union but because of his own personal character, a character issue, was unable to see through the transformation of the south because to him it was against everything he believed. >> please join me in thanking annette gordon-reed. [applause] >> annette gordon-reed is a history and law professor at harvard university. she is author of the hemingways of mother jell-o which got the pulitzer prize in history. her book on andrew johnson is part of time's book on the american president series. visit americanpresident whoseries.com. >> next on booktv, the daughter of former house speaker newt gingrich discusses her book the essential american, the most significant documents and speeches in the history of

america. this is about 40 minutes. .. >> somewhere else either in the library of congress and in the capitol building but really this is where i spent a lot of my time growing up so for me it's the particular thrill to be back house. thank you very much for having me here. it's really quite an honor.

where i am i'll give a little bit background where i am -- kind of my personal background and my journey through the book and why i think particularly at this point in our notion's history, why this book and why our founding documents in the history of our nation are so very important because we really are, i think, a really very important crossroads of the gun and i think we're going to have to figure out in the end who are we as a country? what do we believe in and that's going to really set the pattern for the next generation. the best place is to look in our history. again, i would like to say especially for the clare boothe luce policy group, i have a great little story. i was telling a friend that i was coming here. and are for those who might known dana, i've known dana for over a decade and she worked for my father at the american enterprise institute and she actually got that job because she came to washington to look

for a job. came to one of these events. networked, met somebody, and the next thing she knew she spent a decade in her life working for newt gingrich. you never know who you might meet at one of your events and make sure you mix and ambiguousle alone. she is married to louise was the first violinist for the washington symphony for a long, long time. he retired a year ago. they met because he went to the symphony and he met lewheeze and now they live innorn george you. never know when these events might lead to a happily ever after. so again my first -- my first memory of dc was in the '70s and this was way before my dad won. i'm going to take you on a little bit of a reminder of kind of my background and his career because i think it's important

for us to understand where we came from and why it's important to learn lessons. so as you can see the 1970s it, might have been around '74. we lived in carrollton georgia. we lived in carrolltonorn george because my father who went to emory and tulane got his ph.d. and part of the deal he got some scholarship money if he promised to come back toorn george to teach when he finished. fair deal. he found a job offer at one place. carrollton, georgia. so that's where he went. he had two young girls. and my mother and we all lived in carrollton, georgia. so we packed up to come to washington on a big train trip which you can imagine it was big trip for us. my mother's mother was going as well. we're getting ready and we're coming down the big hill on our little house. it's pretty steep and not very long and my grandmother, mamo, tripped and broke her arm -- no,

broke her leg and i remember because someone had to push her around the washington zoo the entire time. luckily she was -- but grandma got on the train and we rode the train and we kept our vacation intact and the reason why i'm telling you a little rural girl from carrollton, georgia, riding the train up, going to the dining car in the morning and sitting down to what appeared to be a very elegant table with white tablecloths at that time and a little flower and looking out the window and seeing as she crossed the bridge the washington monument and the feeling i had knowing we had just entered our nation's capital. later i learned i'm sure many of you know on the top of the washington monument is the capstone. and on the east side it says pray be to god. but as the sun rises over washington every day, the first

light of the sun strikes the words grace be to god. i try to remember that as i come to washington because it really is a special city and i think for those that live here, you can occasionally forget that. but i think it's very important for us to remember that it is a very special city. so my first political memories are not of the trip into washington. but of the 1974 campaign. so again, a little girl from georgia. it's 1974 and my father decides to run for congress. as a republican. now, back then there were no republicans from georgia. not really. there was rodney cooke, there was mack mattingly, bo callaway and my father and you get them together that was the entire georgia republican group. that was it but he decided to run and because he was at west georgia, that meant that he'd run against jack flint who at

the time was the dean of theorn george delegation. i mean, he was the most senior person. i'm sure many people told him it wasn't a good idea. and lori and i were talking earlier and i know we have the granddaughter of someone who remembers when we announced that he was going to run. so we did have a really long history in georgia. so he ran. we ran really hard. and for those who remember 1974 either from history books or from real life, '74 was the time of watergate. so you can imagine what it must have been like to run as a republican in georgia. really hard. so he ran, ran, ran, ran. and at the end of the term, we went to the victory party. you always have a vehicle party because you don't want to have a defeat party really, really bad and i remember dad sitting there with his yellow legal pad and back then we didn't have those great maps you pull things out. you had someone come from a precinct this is precinct

