is what you are or or or new england in 1819. rainbow drive-in only serve chicken for it is that we carried a beaming in waikiki is a fine spot for a sunburned tourists from new york city stood beneath him ponder historical implications of a lukewarm box of takeout because none of us belong here, not me, not the macaroni, not the chicken soaked in serious task of a nested. like a lot of a lot of people and teams in the silence cannot be another imports from somewhere else in this case india appeared to be in his bridge to shoot off sprouts that dripped down and pour slowly

into the ground and take root, bulging into new connected trunks celesta support more and more chunks into each tree becomes a spooky little porous. thursday shady courthouse that was painted in 1873 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the arrival of new england missionaries on the mailing. to safely tell when a missionary to senate planted it and now it stands over 60 feet high with 12 tracks spanning within 200 square feet. one time i was in the line of courthouse chatting with a woman who worked there about the opinion. she told me that tom gartner put a lot of effort into confining the tree within the square because otherwise they would keep on growing until its recent breaches cracked the foundations and punctured the walls above the nearby buildings, finally toppling everything in its path. in fact, the tendency to crowd out and destroy its neighbors

has earned it the pet name, strangler fig. here in waikiki the u.s. army museum is hunkered down in the midst of other concrete high-rise hotels and condominiums, built in the post- 1959 statehood architectural style you like to think of as a very brady brutalism. the part where my plate lunch and i said it appeared in a black-and-white photographs on display there. the picture was taken in the summer of 1888, a few days after the sons of missionaries who had dethroned the wind queen handed over hawaii to the united states. the park is pitched tents of the first new york voluntary infantry. the spanish-american war has a soldier stopping off in the suddenly american city en route to the philippines to persuade the filipino people at gunpoint that self-government really isn't for everyone.

[laughter] they named their enchantment off to the president to dispatch them here, can't mckinlay. the united states declared war on spain in april of 1898. by august, the mckinley administration invaded the colonies of cuba, puerto rico, philippines and guam and annexed hawaii. in the format clergy of imperialism, the united states became a world power for the first time, became what it is now. hurrah for hawaii theatre roosevelt wrote from cuba when he heard the news that the u.s. annexed to the islands. he was in the caribbean with the rough riders, the spanish at santiago spanish at santiago de cuba. one of the hinder results with american control at guantánamo bay. to roosevelt and his like-minded cronies in the government and military, the most important object of all the 1898 maneuvers with possession of far-flung islands for naval bases and

strategic ports like one time and not in pearl harbor. he and his friends had prayed for these pieces for use of a normal man in patient history mouse. are they ever wanted was a cozy global empire with a few highlights here and there to park a fleet of battleships. that japanese dive bomber thanks for battleships and pearl harbor on december 71941 is how he ended up getting interested in hawaii in the first place a few years back. the purpose of my initial visit was a quick jaunt to see the uss arizona memorial, the monument in the harbor perched above the oily, watery grave of the 1177 sailors who died on the ship that day. unlike the flip-flop for years on my flight to honolulu, i didn't come here for direct sunlight for fun. i came to hawaii because it had been attacked.

after he checked the arizona off my to-do list, i still had some time to kill so i swung by the giuliani palace downtown from a curious to take a look at the victorian building, my guidebook is the only palace of the united states. a guide to me to regroup into a room with a white businessman and sugar planters who had stayed a coup d'état in 1893 lac trip after her royalist supporters botched a counterrevolution. liliuokalani or imprisonment and a palace on a colorful quilt that is on display there. perhaps that of melancholy or state, little flags of the kingdom of hawaii stand guard around the quote tanners square. in one corner she embroidered a scene of a cartoonish man struggling with an impala, losing his hat in the wind. the guide chuckled over the

quaint bit of flats, but he wondered if it was the slight movement of a woman whose crown has blown away and isn't coming back. i should mention that i was there in december 2003, the week before i arrived in honolulu, american soldiers captured saddam hussein was hiding in his reggie carter will i appeared on a steamy victorian era style of the polynesian queen deposed by the sons of churchy new englanders, at that exact moment the iraqi dictator was behind bars any u.s. military can't come being guarded by pennsylvanians. not that the queen, a constitutional monarch and accomplished musician, famous for writing the website below holloway and saddam, a mass murderer faintness over. arrhythmic genocidal link to train the two overthrows an american tension ceased to

