stephen fried present historical accounts of the american west. this is a little over an hour. >> write the american west, and we've got a distinguished, bang-up group here for you. let me introduce them beginning on the far left. stephen fried is an award-winning investigative journalist and essayist and wr adjunct professor at columbia university graduate school of journalism. his first biography inspired tha movie, "gia." the new rabbi and husbandry. he's won the national magazine award twice, lives in philadelphia with his wife, diane, and the book we'll be talking about today is called "appetite for america: how visionary businessman fred harvey built a railroad orbusi hospitality empire that

civilized the wild west." itpi is out in paperback in may. in a review by hampton sides, a great writer himself -- he wrote "blood and thunder" -- hampton sides wrote, this book makes me. hungry. [laughter]ine i like that line.ou would you welcome stephen friedn [applause] >> thank you. >> michael milt sic has worked as -- hiltzik began at the l.a. times as a financial writer in 1931. he now -- 1981. he now writes a column about business. in 2004 he won an award for distinguished business andd financial reporting. with the l.a. times in '99 he shared a pulitzer prize for beaw reporting for co-writing an expose of corruption in the music industry. and when michael won the pulitzer, i won this recently, a friend of his said at least now you'll know what's in your obit. [laughter]

his books include "a death inobt kenya: the murder of julie ward," "the plot against social security." he's got one coming out in september called "the new deal: a modern history." the book we're talking about today is "colossus: hoover dam and the making of the american century," which is paperback int june, michael? >> report in. >> would you -- >> that's right. w >> would you welcome michael hiltzik.eff [applause] jeff guinn is a former senior ed writer for the ft. worth star o telegram. he's the author of three novels about santa claus and christmas. "how mrs. claus saved christmas" and "the autobiography of santa claus." his most recent book is "go dowr together: ory the true, untoldfa story of bonnie and clyde." publishers weekly called it an

intensely readable account of two of america's most notorious outlaws. it will leave readers breathless until the final hail of bullets. the book we're talking aboutut today comes out may 17, it's called "the last gunfight: the e real story of the shootout at the o.k. corral." and it's gotten a starred review there publishers weekly. jeff, for some reason wheal have to find out later, loves the san francisco giants. would you welcome jeff guinn. [applause] i want today begin -- i wanted g to begin by giving each of these writers an opportunity in brief fashion which is very difficult to do to say why they wrote this particular book and why under read it, why -- why you should read it, why it's important to read. stephen, let's begin. >> oh, thanks.e people all over the country go to the grand canyon, and you

walk into the main hotel, and you see a painting on the wall of somebody called fred harvey.e i came a long way to do that,ed and i had that experience with my wife about 20 years ago. it turns out who the hell is fred harvey which is a question people have been asking for a long time is a great way of asking about the history ofrica america. fred harvey, turns out, ran the first chain of anything in america. he owned the restaurants and hotels and, basically, c severallized the american west. his story had never been taken seriously journalistically before, and i was lucky enough o not only to be able to recreate y business, the harvey's were the this the 1880s through the 1940s, but fred's stuff was in the family. it was a very personal book as well, and it gave the insight that most people know fred harvey because of the harvey girls. it was a great american journey

for me. being from the east, this was my first trip to the west. i recreated the life of the west which easterners don't understand. they think of it as a whole other world. it was interesting telling the story of the west based on what easterners don't know. >> michael? >> well, thank you. basically, all of my book projects start the same way. i get interested in a subject and can't find enough published to satisfy my own curiosity, so i realize i'm going to have to write it myself. in this case, the case of my hoover dam book, i was writing a lot about water in the west for my day job at the "l.a. times" and i had a conversation with the head of one the largest water agencies in southern california, the metropoll tan water district, was telling me about where they get their water

and some is from northern california and some from the ground, some from the colorado river, and they like getting it from the river because for them it's free. i said why is the water from the river free? well, we built hoover dam. now, i hadn't known that. in fact, he was lying just a liability, but it made it clear there was a connection between the great structure on the colorado which i had seen two or three times, and my wife of southern california, so i resolved to learn more. now, there's a third factor in this, and that was that my last book of history before this had been a history of a place called xerox park research center. it was a research center that xerox created in 1971 and where the scientists there invented the personal computer and ether

