>> host: let's go back to the 1980's. you are probably too young to remember -- i'm sure that you read about it. [laughter] in the 1980's, everyone in america it seemed was terrified of japan. the japanese had brought other high-profile things like that and if you mentioned some of that in your book. but japan ink disappeared and now we are sort of waiting for japan to be one of these dominoes because the debt is 200% of gdp. it's just government debt. is china the new japan? are we overstating what the0g0gg >> guest: i would say the realpg answer is idled because if i knew i would have treated thatpg already.

>> guest: they have issues around demographics, but i think the fact of the matter in which the government is dealing with these things i think bodes well in that they are sort of playing a chess game, multiple moves ahead of most policymakers around the world. >> host: we have five minutes left. let's focus on solutions that our u.s. audience might not be interested in. you mentioned the housing crisis, and when i think of the housing crisis, it makes me very

pessimistic. i read your book, and i like to think we basically have the government to the federal reserve with artificially low interest rates and government-rated entities, fannie and freddie tilting and liquidity flows into the housing. we have a bubble caused by government mistakes, and the answer in washington is more government. now, you have a history of being in the financial markets. you know that moral hazard is critical. you know mispricing and misallocation of risk is a very misguided approach. it seems when washington does something wrong it's the answer for washington to do something else wrong. two wrongs don't make a right, but it seems that's what government specializes in. >> guest: if the united states government had done nothing

around the united states fiscal crisis, what this world and the country would have faced would have been much worse. i'm not a believer in big government. i know what it can do to an economy. look at after ri can, it's incredibly damaging. we had to acknowledge the government had to step in because things were out of control. that being said and coming back to mcchrystal's comment about starting where we are, not where we like to be is the fact of the matter is there's a lot of problem in the economy still. i believe that the issues around long term issues are still not being dealt with satisfactory. there's a talk of gdp to go towards technology and issues of $45 billion plus. that's nice chat, but i think the united states has to be much more aggressive in temples of addressing the fact that she is

on this economic path. i also think that i think a lot of americans perhaps don't really understand what the implications of what's going on are for america longer term. maybe they don't care, but i think they care which is why i wrote the book.ñi i remember growing up in africa in the 1980s during the adjustment period and the policymakers said, listen, it's going to stink and it will be hard, but it's something we've god toot. igot to do. >> you don't want to do that because i think taxes were going up, and let me ask you, we're in the middle of the fiscal fight in washington, and the last ten years, the federal government's budget went from $1.8 trillion to $3.8 trillion. that's more than double.

of that $3.8 trillion, the house wants to cut $61 billion, and the specialists are acting like that's ripping apart the social safety net. if they can't trim 61 billion from a bucket that was doubled in ten years, is there any hope we'll get our long term fiscal house in order? that's not the fact we spent too much on consumption and transfer spending and issues about capital spending that are getting squeezed out. is there any hope? >> guest: well, i mean, i hope there is because if there isn't, it's the whole world in for a wild ride. we needed u.s. to get it right. when i do read the papers and see the republicans talking about $61 billion, democrats talking about 6. they are not near each other. >> host: they are not near the

numbers they talk about. >> guest: exactly. of course, nowhere near where they should be. yes, it's not a comfortable feeling, but unfortunately the politics have a hold. we have to respond to what individuals want, and they should be responding, and at the same time policymakers should be listening to what the average person understands to the issue. we are willing to sacrifice, and there's evidence to that. christie in new york has shown -- new jersey, excuse me, has shown already there's appetite for people to cut back on spending and same with rubio. people are saying, gosh, we do need cuts to be sustainable. >> host: on that semioptimistic note. >> guest: i am optimistic americans get it right.