indulge in what trinity government bingo at the time was calling regime change. limit iolani palace tour guide mentioned the days of hawaiian flags on the palace ground was littered in the american flag would not, she looks like she was going to cry. i couldn't help but picture that scene from the tv news earlier in the year with the u.s. soldiers celebrated the invasion of baghdad are climbing up the statue of saddam and covering the mustache face with the stars and stripes, a gesture both unfortunate as tr and in proper flag etiquette. [laughter] it was how we spent the morning at an historic tightly pearl harbor, one tattooed on the american memory in the afternoon and another historic site we have forgotten entirely. the crown sought outraged over the invasion of iraq is a rao of american ideals. the subtext of the dissent was come of this is not who we are.

and then if you are standing steamy wireless. it was hard to see the look of the palace tour guide's eyes when she talked about the american flag flying over the palace and not realize that ever since 1898 from time to time, this is exactly who we are. what's more, hawaii's justice theodore roosevelt circle predicted crucial to the american empire's military presence in the pacific. pearl harbor was still the headquarters of the u.s. pacific command, just as for all three of america's 20th century wars in the pacific with japan, north korea and north vietnam. so i started looking into hawaii in the outback of american global domination. americans and their children spent the 78 years between the arrival of protestant she marries in 1820 and the american annexation in 1988, americanizing hawaii, importing our favorite religion capitalism

in their second favorite, christianity. in certain ways, the americanization of hawaii parallels the americanization of america. just as their puritan forebears have set up on the air and into the wilderness of new england, the new england missionaries to fill to the sandwich islands, a place they thought i was as a spiritual wilderness. just perhaps nine out of 10 natives of the americans were wiped out by context of european diseases, so was the native population ravaged by smallpox, measles and disease, just as the industrial revolution in another brother is brought in the huddles massive immigrants to the united states, the sugar plantation founded by the sons of the missionary required massive imports of labor, primarily from japan, korea, portugal philippines, transforming hawaii into what it has become, a multiethnic

miscellanea much every race is minority. hence the plate lunch. two scoops of japanese-style rice and one scoop of macaroni salad seemingly airlifted from some church potluck in anywhere u.s.a. are served alongside the polynesian or asian protein such as kahlúa paid, chicken, adobo beef or local local, hamburger patties topped with gravy and to friday eight, a dish presumably invented to remedy what has always been the hamburger's most obvious defect, not enough aid. [laughter] sugar plantation workers use to share food at lunchtime, slapping tofu and chinese noodles for korean spareribs and portuguese bread. the habit of hodgepodge got passed down, falling to the plate lunch now served at diners, driving someone charge throughout the hawaiian archipelago.

in 1961, delete the kahuku established the rainbow drive-in where i bought my plate lunch. the mostly hawaii japanese-american volunteer soldiers from the 10,442nd minute combat team served as segregated troops in europe and north africa during world war ii, becoming the most decorated units in u.s. military history and earning the nickname, the purple heart battalion. their motto was, remember pearl harbor. their argument was, they were americans, not the u.s. government classified them and their families enemy aliens. rainbow offered menu offering hot dogs, mahi-mahi, reads like a list of what america is supposed to be like, a neighborly mishmash. barack obama, the honolulu point

president mentioned once on a trip on his craving craving for plate lunch, listing rate about drive-in is it possible for. it makes sense considering his cans and other met his kenyan father at the university of hawaii and his mothers marriage blessed him with a half in the nations history. he is our first plate lunch president. [laughter] i suppose the devil way i see the history of hawaii as a painful tale of natives live combined with an idealistic of multiethnic symbolize the next phase in which soy saffron mayonnaise peacefully coax it and congealed, tracked with how i see the history of the united states in general. and the defendant cherokees were marked at gunpoint by the u.s. army to oklahoma on the trail of tears, yet i am also in mostly the descendents of european immigrants, notably swedish