net, and they worked on the internet, developed the windows-style computing, and invented all these great things. when i was working on that, i was dealing with sources that were all alive. i dealt with 300 scientists who worked in this place. i had a feeling they were all looking over my shoulder to make sure i got it right. as a result of that, i resolved that. the next time i read a book of history, it was going to be about a subject in which everybody was dead. [laughter] at least i would have the last word. now, there are still workers from hoover dam who are not dead, but they are very old and hard to find so for the most part, i have the right to say what i think and what i learn, and that's how that book came together. >> jeff guinn? >> well, everybody would agree it's a natural segue for a

writer to go from santa claus to the bonny and clyde and the ok corral. [laughter] i wanted to devote a couple years of my life to the process. going down together had done pretty well, and my agent and publisher and editor suggested, say, you got another book about people shooting each other? well, you know, everybody's got an area of expertise they try to develop. i think there are three iconic battles in american history that everybody in the general public either identifies with or think they know all about. that's the alamo, customer's -- custear's last stand, and the ok corral. people talk about them a lot. a friend of mine wrote a novel called "the gates of the alamo"

and i didn't think anybody could write better than he had. there's a best seller about custer's last stand, and i took the third option which has given me the chance to talk to many, many fine people throughout the country. when the book comes out may, half of them will decide i'm evil, stupid, or both. [laughter] the people of this area are worth writing about and knowing more about. i'm glad for that opportunity. >> thanks. what we're going to do now is ask each fellow and why they are unique is because they are journalists writing history, not academics writing history. i wanted to ask them how being a journalist helps writing nonfiction and impacts your

technique. >> i think journalists have been looking at things they think are more boring than they want to read and want to write a more interesting narrative character-driven version of it. that's what we do in magazines, and that's what's come in fiction book full circle. if you look at the nonfiction books in the magazine articles of the 1800s, they were like this, very narrative, and then it disappeared, but i think it's coming back and focused in america after 9/11 because the truth is that the publishing business was more interested in american history books after 9/11, but what's driving this is one, when you a background in up vest gaitive reporting, you look at primary sources more aggressively than historians do because historian -- history is bouncing back and forth between what one writer wrote and another writer wrote. the digitizing of newspapers helps us do what we do. a lot of books you read were

based on archives and reading as much as possible something on microfilm. it's different when you read digitized newspaper and take in an enormous amount of information. the difference in the books is the way they are written. we were talking beforehand about hose of us who do this write these books, and a historian gives you four versions of an event and let you choose between them. in narrative nonfiction i refer to it as history-buffed. what we end up doing is do our reporting, figure out what we think really happened, then dramatize what happened based on original reporting, and if there's a debate, we footnote that or end note that. that's why our books have numerous notes. the last 100 pages of my book are end books. not a 500-page books, it's just end notes. people want to know how i found

out how fred harvey had a second wife. in my story, he has two wives. that's a change in history. i don't want to belabor something like that. these books existed before. they existed in new yorker writing, and i think this kind of style got more popular in magazines and "vanity fair" in the 80s and the 90s and because of the success of books that show what jowrnists can do with the historical stories that are different than what historians have done and the more successful historians, that's why there's an explosion of this. it's what the readers prefer and what we like to do. >> michael? >> sure. i'll underscore what was said. there's two main points. one is technique and the other is a sense of audience. in terms of technique, i think we find a lot of profession name historians beginning to use

journalistic narrative techniques when they are writing, but journalists, we always particularly in my trade and stephen's newspapers and magazines, we always know that we have to tell a story, that the narrative really is what drives what we are teaching our readerrers, so when i work on my books, what i try to do is tell that story through the eyes of the people who lived there, the people of the ground level and then add on it as stephen eluded to what i construe to be the meaning of the events, the people, the way they acted. now, the second aspect is a sense of audience which is also something that in these newspapers and magazines, we have to have a strong sense of. we have to know who are we writing for? what do they need to know? what will they learn the most from?

when -- i think all of us when doing our research, we read a lot of works by professional historians. you get a sense that they are writing for each other, the historical record, and there's nothing wrong about that. in fact, it's very valuable, eang i think those of us who write narrative history sort of stand on their shoulders when we do that, but they are -- when you read a journal article from a historical journal or a book that's been published by a university press on some historical issue, you know that they're not -- this article is not really directed at the general public, and it's our job to sort of bring that knowledge and all of those facts to the general public and give you, the reader, a chance to understand what we've learned.