whatever, whatever. here are the votes for a and a. so dad would write them down and i can remember him adding them up. he's a pretty good mathematician and my mom is a math teacher but he's pretty good at math and he would add them up again as if it would change the answer. unfortunately, it didn't. he lost with 48.5% of the vote. as we all know if we work in a campaign, no matter how much you lose for you lose. the next morning he didn't complain he didn't cry. the next morning we got up really early. we went over to the ford factory and he shook hands. we shook hands as a family, thank you for your help. we'll be back again next time. next thing, next year same thing happened. he ran really hard. he was sure -- he was sure he could beat jack flint. it was 1976 and he said he knew he really had a chance until the republican primaries and some guy named jimmy carter was getting really ahead and he knew it was really going to be a tough race 'cause we're innorn

george, again. and jimmy carter ran a great race and worked really hard and dad said he thought he had a chance until election day when he stood in front of the library which was on polling place and he saw the buses pull up and he realized the buses weren't there to vote for newt gingrich. they were there for somebody else. so again that night, he added up and added up again and again and again. and then he lost. with 48.3% of the vote. a slight decline. so what do we do the next morning? we got up again, went to the ford factory, thanking very much for your help. we'll be back again. now, my mother tells a great story and i heard this recently from her. we were talking about the history and the family and what we went through and at that point they lost twice. and they had to decide whether or not to run again. he decided to run again and mom says she can remember going to the local a & p running into a friend and saying, jackie you're

not going to let him run again. i mean, he just can't run again. if he loses it's going to be embarrassing, like the first two weren't. and mom had such a great answer. she goes, who am i kill the dream. of course, we're -- he wants to run. and as we now know, he ran. he won. and in time, in 1994 republican resurgeonance on the hill. i reason i tell this story is not to say my dad lost a lot because i know it is still kind of embarrassing and i don't like to highlight that but my point is very clear that i want you to understand that persistence matters. that it's very important that we as a people are optimistic and persistent. persistent because in the end that is what makes the difference. now, thomas jefferson said all that tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.

i think we need to be very, very aware of this quote because we have to understand we can't be silent. the complicity is just as bad as doing something. and we have to have the ability to stand up and think about what we think is important as a nation. today, more than ever, conservatives -- and i think in particular, and i'll talk about this, i think in particular, no offense to men here, my kids always say that. no offense. i know you're going to say something bad, right? and you hear that, oh, please. but i think particularly women conservatives are incredibly important. male conservatives have been important for a long time but i think women -- i think it's our time to step up and be proactive and i'm going to talk about that a little bit. so our nation is on a journey. we're on a journey. and we have this incredible rich history, a lot of which is in the book "the essential american" and i think we have a really bright future which i'm going to talk about as well. so you think about it, we're the link. we're it.

the people here in this room, the people in our nation -- we're the link between an incredible history and an incredibly bright future and it's our job -- i think our future is based on our ability to speak up, to articulate a very clear vision of a great future that everyone can be damaged in. -- engaged in. we have to paint a compelling picture that people want to be join in and want to be helpful and be a part of it. we have to inspire and admire people of our right. and with rights come responsibilities of americans. our future is predicated on americans understanding and their believes that we all have an equal opportunity to share the american dream. we have to understand and we have to articulate and convey a vision that resonates -- it has to resonate. when i say resonate, my little girl played violin and when she

plays it's actually quite great but she's good. she plays and she really plays well you can feel it, right? you feel it resonating it. when louise plays for first chair it does resonates. and to have a vision that resonates for the majority of americans so they can understand it and feel it in their bodies. i'm going to talk a little bit about the founding of our country that i'm sure you all know about. but i'm going to talk about it anyway and then also about where i think we need to go. one is, when you think of the declaration of independence that clearly states, right, that we have self-evident truths. that our creator gave people rights that we then loaned them to the government and i think we think about what we are and what we're not. self-evident means it's truthful. so i think we need to understand we need to have government based on truth. when we say equal, we are creative equal not that in the

end it's all equal. this is a real challenge for us as a society and this is going to hurt some people's feelings because people like for people to be happy. but the reality is, in the end you have to have people that do better than others because they worked harder. you can't have a society where everyone gets the same thing in the end. that's not a free society that creates independent entrepreneurial people. when we're talking about endowed by our creator that our power comes from the god. not that the government decides what power we will have. very different paradigm. i think when you think about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, it's about the freedom to act as you want and do but also we have to remember when it said pursuit of happiness, this is really important. that means you can pursue it. that doesn't mean you have it. and that's very, very different. i have a 9 and an 11-year-old and their great ages. they're really, really fun. the 11-year-old is a girl. the 9 is a little boy and we get

into these discussions sometimes and they're really, really frustrated with me because they're not happy. and i have to remind them that's not my job. it's not my job to make them happy. it's my job to discipline them and love them and to encourage them and it's their job to figure out in the boundaries how they can be happy and that's really hard for us to do as a country. i'm going to talk a little bit about what women do and why women are important in this next phase. we're speaking generalities. if you're not kind of these women don't take offense. women operate a little differently and i see this with my sister. i have a sister who's 3.5 years old. she's absolutely amazing. she is probably the best manager or leader as you would say of people that i've known. i say that because she really cares about everybody that works we are. i mean, genuinely cares for