peasants who left for kansas in the same reason asian and portuguese plantation workers failed to way. whenever i eat plate lunch, i always think back to the lure of my swedish great-grandfathers voyage across the atlantic, supposedly the only food we brought with them on the ship was a big hunk of cheese. then he befriended a chairman whose only food was a big hunk of sausage. the swede shared his chief of the chairman and the german share to sausage with this week. growing up they came to know america has two places, the rapacious country built on the destruction of its original inhabitants and welcoming land of opportunity and generosity built by people who shared their sausage and cheese. in 1899, the reddish poet published his famous poem, the white man's burden, about the new american empire of the island colonies of sullen peoples. for years earlier, when kipling

visited washington d.c. for the first time, he met either roosevelt. roosevelt dragged kipling to the smithsonian to show off class cases full of america's indian artifacts. kipling mader wrote, i never got over the wonder of a people who haven't extirpated the aboriginals of the continent more completely than any modern race had ever done, honestly believe that they were a cuddly little new england community setting examples to brutal mankind. of the five countries, the united states invaded and or acquired in 1898, hawaii is the only one that became a state. that said, i have come to understand that even though hawaii has been estates and 1959 and american territory since 1898, a small but defiant network made it back to this quest of the legality post-development and do not consider themselves to be americans at all.

which is pretty easy to pick up on when they're marching past utah down the main drag of honolulu on the 50th anniversary of statehood, carrying picket signs that say we are not americans. [applause] thank you. so, if you have questions, a microphone carrier will find you >> hi, tarek. i know you mentioned your nephew and your novel and i was wondering, how is he doing and how old is he now? >> my nephew is almost 11. how is he doing? you know, i don't know. i haven't seen them in a while. i do like to travel with him. i saw him a few weeks ago in the

two send my ruin in mexico and guatemala and he is quite a tidy wordsmith. [laughter] he asked if he could sit next to me on the plane home and i was like i do know, are you going to be a total pill? he goes maybe only a chewable. [laughter] >> i'm real curious how you go about doing your research, like what is your process from start to finish? >> what is my process from start to finish? well, let's see, you know, i read a bunch of books first, a lot of come you know, i read some of the official history and then i read some primary

documents for diaries, memoirs, that kind of thing. i have a lot of missionary memoirs this time, lucky me. [laughter] and you know, official biographies of all of the players. and then i just start going and doing reporting trips, where in this they went to back and forth from my home in new york city to the island i think seven or eight times. but stay sometimes for me, sometimes several weeks where i would rent, including one in the building to check what it stands on top of in the opening credits of hawaii 50. and then on this when i spent a lot of time in the archives in honolulu, the mission houses, which houses the missionary papers, reading all the letters and diaries and the state archives of hawaii, which had a lot of the government papers and the monarchy papers and the bishop museum archive and they

have various treasures and artifacts and also reading a lot of old newspapers on microfilm, the wheeling newspaper, that kind of stuff. i'm also going to historic sites and interviewing curators and tour guide and then i did some other interviews with various local, e-mail, some of them independent act this, you know, one of my interviews was with a woman who became a good friend of mine who was a missionary defendant, that kind of thing. yes -- sorry, microphones. >> hi, sarah. i'm curious to know if you saw the annexation of hawaii as maybe having some sort of modern ripple effect in some way causing the birther movement.

[laughter] >> correct me if i'm wrong, but the birther, not a word i enjoy saying because i like english. [laughter] i don't know that they are entirely up to speed on the history of hawaii and the 1890s. i believe their focus and concerns are more prompted by anger at to the president is in trying to find ways to, you know, not make them be the president, unless i'm wrong about that. so i don't really think there's too much. i guess it's sure things are vaguely linked as the united states has never annexed hawaii come a person born in honolulu would not be a legend to be president and therefore would not garner such, you know, loathing as the current one. but i don't think they are that link.

but i'm not sure. yeah, you pick. >> just to let you know, i drove three and half hours to be here with you. i'm from laredo. >> wow, there's a button with my face on it even. >> were also 38 years old, so there's a connection there. the last one with david letterman-- >> david letterman? well, what am i supposed to say? i think david letterman is kind of a youthful hero by nancy is actually a real reader who has always been nothing but nice to me in my book.

