i'd like to provide some historical background for the performance you adjust salt and talk about the advance of 1999, 2011 here on the lower east side. you know, those years as the performance so suggested those years were a crucible change and also tragedy with the strike,

and also of course the triangle shirtwaist fire of 1911. why don't i back up a little bit and come up to it though, just to sort of set the stage a little bit. you know, my book and labor organizing in industrial america of both begin with a large group of women back in massachusetts about the 1830's and 1840's. that is where you had the introduction, first introduction of large textile mills and, you know, the founders of america, jefferson, hamilton were very tentative about introducing industry into america. they weren't sure it would be a good fit. basically an agricultural country, and the a symbol of industry and europe and england hadn't been a very pleasant one. people live in slums, working and living under miserable conditions. so a lot of leaders in america were unsure whether they would encourage it and when they did

they set up what they thought was kind of a model example of how it could be done. they called it the lowel miracle and was basically to have a kind of benign paternalism safeguard these young women workers who come off the farms and so is the first opportunity to work for wages and it's exciting for them. there was a system of boarding houses with the than mothers to kind of guard of the morality of the workers lectors featuring people like ralph waldo emerson said it was an atmosphere up there and people came from all over the world to see it because it was amazing. charles dickens, president andrew jackson, beebee crockett came from down south. it was considered that much of an unusual turn of events that you could have industry in sort of a pleasant atmosphere the workers would be well treated and yet the industry would be profitable and such, which it was. that lasted for about a generation before the women workers began to sort of reason

to the conditions under which they were forced to work. the amplified their feelings in a journal they themselves created called the offering which is the first magazine published and written by women in america. in the offering itself of course had been agreed advertisement for the lowel merkel to show that the workers are so enlightened and happy and huff so much time they can produce this literary journal, but of course it turned to be a bit of a facade and the workers began to complain. they were being made to work 12 and 49 were days of these power looms. the air was filled with cotton dust and very uncomfortable, so they began -- they didn't use the word strike the said turnout, they would literally turn out of the factory, marched down to the town common, and because at that time in the 1830's, 1840's, it was not really calling for the women to speak in public at all, and so when the women strikers would come into the town and get up on a fountain or whatever and search making a speech

denouncing the owners of factories you can imagine the kind of reverberation is set off. it is big news. so that was really kind of in a way that was the antecedent to the what happens here in new york in 1909, 1910, 1911. he also had on the way to get here of course a number of other shocks to american society from of labor in the to 77, you know, after the civil war there was a huge buildup of the nation's rail network and it was kind of the private america that the golden spike in 1869, the nationwide network of railroads were an incredible thing. however, the workers on the railroad were mistreated, poorly paid, safety measures were really haphazard. it was felt that if you have all of your fingers and work on the railroad you probably were being lazy and for and pitching in and so there was a kind of a spontaneous strike in the summer of 1877. it was remarkable it was an

organized by anybody but just broken out in west virginia, pittsburgh, eventually in chicago, and it was a great deal of violence and destruction and essentially what happened is the workers shut down the nation's railroad and this was an amazing moment for both capital and labour because both realized that yes, you can have this national rail network and be proud of it, but the workers are capable completely stopping it. it is the beautiful thing of the real or from the union point of view is if you stop one hovel or part of it you can bring the whole thing to a halt. so, that was a moment of clarity for america because everybody's all that this was the situation of labor, industrial relations were something that probably needed greater attention. again, this happened a lot of decades later in chicago at the market right of 1886 which was about the eight hour day. now the eight hour day was a very compelling argument belabored made basically saying

we want to be good citizens. we want to go to church, we want to be consumers so we can have time to buy the goods we created. so arguing for the day was very sound. even the anarchists of chicago came to embrace it. but of course, it led to the famous infamous haymarket riot of 1886 in which several policemen were killed by a bomb thrown by whoever, it was never really shown who had done it. but a lot of anarchists were rounded up, eight of them were put on trial and four were eventually executed. the trial that led to the execution has always been kind of a dark stain on american jurisprudence. they were basically convicted just based on the words of anarchist craters that appeared in publications. there was no physical evidence, so the haymarket also kind of a depressing moment as labor tried to move forward because it sort of an aroused the eye of america toward radicals and to see again that is very much a constant in