them. worries about how they feel and what they're doing and how they work. and what she's able to do is she actually pulls their strengths and then figures out how to use them together. she's an incredible, incredible manager. she talented woman. but women have that skill in figuring out how do you knit together and create a team figuring out how do you create a group that always competes against each other. it's a very different dynamic. the other thing that women do is because they are by nature, the child that they give birth and they also are the mother, i think women are much more forward-thinking because we're always thinking about especially when you have children, what's the next generation. it's like we can't help ourselves. we worry about our children. worry about their future. how things are ready and by the design the way god created us and worry about things coming up. we care for children which makes us either kind of crazy sometimes which does happen.

also develop stations. i think one of the biggest stories i have with having children is that i'm developing a little bit more patience. i'm not there yet. i have a lot more patients to get and one of the things and i had this experience this weekend my husband laughs over this. we once had someone come and watch our children and the children were running around doing something. they, you know, were starting to say x, y, z and the kids marched out exactly and did exactly what they were told to do which was amazing and look, all you need to tell them and they do it right. you tell them 4,000 times right and maybe they do it. and one of the things about parenting is you begin to realize you do have to be -- you have to repeat yourself. it's very repetition. it's very deliberate. you have to do it over and over again. and if possible, without screaming always helps, right? so it is some of that ability to say the same thing over and over again in the hopes that eventually you'll hear someone saying, you know, they have the

nicest manners. and you hear that, gosh, after that 4,000th time something sunk in. and it medications yakes you ha. and i know women make nests. i know guys like to laugh at that, i know guys do. a lot of times why we create places of safety or relaxation is that allows a place for people to be able to knit together as a community or family. and a lot of times i think in this society we laugh at that. oh, we don't need a nice place to sit or whatever. but it's true. you need that sanctuary. in fact, i was talking to a teach last week and she goes, you know, it's interesting how much information you get when you're car pooling. some of my best discussions with my children are during car pooling. i hear about what's happening and what they're doing. and the nice thing about that that leaves the home as a place to be safe. and i know not all people have that ability.

not all homes are safe but one of the things i aspire to do as a mother is to make sure my home is a place is safe and chirp feel loved and that's what women try to do. they try to build places and communities that are safe. and i think as we as a conservative society think about how do we build the next generation, i think we need to use those same skills. i think we need to be able to think about how can we knit together communities that help each other. how can we figure out how to over and over and over repeat thing without getting frustrated because it may take a really g long time and how do we build on strength and not tear down people because of their weaknesses. i have a lot of weaknesses. we all have weaknesses but i think those core fundamental values are very important. one of the reasons that i wrote the essential american and one of the reasons that i think it's so important is that it reminds

us that words matter. i know it sounds very shocking to hear that. but i think we forget a lot of times, especially, when we email and text, but words have great importance. thoughts and ideas create reality and, therefore, results. you have to be very careful not only what we read but what we think in our ideas. these documents remind us of our exceptionalism and they all ask us to do more or to be more. they also provide clarity. when reagan said, mr. gorbachev, tear down that wall, he didn't say gosh, i hope it tears down by itself. he said tear down this wall. he was very clear of what should happen and it's very important for us to understand our past and again, that's the core police chief behind the essential american. there are nation stories i don't know if you have family stories. we have family stories. the one i told but my dad losing

twice is, obviously, a family story. i tell top my children when they fail, to remind them they have to get up and be nice and gracious and work really hard again. and they can't give up. we also have stories -- i'll say a few family stories. my grandmother, mamu, the same one who broke her leg was raised on a farm. and in a rural area offorn george that makes carrollton look like a metropical list. she was one of 11, 13 we' born 1911 or 1913. they're not really sure but mamu was part of a farming family so they didn't owned the land. they just worked it which means everybody had to really participate. everybody was involved. so when she told her dad that she wanted to go to columbus, georgia, and get her rn degree, he wasn't happy. he needed those hands.