so i've nothing but kind thoughts for the man, which makes a terrible story. he's very nice to me and helped me sell my boat. [laughter] that's a terrible story. you know, you've got to tell the truth. but thanks for driving. the rest of you probably read your hippie bikes here. [laughter] >> when you are coming up with an idea for the next thing let's work on coming to you, but a bunch of ideas and one really fixes you or are you sitting around one day and you're like yeah, that's it. >> yep. it's different every time. i don't have my next idea. so sure i have a million ideas every day. almost all of them lame at this

point. but you kind of know it when you see it. like the last book, one about the puritans, i had always wanted to read about the period tends. i mean, who doesn't? i love john winthrop sermon emigration charity specifically and i've been thinking about them for a while, but then it really started writing a book after ronald reagan's funeral and that sermon was read at his funeral and that's sermon, because of the sermon where we get the image of new england and later america as a city upon a hill and it's a sermon about charity and generosity in that it was so closely associated with president reagan. president whose administration is not about generosity. it is about putting every social program designed to help one's fellow man. i was just a little kick i

needed to get cracking. i thought it was a good time to revisit that speech, just because winthrop and not sermon, because it is about charity and generosity, he says, you know, we shall be at the city on the hill and to him it was two-sided. i guess, it could turn out the way we talk about it, this place eventually, the united states then just new england would be at the city upon a hill to be a beacon of hope into the world. but winthrop also meant it two ways, the second wave being we could fail and everyone could see her failure, you know, will be a there and everyone will have a great view of all ferrier. he defined that failure as the colonist failure to take care of one another. so i don't know, that's why that

one. [laughter] >> sarah, i know you mentioned on your throughput you didn't say anything about poise. and as jim neighbors still have the show over there quick enough i don't know what has been happening with jim neighbors in the last 40 years. poor it is still a great price. amongst the hawaiian, not just a staple food. it's an object of almost religious devotion. it's been mashed taro root. i personally -- let's say i have it praised it for a while since i left hawaii, the naming, there is a whole story there. one of the people i

interviewed,a.whose grandmother had worked for the last queen of hawaii, he walked me through the creation myth. i sat down to interview him and asked him a question about the overthrow of the queen in 1893 and he answered by going back to the beginning of time. as you can imagine, it was a very long interview. enduring when he was talking about the beginning of time, he talked about the earth mother meeting with the sky father and the object of the union was the stillborn and when that child was buried up at the first taro plant and then the next sibling was the first human. and so, the people saw the taro plant has an older sibling and the number went sibling and the

number one goodling's job is to take care of all the younger siblings. so the tarot is a staple food and it is not just what a cheesesteak is in philly. it's a member of the family came to. so it's been very cherished for very long. but then you know, a lot of -- it's a rare plan. it has been for the last century or so just because so much of the land that used to be used to grow the tarot card turned into sugar plantations. >> hi, i know i don't like these things. my goodness, all right. i know this is -- i have to say, who is your favorite there?

there's two parts, but yes, i'm curious. >> i don't really have one favorite author. there are two that i return to again and again when i'm writing, like offense that can i just want to revise myself and not just give up and eat cereal in front of television or some thing. one of them is moby. i will always crack it open at random and read for a little bit and its language is so weird and the story is so strange and it just reminds me of statisticians to jampacked little book. and it's like cold water splashing on my face, just because it reminds me of what it both can be, but it is so different than the way i speak and write that it doesn't lead into my storytelling. and the other is charles addams,

cartoonist. i have a big stack of old charles addams books the cartoon collections images slip through those. he's so delightful and strange and funny. there is something that's like those two -- just like you can flick a switch and me. >> and i also wanted to ask, i've been doing a lot of research on a family in history and i'm part cherokee. the rest is very slavic, but are you thinking about a book? i mean, there's so many books -- well, i'm not enough. there's not enough, not the way congress is going right now. >> a book about the cherokee? i did write one very long essay about one in my essay

