their people. so i'm very deeply worried about it, and it's something -- another thing that i hope president obama will be very steering on and supporting the global warming issue and put into effect some way to reduce our unnecessary production of carbon dioxide and stuff that goes into the air. >> host: well, i enjoyed speaking to you. you've got "white house diary" out now which has hit the bestseller's list and it has done incredibly well. are you planning on writing another book or are you working on one now? >> guest: my next book is going to be in 2011. it is a collection of my bible lessons. i teach sunday school in my church every sunday i am home, about 35, 40 times a year and all of them are recorded. and the biggest religious book published i think in the world

and i signed a contract. and so they have got an editor to take 365 of my recorded sunday school lessons and reduce them down to one page each and that will be my next book. it will be out next fall of 2011. >> host: look forward to it. 2rry christmas to you, b v0v mr. president. >> guest: thank you very much. ..

the first time that i met simon winchester was about 12 years ago in 1898. and he had come here to speak about his book, the professor in the not then -- [applause] a book about the making of the oxford english dictionary. i will tell you i was just so bowled over by this need to his tories. i don't know if there's anybody who is a natural born storyteller, it is simon. and so, i was just determined not to that that we would have sent it back for every boat, so he could tell us the stories behind every boat. and so, this is the seventh time that you've come. and so, i hope that we can have a lifetime of your telling stories. simon studied geology at oxford

and you could certainly see this in his new book. first of all, he feels the atlantic auction is so a life that qualifies to have the biography written of it. he says it in life, capricious and wonderful waterways, when -- water and waves and winds of animals and birds, the ships that man. and further, this is a quote from simon, of all the oceans of the world, he says, the atlantic is the greatest concentration of marker to in human history. if that seems unarguable, the mediterranean could once barely said two of me and what he classical civilization that

shorted the atlantic ocean by virtue of this huge concentration of ideas, events, inventions and developments has the common unarguably i'm also that in the modern verbalization no other ocean comes close to filling this role, which is why the atlantic races head and shoulders above all it's taller, prettier and palmer maritime cousins. so here is simon to give a similar stories about what is going on at the atlantic. simon, i hope you'll talk about the time you were stranded on the short -- [inaudible] [applause]

>> well, thank you very much indeed. it is wonderful to be back here. i live you know of course of carlos passing and i'm really sorry. all of the writers that come here we go this that we miss it terribly. [applause] about five or six years ago, i was driving in chile. the story begins in the pacific ocean. i was driving on the road in southern chile to the torah stovepipe national part in their two or more at their word they

are. but rough gravel road with very few habitations and it's not a very pleasant road to drive on. and it was fairly late in the evening and the serious rainstorm on that dreadful night. and i needed hotel because clearly wasn't going to progress much further to the north. and they weren't any like that. ice on the left-hand inside a wooden sign that said costa rica del rio, which didn't sound terribly promising. so i turned left and sometimes even more dreadful road. eventually us confront it by this huge space with one or two lights burning. i'm not in the door and was

greeted by the functionary. he said yes, we are indeed a hotel. we have had cats for about six months, but we're more than happy if you come and stay the night. he told me a little at the history which indeed had been built by a scotsman inserted a sheep farm in the 1860s. and it was now -- i was going to say lummus, but the cousin of llamas. indeed they would cook one for me for dinner. i found it very agreeable. that's when indeed they made for me. it was a totally nice evening. as sally king of the world. it was great. and then afterwards -- this does have a point. they showed me to the library,

it lit the fire and there's a bustle of whiskey and confronted by this enormous selection of books, most of which were in the english language. in the end they select one but it must've taken down from the shelf and started reading it and i was so fascinated by this story a red that when i finish the book, the sun was coming out. it was one of those books that completely captivated me. he was the book that prompted, galvanized me into action to write this book about the atlantic ocean, which was somewhat ironic. actually this book was boring sort of intellectually without coming to pretentious in the pacific because i written a book about 20 years ago when i was living in hong kong about the pacific ocean.