he needed her to help him out. so her mother gave her her egg money, literally her egg money, her nest egg, and her father, defender said you want to hear from me again and she went to columbus to get an rn degree and it was a huge, huge event. now, i tell this story to my children because i want them to understand that we value education. education is important as is doing what you think is really right for you. now, you'll -- you'll be glad to know that when her father became sick later in life and needed someone to help him, she, of course, was there and took care of him for which he was grateful but it's important. education is important. a mother who is the oldest of four children, was told when she went to college. you have two choices you may get out in three years and your sister will go after you or your sister will wait another year because there's not enough money

to send two children the same year. so i'll give it a try he went to auone and graduated from auburn and got in and out three years. and became a high school math teacher. and again, we value education. my sister cathy whom i mentioned earlier and this is the similar story i told you about raising money for cancer. my sister has arthritis. if you've never seen anyone that has this disease, it's an incredibly debilitating disease. she had days six, seven years ago when she literally could not get out of bed. i mean, literally had to be lifted out of bed. and she began taking a drug called embrol. it totally changed her life. it doesn't fixed everything but it stopped all the progress of the disease. so my sister having been conquered that at least for now decided she wanted to raise

money for arthritis and decided she wanted to walk a marathon. and for those it's 26.2 miles so she asked me if i would go along and help raise money for this, for rheumatoid arthritis, sure, of course, you're my sister and i'll have to do. oh, i'll have to carry her. she's 5'5", surely, i'll be able to carry her but, you know, cathy, but cathy, of course, made it fine. walked all 26.2 miles. took it seven hours and 47 minutes. we raise $40,000. we've done it -- we've done it two other times over the year we've raised $146,000. so you really can do incredible things when you put your mind to it. so those are some of our family stories. in terms of our nation's stories, there are a couple i want to highlight for you today because i think they're so important. is abigail adams often

overlooked but if you think about the revolutionary war, women were left behind with the children and if you look at her letters with john you see a woman that clearly was very, very bright, highly educated, and asked really great questions. and when you read her letters, and you see her questions you think she's prodding -- she's giving him the next thing to do, just make sure. and one of the things that she said she reminds him that every member feels for us. kind of like we do right now when you get calls from constituents and people who say remember the people down in georgia, remember the people out in texas and remember those in california? she reminded him of the people at home. and she also reminded him if a form of government is to be established, what one will be assumed? what's going to happen? how you will you form this government? how will it be made up? but clearly their relationship not only provided him with stability as a family but also

intellectuality challenged him. the other one is jean kirkpatrick who i'm very fond of. she's very interesting because very, very bright woman who was a dad originally. part of the democratic party, part of that organization. was very concerned in the '70s in the way of foreign policy was unfolding and got very concerned and had ronald reagan's attention when he was in office. and really her 1984 blame america first republican national convention i think you could take that speech today and put in new places and new names, that speech is just as relevant today as it was then because it very clearly lays out a country cannot plame of it and be able to live at the same time. i think this whole judgment we have to think about as a country

because where we don't not have right or wrong, i think clearly in the forefront we must have truth and must understand that when we -- when we say two plus two as my dad says equals four it really does equal four and there has to be a standard of truth but we have to think of moving forward with having truths without judgment. if you look in our history we have a cycle of victims and oppressors and as the next group cycles over and the victims become oppressors you have the same cycle and it reverses. the way to fix it and possibly fixing that is to have truth, not necessarily without judgment but with an open mind that was going to lead you to a more interesting, more creative decision that would be inclusive and allow everyone to participate. that's a lot to think about so i'm going to back up and give you a little bit of abraham lincoln to think with that. so my favorite selection out of the essential american is lincoln's second inaugural.

and you can tell i have i'm overweighted in lincoln because i couldn't figure out to what cut. i have lincoln's first inaugural, the gettysburg address and the second proclamation and the second inaugural but i couldn't figure out if you're really trying to cover american history, what do you leave out? i couldn't figure it out so i left them all in and when you look at the transition, his wording and how he exchanges as a person from his first inaugural which was clearly a legalistic case why we shouldn't go to but we should have to but if you look at his first inaugural it basically says, you know, the states have succeeded we know it's going to end up in war. i don't want to go to war but here's kind of the legal outline of what's going to happen. if you look at that and then you move to the gettysburg address where in less than 20 minutes in 287 words never using the word

"i" "me," never talks about himself he moves from the found of the nation to the future. and wraps us all in this great promise for tomorrow. unbelievable speech. he was not the keynote speaker that day. and wherever it was, he was a well-known orator. he spoke for two hours. don't worry. i'm not speaking for two hours today. but if you can imagine lincoln getting ready for 2-hour oratory saying 200 words in less than two months so short that a photographer could not take a picture. but the second inaugural to me is really heart researching and i want to spent a moment talking about it especially since we're right in the capitol that way. but if you can imagine, the first inaugural the capital the dome was half finished. in the first inaugural it was half finished. there was scaffolding up at the