i know i'm writing for an educated audience and a sophisticated one, but one that doesn't come at the subject with a professional or an academic historian's point of view. as a journalist, i'm translating what's in the historical record into a vie -- vie knack cue lar for an audience. >> i want to go to michael's book and it highlights what he talks about. imagine this written by an academic journalist. he's talking about sim eli, the boss of boulder city, a place of where the people of the dam lived. he was an old man with a on old testament prophet with the grand woods american gothic. that's a sentence, and you see

the guy. he did something really interesting was he made a character out of the colorado river, describing it as a fire red monster and man's inability to control it and so heavy that dust blew off it. good stuff. >> that's a basic technique. books are described as a biography of nonliving things because part of what we do, and, again, this comes from magazine writing. it comes from a certain kind of book writing, and people are finding they like it better. things like in a history book or article, there's sections in it where people go here's the boring part to get through to get the information to get back to the interesting part, but, you know, we don't get to have a boring part. the idea is to make the boring part not boring because no one lets a journalist be boring. you have to bring the river to life, everything to life. in fact, the dam and river are

allye. it's a question as whether you see it that way. readerrers share that interest. they want everything in the book to be animated. >> in fact, when i write my columns or articles for the newspaper, as i'm researching them, somebody i'm interviewing will say, this is really technical stuff. your readers will not be interested in that. my response is i understand what you're saying, but my job is to make it interesting, and that's the same way to approach a book like this. >> to highlight what stephen said, there's a famous line by -- it's about fiction and the advice about fiction is to leave out the parts people skip. [laughter] >> which is a hard thing to do. when writing a history book the question is if it should be there -- in a novel you can skip it and move ahead, but if you've done a big -- you know, i had to research, you know, basically 80

years over three generations of the family. if you skip parts, that's not good either. a lot of us slept through this in history class, but my goal was to make it come to the with the harvey girls, the restaurants. you have to develop different way of writing things so the boring stuff becomes not boring, and, you know, i love seeing what my colleagues do to try to make that happen. it's also very factual whereas i think when the new journalism began it was the dam and start adjective going crazy, but what's interesting is people are going back to the original sources, the old newspaper stories and trying to bring the thing alive based on the observations of the people at the time and not just wild flights of fancy. >> what i was actually going to say -- >> sorry. >> you can tell journalists get to the point quicker, but

clearly that's not always true. [laughter] no, these guys are absolutely right. there's two things with journalists that we bring to the table. the first, i think, is because of the nature of our training. we have to discern very quickly what are the most important aspects of the story. what's really going to make a difference? what do the readers need to know most? again, these two fellows particularly shine at it. it's not enough if you're really trying to have a conversation with the reader instead of a lecture to simply be a lister of what happened. you don't just tell what. you find those moments in your story that tell you why and how. i realize that's not quite as detailed as some of the explanations, but, again, these guys are better at it than i

am. >> why are the earth and holidays celebrities today? >> they are celebrities because they allow people to make their own interpretations of who they are. they are iconic because there's a lot of nighs information about them and things that can be interpreted in different ways. you can always make the holidays and the clintons into what you would like them to be. we hear a lot today about revisionist history. you know, who are the revisionist journalistic historians who will come in here and take something that's been accepted for years and maybe demonstrate it might not have been that way? well, that's not revisionist history, but going back and claims history. the earp and holidays would strangle each other over the question of what color their eyes were. there was a lot of mythology,

stories not studied thoroughly, and it's accepted as gospel. that's the fun of it. >> tell us, starting with stephen, about selling a book about the west to publishers in the east. [laughter] you mentioned that the easterners thinking of the west as a vast exans of place -- expanse out here. what was it like to sell that book? >> i was lucky because the truth is while today most people don't remember fred harvey unless they are a certain generation. there was a time when fred harvey was the best known brand through america. some of it is a generational thing. i was fortunate that my editor was a little order older and they to write a book of fred harvey was something she immediately understood. when you look at the marketing

everything is in the east, and you have to explain how to approach that, and when we have been out for the book, it's almost like eastern and western events. when the book came out we took a promotional train ride along the route and stopped in the cities and did big museum things because it's part of the history in the cities. in the east, it's like explaning to somebody before howard johnson, there was a guy who invented this story industry that howard ripped off. if you want to understand how the restaurant business, hotel business, the business of civilizing cities in the country came about along the railroads and plains and trains, because the fred harvey company was on the roads too and the first meals in the air for because of fred harvey too. people already know fred harvey because they have been to the grand canyon. they've been to winslow, but

it's cool. there's an area where everybody knows the story and to other areas no one had heard it before, but you can show them it's important as an american to understand the stories that you want to understand the history of america which is broken up by different parts of the country, but does have to come together. >> michael, did you have interesting experiences in that regard? >> well, it was a challenge, at least theoretically, to bring a book about a great western monument to east coast publishers. i was fortunate in that everybody across the country knows hoover dam, and, in fact, that was part of the pitch that this is a great national -- it's a great national structure, part of our nation. i didn't have to educate east coast publishers about what it was i was writing about, but what i had to do is draw a connection between the building of hoover dam and its role in the west and its role as a