>> host: thank you for being here, her book with lots of good data and big ideas and proposals. thank you very much for being with us, and thank you for watching. >> guest: thank you. >> that was "after words" in which the latest authors of nonfiction books are interviewed by others familiar with their material. "after words" airs every -- saturday, sunday, and monday. you can watch it online and go to booktv.orgñr and click on the book tv series and topics on the right hand of the page. >> coming up, william coon recalls the publishing career of

jacqueline kennedy onassis. among this is relationships and the book on the assassination of john lennon and a -- >> i want to begin by telling you what a nosey biographer when invited to your house for the first time. you may not know me very well, but off me a cup of coffee or tee or a glass of wine and you go in the kitchen to get it for me, and while you're out of the room, i look at your book shelf, raise your hand if you've done such a thing yourself? [laughter] all right, there's others in the

room. i think the point is that the collection of books tell you something important about a person and possibly something that person might not be willing it -- to tell you right away themselves, and the same is true of jacqueline kennedy onassis. you can tell a lot about her and about the 100 books she brought into print when she was an editor at viking and double day. if any, editor's books are even more indicative of her personality because they include works that she's selected, she's invested her time in, and helped to bring to publication. so, what i'd like to do is tell you the story of those 100 books

and how they connect to her life and who she was. two things i'd like to say about jackie's personality. first, she was a reader. among her earlyiest memories was being sent up to her mother's bedroom to take a nap as a child and getting out of the bed, getting a book from the book shelf and going to the window seat for an hour and reading the book up stead of taking the nap. she told that story in a kind of essay she wrote for a competition to go and do an internship at "vogue". i think that's her admitting an important memory about her childhood. that identity as a reader continued all her life. her white house secretary

remembered that people usually thought what's jackie doing? well, she's jet setting with her international friend. well, that's not usually the case. usually she was by herself in her room reading a book. that's the fond memories the white house secretary had of her. arne skhickler did many sketches of her, and this is the one she liked the best. it's not the one he developed into the official portrait, but it's the one she wanted to keep and she said to him, that's me, she's on the sofa reading a book. she was also a writer. when her children were away at school and her second husband died in 1975, she began trying out ideas for different careers, and one of the first things she tried is writing an anonymous

piece for the "new yorker" and wrote on photography. indeed, one of the books she had in her room when she died in 1994 was a book congressmen rating an essay prize she won as a young woman at miss porter's school in connecticut. being a writer was also important to her identity. after her "new yorker" piece was published, her formal white house secretary suggested that she get in touch with an old friend of her whose family firm was the viking press, a major publishing firm, later acquired by penguin.

she met with tom and thought it would be great to have her own board. he thought she knows everyone, has the best sort of address book in new york, we can get good book projects out of here and it's good pr for the company as well. he was happy to take her on in 1975. their relationship, though, didn't go well because in 1977, the viking press acquired a novel by the british novellest jeffrey archer called "shall we tell the president," and this book imagined the presidency of ted kennedy, her brother-in-law, and imagined him being assassinated in the novel. now, there's some question about how much jackie knew about this in advance, but when the book was published, the "new york

times" reviewers said of the last line of the book review, anyone associated with this novel should be ashamed of herself which was a little bit unfair because she hadn't had that much to do with the novel, if any, but under pressure from the kennedy family, she resigned her position at viking. she was able to join doubleday later in 1978 and remained there for 16 years until the day she died. her career there was much happier, and if we begin to now shift from the beginnings of her career in publishing to a consideration of the books themselves, we see that they fall into a number of groups that sort of classified according to scenes in her life. i didn't want to cover the books chronologically because they fit

with certain areas which you could also connect with her life and that was more revealing about her permty. i'd like to take you through those groups of books than a strictly chronological account of her career of the the first of the scenes is marriage. [laughter] well, everyone, i think, knows as jackie as the wife of a husband not entirely faithful to her. it's surprising to find her backing a one-time editor of "vogue" and special at the costume institute at the college of art to have a feature who had names associated with her former husband. there's marilyn monroe.

in backing dianne -- diana to do the book, she rose above her history with the women and joined them in saying both the women have indelible attraction and allure and appeal. it seems to be one the things which attracted me to jackie, to her as an editor that she separated her job as an editor from what kind of personal history she might have had with these women. she also encouraged barr ray chase to write a novel and sally hemmings, the slave mistrees of president thomas jefferson. she commissioned elizabeth crook to write raven's bride, a novel about a woman who had a marriage that lasted only a few weeks to sam houston which broke up probably because of his infidelity and who spent the

rest of her time in seclusion trying to protect her privacy. now, this book came to jackie via bill and judy moyers, and they specifically recall recommending the book to jackie because it reminded them of her, especially in the character's insist ten sigh on privacy, and she acquired the book and published it. she accepted the novel "the last living member of the renaissance " and the book called "the wedding" the trouble of african americans in a summer on martha's vineyard. her experience may not be been io identical to the characters, but endorsed the books and remitted marriage as complex, problematic, and neither romantic or ideal.