cattle resistance to labor in america is this idea of tainting of labor with reckless and, communism, bolshevik, whatever it is. 1892 of course the homestead strike also use all a tremendous violence between the pinkerton agency and workers that also kind of got a lot of attention nationwide against order focusing this problem on what can we do to make industrial labour relations more peaceable. the strike of 1984 which not only used the federal -- not only were the federal troops sent to the federal government used court injunctions to stymie the activity of labor unions which was considered sort of a not playing by the rules because they use the sherman antitrust act which has been designed against large corporations and the use that against labor unions, so by the time you come to 1909 the progressive movement in new york was eager to find

solutions to these kind of problems. they saw the people were living in slums, workers had very little recourse. in those days before social security, unemployment, the fdic, the worker's family was down and out it was really pretty serious, and so the muckrakers, other progressive workers, social scientists for kind of new on the scene felt that they wanted to take action to reconcile this. kind of overriding what to do with the large number of immigrants pouring into new york as well and the question of what role government what taking this. teddy roosevelt mediated a coal strike in 1902 of the request and what steps the government could take. now the needle trade, the garment district down in the lower east side were fairly abysmal will. my friend chris nelson asked me how hot was it in the sweat

shops? in the thing about sweatshops is the art about the temperature so much as with buckles wet labour which would be a way of subcontracting and down and down and down to contractors all the way down so it really is worth very little by the time it got to the seamstresses themselves in. and they put up with a lot of hard as conditions in terms of crowding. de -- work was a regular, there was no guarantee. there were lots of rules, you could be fined for tardiness or taking a smoke break and come destroying fabric, sexual harassment, so a lot of the uprising in the 20,000 was about was not just wages and hours but also about the basic workers' dignity that was the desire. one new thing about the strike that the opera a limited to was involved in people outside of the labor movement as there was

an organization called the women's trade union made up of upper-middle-class new york women who wanted to join women's labor issues with other issues such as suffrage, temperance and education. so they got involved and with the ideal gw you to help with the fund raising and the organizing for the strike they helped mass rallies and meetings amongst the parade. most importantly, they went down to the picket lines and also with female college students a cullom to witness what is happening to the young seamstresses' which is borrow because the companies have hired thugs to police the picket lines and there were a lot of very violent encounters and displayed in the hands of the labor costs because the newspapers which were critical of sleeper these are images they really couldn't ignore and couldn't help feel sympathetic with young teenage

women the assertive -- being beaten up to keep them off the sidewalks and you begin to see a kind of public opinion trending in the direction of the seamstresses and cord makers themselves. that particular strike ended in early 1910. it was somewhat successful and one union recognition and some of the shops but not all. it's part of the problem was the factories had successfully outsourced a lot of the work to other cities said they were not being terribly hurt by the strike as much as would have been these lawyer. the next year though it was called the greek revolt of 1910. in this instance you had another sort of progressive element coming which was called industrial democracy and one of the key people behind it was louis brandeis who was leader supreme court justice and he worked with a man named abraham lincoln who was in the

department store in boston which was known for its very progressive policies towards workers and had been for years, and these men believed that in something called scientific management, a social science from the idea that the labor industrial relations could be reasonably manage through what they call collective bargaining, a way of bringing labour and management together to work out in advance there would be no strikes, no work stoppages or breakout or picketing but rather these matters would be handled calmly without any confrontation, and so brandeis' came to new york and managed to work through with the various local government factories here and also with the cloak makers. it was a very elaborate to deliver the process that took many months. they couldn't agree on the full recognition of the iltwu. they came up with the preferential shop as opposed to

the close shop which would be a shop where the management with higher union workers. they would prefer them to any other workers as long as they were available, so that was kind of compromise language and overall this sort of melted was in nicoe -- but it was particles of peace and all of this was kind new deal and a way of democratizing of labor industrial relations and bringing to the constitution is essentially into labor management. the one kind of weak spot in the regime established by the protocol, however, this factory safety and workers' safety and this had always been in the preceding decade this had been a kind of bitter subject because of something called the bochner case. it was a supreme court case wachtler versus new york from 1905 joseph walker was a man who owned bakery in utica reformers

of new york passed the legislature called the bake shop act which limited the hours of workers could actually work in a bakery or the conditions in most bakeries were horrendous a lot of them intended in basements. there was no inspection at all of the health and sanitation and this not only endanger the workers but anyone who consumed these codes so the bait shop act had initially been very popular but the lock nurse successfully sued and won in the supreme court that basically saying the state legislature of new york had no business telling him how to operate his business or how to deal with his workers and there was a very crucial thing in the resistance to unions it's what they called liberty of contract in other words the idea that companies just like people have a certain rights and large companies dealing with even a single worker something called liberty contract that the to enjoy it and no one had the right to interfere with it. of course this is kind of