national structure and make the connection with public works, with great national endeavors, and with issues of water conservation, and all these things, but that was very educative. i think that is what sold the book to my publishers. now, once you get beyond that, you know, you have the deal and you writing the book, and when it comes to marketing, i find that my approach to speaking about hoover dam is different depending on where i am. if i'm in the east, i try too draw the -- try to draw the connections for the audience. in the west who live with hoover dam much more obviously than the rest of the country, i don't have to do that. i focus on more immediate issues, and those of you who may have heard me speak yesterday when i was talking about the book know that certain places

like arizona, which had a unique relationship with the dam and with the construction period, it can be even more refined, so, you know, these subjects mean different things to different people in different parts of the country, and that's part of talking about it and selling it. >> jeff, did you have a particular challenge with your book? i know if you approach editors and publishers in the east about the ok corral, they know about it, but what was it like? >> the most enjoyable part about writing about the west perhaps was seeing the amazed looks on faces of editors of eastern publishers when they say, really? [laughter] there's also a great advantage, frankly, to being able to want to write a book about something involving the west in that when you're talking in terms of wonderful large sprawling subject matter, i mean, america

in its push towards greatness is always moving west throughout our history, and the west is a place where people can go and make their reputations, where they can really over 75 years civilize a whole area and make these contributions or build a dam that is really beyond almost anything else that's been built by map in the entire nation's history. the west has the best stories, period, and that's something that i think a lot of people in this room already know, and ain't it wonderful when we can convince the other folks back east that's it's true? >> i noticed this working on the book. when you look at the period after the civil war and how america reremansed the west is because it was gone after the civil war. you count talk about the east because they pushed themselves

to the brink of destruction. it's not surprise l after the war people are obsessed with the stories of the west, and they were covered in the newspapers. you know because you've been through the papers. when billy the kid was shot, it was front page stories the next day. this is not long term mess making. the west became what americans could moe man -- faint size about a lot. the flip side of that east-west thing is that i think people in the east are easily sucked into western stories if they can -- if they can come to know that this is a story that matters to them. >> the challenge is to make 2 the story -- is to make it the story of what really happened opposed to what you think happen. the truth is better and more interesting than the mythology, and that's something we all fine find. >> i read somewhere that you

wrote that some people believe what happened because they want to believe it happened opposed to what really did. why is that? >> one of the things where the tombstone myth took hold is during the days of the cold war when it was clear to a lot of us, a lot of americans that the world was pretty increasingly complex place, westerners on -- westerns on tv was american's favorite form of entertainment. in dodge city, even though he never walked there, matt dylan was just as real to americans. you got situations where there's clear-cut good guys who, with their courage and their willingness to fight with their fists or with a gun, stood up to evil and somehow they always conquered it. it was, it was sort of a national need for that kind of western comfort food, and they bought into it. now, all of us here today i bet

if we were asked to name every member of the obama cabinet would stop after two or three names, but we could sing that theme song from the wyatt earp tv show. >> can you sing it now, jeff? >> no, because i like the people in this room, and they don't need to suffer. [laughter] >> it's interesting how the tv part came up because there was a movie version of that 20 years before, and one of the things that's interesting is watching the west deal with its own stories, and, i mean, the harvey company was involved with this because they sold books and took people or tours that the indian detours people took in arizona and new mexico was the first time people went to pueblos, and it was a different time politically. the u.s. government was still deciding how to tell the stories about what they did to the navajos. they became heroic as teddy

roosevelt came to office, the turn the century, this is when the stories were retold to the tourists to came west to hear the stories of the west which then influenced the movies because to get to hollywood, you had to stop in the west at the fred harvey hotel, and they made indian movies there. by the time they were in tv in the 50s, they were well-developed. it's entreing to -- interesting to see how they changed over time. >> i want to ask you since you are experts at telling come plex stories and using characters to do so making your books readable, define key characters briefly. i'll pick a character for stephen and jeff, but mike, you can pick one of your own. >> five or six instances, what man was he? >> extremely practical and

unsophisticated in a few. he was in no one one dimensional made mistakes and didn't admit them. it had a lot to do with his successes and down falls. .. >> michael, there are a number