collections, but i doubt i would revisit that. but there is a little bit, you know, i do read this it some of the history of that tribe in this hawaii book just because it is the same organization in boston at the american board of commissioners for foreign missions, the group that sent missionaries to hawaii. they are also the group to send missionaries to the cherokee nation and christianized, westernized cherokee and that same group started the school up in connecticut for a heaping youth, where all of these new england ships in the china trade were coming back without these kids from all over the world and some of them were put into school, including basically the first white christians and two of the cherokee man who studied

there as poise and were a couple of the ones who signed that treaty against the will of the rest of the tribe that gave the u.s. government permission to start the trail of tears. .. >> oh, in case texas legislators are watching c-span at 7:00 a.m. on a sunday morning? [laughter] i mean, i'm not going to

reinvent the wheel. my work has been very important to me. that is where the books are. [laughter] i mean, i spent the first 11 years of my life in a tiny, tiny tiny town in oklahoma that had no library. at the school, there was one shelf that had two books on it and you could take those home, but you went through this books pretty quick. when i was 11 years old, my family moved to a college town in montana that had more than one library, goodenow and that first summer they had sidewalks also. [laughter] and we likes to roller skate so that first summer -- moving from oklahoma to montana, it sounds like one sticks to another but it was a college down and to us it was basically like we had moved to paris.

that first magical summer we had roller skates and the sidewalks and we would roller to skate to the library every day. we just thought we had moved to civilization. no offense, oklahoma. [laughter] when i was in high school, i would skip school a lot. i would skip -- that does not sound good. stay in school. i would skip school and go to the library. [laughter] the library is not just for my work is a writer. are displayed in this book i would helps tremendously by archivists and librarians at those institutions i mention in hawaii. some of that would need impossible without them. i can't tell you what you can learn from microfilm of old newspapers. i mean, and now or even much of it has been digitized and is available widely.

i can't even, i can't imagine -- libraries are just so crucial and vital, i don't even know how to talk about life without them, you know? it is like oh there and going to be any more eggs anymore. like, what? [laughter] so, the i yeah i wish i had something super tzipi to say about it but i mean i do think they are so important and i mean you don't know how great greater library is until you are born into a town that doesn't have one. i will put it that way. [applause] >> we lived in hawaii years ago and we knew the history and all that but it is interesting how conflicted about being

americans, being hawaiians and it is a different state to live in. it is like i said interesting how they don't always consider themselves part of the united states. but it got to be very aggravating to hear people come over and visit. over and visit and stay well back in the states or back in the u.s.. we would say you are in the u.s. we would go back to visit and hear people say, well, now that you are back in the u.s.. we would say we are living in the u.s.. we are in hawaii. will hawaii is not really a state and things like that. and it has been since i can remember, back in 1959. i guess you've heard a lot.

i think though shows, think it was right after this crowd of people, what do you think of the united states united states abée altgeld back, you are in it. [laughter] but i mean i think some of that dislocation and i think some of that is a byproduct of what happens when you know, one country on a continent, you know, colonizes and islands thousands of miles from it sure. in some ways ear, in some ways it is a cup completely american place to me because it is so militaristic. their military bases and training grounds everywhere. it is exceedingly religious. there is a lot of really crummy commercial architecture which is a bit of the specialty in this country. there are so many things about it.

especially, then you have all those hotels and resorts with all the hotels and the resorts and then i'll the military bases you know there is a writer i really like named steve erickson who once wrote that the two great contributions of the american civilization are annihilation and fun. [laughter] he was writing that about las vegas and a piece about all the old nuclear test done in the nevada desert that i think that applies to hawaii as well. but that on the other hand, you know, it is still so much, so often the sovereign independent country it once was. the language, even you know english speakers, people who would say they don't speak for why and that there coined words are peppered into normal talk. if you are going to ask directions from someone, they would tell you to go malka or

mckay. malka towards the mountains or mckay towards the ocean. it is such a singular place and it still has so many vestiges of its singular culture that it is kind of lost in a way. that is why -- there. i have a friend who was a teacher and i was speaking to him and some of his colleagues. i was talking about butchering his name and the pronunciation. i just said, i hate saying hawaiian words in front of hawaiians and my friend was driving me home later. he said it is funny you call this hawaiians because i don't ache of myself as a hawaiian. i said, what are you talking about? you were born here. you live here, you went to high school here. he just that i know, but my family, his ancestors came from japan and germany and i don't