capitol. and they wanted to have a sign that the union would endure. at the second inaugural it would all been assured that the north would win. and the dome was finished. he comes out and it's a cloudy day like today and it's overcast and the story says, the clouds broke and the sun shined on him. which must have been incredibly moving you were there. there's a couple of things in the second inaugural is where we need to move for our next generation of conservatism. he talks about let us judge not that we not be judged. he has become a man who truly understands that he's an instrument in the hand of god. you can see it in his speeches, you can see it in his writings. you can see how faithful he's become as a leader and a president but he talks about let

us judge not that we not be judged. he then goes on and closes with that great line with malice towards none, with charity for all with firmness in right as god give us the right let us finish the work we're in. now, you may think what does this have to do with me. you're a college student, an intern you're a business here what does that have to do with me? i often say the same things myself. i'm a writer, i'm mother. i do a lot of laundry. eight loads this weekend and you wonder what does it have to do with us. i think it has a lot to do with us. first of all, we're a nation moving forward and looking forward. that we're a nation that wants to reach out to others and include others and we have to depend on truth. we don't want to lean on judgment. because in the end this doesn't get to us where we need to go. and i think we also have to understand if we really want to dream big and think about where

we want our nation to be, at least when my children are older, i do have my little ones, is that we have to think about a nation that can be focused on truth for creative solutions because part of saying what's truthful without judgment -- the truth is still the truth. it doesn't make the truth go away. it just makes us focus on the truth and create a really creative solution versus looking at the past and figuring out how to fix the path because let me tell you what, you can try all you want. you can't fix the past. it doesn't change. there's nothing there for us. it's gone. you think about how can we be creative and solve problems for the future? that's what we're about. and then we have to figure out how can we make it so attractive that we absorb the majority of the country with us. that we're all working together. it's about absorption instead. so if we're going to do this thing, how do we do that.

how do we work hard enough to make that happen? one of the things that i think does help us is our nation's stories to talk about abraham lincoln and his second inaugural address and talk about ronald reagan when he gave the brandonburg gates speech and why words are important and talk about jfk's and his statement if not what your country can do for you, right, which is currently doing, what you can do for your country. and are we really doing what we should? and i think the hardest is to be a good example. that's the hardest thing i do every day and i fail every day usually by lunch. [laughter] >> sometimes i get a little later. but with two children i think you really understand what that means because they say everything you do and they say how you ask them to do things and they say how you react to people around you or to them and i think we all need to understand that every one of us has been an incredible network and we can be a good example. how do we do this? i'm using some of my dad's

things is to learn every day. i don't know if you learn every day. i try to learn most days. usually i learn from failing. i'm pretty good at that. pretty good at failing and getting better at learning from failing. but i think one of the things we have to learn as a conservatives movement and as women is what resonates. you want to talk a movement to resonate with america what does resonate? just like a violinist can hear the notes they play. resonates. so we were at lunch with louise haza last fall the violinist that i was talking about earlier and he was telling us is story about talking to the violinist in the world. his name i don't even know, that's terrible. but the story was -- he asked who's the greatestist violinist in the world and the response of the greatest violinist was the violinist who correct the notes the fastest. and what they did is they went back and listened to the tape of this maestro and they realized he slowed the tape down you

could hear his flaws. you could hear when the notes were off. but his hearing was so good that he could correct it before the human ear could hear it. so he was literally correcting as he plays. so we have to have that ability as a community and a movement to figure out if we're going the wrong way. if it's not resonating. if we're not building positive energy and optimism, we need to rethink what we're doing 'cause it's all got to, just like in a violin it's all got to be fabulous and fantastic and it's got to be pleasing to the ear and we have to figure out how to do that. because this is going to be a very long process and i think in the end we're really never over, life takes a long time, don't tell my children, life takes a long time if you're lucky. we have to enjoy life. and i'm the worst on this i get up on saturday with her to-do list. i have my to-do list and i have my husband's he's not so happy about that. he's the guy that gets up and sits on the couch.

he's together rest first and i know we're together for reason because god wants me to be patient. i'm not there yet and god actually wants him to do things on occasion. [laughter] >> no, but it's good for me because i'm very, very focused and i get too involved in activity and i try to do too much and jimmy is there to rein me in and say, honey, that's not what life is all about. it's about having fun. one of my favorite stories about my husband is the egg story. we cook our children grits, toast and eggs every morning because i'm from atlanta and i can do it. i cooked the grits and eggs this morning but in many cases jimmy did. we had a raining battle who had the best eggs on the pressure on those children to declare who was the best egg maker, mommy or daddy and i have to say he won for quite a while kind of embarrassing for me but i got over it and jimmy, he was trying

to have me do this or that and jimmy what's with the eggs. honey, you got to love those eggs. you got to love those eggs which means he had to pay attention to know what you're doing but that's become our kind of code for no matter what it is, you've got to love the eggs. you've got to love the committee meetings you're in and the calls you're dealing with. it doesn't matter what it is, you got to love your eggs. and i didn't meany loves his eggs not anymore he's gotten a doctor's report and he and i are off the eggs for a while. and the last thing we remind ourselves of you really have to be true of who we are as a conservative movement. and also as women. i think for women i listened to my mother talk how she was the first math major and it's a world i don't understand because it's a world in an age i have an undergraduate in finance and an mba in finance and a cfa. i can do whatever i wanted. but i think as women we now have to figure out we have choices.