everyone told me in hong kong at the pacific would be the oceans of future, and it was kind of too late and i said okay, and i decided to write a book about it. i spent a lot of time traveling from capture to chile and a straley had to alaska and crisscrossing the ocean going to lots of violence in between. i read the book which was a fairly secure failure, which i read about america in the 1970s, which sold only 12 copies. it wasn't quite as bad as that, but it was pretty bad. and the reason i rank was that it might well have been true to say that the pacific was the ocean of the future. but what it clearly wasn't was the notion of the past. it had very little human history in it. and yes, there is the politician

navigation. but generally speaking, it was nothing compared to the great richness as you mentioned at the mediterranean and then at the atlantic. so with that idea at the back of my mind, galvanized by this book that i read in chile, that i'll call about later. i will tell you about the book towards him at this little chat. i decided what i done in the 1980s of hong kong with a chosen the wrong potion to write about. so simply fetches the right ocean it would be a bigger chance of making a book that was a lot more readable. and so, as you mentioned, i decided to write it as a biography all because it has a definable birth. we know when it came into being, which was about 200 billion years ago when pangaea come in discrete goober continent that dominated the world, surrounded by this seat called him closer

and broken half essentially in the water cascaded into the middle and that was the beginning of the atlantic ocean and it didn't really send this sort of s-shaped configuration that it has today until about 50 million years ago. but nonetheless, that's its origin. at first can be written about geologically and is likely to have, which we know it's going to cease to be, which is in about 170 million years. this clearly can't school of geologists in texas, who are very clever people who do a lot of mathematical modeling to predict how continents are going to move in the future. and i linger on it, but basically what's going to happen they think is that cape horn, in patagonia that we were just talking about will move east words on the bottom end and will

pass out the south africa and then we'll continue moving eastward until it gets to south australia or in tasmania and we'll sort it and adjust really a to start itself moving anti-clockwise and cape horn will start for the north words and then eventually collide with singapore. it sounds ridiculous, but when cape horn collides with singapore in 170 million years time, then all of the works that will then squeezed out at the atlantic today will go somewhere else, but the atlantic will cease to be. of course because i was saying that human kind will no longer be anywhere near it. i mention this only because -- i might've mentioned this to before in a previous occasion, but i was once talking -- the concept of geological time is sometimes difficult for people to grasp. i was talking to a group of

ladies in kansas city once about the likely volcanic corruption in yellowstone national park, which will be a fairly titanic event. i said when the volcano is finally about in yellowstone, all of the great cities of northwestern united states makes seattle and portland and probably san francisco, certainly vancouver will be buried under hundreds of feet of ash. i said it will be in a stern critic of veneers by which humankind will be totally extinct. and everyone sort of was relieved. except for this woman in the front row, who cut sort of red-faced and she said even americans will be extinct? [laughter] but anyway, so we are certainly been extinct in 170 million. so it's got a life span -- total lifespan about 450 years.

more of us in the middle of that period. where we are now there's a very slim and geological terms. time of 200,000 years for human kind and haven't see shuts the period i really concentrate on because that's where the richness of the story comes from. the way i decided to organize that to try to corral all these events into some order, was given to me, a shakespeare man who was unaware of the atlantic existence. but nonetheless, i had read while crossing the atlantic, in an airplane, a copy of a briton anthology compiled with poetry is organized according to siddiqui of the title of that

country. as you remember from school, when ace buchanan versus arms, to a schoolboy, lover, soldier, justice, the old man and return to childhood. and it seemed to me that that would provide a framework into which i could corral as much of what i could find out about the atlantic into it. it seems as far in its early days but all of the criticism is and it but thus far no one has for a very useful structure. i thought i would do because i know there's a time limit and barbara is very fearful talking about superior language keep it relatively short. the most going to have enough sellout three to illustrate just the tip of the iceberg, the kind