know, compared to -- it is like that in new york where i lived. this very disparate place with all these people from all over the world and all these different kinds of foods. but, everyone who has been there consider themselves new yorkers. doesn't matter where you are from or where your ancestors are worn or what color your skin is or whatever. it is one a jumble and like fairly happily so. so there is some kind of lost quality about hawaii and the identity of the place and the people, and that i think is he now a result of this kind of i guess it is sort of kind of americanization and what happened when the missionary offspring overthrew the hawaiian queen in 1893. it was kind of a severing from the whole ion past. one of the other thing she did

when she was lockstep in her cell was she translated the creation myth which is a genealogy that tells the story of hawaii from the beginning of time from the slime that created the earth up to her own ancestors and i think one reason she did that after her overthrow is she is thinking about that and that long, long, long eons of hawaiian pass that have just been you know, you know severed. and i think there is still -- it is like what is that called when you have something that is amputated? phantom limb, thank you. i think there is always going to be that there. i mean it takes it a very fascinating place for that reason, you know.

>> back on the subject of oak ideas. i would like to know where you came up with the idea of -- [inaudible] >> book ideas, where he came up with the idea for my book on residential assassinations. i don't know. i don't remember. i think i was writing a lot about president lincoln and it must have just occurred to me in some of my lincoln research. i don't have a snappy story. >> i find your style really dry and funny, so i was wondering if you ever entertained the idea of branching out into fiction, because you mentioned. >> no. [laughter] that question which comes up a lot is such an insult to nonfiction. [laughter] just because something is true

true -- no, i am not a liar. [laughter] there are times where they are welcome to buy here. the thing i love about nonfiction is it does not have to seem plausible. nonfiction is about things -- that can't be true but it is, you know. you have to write the stories that seem like they could've happened to people who might exist. so you don't have to do that when you are writing about a weirdo like abraham lincoln or you know, and even in this one thing that happens is as the first missionaries are leaving boston harbor or they are en route to common and christianized the hawaiians, while they are on the way, while they are on the water, the new hawaiian king decides to abolish the old religion.

he put that in one of the fiction type stories and it is just going to seem like, you know, no. that is too easy. within the missionary show up up and in a given news. oh guess what, the old religion has been banned and outlawed in there is nothing to replace it. here we failed them in a spiritual vacuum. to them, it would just seem like god was on their side and to get from god. if you put that into a made up story, i mean, that just wouldn't work. it just as unbelievable. or like, you know about that story of how john adams and thomas jefferson died on the same day and it is the 50th anniversary of the declaration of independence. it is july 4, 1826. if you put that in a novel, that would be plausible but it is

fact. and therefore, it can be as implausible as possible. anyway, fiction. [laughter] >> i know i am a groupie and i pre-order everything you write as soon as i hear is coming out. >> thank you very much. >> however. >> oh, where's this going? [laughter] >> when it came out it was a title, "unfamiliar fishes," i had no idea what you are you are going to be writing about. and it is just like. >> that is because i hate subtitles. go on. [laughter] >> what inspired you to use that title? >> oh, it is a quotation from a letter written by one of the first hawaiian writers whose name is david mollo, and he was

almost 30 years old when the first missionaries arrived on maui, the island where he was at the time, and they taught him how to read and write. he was well schooled in the hawaiian oral tradition but the missionaries from new england had to invent a written language for hawaiians, so they caught -- they taught him and some other people to read. in fact pretty much the entirety of the hawaiian population and within a few years he was writing his book, hawaiian antiquities which is a compendium of sort of knowledge on the classical hawaiian culture that was dying away think as to the coming of the westerners, and it is a very beautiful, very useful book. and he became -- he was under the influence of these new englanders. he learned to read it right, he became a teacher and a minister and but, being a writer which is to say grumpy and full of