lopsided arrangement since a huge concentrated capital and industry versus working person it really was not a jury fair but the walk third decision froze the idea of government regulation of factories and stores and places of his kind again industry overall. so in this is where we come to the fire. the trial was when we build stands up by nyu the trading company had resisted all efforts of the unionization they provided both of the 1909 and the 1910 strikes so they also than their workers were working on a saturday afternoon like a lot of the other workers had the day off, they were working on march 25th, 1911, and a five-year broke out on the ninth floor of the factory. the occupied the ninth come eighth and tenth floors to a lot of you are familiar with the histories will have to go into it too much and it was a

horrendous fire and consuming the upper three floors very quickly. the memory of it is kind of haunting forever because of the image of the young women workers leaping from the top windows of the building. some on five-year into the street below and it really was a moment in labor history that kind of galvanized as you can imagine the outrage about this, the stubbornness of the managers to buy the we were acquitted. it turned out they had locked the doors, the stairway doors had been outside the remembered of safety violations that sort of tended to do the workers inside may themselves east cape >> caller: the but the public outrage over this brought about several huge mass public meetings and committee to go to albany and try to form a response is a. the woman charged with doing this was frances perkins was a young woman from new england and

of that time worked for the national consumers league. she went to albany and she had actually been president at try and landsea in the women jumping from the upper floors and didn't need any motivation. she went to albany and enlisted the help of the two young senators robert wagner and al smith. of course l. smith went on to be the governor of new york. robert widener turned out to be a senator in the roosevelt administration and of course the wagner act of 45 that guarantees bargaining which is part of his domingo and perkins was successful in creating something called the factories investigating commission new york state factory investigating commission which became a sort of template for such commissions around the country and they went all over new york state she and her they not only looked into the fire hazards but also they got into an area that was just beginning to see a decrease of attention which is what you

would call the toxic waste chemicals and gases produced in manufacturing process these called the dillinger straight. no one had looked into this much before and those kind of effects are often hard to spot because they can take years to develop frances perkins also put herself into trying to discover and reform along those lines as well so that period of 1909, 1911 eisel the emergence of the three developments. use all sort of a cross fertilization of the groups outside of labor like the women's trade union, coming on board and getting involved in helping publicize the strike and then use all louis brandeis and industrial democracy attempting to work out ways to actually kind of come to create contact between the waiver and industry

that would avoid conflict and then finally add more tragically of course the work of the factory investigating commission which finally got around to kind of setting the bar for the intensity or the depth of state involvement in governing workplace in terms of safety. so that in a way was a very positive few years despite the losses at the time in the factory it wasn't exactly the end of the labor strike as many of you know the years just after that they were open real labor war going on in west virginia, colorado, between the miners and mine operators and hired agents. if any of you have seen the movie will remember that and of course won a world war i came you eventually have a sort of crack down on a lot of what was deemed labor radicalism and they were pretty much crashed. various other, emma goldman was

deported, there was a lot of effort put into using kind of the new legislation of the first world war if the the government really go after a lot of people who are involved in the labor costs and have some sort of an immigrant background so a very chilling time for labor price of the circle was the ultimate record. some say it was a little bit of a precedent for the new deal. but i think you can almost say that about a lot of what went on from probably the 1870's and for what. they were often historians were not the same. the was the rehearsal for the new deal. there were baby steps forward and of course it took the onslaught of the depression itself. anyway why don't why stop there. i talked enough and it is always better to have questions and discussions. thank you very much. [applause]

can people just shanta out? they have to use the mine? -- mic, okay. >> hi, phil to read to questions. where is the building the training will start fires took place? >> it still stands. everybody probably knows it is on washington and green, okay. [inaudible] and i lost. >> under what circumstances could the owners of the triangle shirtwaist companies could have been equated? >> it was a very -- they had a very good lawyer basically, and what he did is convinced the jury that the young seamstresses who testified against him were to be emotional generally it probably specifically because they were fleeing a fire to be

relied upon as witnesses for what they had undergone which is to escape with their lives. you were acquitted of the jury decided well it was more like an act of god these things happen. it would be wrong to hold the factory owners that provide jobs for us all along those lines. it was a sad resolution because a lot of people were looking for these two men named harrison blank i think to go to jail. they had offended people's sensibilities by within days of the triangle fire they had reopened their business a few blocks away and sort of a temporary piquet right on going. >> if someone wants to repeat it i can repeat the question.