of things i discovered when i was doing the research, which was buried somewhere in the book until you a tiny bit about the book i read in chile and why it's important. the three that i select it, one is sort of ludicrous. one is by no but generally speaking little-known. and the third one is completely ridiculous. last night so as you'll see, the first one was when i came across in the north atlantic. that was the faroe islands. the faroe islands as a group of 18 islands between shetland in iceland and the high latitude a foggy, rainy, quite cold, we

flourish in places like that. it has over to denmark. it's essentially with the vikings spoke were very similar to what we believe the vikings spoke. good reputation and the vikings strong and pillaging all the time. and unfortunately no one is were. their 50,000 very reason that men are big strapping chaps. no one to fight. so they are absolutely bursting with a super abundance of testosterone and clearly need to get it out in ways you can't imagine. when i'm going to describe to you as one those ways. you don't mind, it's not dirty. [laughter] the islands -- there are eight tina brown and they are native

battles. and they've been tilted from west to east, such that on the western side of her enormous cliffs. i mean, some of the tallest cliffs in the world cup 2000 feet high and the slope down until the eastern side of the grasslands have disappeared into the ocean. the first woman springtime to the western most of the faroe islands and sure enough there is this vast cliff, which goes way up into the clouds, black dripping vessels, but with occasional patches of green can which he looked binoculars are vertiginous patterns of grass are not much bigger than this table. and they are over the otherwise vertical landscape of the cliffs. but what happens to the spring is both arrive at the bottoms of the cliff with the young pharaoh and men. if you can imagine the scene

with a little troubling boat or something smashing up down, cliffs are formidable. there is water, seaweed. but nonetheless the men inched their boats up to the bottom of the cliffs and leap onto this vertical cliff. it not as foolish all about because you realize they been doing this for years but there are wrote that up and suspended from the top of the cliffs cliffs all the way down from 2000 feet, and so the fairways jump and chooses the moment to leap and crashes onto the cliffs inherently secure for a few minutes. and then what he does is he a mutual. he turns around and reaches down into the boat and clutches from the well of the boat a lan. there are lots of land in the bottom of the boat. but he picks up the flame and puts it around his neck and

somehow secures up a substring or something into his little lamb legs and then hand over hand he starts claiming up this road. you see him go up 100 feet, 200 feet and then he disappears into the night. when he's about 800 or 900 feet up, seriously high level, way above the sea level down below, he then finds to his laughter is right a patch of this very digitus grass, which seems in his mind to be suitable for the lamb that he thought around his neck. it is fossilized by the guano from the puffins that live in abundance on the cliffs. he has found what he deems to be suitable piece of grass from your missile and from this ♪ and put them on the grass while he's holding onto this other

hand. the live down and think this is not exactly what i thought into. but after a few moments he realizes that he doesn't keep his footing so do it every 10 to make sure that he doesn't. he sort of scribbles and eventually reaches a point of equilibrium, whereupon the faroe says abernethy conversation that takes place, but he sentences are you going to be okay? the win gives him the thumbs up. it's an event defense and goes back in the boat, leaving the laminar for the rest of the year. and you see, if you go in and summer to any of the cliffs in any of these 18 islands, you will see vertical cliffs, green patches of grass a tiny little

lamb the higher up they are. but then, i saw what then happened in september in a sober is he comes back, clearly not having got rid of this testosterone during the summer and we offense the rope up to where the lamb was back in april. he is confronted when he gets back to the right place now with the lamb, but with an enormous sheep because he hasn't had anywhere to run. he's just eating the grass and just gets really and hanging on. and i would like to be able to report that he puts the lamb around his neck, but not at all. a simple gesture, he pushes the lamb often the lamp tumbles down and crashes a few seconds later into the sea. and apparently it is enormously dangerous to travel anywhere around the foot of cliffs because of a sort of monty python this moment, they arrive

at the caves of falling sheep. and then they take them back and eat them and have seized a claim that it was the finest female anywhere in the world. so that's all there is to the story, but that is something i would share with you. in the ludicrous end of the spectrum, now, like many smiles off your face because the next-door is not ludicrous at all. it's quite serious enough time for people in new york who brings the demographics that are quite likely to know the story, but relatively few of them did. i'm hoping not to terribly many of you will know the story. july 1916, the royal navy was losing the battle of the atlantic. there were two battles, one in each of the world wars, both of us were tonnage worth the more german submarines would attack