misgivings. as the years wore on and he saw more and more white people kind of drowning his homeland, not just the missionaries in maui where he lived was one of the stopping point for wailers during the golden age of flailing so there were hundreds of whaling ships stopping and hawaiian ports at the same time. essays all of these white people come in, moving and, dropping by, sailors on leave, they were probably not the ones to make the best impression. he wrote this really sad liturgy these natives and it says something like, i will try to get it right. when a big wave comes in -- on a large and "unfamiliar fishes" come from the dark ocean and they see the small fishes of the shallows, and they will eat them up. and then he says, the big man from the important countries come here and see that our

people are small. they will devour us. so it was kind of prophetic. but i also like pulling "unfamiliar fishes" out of that just because my book is about these americans, and the americans he came to hawaii in that time in the 19th century, they are not like regular joe americans. you have got your bible something killjoys. you have got your sailors on leave and then a bunch of capitalists and con men and other of dreamers. so, something -- something about pulling that out kind of captured these kind of singular types who ended up there. >> we have time for one more question. >> sarah your first book was a media study from eluster's point of view. have you thought about doing one now that you have been on the other side with npr and your

television appearances? >> oh, you want to read the diary of me like going on book tours and talking to interviewers? know that hadn't occurred to me. [laughter] i will say that that was my first book, listening to the radio for a year. that was a prison sentence. and it has been more than a decade that i was let out on parole. so no, i mean the one thing about bad form, i had to listen to the radio every day and i don't know if you ever listen to the radio, but it was kind of trying as a project. but i do think there is something in that form that definitely captured the time. the your listen was 1995, and i don't really listen to a lot of

different kinds of radio so much anymore but at the time, i can imagine that it has gotten more violent, the talk. like when i turned on the radio, you think they be on the first day. this was right before oklahoma city, before you know, especially with with the right-wing talk radio that people started wondering hey, maybe you shouldn't talk like that all the time. the reason i wrote it was because of the 1994 congressional elections, and the freshman congressman when the republicans took over the congress call themselves the ditto head caucus. it had a huge impact on the country and i was kind aware of that side of it. i would here before oklahoma city, the first day at kid with a paper route calling in to talk shows saying there is this other kid trying to horn in on my paper route and the host would

say you need to get a gun. they said it in jest, and then i remembered maybe a week into it i was visiting my parents in montana and there is a big snowstorm. there was so much snow that the streets were plowed yet and i went cross-country skiing in the middle of the night and it was so fluffy and white and wonderful. then i came back and i turned on the radio and there were some person saying that you can solve the problem of the welfare mothers and illegal immigrants by giving the welfare mothers jobs like posting them at the border to gun down all the illegal immigrants. when i say it was a prison sentence i'm saying it is not like it was really hard having to hear slayer songs all day long. it was this very dark and violent and terrible things i had to listen to. so, yeah and i think we forget, we forget that.

i mean, i don't know. i would like to forget it, but i can't. and then after you know, oklahoma city when that happenes president clinton said that stuck with me when that happened. he said if there is talk of hate, stand up and talk against it. that was something that was nice to hear after you know, a few months of listening to violent calls to murder in between commercials. so i don't see re-creating that experience, lovely as it was. but i did -- it was my first book and i learned a lot by writing and publishing it and it is a very dark and i think kind of angry book. but i think that comes from what i had to listen to. i think we have one more question. and could it maybe be slightly more hopeful?

[laughter] that is not from your question. that is me in the starkest. >> i will have to work on hopeful i think. is curious to see a parallel between the missionary effort that you write about in here and the dulles brothers who have enjoyed life? >> i don't know who the dulles others are. >> john foster dulles. >> oem mac, i was thinking of the airport. >> who brought us the overthrow of most of the. >> oh, some of the other american regime changers? it does seem to be a habit of hours. we don't like guatemala. i know we can do or we don't like the guy running iran. i mean, these things to kind of -- or we don't like the guy running cuba, that kind of thing. it is one thing for a government to wants to hope for foreign leaders who would perhaps if not