we can do that or we can do this or we can do -- and every woman is different and every woman is going to change a couple times during her life. i worked in corporate finance for 15 years. i ran a big corporate group with $4 billion under me. and then i had two children and now i'm a writer. so the good news now is nowadays you can reinvent yourself. as you change and grow and as you decide you have a different priority. but i think in the end you have to really be authentic, which means i'm the same standing today in front of you as i am this morning cooking eggs for my children. you have to be very clear about who you are and what you will and won't do. and i think you have to understand that it's important that no matter what you do, you do have to in the end love all the eggs that you're involved in. ladies and men, i think we have a very big job in front of us and i think that collectively

but together we're up to the task and our task is to be truthful without judgment. to be creative in solution. to allow all americans to come in and join the movement. and to understand that everyone can pursue the american dream. i'd like to thank all of y'all for your time, your commitment, your passion and for serving what i think is an integral part of our incredibly bright history and our incredible future because we are the link of our great american story. thank you so much. grace be to god as it says on the east side of the monument. may god bless you and god bless america. [applause] >> and i think alyssa said we would take any questions. yes, thank you. and yes, you can ask exactly how

the eggs are cooked. >> what is your favorite speech that is in the book? >> my favorite book is lincoln's second inaugural. i mean, it moves me to tears when i read it because you can tell how hard the war for him. he talks about, you know, we believe in the same god. we read the same bible and pray to the same god. this is where we are as a nation hopefully it will be over soon and you can almost feel his party breaking in two but in the end he's very merciful without judgment and wants us to work together in reaching for a bright future. >> in your interactions of people with liberal persuasion. what's your common ground you're able to connect with especially with this book.

>> what are the common ground in terms of talking of liberals especially in terms of this book. it is american's book it is a conservative book although they happen to be more conservative but we have mlk is in the book and his speech is an incredible speech and again, i think we need to reach out to people who reach out in the others and include in the movement as roll models. jfk is in there and fdr is in there as well but the idea was to have american stories and all of those that i mentioned -- all of those authors ask us to be more, to do more. none of them say where you are and don't do anything or let government solve your problems. i mean, that wasn't their idea but to really how do we figure out together. and i'll give you another example and this is an area we have a lot of opportunity. two fronts in conservation. i've been involved in over a decade and my father was involved before me in a trust of public land. it saves land from people. and i think organizations such

as that that are conservation-minded and saving land publicly for people to use i think the conservatives have really gotten a bad wrap in terms of being environmentally aware. i love the environment and god created the environment i think -- we should be stewards of the earth and take care of it from a stewardship standpoint but we have to figure out to do it in such a way that it makes sense because if we just have rules and regulations we can't control what the rest of the world does. we have to build in solution that is actually work not just for us but makes sense fiscally and others will adopt it as well so i think we have to be very proactive in terms of the arguments. >> i'm wondering what's the best way to take in some of these speeches and i know when i'm reading a book and my eyes glaze over the words i don't really absorb it completely so did you listen to a lot of these speeches on tape? did you read them allowed to yourself. what process did you have to

really absorb them. >> that's a great question. a couple things. i do have an introduction in each one. who's involved, why did it happen, what was the outcome and why it resonates today? and that helps. and the other thing for those who are -- my husband and i did spending a friday night listen to ronald reagan the speech, his goldwater speech, that tells you the exciting life we have. and the brandonburg speech on tv. nearly not all of them are -- even when we looked at the book itself, the book of patrick henry, it's the first entry i think it's very interesting that not only is there no written transcript of that speech but literally what there is, is someone else recollection of being at the speech and that's all the record that is and that's where we get the phrase give me liberty, give me death. i think it's fun and also i know that i and a couple of them especially in the documents the northwest ordinance is pretty long and not that exciting.