vessels coming eastbound from canada and the united states, bringing supplies to the british isles. the germans suffering in the balkans withrow torpedoes that the cargo ships and the royal navy would attempt by using the gunfire or death charges to stop this part is. in the first world war, german submarines come when they fire their torpedoes, had to come to the service. technology didn't allow them the first world war ii fire torpedoes from underwater. and so, it was relatively easy for the royal navy if they saw one of the submarines to attack them with naval gunfire. but the problem was in 1916 summer, is the royal naval guns can fire with much regret the because we were not of cordite, the proponent for the shelves. the reason we had run out is because we couldn't get enough of the singular chemical components, which is acetone,

which many of you in this audience will know -- exactly, i want to make a certain gender related claims, but 50% of you will know what that is. the rest of you probably won't. so anyway, that is the battle. there was not enough acetone because we had brought country and bought acetone from the germans. so, there was a situation in 1916. well, that's the background. in manchester, editor of the manchester guardian, used to work for the guardian and much revered figure in who made the remark that comment is free, but facts are sacred. he used to have lunch every tuesday in manchester at the liberal club with him when he found interesting. on this particular tuesday, which i think is in july 1960,

he had lunch at the right russian professor of biology from the university of manchester quite high in vitamins. during the course of a very long conversation, bateman got very excited and sad i am tempted to do an accent, but it won't. he says they've developed this new technique for producing acetone in very large quantities. now he had no what i think was a remember the fact. he was in london where he was having lunch with david lloyd george was minister of ammunition for cabinet. he was going on and on about the fact the royal navy was moving to that of the atlantic with which we had run out and couldn't make it because we didn't have enough acetone. do the same word is being used one week later in a light went off in his mind. he says this extraordinary.

and many chaplains to say in manchester who claims he's a sensible seeming biologist to be a will to create acetone in large quantities. he says this is amazing. we should have been to london. they bound him to london he was interviewed by some balkans who discovered he wasn't in that case and said what do you need? he said first of all to do this i need something with hoppers or distilling tubes or something a brewer would be lovely or distillery. they said sure and let against the nickel since chinn factory, which is in east london has just gone bankrupt and we've taken control of the site. so with a june factory work? he said it would, can be better. for he was mhn factory. is that i'd like something with a lot of sailors, something like mays. they said you can't have names because that outcomes from canada and that keeps getting torpedoed by the german so we

can't spare that. what else? san pablo chestnut? and as it happens and some of you may know, each autumn and they turn, they used to be called killers, where you take on horse chestnuts and put a string through them and suspend them. another little boy with another one will try to hate his conquer any of you which first. anyway, it's a very very important thing in britain. he decided to capitalize on this in the automotive 1816, word went around to the british government to children you cannot play the game because they should collect these and bring them down to london. what happened that september was

the children collected them as usual, put them in paper bags, the families were turn up with saxony frustrated to get their conquerors to the noble race. the words that come to london. for thousands of tons of these would arise and go to the nickel since june factory from the group poured into the vats in using professor reisman's magical technique, first of all from the tabs at the bottom would come out trickled in a stream of pure acetone, which was then taken in tanker cars down to the royal naval factory and turn into cordite, which was voted onto the naval ships and then started firing again. by the late on most 1916, the whole tide of the battle of the atlantic was reversed. the prosecution of the war started to turn in britain's favor. so come the following year, in