act in our interest, at least you know -- but the thing about the united states is at our founding, in the declaration of independence you know, defines our beliefs, our theory of government is that should it be based on the consent of the governed. so by definition, the idea that americans would go abroad and try and monkey with other countries rulers is a contradiction. is at best hypocritical. is that what you are talking about? >> i'm talking about the religious fervor. >> the thing about -- the missionaries, the original missionaries, the one who came in the 1820s and 30s, they weren't the ones who overthrew the queen. was their children, the ones who were born in hawaii who most of

them attended the school founded by the missionaries to educate missionary children. that is the school our president went to. it is those children, the hawaiian born hawaiians. of there were hawaiian subjects that overthrew the queen and to them it played a little role. the queen was a more devout christian than any of those guys ever were so if the original missionaries in hawaii has is their man they were supposed to westernize and civilize the winds as best they could but they also had strict instructions not to mess with the government and not get involved with political affairs as political affairs are of this earth and they were to be concerned with getting as many hawaiian into the kingdom of heaven is possible. most of them really stuck to that. a few of them did quit the mission to go on and work for the hawaiian government, but they had to quit their jobs as missionaries to do that. there was one ask missionary who helped helps with the framing of

the new constitution when the hawaiian king made hawaii into a constitutional monarchy. there was some missionary who quit the mission to work in the judiciary because he objected to the fact that the headquarters back in boston for taking donations from slave states. this was before the civil war. so the actual missionaries did more or less stick to their plans partly because they just didn't have time to do anything else. these were incredibly burdened overloaded people. look at what they did. so they wanted to -- they wanted to make everyone christian and because they were protestant that means they needed everyone to be reading their bible so they had to a and bent the written language in b translate the bible and because they are persnickety seminary educated the languages they translate the bible from greek and hebrew into hawaiian and they have to publish that. than they then they had to teach everyone to read, and run the

school. and preach their sermons, and because it is a monarchy they have other commands and demands that the aristocrats placed on them. the missionary wives or is able everything and so new dresses for the queen and the chiefly women. and there is just so much new -- and they built their houses and their churches. they were so overworked and overburdened that they really didn't have time to do you and a coup d'état. put but their children, their children -- their children dead and he had very little to do with it. like sanford doles the man after the overthrew who becomes the president of the republic of hawaii, he and the queen, you know they went to the same church and he taught sunday school and she led the choir. she was a solid christian and in fact in her book, her memoir, it

is called hawaii story by hawaii's queen. she writes the book. is her story but it is also she is publishing it in 1898 to argue against annexation. she uses two arguments against annexation. several, but two of them say this doesn't seem christian and she basically implies god will smite us if we do this to her little country. and the other one is that it doesn't seem in keeping with the demands of democratic republican government. so, there is that. [laughter] i would like to thank you offer coming. thanks austin. [applause] >> to find out more visit the author on facebook and facebook.com/sarah jane powell.

>> this is a sad day i have to say and mrs. kennedy's life. this is the red room and the reason i show this is that was the first round that she completed in a restoration that this was the day of her husband's funeral. and she insisted that she meet those who were coming from afar, those who were diplomats, the diplomatic corps from abroad and so she stood with her brother-in-law senator edward kennedy to her right and she insisted on treating everyone who had come to pay their respects to her husband. on a more glittery note, can we remember her for her state entertaining. in the short amount of time that she was in the white house and it was only a little over a thousand days, she and her husband through 16 state dinners. in the first term, full four years of the w. bush term, they hell held i believe it was two. now, mind you 9/11 happened during that time. there were security issues, but

the bushes, the second bush is from texas were just not as interested in that. they weren't as interested in state entertaining. they weren't as interested in bringing people from abroad and entertaining them at the white house. the kennedys loved that lifestyle. they both came from the northeast. they both had ties to new york city. president kennedy had ties to hollywood going back to his fathers day father's day there is a hollywood mogul in the 1920s, so they loved that glimmer and that panache of entertainment. but they also particularly mrs. kennedy loved the arts. so she would use each and every one of the state entertaining medications to bring artist to the white house. >> you can watch this and other programs on line at booktv.org up next we continue our first lady programming with jacqueline kennedy. barbara perry, former judicial fellow at the u.s. supreme court, recounts the transformative effect