of characters we could go to in your book, and that's one thing i like about your book, frank crowe with his stetson hat, william mulholland who's famous in l.a. history. pick a fellow that you want to talk about as instrumental in the hoover dam and in your book. >> sure. well, i think inescapably the single character of the construction phase of hoover dam and my book goes all the way back to the 1800s and brings the story or pretty close to modern times. but, obviously, the construction of the dam is the centerpiece, and that is frank crowe. he was the superintendent, he worked for six companies which was the private contracting consortium that built the dam, the remnants of which today, bechtel company. crowe was a fascinating character and also the summit of a lot of myth -- subject of a lot of myth making earlier on. he was a dam builder

extraordinaire. hoover dam was his 14th dam. he built dams in the remote mountains of the north many idaho and montana -- in idaho and montana, he built dams in deserts. hoover dam was built in the most remote and harshest environment that he had ever worked in, but he understood when the planses were coming together, and he knew about these plans because he had worked for the federal government as the plan superintendent. he knew this was going to be his dam. now, he had several aspects of his approach to dam building that were important. one was he was a relentless driver of men. he would -- forest fires, blizzards, nothing would really stop him. he would get these dams built way ahead of schedule, often under budget. he was known for this. he was also widely admired by the men who worked for him. he would go from project to

project with a team of four men, and they would hire miners and builders wherever they, wherever they landed. but he did have this very loyal cadre of underlings. so the image of frank crowe is that he was a master engineer, he designed a lot of the equipment that was used to build these dams. he was beloved of the men, he loved his men, he would do anything for them. he was an extremely efficient deployer of men and materials at the dam site. the aspect of him that i i wanted to make sure people saw and that i tried to bring out was that, was that there was a dark side to his pace and his relentless approach to the work. and that was that if men got in the way, the project would come first. and building hoover dam there were several episodes where that came out. there was a strike by the industrial workers of the world

very early on. frank crowe crushed that strike brutally, but he did it from behind the scenes so that he wouldn't be blamed for the consequences of breaking the strike. there were periods in which decisions that were made to save money for the be contractors, and after all, he was an employee of bechtel and henry kaiser and the other contractors. to save money, he would do things like run diesel and gasoline-powered equipment underground, and scores of men died from carbon monoxide poisoning. they didn't get compensation for their -- their families didn't get compensation for their deaths, they didn't get compensation for their injuries because when they were brought out and brought to the clinicsing and hospitals, the doctors who were working for the contractors diagnosed them as having suffered from pneumonia which was not a construction

injury. well, frank crowe knew about this, he condoned it, he oversaw it. so that's the other aspect of it. he was a three dimensional man, he got this dam built, there's no taking that away from him. his men loved him because they weren't allowed to see his contribution to the conditions that they worked under. >> one final note on that, michael, the first -- there were 112 deaths associate with the the construction of the dam, the first one was a fellow named jay george tyranny who fell from a barge, the last death was his son patrick who fell from an intake tower 13 years later. i think that's fascinating. >> they both died on the same date, a little spookier, the same day of the year. >> now we'll go to fred harvey. he was a brit, he was a nervous nelly, he was a workaholic, and stephen will answer this, but there's a story that the grand canyon was formed when fred

harvey lost a nickel and went digging for it. [laughter] >> it's -- yeah. people were not always happy when fred harvey came in because the fred harvey establishments were so much better than what existed in all these towns, they could get fresh meat off the trains where everybody else had to deal with what they could. only the passengers were happy about fred harvey. the thing that was fascinating to me, all my books are about families, family dynamics, and what we want in our history books is to get to know the people and their families. and what's cool that i learned and didn't know when i pitched the book is you can't really tell his story without understanding his son ford, who no one knows about, who actually was fred harvey longer than fred harvey. and most of the things we associate with fred harvey, the company, were done by ford harvey who ran the company from the 1890s until his death in 1928 staying behind his father's name because the idea was the

fred harvey name was so powerful that it was better to say you were being taken care of be by fred harvey. i love relationships between fathers and sons. they're what drive almost everything i write in magazines and books, and i was able to really delve into the relationship between these two men. fred harvey was sick. he had what we now call americanitis, american nervousness which is a ridiculous diagnosis of his day. and he spent much of the year in england, and his son ran the business. so the relationship between these two men, and we found be all their letters or back and forth to each other that were incredibly powerful especially when fred was dying and he was going all around the world trying to find a cure to the colon cancer that was killing him. people with aging parents are having the same conversation with their parents, it was uncanny. i was able to recreate fred in some ways through his son, and that was the part that was really a surprise to me.