it's to skim it and look for the parts that's interesting at that particular time and to read -- introductions are always 700 to 1,000 words so they're pretty easy to get through and to figure out what other parts might appeal to you but the good news is this book really is -- i mean, you can pick it up and. you can read two. you can read the rest later so it's really easy to use. >> how did you go to picking the 25 speeches or documents. >> we do have 25. the original goal was 21. i failed. we have 25. and it was really hard -- clearly you have to have the declaration of independence. you have to have the constitution. there's some that you know you have to have. and then that was the first probably 15 and you had to figure out based on that what -- what worked. a couple things we tried to do, one, we wanted to make sure we covered our history so we do

start with patrick henry and go toorn w. bush so we kind of have a good coverage in terms of what i see happened. and the other thing we did want to have things not only clearly should be in there but things that are a little less well-known. so remember the alamo speech is in there that is not as well-known so we tried to do a little bit interesting to make it interesting. [applause] >> for more information visit the author's website, jackiecushman.com. >> you know, how would time travel super face with some of these ideas? let me just turn it in that direction and i'll simply say this, one of the big puzzles with time travel, of course, is you go back in time and you affect things that maybe prevent your own existence. you go back and kill your parent

before you are born and there's a logical paradox and we saw that in back to the future and hollywood loves this idea. it's a variation on the paradox which comes from the following idea. i mean, imagine you travel -- you can travel to the future, you know? imagine i traveled to the future, let's just say and i want to see what's happened in string theory and has it been proven or not and i go to the floating internet station or whatever and i see that surprisingly the theory has made a major advance and the author of that paper is my mom and i'm like that's weird because my mom doesn't like physics and she wants me to be a doctor, not this kind of doctor. and all this sort of stuff. so and i look in the acknowledgements to the paper in the future and she thanks me for teaching her all this physics, and i'm like, holy crap, i better get back. i got a lot of work. and i use the little machine and

i travel back and i start to tutor my mother and, man, it's not going well. she's not getting it. a year goes by and two years, how in the world is she ever going to write that paper and then i say to myself, i know what was in that paper. i read it. let me just tell her what to write. [laughter] >> so i tell her what to write and she writes the paper and everything turns out in the future. now, the question is, who get the credit? [laughter] >> it's not a question of credit really. it's a credit of where did the information come from? did she think of it, no, she got it from me. did i think of it, no i got it from her paper. information, ideas just seem to pop in at thin air if these things are possible. how does it relate to multiple i ver -- -- and you never come back to your own universe. you come back, say, in the quanta multiverse and let's use that as a explicit example. you go back to our other copies

of the universe. for instance, if anything back in time and kill my parents before i'm bopper, i wouldn't be born in that universe but so what? my origin would still be unaffected because my parents would be unaffected in the universe in which i started. so that's sort of -- but again, it's a little far afield but at least that's some interaction with time travel. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> well, with federal judge denny chin's rejection of the 2008 google book settlement the future of a complete online library is in question. joining us now to discuss this issue is sarah weinman. she's the news editor of publishers marketplace. wisdom weinman if you could begin by giving us a brief overview of what the google book settlement was and who are the parties involved? >> sure. the google book settlement arose from an original lawsuit that was filed by the association of

american publishers and the autho authors guild. in their view google was printing out of work books and they felt this wholesale scanning was infringement. and they didn't like that. so they sued. as it made its way through the courts, however, the parties all decided to create what is known as the google book settlement. and what that would entail is coming up with some means of giving copyright holders some monetary value for their work and what they elected to do is to create an opt-out process if authors did not want their works to be scanned by google, they could write in and opt out and those who did have their works scanned by google would get about $60 per work. as it made its way through the courts, judge chin last heard

about this approximately 14 months ago and then he was confirmed to the second court of appeals after which nobody knew exactly what was going on with the settlement. and then when the news came in last week that he rejected it, that sort of created a wave of surprise among many parties especially in the publishing community. >> what was judge chin's rationale? >> he ultimately believed that the settlement was not fair, adequate or reasonable. he felt that the numerous objections that were lodged by about 6,800 authors and 500 other parties was substantive to rule that the way that the settlement was created contravened current copyright law and there was perhaps a better way to do it. in his view he thought the majority of his objections could be mollified by instead of an optout process using an opt-in process. where copyright holders say no,

i want to be part of the settlement instead of assuming unless you opt out, that you're automatically in. he didn't like that and he felt that this was not a good way of doing. the other portion that i addressed earlier related to orphan works and he felt that the google book settlement could not adequately address this. and instead, this was a matter that should be taken up by congress. >> so, sarah weinman, during this entire legal process, google has been scanning books into its system. what happens to those books? >> that's a very good question. and, in fact, because the settlement has now been rejected, no one really knows what the next move will be. there is supposed to be a status meeting in court on april 25th at 4:30 at which time i guess the parties are going to state their claims as to why they should come up with a revised settlement. that's what the aap and the ag are both on record as saying.

