as that. >> where are you from and do you teach also? >> i do teach around the country. i have a company called small pros and we do continuing education seminars for the lawyers around the country. i teach at law school as well. but mostly what i do is teaching on the road teaching lawyers. >> so if a lehman picks up this book, making your case, what are they going to learn? >> you're going to learn how to persuade, how to speak credibly

and how to write credibly. in fact there have been business people already writing reviews of the book about how to make them, help them make better business presentations, and how anyone in any kind of argument can at least be sure that he or she has a cogent a logical argument. that is what the book is about. >> bryan garner along with justice scalia making your case, the art of persuading judges. karl rose, senior adviser to george w. bush and fox news contributor talks about his memoir courage and consequence and takes questions from booktv viewers. this program lasts about one hour. >> karl rove encourage and consequence you write about the fact that