>> when collective bargaining became what was the response to that? it sounds like an is an avid mengin to do things this way. what was the response to that on the part of anarchists or marxist tendencies within the larger labor movement? >> the term collective bargaining actually came from to reformers in england. william and beatrice webb who were fabians'. i guess george was among the crowd. i'm not sure it came from management although it was something that was seen as a way management had begun after a lot of the disruptions of the late 19th centuries they had begun to look for ways also that they could maintain productivity and not go through these work stops. i think there was probably a lot of shading of reaction in other words the radical entities might

denounce collective bargaining to rhetorically but then in practice when they themselves were involved in the labor disputes might actually push toward something like that, so it's kind of hard to say because there is this gap between the rhetoric and real action. as you know it is very typical of anarchists in the communist party they would when i got down to the tax we would go in and serve as a labor union and deal with wages and hours. i do know that the american federation of labor disliked the idea of he was weary of the idea of this kind of regime of any kind of bargaining for the frederick taylor kind of influence scientific management of what workers should or should not do because of course of represented a kind of control and that is something you kind of see even after the new deal with some labor leaders who particularly even though labor there has always been this kind of neurosis' a little bit because even though labour sought government intrusion and

regimes and things that would govern the labor relations there also was sometimes a kind of nostalgia for just the freedom of not having it be bound by those things at all and just being able to strike when you want it to you don't have to be certified by the national relations board so it was a little bit of both i think people slowly though generally came around to view. >> i wonder what happened with the law will miracle. estimate it became like the nightmare a little bit after a while. you know, it became -- it sort of coal last the demand for what was a ten hour day. if we had exceeded the demand for the eight hour day, supposedly these petitions were collected oliver massachusetts

and they were taken to the state legislature. again, the legislature said this is not really our business. you have to deal with management. so that was a big disappointment for the workers. what happened is the sort of pride that made the lowell merkel work as these were native american girls basically who were working off the farm, very yankee and that was part of it and what eventually happened is those types of people stopped coming to work in the jobs began been taken by the mid-19th century so then it kind of lost a lot of what had been attracted. >> yes. >> the story you have told in the tragic file, and of women who work and i wonder in the history was it just a coincidence or in the history of

labor unions would it be the case the women labor forces were somehow [inaudible] >> if the fed is a very good question but the history of the garment industry and textile industry. we see that even today a broad. because the textile industry they can be brought up and prepared and made to go relatively cheaply. they don't need a whole lot of capital. a lot of the product is seasonal in nature and so that was true at lowell and new york that everything it's a very transient kind of business and so it's something that appeals to venture capitalists. why women get involved as it is low-paid. it's sort of like a skilled and for instance at lowell, the skills were those which the women were country women were to leave that they had a knack for

weaving and selling so it's kind of natural that they would fill the ranks of these large factories. and of course the same thing here and new york the seamstresses and the jobs were kind of exploitable largely as well and these were teenage women, jewish, italian, many of them barely spoke english. there were glad to have any job they could get. they were trying to get a foothold here and so that is why it appealed more to the women workers and the management also. for a lot of the people of union became like the iltwu of new york became like the first real part of america that they could identify with. identify with it much more than their jobs. but i think that you see even now in indonesia or wherever that a lot of these garment factories are worked by women and girls.

>> the customer is having to do with the role as activists fighting for economic or social justice or better conditions with that word es the vanguard of and vendor relations played out within the movement? >> in new york they certainly did because the 1910 strike was the male club makers in other words even the what was called the ladies garment workers union that had to do with the garments, not the workers. the male workers were also very, very militant and yes a large lead held in the 1909 strike did less so at lowell and in fact in the mid-19th century it was often at that time it was often thought that the women's wages were not willing to be taken seriously in terms of like a family with the man as the breadwinner and in case of any kind of labor strike it was the male worker whose job and whose salary needed to be safeguarded say you often deceive risks develop between the men and the

women strike situation because the men would want the women to follow their lead and to cooperate and sort of be team players and is in the massachusetts streak of 1860 what was so famous about that i didn't talk about that but the women said hell with that we want to set our own rates and a sort of broke off from the male-dominated union and when their own way. that also was a sort of precedent in a way of what happened in 1909. so i think it was a case by case basis. yes? >> was there any response to all of this to move this work to other regions such as the south would be less of this to occur? >> that is a good question whether the owners for a project had moved away and the answer is yes of course. hysterically the textile industry has moved and started in new england and moved into

upstate new york, pennsylvania. dimond unionized labor basically from there it has led down to piedmont of north carolina and virginia and from there it went further into the deep south, texas and then of course finally across-the-board altogether as we know into northern mexico. last i heard it was seen heading towards deep mexico to get away from the union organizing that's taken place now in northern mexico, so this kind of on the run. i think it's interesting because it shows that there is this kind of renewable universal principle that people, no matter how downtrodden and repressed and exploitable they might appear they will eventually begin to realize their collective might and unionize. but yes, you are absolutely right. >> this coming march it'll be 100 years since that time and will fire.