a second group of jackie's book i grouped around the category of motherhood, clearly a crucial phase in her life. this image she commissioned also from aaron who did the one of her reading has her son john reading and her daughter writing or perhaps working in a sketch book. it's a key indication about what she cared about, and this comes out too in the book she commissioned. she did four books for children with carly simon and two more for children with a pair of young women whom she met by the editor of rolling stone. she also commissioned peter's book for children on prague called "three golden keys" which he later thought that her commissioning that book had laid the foundation for his being

awarded a mcarthur foundation genius grant. her authors thought of her as a ma -- maternal figure. they said of jackie, an editor becomes kind of your mother. [laughter] elizabeth crook who wrote "raven's bride" recalled her as extremely motherly and she sometimes felt that jackie was looking after her as a mother hen would. many of her younger colleagues remember the same thing. scott moyers, a high literary agent in new york, but then was a junior assistant to jackie, remembers being sick one weekend, and she wasn't to the store and brought him back medicine. she reproached him for going outside with his hair wet, and

then she sponsored him when he ran a marathon to raise money for leukemia for which his own mother died. not only did his children books rise from her experience as a mother, but her colleagues and authors all remembered a maternal strain in their editorial work with her. betty thought jackie was a closet feminist. [laughter] although that may sound like an intentionally provocative remark, actually, quite a few of jackie's books back up that contention. they are on women's history, and by the way, women's history far ahead of its time in some ways. women's history is a established part in the american education departments, but in the 1970s when she began to do this, it was not. she was ahead of her time with

this, so she did books on women's history and several fictional narratives of independent women fighting against the odds in a man's world, and i'd like to tell you about a few of those. this is the cover of "remember the ladies" which accompanied an edition in 1976, and it was one of her first works at viking and one of the first of her works on women's history. another book that she acquired with bostonian's book, a novel on working women in the mills of lowell, massachusetts in the 19th century, so a historical novel covering history, but with women workers as heros, and that was called "call the darkness light." another book in new york was called "the 18th century

woman". included in it were women she admired, the subject of popular biography 10 years ago and abigail adams, the first lady jackie was on record of admiring the most. she wrote on how these powerful 18th century women were ahead of their time during the 18th century in asserting their equality to men. that book came out as false dawn because the contention was they had a greet -- this small group of women had a great deal of legal and social and educational quality in the 18th century which was later lost and not regained until modern times. she also published the diary of an independent depp by tonight

called maverick in mauve. she asked eugene kennedy who is of no relation to expand and article he had written for the "new york times" on the first female mayor of chicago, jane burn, and that became a novel called "queen bee," and not all of these are uncritical accounts of women in power. "queen bee" is about a figure who is power hungry and power mad, and when the book was published, jackie joked with eugene kennedy saying you might have to leave chicago now, eugene. [laughter] she had surprising sources for books. she found an article in "people" magazine -- isn't that great? jackie reading "people" magazine? [laughter] about how an enterprising african-american woman who was trying to put together a reunion

of the desen didn'ts of the masters and slaves of a north carolina plantation called summerset. that article turned into one of jackie's book called "summerset homecoming" and it was said to be less about house, but about a remarkable woman who tried to uncover some of her own ancestors. she gave very e very few interviews. one of them was a magazine in connection of promoting the book "call the darkness light," and in the interview she says something about women's position in the 1970s and 80s. this is jackie speaking. "what has been said for women of

my generation is that they weren't supposed to work if they had families. there they were with the highest education, and what were they supposed to do when the children were grown? watch the rain drops coming down the window pane? leave their fine minds underexercised? of course women should work if they want to. you have to do something you enjoy. that's one definition of happiness. it applies to women as well as to men. we can't all reach it, but we can try to reach it to some degree." so that was jackie in "miss" magazine. well, the next group of books is on photography, and it's interesting -- it was interesting to me to find probably the most photographed woman in the world also specializing in books on photography. she did a number of books in a large illustrated format, and here they are together at the institute of contemporary

photography in new york on which jackie served on their board, so photography was an interest to hers in the museum world as well, and jackie organized a special exhibition to go along withñi with this. that photo was snapped in 1980. she was introduced and together íhe did a book of weird staged fashion photographs including monkeys, dead leaves, and scantly clad models on the back stairs of versailles called unseen versailles. lou y wrote the introduction of the book and recalled it and called it everything being about false pornography. how can you defend it?