1917 was clear that everything had changed in the battle of the atlantic from the complexion had changed their favor that we should give this fellow a medal, an award or something like that. and so, government just talked about this. inside because he was a foreigner, the person who should give him this award should be the british foreign secretary. so arthur belford invite him, who you knew -- they knew each other for other reasons on to london and said were terribly grateful it will be to be able to call yourself sir. the fact of the matter is i don't want the british government. i do want however is a public declaration from your government to say that his majesty's

government would look with favor upon an establishment of the homeland for the jewish people in palestine. and zero, arthur balfour said i would probably do that. there were discussions this summer and on the 17th of november, 1917, letter was formally written, delivered to the president of the world-famous congress, with a copy of gratitude to professor of biology at the university of manchester, saying precisely that. he would look with favor on the establishment of a home at the jewish people in palestine. not of course was about the declaration, which led in 1942 the creation of the state of israel, a state which is created from chemistry for little or no aspect of chemistry. but for my point of view, crucially in the middle of the atlantic ocean. so that the more important story. [laughter] and the third one that i plan to tell a third story. i'll be good.

i'll try anyway. the third one is frankly ludicrous. there is an island in the south atlantic called tristan da cunha, which is a british possession, and extremely miserable place. it's the most isolated inhabited island in the world. it's about 1800 miles west of cape town, truly dreadful weather. it's dominated by a volcano which erupts spectacularly from time to time. but their 220 people, british citizens and numbers only seven families with the great deal of inbreeding, which produces all sorts of thoughts. and basically all they do is grow potatoes. i mean, vicious on a very interesting place i have faith. in 1941, for reasons best known, the british decided to reclassify this is a ship.

[laughter] they gave it an entirely new name. it was hms atlantic isle. and they decided that it was a static ship, from which one could observe quite again. in the south atlantic. they appointed six sailors. one officer with five rating to go down there and take command of the ship. and the captain, as it were, during the four years he spent it was very literate and very sensitive chap. with emily rogers, what he could gather, they never even held hands. so unbelievably chaste. they barely spoke. pickiness ratings was evidently totally enraptured by emily any

hope, i think it was more fantasy than reality, that he reciprocated about three paragraphs in 1954 about his love. i can say nothing ever happened. and he was very sad what he wrote about the departure from the war was over and he had to leave this girl behind the very first affecting. there were two beautiful paragraphs, which i found. one of the things i wanted to do with the emily rogers. with this woman who was so enraptured in the work? but of course, 30 years have passed for 40 years in fact. so she was no longer a girl pitchers a 6-year-old lady, by now married and a grandmother indeed, married to the chief island.

anyway, i walked through the village of edinburgh and not particularly pleased to navigate because there's about 40 playhouses to where they live and they with a rather large man with his arms close and he said i understand you are a writer. i said yes. is that i imagine here to see emily. i said i'd like to. he said no, absolutely not. that story was so embarrassing to me into her. and he'd emily were the only. so i wrote a book in which there is a big chapter about tristan ciccone are. i quoted those two paragraphs from derek roy's book. is a very tender piece of writing about a young naval

officer with his unrequited love affair for the silent girl. so i thought no more about it. and then in the 1990s, i was in the south atlantic, lecturing on various islands like south georgia and tristan, two groups of americans. and eventually we came to tristan and you see this beautiful volcano ahead of us. we sailed up to it with me and sorted telling him about the history of tristan and napoleon now the rest of it. the number dropped anchor or at least we hope to. i'm not from the little harbor came a little rubber boat with a policeman on board. i mean, the policeman does many other jobs that he quite literally were as many different hats. on this occasion he was wearing the hat of tristan police department. and he came on board and said -- [inaudible] is that i'm afraid the island council has decided to ought be allowed to land.

he said because the story told 15 years before about emily. i said i'm sorry. i couldn't land. so it was embarrassing because all the americans were to file past me and he said you're actually not allowed to play patients or something as the captain of the ship. then they'll can buy three or four years later than it was not that interesting and we went somewhere else. and that happened two more times. and then i have to go back to research to do this for. and so is down again last year. but now they have e-mail. at the least the administration has e-mail and he was a chap by noon. a friend i used to know in pakistan, although he's clearly not at the cutting-edge. but i e-mailed him.