currently, so much is outsourced in factory and labor and women and in laos and cambodia but are you aware now in the area right around here that still exist much lower number perhaps such conditions, what changes have happened in 100 years? what protections exist? >> it's funny because about a year or two ago i saw a movie called made in l.a. which was about this very, norman los angeles and it was amazing to see the kind of sweat shop conditions existing in the present day los angeles. of course that was a movie about people resisting it but still there was a lot of footage of the scene. i don't know what to say. there is a lot to be -- you can be depressed about a lot in terms of not only what has happened here but abroad where as bad as things are in the inner city of america with this

kind of thing abroad you get into a whole different scale of human rights abuses, environmental abuse, this kind of thing and so it is even more vast problem and of course that labor is also low-wage, non-unionized. that is where the labor movement to can think of it into the large extent where it is right now it is a transitional period trying to become a -- jogging to keep up with the global nature of capital. it is behind the obviously. there have been in rhodes over the past ten years of love like and how sweatshop, the successful consumer boycotting of certain brand names to force for change, efforts to get world bodies of trade to put in place in forcible codes, but it is a long way to go. i think it will be another generation or so before you could speak confidently of it. this?

>> is it your relevant today? >> now it's part of unite. >> but it's not as forceful as it was 40 years ago. >> i think you might is still enacted with the needle trades and i don't follow them exactly. much of what i worked on the research had to do with the past so in terms of the present i'm not really in of doherty but as far as i know, united i think has a little less than 1 million members and are still active in what only the needle trade with other things as well as a sort of umbrella at the federation. and hotel workers is the right? okay. one more question. >> [inaudible] if you know a lot of questions. >> continuing even from your opening act on the women's dressing characters of the period is mother jones and how she sort of moves between the different wiltz like both mining

and textiles as an organizer opposed to we sort of mentioned a number of the women workers. i wonder if you can speak to that. >> yes, mother jones was a remarkable character. mostly we associate her with she was known as a miners angel and was a formidable. she, herself, was an irish immigrant. she lost her entire family to the yellow fever epidemic and lived through the strike of 1877 and the haymarket. there was something we didn't mention which was the army of '94 when people all around the country began to march on washington to demand really the kind of changes that would come at the new deal in terms of its job creation, unemployment insurance and so on. mother jones which can to the floor she led a group of people toward washington. i don't think they ever need it but after that she became involved in the miners struggles

and in west virginia in 1913 and later in colorado as well. i don't know that much about her involvement textiles although i know she was involved in the new york she got involved in the street car strikes that were periodic throughout the 20th century and often she was kind of known for her style was very strident and she would be little laborers and say you are not men if you don't get out there and fight and she would gather the miners' wives and tried them as well like what are you doing sitting here, you get out there as well and get arrested. she was actually responsible for causing a lot of the urban disorder getting people arrested kind of thing and was detested by the owners and the police. >> in your book there is power in a union emerges against the backdrop of the feel we know as

sleeper study. 40 years ago this field barely had been born in academia and even popular works of popular history like yours. do you remember what if anything you learned in high school and as an undergraduate about the fields about the topic you write about? >> i mentioned in the introduction to the but i sort of grew up with a standard of rendition of labor history which was flattering actually and it's one we all know the unions were good and fought for things we took for granted that were a valuable like reasonable hours of work, benefits, pensions, safety on the job, so on and so on. and that was always a recollection and it was for me it was more of a when i was a young adult life think when i began to work that i began to

realize the unions were not held in high esteem universally. so i think i had this to standard providing there was a labor scholarship as far as the 1920's there was a man named john comments who was one of the first historians and were 12 volume history of labor until that point. obviously that kind of scholarship reflects the year in which it is written it's become much more specialized and focusing on gender and different elements than it did at one time you could have just waited. >> yeah wanted to show off. [laughter] what was the most surprising thing you can cross when you are researching the book >> and all one of the afl-cio in forming blacktops during the cold war when they were so much -- the bald and -- in order to