he said here's jackie's telephone number, give her a call, and that was the end of the troubles. [laughter] i like thisñi photograph because they look notñi like two fashion clad beauties, but two very determined women who want to bring their book out.

that's him on the left and the photo that jackie allowed to go ahead which was the foe foe of the texas school book depository in dallas. what that says to her is questions of art were more important to her than questions of her biography or her own trama. she was not put off by bizarre personalities. he remembers him standing on her desk and imitating a goose step. [laughter] she was in her chair with her arms crossed and unphased by this. i kind of like that picture of her dealing with one of her authors. she did another book of photography with the french photo journalist, mark riboud,

which was a picture of heaven on the top of chinese mountain and that was the hiking destination of young married couples. her and riboud happened to be in china together in the late 1980s. he was there because he was commissioned to photograph the opening of a new university for "time," and he asked, well, jackie you will be here at the same time as me, help we mountain photo shoot, and she did. the amazing thing was that the chinese didn't recognize her. back in those days they didn't have the same access to the mass media. to her, she was another western woman on the street. they didn't want to take her picture or point at her and say are you jackie o? she felt enormously free, and one of the things that she and riboud did together was they went into a small walk-in photography studio usually used

by recently married couples, and they had this picture of themselves taken. [laughter] it was taken in black and white, and then the chinese hand colored it. [laughter] and sent it to riboud. riboud saw -- i mean, came back and forth between paris a lot, and he was invited to a dinner party at 1045th avenue and went one evening and said jackie, i have the picture of your wedding with me. [laughter] one of her last books in 1994 was on the work of tony frisel, a friend and contemporary of jackie's mother, janet. the copy of this book in which she would have had direct involvement hints at the way in which a woman's work might also be a commentary on her life.

she says the jacket copy for this book stretched the boundaries of the world in which she was born and became one of the most renowned photographer of her time. her pictures were her life, and i'd say the same can be said of jackie's books. she stretched the boundaries of the privileged world in which she was born and she did that by her books. this is a photo of a model that frissell dropped into a dolphin tank in marine world in the 1940s and jackie chose it for the cover of the book. i think we think of her as somebody who was one definition of sartorial elegance, but her selection of this picture for the cover of the book shows her elegance for pictures as well. such an amazing picture. jackie was deeply involved in

the selection of these photos for the frissell book. toni's daughter was involved as well, but because he was dead and no longer around, jackie was involved in jecting things as well as george. the selection of all these people made from frissell's photography covers a wide range of subjects. this is the vanderbilts having tea in florida. i love this picture. they hauled the oriental rugs into the corridor to have it outdoors in a kind of a bree way. that wonderful woman on the far right hand side is cusualo vapider built and became a dutch

ess. she wasn't just interested in fashion and privilege. she went to europe during the second world war and photographed bomb damage, displaced refugees, and the tuskegegee airman, a group of all black pilots in what was then an all-white army. jackie went to washington, d.c. to the library of congress with a group of staffers to make one the preliminary photo selections for the book. in the striped top, that's the curator with jackie in the center and toni's daughter on the right. they brought with them some disposable cameras to make records of the images they wanted to select and someone snapped this photo of jackie at

work on the boxes of photographs. . bruce tracy, one of jackie's assistance said, when he saw this photograph, if she heard that snap, she wouldn't have been happy, but in a way, i'm happy that that picture is there because it shows that she was a working editor. she traveled when necessary on behalf of her books, wrote in the margins of scripts, sent letters to authors saying this is not good enough. you need to do another draft. she man handled the boxes when at the library of congress, or woman handled them. [laughter] while they were at work in the library of congress, everybody was conscious of the fact that toni frissell photographed jackie's wedding to jfk in 1953, but they were all shy about asking her to go through those