is it david, i'm writing this book and i'm coming down to tristan. it i've got a little bit of history with tristan. what is the situation? suicide i'll have tea or something. we were put into the island council. about two weeks later -- by now of course emily rogers said -- has been his dad and 50, 60 years, 40 years since my book. you would think the fires have been dumbed down. not at all. the island council has a really decided that he would not be allowed to land on this occasion or indeed ever. [laughter] so i stand in full humility before you demand who has written extensively in the book was not allowed to travel.

and if i may, just rounded off by going back to the book i read in chile. the book that is so captured me and i think it's the sort of book if it ever comes back into print, start here. it's a man called john marsh called skeleton coast. it's about a shipwreck, which occurred in 1942 on the skeleton coast of what was then south west africa, but is now namibia on the skeleton coast for those of you who don't know is a stretch of about 30350 miles from the angolan border, he recalled the colonial river, don't to debate. it's absolutely treacherous. i mean briefs on shore, wind, fox, disagreeable cold currents. if you do happen to catch up on this coast, there is no water and you die basically. there is no sustenance at all. well, the dunedin star, which is coming down from liverpool

ultimately to go around eight in the 60 passengers on board, it struck something called november 1942 ran aground, sent out a distress message, 60s survivors survived the wreck. they manage to get onto shore. they built themselves a temporary shelter and we did rescue. and normally don't get rescued, but in this particular case they did this was the story of their rescue which was a convoy of police vehicles which took them about two months to get to them. but no one died except in the maritime side of the rescue, which didn't succeed, a number of ships came. one of them was for itself. the others turned back to the one that was wracked with the south african harbor port type, called mr. charles elliott. and it got relatively close.

into young men tried to swim ashore with a rope. they were called messiahs curse at scotsmen caught angus campbell mcintyre. and both of whom drowned. and i read this story and thought i went to go find this rack because the spec chips.k. there's nothing to cause them to dk. they remain there. and also another was this incredibly lonely grave. so i thought i would try and get there eventually. and i was teaching this i did. i happen to be in cape town and got a fleet to the capital of the video. and then i tiny plane which took me to a remote place in the northern part of the skeleton coast, found an agreeable man with a land rover. and i have the gps reference of where we believe the ship was stranded. no one had seen it for years. one of the coast for a number of days and sure enough in the end

we found it. with all its cargo is still strewn around. you'd open these big wooden boxes and you would find one of the cargo she was carrying a light bulbs, still unbroken after six years in the desert. it probably didn't work, but nonetheless it is still there. initial facilitator. the canvas was no longer with the six. and then i wanted to go to the grave and that's about 60 miles south of the wreck site. you come to this point. we look to the ways, these enormous waves coming in. every time they go down you can see two tiny sort of little pyramids of rusted iron, which are two extensions, which is all that remains of this. and then a great big pile of rocks and whale bones, planted vertically in the sand, a brass plaque, which most unvisited site. no one goes there.

that said, this has raised a memorial to two men who very bravely attempted to rescue in 1942 matthias corridor and angus campbell mcintyre. but i was really moved by this. first off i'd gone after this book, but i decided i needed to do something. i've taken a tiny bottle it found in the record, sandblasted almost pure unadorned glass with a screw cap. it was something women might have kept smelling salts. so i raised the know, saint thank you for trying. rest in peace and put my name and address and and address and put them into the bottle and couldn't shut. typical message in a bottle. to put it onto the whale bones about the route selected by the grave. but then i got back -- i did as much as i could, but then i got to new york and wrote this book.

and at the not the yen has been haunted by the fact that angus campbell mcintyre was in atlantic man, born on an island in the atlantic and western scotland, traveled down the atlantic to cape town, to another atlantic ocean city, had taken a job on a little boat that were in the atlantic, attempted to rescue in atlantic, drowned in atlantic and the body was swept out into the atlantic, never to be found again. soon the end i decided the best thing to do was to dedicate the book to him. the book is dedicated to angus campbell mcintyre to me since a police part of the story of our human relationship with this great imperturbable mass of border, the atlantic ocean. [applause] >> there is a might care for questions.