sort of help relieve of the image of being a radical they themselves bought into the cold war mentality and to the extent they not only were policing the unions in america and expelling them occasionally to get involved abroad and they had working in latin america and europe and asia and they were involved in how things like the overthrow in chile in 1973, what happened in guatemala earlier and also in italy and france. they would try to get in and undermined the left-leaning unions and sort of instead push for the more mainstream federal agents. in doing so they were also licensing for legitimizing five real dictators right-wing characters of latin america so it wasn't a very savory -- i was very surprised if they hadn't known much about it and of course it still haunts us today because even now when an

american union says to the movement in the developing country to work with you and help you they are naturally suspicious because of this task. >> okay. thanks a lot for coming down. [applause] some of this event was hosted by the tenet museum of new york city. for more information about the museum and its event, visit wpm tenement.org. we are your the national press club talking about the book a secret gift. can you tell us what is the secret gift? >> the secret gift was made in the depths of the great depression in 1933 by an anonymous donor to 150 families and his identity remains unknown for 75 years. two years ago a suitcase was handed to me that contained hundreds of letters from that period and the identity of the secret to donor who was my

grandfather. >> can you tell about the gift? what was the donation? >> $5 to 150 families who had written to him and the last two years i tracked down their descendants to find out what the gift meant to them, did it affect their lives, did it change their fortunes, and so those of the book is about. >> thank you very much for your time. >> follow booktv on twitter. send us a tweet at book tv with your favorite book tv program from 2010. from now one till december 10th we will select one tweet per day at random to receive book tv swaggart and the program will be included in our holiday schedule over the december try for free 26 weekend we look forward to seeing your favorite booktv programs from the last year. thank you for watching.

>> secret historian has been nominated as a finalist for the national book award of the nonfiction category. the subtitle of this book is the life and times of samuel steward professor, tattoo artist and sexual renegade. the author is justin spring. that is quite a subtitle. who was samuel steward? >> it's quite a life, a secret life i brought to life for the first time. sam was a university professor who dropped of being an academic to become a tattoo artist in boston and later on a road the trail blazing hotel arabic pornography. >> how did you find this guy? >> i came across this treasure trove of boxes that had been put away after he died i knew i had an amazing life story and no one ever touched before. but in the life that together and presenting it in a biography. >> when did you first hear of him?

>> around 1987i came across the refrain of the erotic works that he had done that were published by a small press of san francisco. i was excited bobos works but i didn't know who had written them because there were published under a pseudonym, it took another 13 years to get the rest of the story. >> how many names did he do this during his lifetime? >> i think about 20. he was known as bill faeroe the tattoo artist and people who knew him socially knew him as phil, sam or samuel steward and then of course his porno name but he wrote in the 50's and 60's and each time he published an article which was under different names a part of putting their life back together was stitching together the different names and publications. >> when you took this book to a publisher and said i would like to publish a biography on this man, what was the response? >> the proposal was rejected by ten publishing houses and was only because a good friend of mine said try to sell it as a

magazine article 1 may be a publisher will nibble i went to town to "vanity fair," get sent to the new yorker and ended up after a whole bunch of tap dancing i was able to catch the ear of the president of the publishing house and he said yeah, let's do it. >> wind samuel steward live? and he was born 1909 and lived until 1993 so he lived a long life and one of the things i do in telling his story is to chart the progress of what we now call a gay awareness over the course of many, many decades during the 20th century. >> as you well known today in the gay community? >> no, but now that this book is coming out, he is known more and more. among the people who care about things like the history of pornography or of sex research or the history of gay literary publishing he is known but it is only a small handful of people. this book brings it out to a much wider audience. >> and what was his relationship with albert kinsey? >> keen at albert kinsey in late 1950. he became an informal associate

of the institute for sex research connecting kinsey to a lot of source material and also donating fast amounts of his own archive because sam was a sexual record keeper in the record keeper about sexuality in general. so he gave lots and lots of material to the kinsey archives. >> what he's -- was yet in his lifetime? >> he had to live as a closet man as an academic professors. but as late 30's he found that more and more difficult, so rather than not to be out, decided to leave that. >> justin st, his newest book, secret his story in the life and times of samuel steward, professor, tattoo artist and sexual renegade, a finalist for the national book award of boo nonfiction category.k, cover de did axe has covered several different wars and was a free lancer who worked for t c-span and in iraq and ve y afghanistan. david axe, where else have youw?