photos because they knew there were photos of her in the box. they took her aside finally and said, jackie, these are the pictures of your wedding. she said, okay, yes, let's have one from that. let's see what we have. she chose one right away, almost to get it over with, and this is the one she chose. let's take that one, she said. they specifically remembered it wasn't the best one or most flattering of her. this is not a bad photo by any means, but she said she was without vanity on this. she wanted the selection out of the way, acknowledged that a picture of her probably ought to be in the book, and that's what she chose. ordinarily, she didn't like her fame referred to, not by her authors or colleagues. she didn't like, especially towards the end of her career,

her name appearing on her books, but when it came to a photographer whose work she admired, she was ready for her own image to be reproduced in one of the books. in some cases, again, i think this is a question of art for her. in some cases she put what she regarded of art before questions of her own privacy. now, jackie also did a significant number of books on ballet including memoirs by marry grahm and judith and several books by kelsi kirkland as well as dancer's memories by george balanchine. in addition of alexander's fairy tales was an introduction by.

he didn't believe for a second that he wrote the piece he gave to jackie. he was a dancer, he couldn't string a sentence together. i don't believe he wrote that. [laughter] he did agree to his name going on the cover, and he did remember that they both wanted to help promote one another's careers, and that went for jackie as well. one of the few interviews she did with the "new york times" in her post-white house years was for a magazine article on the acquisitions that he was dancing foot and he was too old and had to get off the stage. jackie stood up for him and gave an interview for that and said he should dance until he drops. he died young of age in the end, and she was one of his supporters all the way to the end. it's surprising how subversive

and wicked some of her dance books can be. this is a very funny photograph. this is from martha's grahm memoir which jackie would have certainly selected and help put together herself because grahm died in between finishing the text and the book coming out, so jackie certainly would have been involved in secting the art -- selecting the art for that. one of the things which appeared in grahm's memoir is a picture of her from the 1930s in a dance called every soul is a circus, and the caption reads, "just before i tapped with the flower, i thought, where did you come from? i could eat you up." [laughter] she seems to say it to ere -- erick's bottom, but that's

jackie's selection. [laughter] okay, the woman who was called america's queen by the tabloids, and this is another thing that surprised me also did a significant number of books on the royal courts of europe. her she is on an official visit to britain in the early 18960s, but in her editor career, she brought out a series of books on versailles and the court that succeeded it including biographies of louis the xiv and xv. unless he kept quiet about her dress budget, she wold turn into marine of the 1950s herself.

she told deb br when working on versailles that she particularly identified with one royal mistress who was versailles' most famous patron of the arts. it seems likely that jackie may have had that as her pattern in the white house of the 1960s, some sense she might have tried to do a 1960s version. later on, jackie personally selected this pore trass with a book in her hand as a symbol of her learning for prince's grace book with jackie called "my book of flowers". for anyone interested in this, it's not the most valuable book in the collection, but the

anthenaeum has a signed copy of this book. if you are nice to the curator, he might show it to you. [laughter] jackie went to russia in the 1970s with the museum of arts to ask the russians to be as generous as possible in their loans of clothing for an exhibition done at the costume institute. while she was there, she tried on a swan's down opera cape worn by the con curet of andrea the second. this is something which clothing was brought back this his holiday snaps of her. she also commissioned russian play wright ed war radzinsky.

it was a best seller. did she identify with the subject of this book? it's hard to say. radzinsky was convinced she decided to take the book when it was knot -- not about the murder, but the forgiveness for the executioners and captors. the editor said no, she took the book because of potential. she had a long term interest in the arts, court costume and royal biography, and what that says about her is not so much she wanted to be a queen herself regarding court history as a chapter in the history of art and thought it worthy of serious attention. of course, she may have once as a little girl imagined being a

queen herself. her causen of gray gardens remembered as a child jackie wanted to be queen of the circus, and there was a crown and said she was going to run away to the circus with that tinfoil crown. i'm sorry, that's radzinsky with jackie at the russian tearoom. radzinsky is a great story teller, and i talked to him for this book, and it's hard to get a word in edge wise when talking to him, and jackie seems slightly pained there as a story may have gone on there for a long time. [laughter] now, jackie resented being thought of as what she called just a sheltered socialite. it has to be said she was interested in issues such as