>> thank you. that was wonderful. >> john marsh. i think you can get it online. you can find secondhand copies. >> something that seems to connect all the stories as they connect to england, which is an island nation in the middle of the atlantic and that makes sense. do you have stories about new england, which depended very heavily on the atlantic and where people went back and forth to sort of stay in touch and to make a living whaling and trading? >> there is a whole heap was up about whaling from the bluster in new bedford and nantucket. i don't want to sound as if i'm trying to sell this book, but i suppose that's what i am trying to do in the way.

but there's a lot about everything. and in fact, under no affinity heard this morning on the morning edition program, looking at a nice interview by lynne married and looking at the comments, which i did on the train coming down to washington this evening, the first comment was an angry man named your racist and eurocentric, with which there is no discussion about the middle passage. but there is heaps in the book about the middle passage and slavery. so there's not very much about the titanic, quite a bit about the lusitania. but i try and cover all those. so yes, there is a chapter about the lover chapter is all about poetry and music and art, architecture. in the day writing about it, he lived in this place called name.

and on the day that i was writing about extraordinary coincidence, and you may remember the story, a little girl from new york was standing on a rock, just where she was painting and she was swept away by a waiver. watched in horror. thank you. >> you've alluded to a little bit, but there is a logistical question. krakatoa, your book is about a huge event, but a single event in a point in time. this is about a huge subject, limitless. what are the logistics of writing a book on the limitless subject. i mean, you've talked a little bit about the framework and selecting some things, but to just select the outline first and then research it and then write it? or how do you do a book like

that? >> certainly yes, in a way. the structure is hugely important. i think i've always said i've been asked to teach about writing nonfiction. i'll say there's three elements. the idea -- the primacy of the idea is to have a good idea. but the second most import thing is the structure, how you rate this idea. this is a classic example of the idea could really get away with it. he could write a 20-point dissertation. you look at the classic work on the military and in the world of philip second. and that is the 2900 page books that describes a one much smaller themes. of course an awful lot of risk comes with that. thus far it dodge the bullet. but this is it a monstrous way

to organize it. in the third leg but i don't mean to dismiss, but the writing one tries to make his good. but in the order of president, i think atf, structure and branding. all three would be equal merit. they had to be put in order, idea comes first, but structure is a close second. it's rather a vague answer to your question, but it's important to me. >> i was delighted to hear that you're not tempted to go back to visit tristan. that was my favorite book of yours outpost, which they actually have here. but i was wondering if you have been back to any of the other islands in the atlantic who had visited that time. st. helena -- >> i commend if you've not been, there is a ship that leaves portland. endorse at every 12 weeks. it's inexpensive, wonderful with food, terribly nice stuff on the

boat. it goes portland to 10 arrays, which is a bad place to visit to dakar in senegal and goes to ascension island and then goes to st. helena and drops you off for a week. you have to stay in the conflict hotel and this exquisite regency town, unchanged for 280, 300 years. the reason you have to say there is the ship takes contract worth two of their work in an american base and then picks up the contract work and then you go back on with it to cape town where you can fly back to washington. so i hardly recommend it. there is no airport in st. helena, you have to go by ship. >> thank you, sir. i was curious going back to krakatoa, one of the impressions

that i cleaned from your book was that scientists were not exactly attentive to seismic activity. and now barak by in central java is now demonstrating some seismic activity. are we -- should we be concerned >> no. krakatoa is like a safety that goes up almost every day. volcanoes you need to worry about is those who don't go off. because when it eventually does go soft, echoes off big-time. but now, krakatoa is a nasty volcano, but it's releasing -- it is doing what fair we've people should do more often, which is releases its own energy. so don't worry. >> if i can ask a question about dictionaries, is it true that

you've stopped consulting your dictionaries at home and you know what i look up words on your ipod? i know this question comes from. this is a decision. i was in australia when he made this remark that he could not condition the third edition of the oed being published in a hard paper format. and i got telephoned because of the books i'd written about the subject and i think quite honestly -- i think that is -- i hate to say it in a place like a bookshop, but in 30 years time, the oed volume edition -- third edition will be published in 2037. this feature 2037. and i think i've been coming humankind will not be extinct. by then, i think most massive reference books will be available essentially only online. i would've thought for purely