worked? >> lebanon, chad, somalia, congo, off the somali coast.fora i might be forgiven if you -- nicaragua -- there. >> host: that doesn't sound boring. >> guest: right. the title's meant to be somewhat ironic but not entirely. war, the modern experience of war, low intensity warfare is a lot of sitting around. it's 99% waiting and tedium and bore dumb punctuated by 1% of sheer terror. i think that describes the experience of the typical soldier, but it's the same for reporters, too, between the red tape and the logistic and the distances you have to travel, the logistics of being a reporter, arranging interviews and negotiating languages and cultural differences. you spend a lot of time weeding and maneuvering for the golden nuggets of excitement or the tiny little gems of a good

story. >> host: and this is done much like, as a comic book -- >> guest: right. >> host: in a sense, a nonfiction comic book, and you write, i love how war made you appreciate the little things. you said coming home was like popping ec that si. what do you mean by that? >> guest: i've actually never done ecstasy, but i imagine it feels ecstatic. you spend time roaming around a place like somalia or chad, and it puts into perspective, i don't know, what we have here in the united states and what we call problems. so one reason i enjoy my job as a freelance war correspondent, or enjoy's not the right word, one of the reasons i find it fulfilling is it contextualizes the rest of my life. and i've come away from my work as appreciating being an american more than before i did this kind of thing.

>> host: when you read your book, it doesn't sound like you could stay in the states very long before you had to go back. >> guest: well, that's the irony. when you need that contrast between home life and life in some conflict zone in order to appreciate the home life, and you have to keep going back to the conflict zone in order to keep that and to maintain that contrast so that you can, i don't know, that's the only way i can find peace and satisfaction was to move between these two extremes. the one made the other make sense. >> host: david axe, what work did you do for c-span? this. >> guest: i shot video and have done voiceover and studio interviews from and about the iraq war and the afghanistan war, piracy, the conflict in central africa or conflicts in central africa, and that might be all. i think so, yeah. >> host: ptsd? this. >> guest: myself? not formally diagnosed.

i had a rather hairy experience in chad in the summer of 2008 and came home feeling not quite like myself. and managed to, you know, through the help of family and good friends and a lot of beer managed to right myself, i guess. i don't think that the trauma i've experienced compares to what an american soldier who spends 15 months on deployment in afghanistan or iraq, my experiences don't compare to that, but sure, sure, i've had some stress. >> host: we're going to put the numbers up on the screen in case you would like to talk with david axe about how journalists cover war and how it effected them. these are pictures here, these are drawings of when david axe went home to detroit. and what i noted on these is that you slept in quite late every morning, and you didn't look like you were terribly thrilled about anything. >> guest: you mentioned ptsd.

probably the worst i've had was in 2008. prior to that i was in somalia in late 2007 and also a very difficult place to work. and came away from that, i don't know, with a rather bleak outlook and crashed, i guess you could say. i needed, i needed some time. and i took that by moving back home, you know? a 30-year-old man moving back home with mom and dad, and i did nothing for as long as i could stand it. and i think had i not done that, things would have been a lot worse. so, yeah, i slept in. played video games. [laughter] >> host: what were some of the worst experiences you had? this. >> guest: i was briefly kidnapped twice in chad. actually not covered in the book. hinted at at the very end of the book. in somalia i spent some time in the after guy ya refugee camp with, among -- surrounded by one of the world's worst humanitarian crises, made

friends with somali reporters some of whom have since been seriously hurt or killed. that has been very trying. iraq and afghanistan there is always those bursts of extreme violence that rattle you. i think in the balance, though, somalia and chad have been my, the most difficult places to cover. personally and professionally. >> host: how did you get started in this line of work? >> guest: in 2004 and 2005 i was, i was a full-time political reporter in columbia, south carolina, for the local free times newspaper. and if war is boring, then peace is way worse. and it was driving me nuts sitting in on county council meetings and things like ordinances. so i had an opportunity to embed with the national guard in early 2005, took it, realized not only could i enjoy it, but i could do it. so i quit my job and began

freelancing from conflict zones full time. >> host: 202 is the area code, 585-3885 in the east and central time zones, 585-3886 for those of you in the mountain and pacific time zones. where was the last place you've been? >> guest: i just got back from congo, and the artist on "war is boring," matt, he and i are going to collaborate on an entire graphic novel -- >> host: novel? >> guest: right. well, it's nonfiction, a nonfiction comic book about congress go. >> host: why? >> guest: congo's probably the worst war that most americans don't know anything about. no one is exactly sure about the numbers, but in the past 15 years at least 700,000 people have died in several overlapping conflicts. it's a gigantic country, lots of problems, and a country that really matters to the developed world. leaving aside humanitarian issues which, of course, matter on their own, congo's the source