table settings andñi luxury interior design. another one of her books fits into this category of luke's interiors. she did six books with tiffany design director, john loring. this is jackie with loring at the party and a lunching for -- launching for one of her books. together, she and loring did six profitable books, profitable for tiffany and doubleday as well, and they include tiffany table settings, tiffany taste, tiffany history, tiffany weddings, tiffany parties, and a tiff any cook book. she said, john, isn't this great? we can go on and on and do tiffany mushrooms.

[laughter] with frissell's photography, she agreed to add a hint of her involvement with the book even though her name is nowhere on the jacket cover. they superimposed this picture of a sapphire engagement ring on an image, the house in new port for which she herself was married to jfk in 1953. she also allowed this picture of herself and jfk at a party in newport to go opposite the title page of tiffany parties. it was her way of saying this is who i am, this is about something i love, and not all her books are highbrow inquiries into the nature of art, and she wasn't ashamed to admit it. she wasn't ashamed to to admit her involvement with the

commercial projects. in fact, steve ruben, her boss at doubleday had one distinct memory of her. if she brought a project to him she wasn't sure about, he said, jackie, this might lose money, and she'd drop it right away. she would definite respond to that kind of stimulus from the doubleday higher ups. the last of these groups of books i'd like to talk about is a group of books i call camelot books. they took up themes or events of jfk's presidency and of his brother, robert kennedy's, shorter political career. that's jackie and eugene in the doubeday sweet back in kind of

the days when publishing still had a lot of money sloshing around for promotion, doubeday had a specific room for the launch parties. that's no more. with kennedy and the suite, she did a biography on mayor daly says the mayor won the presidency by stuffing the election box. not true, the book says, as you might expect. [laughter] one the other interesting aspects of the pook for me is we know she was fierce in protecting her privacy. he didn't want this biography of him written, and he told eugene kennedy this much, and jackie and kennedy gt the idea of cornering him at the democratic convention and asking him permly at the convention with the notion that he had so much

respect for the kennedys and so much respect for yak ky that he'd immediately cave in, but he didn't. when they said we want to do your biography, he said, i'll look into it, and he never called them back. [laughter] she went ahead and she was willing to sponsor this biography even though he was an unwilling subject of the biography. she also did a book with stuart udall who was secretary of the interior under both jfk and lbj, a very strong environmentalist before his time. he's only recently died. udall wanted to write on the legacy of the early spanish explorers in new mexico, and as a way to get him to get on board with the book con september, he invited her to come out to arizona to go on a hike with him and his wife on the trail which they believed had been followed

by the 16th century conquistadors. this is them on the hike sharing a glass of wine celebrating forging the river. the picture i'm not shing you -- showing you is her almost falling into the river, but udall helping her across. jackie helped institute the profile in courage award to recall the book of the same name by jfk identifying historical figures who sacrificed their political careers on questions of principle. the first award went to former congressman carle elliot who sacrificed his political career in a showdown with alabama's governor george wallace. he was not only the first recipient of the award, but jackie commissioned him to write his memoir for doubeday which

she published as "the toes of courage -- "the cost of courage." one other book that falls in this category is the biography of another crew saiding southerner, john frank johnson whose landmark rulings advanced rights for african-americans. for example, by striking down the ban that local authorities wanted to place on the march of martin luther king and others from month come riboud in 1965. frank johnson struck down the ban, the march went ahead, and the biographer made that an important event obviously in johnson's biography. when the book's author after it was published and should say, you know, i was curious, why did you agree to do this book with me? why did you commission it? she said it's simple.

i can remember jack and bobby talking about judge frank johnson and how much they admired him. now, this is a slightly -- a different sort of story, but one that connecting back to the sort of kennedy presidency. she was also ready to commission a book from a man she never met before, phil myers to write a book about a group of russian cold era spies to organized to give the united states early warning of any impending russian nuclear attack. what's more surprising still is that myers identified as a spy, a man whom jackie had known personally, a curator of arms and armor in st. petersberg and later was in new york, and that's how jackie knew him.