romantic reasons come the oed will produce a hardback condition. but as to what i do now, i have to complete 20 volume oed's. but if i want to know a word or for instance, the oed website has been relaunched on december the 10th. and i've been a sick review of it. it is amazing. because you can look, as i did the other day. i looked at the timeline of the introduction of words from various languages. and i decided i want to look at australian aboriginal words that had come into the english language. and it's interesting historically because they were also about the cayman we started colonizing australia in the 1830s and 1840s and then it chopped off and it spends recent resurgence because of the resurgence of pride among the aboriginal peoples so worth a cool bar and so forth have been introduced and burst are not a lot to do with that as well.

but using the new tools available, you can find out all the words that have come from the really most of your australian aboriginal languages and then find words from books that employ them. the minute the book that employs them was written by an interesting out there, you can find his biography. it goes on and on and on. you could not do that with a hardback book. i rarely use hardback books geared to dictionary and look at almost exclusively online. >> we've got time for two more questions. they make you go ahead. thank you. in terms of a climate change and global warming, are many miles of atlantic at risk as they are in the pacific? >> no, because the odds -- particularly owns the indian ocean, thinking of the islands in and around the ganges,

d-delta and bangladesh, they are much more liable to be inundated. most of the islands in the atlantic ocean, except things like anguilla are volcanic in big and massive in art risk another things, but not so much from the rising sea level. it's the cities around the periphery of the ocean that are most notably brought it down york to its interest in the right dump is really stepping up to the plate. i mean, doing remarkable things. the other thing they're doing is not hiding the water. we should know from king commutes, there is no point in rising sea level's. then you should know that. bill things that flow. they're building apartment buildings in stores. since the water rises, fine, then department stores raise with rising tide.

[laughter] london is at the moment still not advancing to rebuild, which is not going to be overtopped fairly soon. a new york of course has a subway system, which is really inflating, but it pumps the only thing they can do to fight rising sea levels, they're going to spend a lot of money on even bigger ones. so, floating. can you stop global warming of course, but float rather than fight. >> okay, one last question. >> forgive me because i cannot remember the exact location of the atlantic, whether it's the canary islands or portugal. but there is a geologic slip -- >> not going to happen. i remind you, the volcano on the west side of the canary islands

it is an extraordinary story. and i go to in some detail in the book. there is a bbc with all the sordid dignity a documentary which said when the volcano erupts, and enormous slab of rock is going to fall off the western side and create a tsunami, which will inundate new york. well, no geologist in his right mind except going to happen. certainly once again in tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of years. and in many cases if it does happen, this big chunk of rock isn't going to fall off in the wave is going to create isn't going to be nearly as large as that. but the interesting thing is that the financial backing for that film was given by a chicago-based reinsurance company.

[laughter] [applause] >> simon winchester is the author of several books, including the professor and the mad man and krakatoa. for more information, visit simon winchester.com. >> coming up next, booktv presents "after words," and our long programs where we invite guest host to interview authors. this week, former president jimmy carter discusses his new book, white house diary:.the india recounted the events of this administration as they occurred. the 39th days, the nobel peace prize winner effects on the players and controversies of the late 1970s, more than 30 years

after recording his account of the facts. he talks about his time in office with historian douglas brinkley. >> host: welcome to washington d.c., mr. president. it's wonderful to see you. i was wondering when you fly in here and go over all the arguments coming up over the potomac river and the tidal basin, what do you think when you're flying into this town? >> guest: i was like at the white house and i think about the wonderful times we had at the white house in referral to the sea in a canal this afternoon. as you know, founded by william douglas, one of our great justices of the supreme court. > as for easter brunch every afternoon. i used to run about 40 miles a week, which is a lot, including in washington and around camp david on the weekends. so i just think about the good times we had. i think about the congressman who counsel i am now but