and google will have to figure out exactly what they want. there are multiple ways of looking at it. some commentators say that this actually hurts google because, you know, this puts their scanning ability in depth. other commentators say no, in fact, it's fine because in another separate program which is the creation of google ebooks google is already scanning works that are in the copyright with various permissions. you can go to google's ebook site online and download for a price any current ebook that's probably available for sale. you can even go to various independent retailers that are affiliated with the google ebookstore and do it that way. they do what's known as a partner program where publishers and authors as well have opted in in order to make these books available for sale. so there's some rationale by implementing and instituting this particular program, that this is perhaps a model for what

the google book settlement should be. the other thing it puts in limbo is that the settlement was supposed to create what's known as google ebooks rights registry and google and publishers spent roughly between 12 and 50 million already in terms of getting this up and running. now, that's in limbo because how can you have a rights registry for a settlement that technically doesn't entirely exist? so it remains to be seen will the aap and the ag relaunch their lawsuit. will other parties litigate will google want to continue the soon. i have a feeling we'll learn more on april 25th. >> what was google's reaction and the american association of publishers reaction to judge chin's suggestion that they use an opt-in system? >> both the aap and the ag were underbly disappointed that the settlement was not approved. but both parties seem to express some optimism that they could

find a way into the settlement. like macmillan's ceo john sergeant who released a statement on behalf of the aap essentially said they're prepared, that is the publisher plaintiff to enter into a narrow settlement along the lines to take advantage of its ground-breaking opportunities and they hope that other parties will do as well. and scott turo is president of the ag accepted along the lines regardless of what the outcome of discussions are, readers want answer to unavailable works. and so they hope they can arrive at a settlement. with respect to google, they were as i said kind of disappointed but they essentially said they hope to be able to continue their scanning work and make as many books available. so essentially i think it's disappointed but cautious

optimism seems to be reining the day. >> sarah weinman's what about google's competitives microsoft, yahoo! et cetera, what was their reaction? >> to the best of my knowledge i think the reactions were mostly lodged within court documents. from what i understand, though, they were certainly pleased that the settlement was not approved because each of those parties or certainly the majority of these parties did lodge objections to the court. amazon, for example, had essentially said if you give google this unfair advantage, how is this good for copyright? and that was actually another big issue of judge chin which is that if -- it's a good idea to have a digital library, to have these works scanned but should google be the arbiter and the decision maker, the entity that decides how it's scanned, what is scanned, which books are

essentially made available? and i think in judge chin's opinion, he felt very uncomfortable that one entity, one corporation could have that much power and an unfair advantage over a corporate entity or a public entity. >> sarah weinman recently in the "new york times" robert darton who's the director of the harvard university library wrote that the decision is a victory for the public good but insisted, quote, we should not abandon google's dream of making all the books in the world available to everyone. instead, we should build a digital public library which would provide these digital copies free of charge to readers. is there any viability to that? has anyone stepped up -- >> it sounds like a wonderful idea. yeah, the only -- the only entity that stepped up is google. and, unfortunately, especially with the current economic state of play, the priority for a digital public library that wasn't already in progress i suspect is not the highest of

priorities. i mean, already look at the money that's just been spent on the rights registry alone which may have to be abandoned in a worse case scenario. or in a best case scenario taken up but then who will it be taken up by? so as a result google was the tremendous market cap that they have were really one of the only corporations or only entities public or private that had the clout and the muscle to be able to make this happen. so i think ultimately that was why a settlement was a good idea for the aap and the ag because they recognized there is value in the work that google did and they wanted to at least get something off the ground and that could be built on and built on. will the library system be able to come together for a nonprofit entity when they're facing such massive cutbacks as state and federal level? i'm not entirely certain. so even though there's disappointment and there's cautious optimism about revising

the settlement, there's also understandable skepticism that this can happen. so some people are looking at it as a win-win. i'm looking at it as a more neutral, potentially great loss, i suppose, if something doesn't move forward. >> does judge -- or will judge chin continue to have a role in this issue? >> from what i understand, he will not, especially, now that he has moved on to the second circuit court of appeals. this is actually one of the last outstanding cases on his docket. the 14 months it took at least in publishing circles a little long but in light of the complexities and the issues that were raised it makes sense in hindsight. so then the issue becomes who will take this up? will have it to be litigated from scratch? will it be heard again? are there other court cases that may factor into how -- what kind of potential outcome is reached at a later date?

will this drag on for years? we just don't know at this point. a lot of things will become clearer at the status meeting on april 25th. >> and we look forward to talking to you after that status meeting. finally, sarah weinman, do you see congress playing a role? >> it's a very good question, peter. certainly judge chin hopes that congress will play a role. i'm not entirely certain that they will play a role since -- from a priority standpoint, looking at it in the greater context of budget cuts and health care and various military activities going on, whether the issue of orphan works or having a digital library is going to even register on the current congress. they also, i think, traditionally haven't necessarily been the most willing listeners in terms of trying to change current copyright law to make it