she'd been introduced to him at the met and worked on russian costume together. this photo was given to me by his daughter and myers, it is him with a weapon in his hands. he and his wifeçó died in an automobile accident in france in the early 1990s, and after jackie heard from phillip myers the story about the cold war activity, she openly wandered whether the accident was an accident at all, but a revenge killing. myers was willing or surprised she was willing to consider the proposal and help him with research even though it was coming in, in other words, he didn't have a literary agent or no special introduction to jackie, and yet, it was a story

that interested her, and it was a story she wanted to help him with. when she later had talks with myers and learned some of the difficulties that might be in the road from the russian and american secret services about his telling this story, jackie laughed and said, you ought to be careful phillip, or you will be squished at the bottom of a trash can. that says something about her courage and willingness to follow a good story when she found one. okay. that's jackie with bill moyers and her long tim come companion, maurice. perhaps the most interesting collection of books is on a subject she knew well. that isçó on fame, celebrity, ad miss. one of her proudest achievements was a series of interviews bill

moyers did on pbs with a scholar of religions and that ought to be a bookment jackie said that's fascinating, let's make it a book. others said that's not a book, she said, no, it will be. this was the power of myth, and it was another one of her best sellers. one of the most interesting passages is about how ordinary people, hollywood movie star, for example, like john wayne, might become something more than a cow bio, but a legendary figure whose celebrity helped shape people's lives. she did a number of books in this area including works on film stars and gene as well as her book with michael jackson, "moon walk." these are all about being transformed into superhuman, extraordinary, sometimes

ridiculous, but sometimes with meaningful results especially when living legends give shape or comfort to people's lives. it seems to me we like to make fun of the cheapness of celebrity culture, but the power of myth invites us to reflect on how famous figures can be touchstones, guiding lights even for people's lives, how in an age of declining religious faith, at least in the west, we still longñi for contact with human figures who we regard as bigger than ourselves. well, i just gone through some of the scenes of the 100 books that she did as an editor and showed you some of the images and the subjects she worked with this bring those books to life, but to really get a sense of what she's like, you have to turn to something other than these images. i'd like to end with the story told to me by paul, another

her. he was sitting an an internal desk next to the offices that had windows, and he recalls sitting there at the desk and hearing a commotion down at one end of the hallway and heard footsteps running down the corridor, and looked up and there was jack linñlrunne;tw3ñin the corridor in stocking feet like a schoolgirl. she was not wearing shoes, tearing down the hall, in her 60s then. did i just see that? did it really happen? his reflection was it humanized her. she was one of us. she was on deadline. it was something any of us would have done to get our books in on the deadline into print. reading jackie was also running jackie and for the most authentic vision of that woman intent on getting one of her titles into print turn now not

to a picture of her, but to the pages of one of her hundred books. thank you very much. [applause] [applause] [applause] [applause] i think we've got some time before seven o'clock for some questions, and i'd love to hear from you if you got questions about what i said or experience of your own that you'd like to bring to this, and i see -- i think i see a hand right there, and would you like me to repeat the question, or is there a mic on? go ahead, ma'am. >> did jackie have any particular literary agents she relied on?

>> that's a good question. i think the answer is no. she -- scott moyers remembers she didn't like taking lunches with literary agents because there was a sense if she did it with one or two, everyone would want to have lunch with her, and so her more standard forms for getting books tended to be through newspaper articles, through friends, through contacts of her own from her previous life. she did take a few things by literary agents, but i don't have a feeling that was something she was doing regularly. good question. there's another question right down here in front, and, ma'am, stand up, and the mic is coming up -- no, it's not. right here. >> is this loud enough? you have so nicely told us about

how the elements in her life, perhaps inspired, but in any way, they encouraged and fit in with her interests, fit in with the books she edited, and i'm wondering if we can ask the same question of you? [laughter] and your life and your interests. thank you. >> that's an excellent question. thank you very much. i think if you were to come over to my house and i went to get you a glass of wine, and you were to slide over to my book shelfs, you'd find books on regal figures in history. my previous work has been kind of on court studies in some way. i've done books on people who work for queen victoria and on the prime minister and 19th