the things that surprise you in your research, you pitch a book, it's a historical book, you think you're pitch ago book about a known story, and one of the most amazing parts is when you find something it turns out no one ever knew or appreciated before. you could be going to the editor and the story's more complex, and the editor goes, i like the very simple version of it, and that can happen. but part of what's cool these historical books, when you're an investigative reporter and your goal is to find something no one else can, and many this case, ford harvey was like a sentence in my proposal, and he ended up becoming half of the book because he did all the things that people associate with fred harvey and was a modern businessman based in kansas city that no one ever heard of. >> jeff, were you going to say something? >> i was just going to say probably the best analogy about being surprised is that books are very much like children. when you start with one, you

think you know exactly what it will grow up to be, but it ends up being whatever it darn well wants to. [laughter] and that's part of the fun, don't you both think? >> yes. >> all of these books deal with places we can visit. mary coulter-designed hotel in winslow, if you haven't been there, you have got to go. there's a wonderful line in stephen's book with the architect of that building, mary coulter, as she was dying, i think? pretty close to it? she was told that la pa sad da was going to be closed, and she said there's such a thing as living too long. tell, briefly, stephen, about la pasada and why everyone should go there today. >> it was one of the last of the harvey buildings built. the built in the 1930s for the tourism industry in the southwest. keep in mind that everything we have here now, these were the flyover states to get to california, and the idea of

stopping in new mexico or arizona was ri dick house. the railroad and the fred harvey company developed the opinion that people should learn america through that story. it was not part of america before that. la pasada was the last of those hotels, and mary coulter who was fred harvey's in-house architect basically designed a hotel from scratch that didn't match itself so it would have a story so the do sents could tell this story, it was all built at the same time just so they could build the story. that was mary coulter, she was wonderfully wild in that way. the hotel became like a closet for years and years and years. it closed in the '50s, and a coup from los angeles tried to bring wednesday low, arizona, which at that time no one went to except to stand on the corner like mention inside the eagles' song. [laughter] they really finished it room

from room. thank goodness, the railroad had just boxed it up, and mary coulter's stuff all was still there, and they brought it back to life. it's an incredible jewel of a hotel, it has a four-star restaurant in it, and i'll say my friend who is a chef there is now a finalist for an award announced last week, and it's a place people don't know to stop between santa fe and the grand canyon which is the essential tourist route, but if you're on the way back and forth as many people are as they're traveling, you have to stop at winslow and stop at la pasada. >> michael, when fdr dedicated the hoover dam, he said, i came, i saw, i wuss conquered. what did he meansome. >> i think anybody that goes to the hoover dam feels the same. there are a number of places that i've been or that i've experienced that i feel i can never get tired of; niagara

falls. i used to visit almost every weekend when i lived in buffalo. i never got tired of it. hoover dam is another one of these places. you can see it again and again, it never really loses its ability to astonish at the very thought of putting the structure many what was then a truly remote, inhospitable place. we now think of hoover dam as down the road from las vegas, but it wasn't that way with then, and when you're standing on it or looking at it, you still get the same sense of majesty and grace. all of this was the product of engineering and design on a scale that we'd never seen before. now you can, of course, you can take the bridge that's just downstream from the bridge, and although you can't see it from your car because i think the bridge builders didn't want, didn't want people crashing into

each other, you know, as they were staring wide-eyed at thissal paster monument upstream, but you can walk over the bridge and see it there. the thing about a structure like hoover dam is that it sets the benchmark for everything that comes after it. it's no longer the tallest dam in the world, it's no longer the dam with the largest volume of concrete, it certainly isn't the long e dam, it's not even the dam in the most remote or inhospitable place anymore. there have been dams built since then that posed greater engineering challenges for their builders than even hoover dam did for its builders, but everything that comes afterwards is compared to hoover dam. and there's a reason for that, and that's just because of the power of the structure and it's saying this really is nothing like it built by man that i've

ever encountered. >> stephen and michael both used the word majesty and majestic, jeff, you know what's coming. your challenge is to use that word in describing tombstone. [laughter] >> when my book is published, i think some of the folks who live in tombstone and promote it as authentic will fly into a majestic rage. [laughter] i have to say, very honestly, that after two years of working on this book i have grown to love in this part of arizona very, very much. besides the beauty itself, i think some of the people here are very special. there is a town called bisbee that i love of to drive through. it's the last thing i do before