of horse -- most of the earth's rare minerals. without congo, we wouldn't have this high-tech society that we have. so conflict in congo should matter a lot more to americans than it does. we want to draw some attention to that. >> host: in iraq and in afghanistan, were you embedded with the military? what was your experience working with the military? >> >> guest: i've had really good experiences, i've had really bad experiences. the u.s. military is a vast organization, and everything sort of turns over every three years so it's a different cast of characters. once i inadvertently reported on a secret technology in iraq and was detained and then booted out of the country by a very irate u.s. army. that was probably the low point, but there have been high points as well. i've witnessed incredible bravery and sacrifice even on my behalf by soldiers in iraq and afghanistan. >> host: how did you find that

secret technology? the u.s. army, and i was working as a freelancer for wired at the time. i said to this lieutenant, what's that? and he said, oh, that's a blah, blah, blah, and i said, oh, that's interesting, tell me more. so i was taking notes on this bit of technology, lo and behold, it was classified. i didn't think that, apparently the lieutenant didn't know that and, yeah, it got bad real fast. [laughter] >> host: david axe is our guest, "war is boring" is the book. fredericks burg, virginia, you're on the air. please go ahead. >> caller: hi, mr. axe. you commented on it -- >> host: fredericks berg, you with us? >> caller: yes, i'm here, can you hear me? >> host: yes, go ahead. >> caller: i wish you could expand a little bit, i've always been interested in how the unique military cultures of the marines, the army, and the special operating forces, what differences you may have seen in the fact that there's three

branches that are doing this kind of work. >> guest: i don't really have special forces, but i have worked with the marines and the army, the air force and the navy and even the coast guard. i guess it's cliche, but honestly working with the marines is the best experience. there's a kind of culture of accountability and sacrifice in the marine corps that, while present in the other branches, is amplified in the marines. i guess they're able to hone that in a better way than with a vast organization like the u.s. army. so the marines have always taken really, really good care of me, and i'm grateful for that. >> host: emporia, virginia, you're on with david axe. >> caller: good afternoon. my question was, basically, being a war correspondent do you have to go through any specialized training at all to be in conflict zones? >> guest: no, i didn't. in the beginning of the iraq war, the pentagon rounded up

some reporters and put them through a reporters' boot camp in anticipation of the invasion and having embedded reporters. but once the embed program had sort of found its footing -- because i didn't embed for the first time until early 2005 -- by then they weren't doing those boot camps. and i found that the military was, by that point, experienced enough in handling reporters that they were able to just accommodate me in the conflict zone and point out what i should and shouldn't do without putting me through a formal training program. >> host: who was or who is ahmed zia in afghanistan? >> guest: he's one of my fixers. as a reporter working in a conflict zone, you utterly rely on your local fixers to drive you around, to keep you safe, to interpret, and he was one of my better afghan fixers. there are good ones and there are bad ones. the bad ones will squeeze you for cash, the good ones will save your life. >> host: how do you find them? >> guest: networking. i find other reporters who have

done similar work and get referrals and check out these people, cross-reference and then cross my fingers. >> host: you start to tell a rather homophobic joke with ahmed. >> guest: well, that's afghan culture for you. [laughter] >> host: you write that you came back from afghanistan with, basically, a low-grade anger. why? >> guest: i came back from afghanistan the first time in the summer of 2007, so by then i'd been covering primarily american-led wars for nearly three years. and it was frustrating to come home to a society that didn't seem to realize it was at war. certainly, soldiers and airmen and marines, sailers deployed overseas, they know they're at war. reporters who cover the conflict, we know we're at war. our elected leaders probably sense that we're at war. but it's easy to get the feeling when you're just walking around small town america or in many detroit or d.c., wherever, a lot of americas don't seem affected

by these conflicts. i'm not sure who's to blame for that, but it's not healthy. >> host: "war is boring," is the book. cold spring, texas, please go ahead. >> caller: yes. i personally experienced post traumatic stress syndrome after my husband was district attorney in an eastern county, and what i found was i could not sleep for months and months and months, and i was just wondering since he refers to having post traumatic stress syndrome, did he have insomnia? ..

at night and have no idea where i was, and that is probably the most terrifying in psychological the fact that i suffered. so it would spring out of bed at 3:00 in the morning of utter darkness at columbia, carolina and the in sprinting around my apartment running into things because i had no idea where all i was three that i think myted o drain has enacted to do any kin of pork and i don't suffer this kind of things anymore.. >> you know, they have somee really good pasto in mogadishu, you quote yourself as sayingexpr parents face is rather priceless provided you include that? >> guest: i came home from somalia in late 2007 and crashed moved in with my parents. i think they at first struggle to understand what it was i was dealing with. the memories, the experiences, the disillusionment