i start home just because it feels so special there. tombstone itself, as it exists now, seems to me to be a delap dated movie set meant, hopefully, to appeal to folks who like to take their entertainment in a one-negligencal style. now, i don't know that that was the wrong approach for the town now to have taken. they're trying to survive in tough economic times, and every tourism dollar counts. but the real tombstone, the tombstone i fell in love with when i was writing this book, was such a diverse place. i think i call it an amazing, unique combination of elegance and decadence. and i don't know that that comes through anymore. the courthouse in tombstone was a special place. and the staff that worked there did a great job of disseminating information, but i also think

hasn't that sort of closed down now because of government cutdowns? or it's being discussed being some changes to it. the city took it over. well, i don't know whether i'm pleased or concerned. [laughter] you don't want, you don't want to mock any community that is doing its best to promote itself. and in the sense that it at least interests people many this area, and maybe if they go there, they're intrigued enough to want to know more and maybe more factual information, that's great. i do not expect when last gunfight is published may 17th and in every other place in the world will be considered the perfect gift for every occasion. [laughter] that they're going to want to do, me to do a book signing in tombstone, or if they do -- >> maybe a gunfight. >> no, not a gunfight. they would want to reenact the dramatic hanging that took place.

[laughter] they'd think a bullet was too good for me. >> jeff, one quick thing. did you have an initial reaction when you went to tombstone, and you saw the reenactments and the folks walking on the boardwalks, did that repel you or did you come to accept it? >> when i was a kid working my way through college, i had o work at six flags, and i wore a big blue frog costume. the effect there was, first of all, i was kind of surprised that it was pretty one-dimensional. the folks there were very earnest, but when they would give information, it would be completely at odds with the actual records of things that i had seen. >> right. >> and that is a cause of great concern. the gunfight reenactment, though it draws crowds and i'm sure it's very sincere, again, there are elements of that story that have been long since disproven,

particularly one of why the nieces -- wyatt's nieces was interested in a boy when, in fact, that girl had been married to a rancher some months before the gunfight, and it never could have been an issue. so was i disappointed? i realized it was going to be a little more of a challenge than i might previously have realized. [laughter] >> all right. we've gone through the books and the characters in the books, i want to hear from the audience. i'm sure there are questions, so bring them forth. hi, jane. >> hi. i would like each of you, the term creative nonfiction, tell us what it means to you. >> well, it doesn't mean making things up, if that's what you're asking. telling a story is a creative act. when you're dealing with subjects as large as the ones that each of the three of us has dealt with, telling a story

involves a lot of selection. there are thing we all -- i'm sure there are things we all have left out that we are dying to put back in the directer's cut of our books. [laughter] i know that's been the case with me. there are stories we have to truncate, there are issues we have to come press. if -- come rest. if you are writing academic history, most of those things would be referred to because your task isn't to put all the -- is to put all the facts on the table. creative nonfiction you have to structure the story in a way that gives it pacing and drive and keeps the reader or's interest. reader's interest. and as i said, that's a creative act. and it's very important, i'm sure to all of us, in writing books like these. >> i don't think that the goal is to write creative nonfiction. i think the goal is to write

engaging nonfiction. >> i agree. i think, you know, i teach at columbia graduate school of journalism, and terms like creative nonfiction, actually, get writers into big arguments. some people think that's a compliment, other people think it's sort of in a way not an insult, but a thing to debate. creative nonfiction, literary nonfiction, you know, is one thing one or another? >> i think among people who are trained as journalists who become authors, their biggest concern is whether people are cutting corners in their historical recreations because the readers won't know any better, nor will their editors. and that's always a danger when people start writing long form and getting into the heads of dead people who are putting themselves in situations they couldn't have been in. a lot of us go to the footnotes and go, where's the factual basis of this? where'd you get this? creative nonfiction is not always a compliment to us. but the term is used to sort of

differentiate nonfiction that is more narrative and character driven. >> i think it's a good, distribute i have term at least as far as i'm concerned because it does describe the task. the problems that we with all have solve when we're writing these books and writing books is a problem-solving exercise as is writing any form of journalism or nonfiction or, indeed, fiction. >> i'm curious, is creative nonfiction a term that makes you want the read a book? the i'm kind of curious. >> no. >> so it sounds bad? >> you hi it's insulting, right? >> yeah. >> that's really interesting. most writers would think the same thing, but since you asked it, we thought you meant it was a good thing. >> i disagree. [laughter] >> my question is for jeff. several years ago i taught a class in great american trials, and one of the trials we talked about was the trial of wyatt earp. and one of the things i learned that when i talk about with people today, they find it very

surprising, is the gun laws that a town like tombstone had. and i wonder if you would care to comment on those and how they operated or didn't operate. >> it was interesting how the gun laws in tombstone, the laws in any mining town would gradually become refined. a lot of people, if only from watching tv, would talk about how, well, so people weren't allowed to carry guns in tombstone? well, of course they were. you could get special permits all the time. and these were given quite often to civilians, to gamblers and so forth. if you had the right connections, you could, in fact, carry a gun, and that was one of the things that surprised people. one of the things that i was amazed to learn as i was writing the book, i had thought that maybe the first time that don't carry your bun guns to town -- guns to town thing, that wichita was one of the first cattle towns and all the causes and effects beyond that.

that, again, is part of untangling the web a little bit. if we, as we are writing our books, don't learn things ourselves, then maybe we're not bringing the right objectivity to it. i would think the worst thing you could do is decide i'm going to write a book because i already know everything in it, and i can just sit down and put it down that way. i mean, if you don't get surprised as you go along -- including the fact that doc holiday had a license to be carrying a gun instead of sneaking one into the gunfight -- well, maybe you were the wrong person to try to tell the story to the rest of the world. >> we have another question here. >> this is also for jeff, and it's not about tombstone. >> you're a nice man, and i like you. [laughter] >> a few years ago i found myself in prim, nevada, looking at a car. and i have not read all of your book, but does your book confirm for me that that is the real car. but one thick i noted -- one thing i noticed, they had on

display this shirt that clyde was supposedly wearing when he was killed, and it looked to me something no adult man i had ever seen would be able to wear. was he really that -- >> frank was a shrimp. he was 5-5 and a half and weighed about 125 pounds. that really was his shirt. when clyde and bonnie were ambushed, murdered outside gibbsland, their bloody clothing was returned to their families as keepsakes. clyde's family fell on hard times, and they sold the shirt intact, but they took the pants he had been wearing during the gunfight and cut small swatches of them which on the criminal memorabilia market can still be purchased if you're looking for that special stocking gift -- [laughter] for a loves one. for a loved one.

yeah, the market for this kind of memorabilia, that includes tombstone, is substantial, and that was clyde's shirt, that was the so-called death car. there were four of them being toured around the country at one point. one fellow actually threw scrambled eggs on the windshield before he let the public in and said, there, see, the brains are still attached. you saw the real one. >> the memorabilia thing is interesting because these history books do set off sales. i did some research on ebay because sometimes the only way to see the things that existed in the places is to see the people who were selling them on ebay. so my wife is so happy the fred harvey book is over because she doesn't have to write any more checks for $17.52 for me buying fred harvey stuff. you have to do research on them. >> i have one tombstone question that could be answered -- >> i don't know if i said i

liked you before or not, i may have to rethink this. [laughter] >> is it true or not true that the place that people pay to see where the gunfight took place is not where the gunfight took place actualliesome. >> -- actually? >> let's be kind and say it's in the general vicinity. >> okay. [laughter] >> over here. >> i'm aspiring to do a little book on the black hills gold rush, and as you said sometimes you find out there's a lot you don't know, and it takes a life of its own. one wyatt earp question. did he ever get to the black hills? because i find references that he was supposed to have been a stagecoach of guard or driver -- which i doubt -- but that takes a life because that was written pack 100 years ago, and people were embellishing history. but the real question is how do you know when to quit writing or when to quit researching? is. >> yes. >> i think maybe these other two guys should join in answer to

that one because you always worry that there's one more important thing you haven't found, or the day that your book comes out -- [laughter] somebody else will find something new. the best way i can answer that is i do not belief -- believe there will ever be a definitive work of nonfiction published. someone's always going to think of something we haven't thought of or look in a place where we did not. the best you can hope for in writing a book is that when you sit down to start writing, you feel you've answered the major questions, and as more come up while you're working, you do your darnedest to try to find that as well. >> i find in my book that's absolutely -- in fact, the preface of research really never ends. generally, i start writing before i know i'm done, and in many part writing helps me identify what it is i actually need to know to fill in the

gaps. but in writing "colossus" after it's been published i still run into people who, who have stories, family stories or even family artifacts, and all i cana say is i wish i had known this a year and a half ago. my, my new book which is about the new deal, that's a subject that's really just bottomless, j and i know that like anybody who's written about it no matter how manyit volumes you write, there's going to be more to say and more too learn. so, um, this actually goes back to, you know, my point of view m about creative nonfiction.fict the preface of creating tells you that you cannot, as jeff said, tell the entire story start to finish and know that't it's definitive. >> the shortest answer to me about when you stop is when you. wife tells you to. [laughter] you know, my wife