fortunately for the united states and the west, bin laden has matured as a defensive and tempered islamist not like the saudi monarchy and the muslim brotherhood, offensive and intolerant ones. even with these differences however the saudi's overseas missionary activities are an indispensable aid to al qaeda's organizational, military and media activities. to expatriate saudi preachers islamic ngos and direct funding by riyadh from local islamic organizations, the saudi's have created muslim communities in most areas of the world that are alienated and even had -- alienated from and hateful toward the west, and so these communities are continual environments for hosting an al qaeda presence. in the balkans, in india and bangladesh, in the north caucasus in south asia, in north america and europe and in sub-saharan africa.

.. >> i'm going to read for a little bit, and then take questions just like at every other reading you've ever been to. [laughter] why is there a glob of macrony salad next to the japanese

chicken in my plate lunch because the ship left boston harbor with the first boat load of missionaries bound for hawaii in 1915, and they serve chicken four days a week. a banon in wakiki is a great spot for a sunburned tourist to ponder the lukewarm box of takeout because none of us belong here, not me, not the macrony, not the chicken soaked in soy sauce, and not even the tree. like a lot of people and things in these islands, banons are imports from somewhere else, in this case, india. they shoot off sprouts that drip down and bore into the ground and take root bulging into new connected trunks as to support more and more branches leading to more and more trunks until each tree is its own spooky

forest. there's a banon tree planted in the square to comeme rate the arrival of the it was 8 feet tall when planted and now stands over 60 feet high with 12 trunks spanning more than 1200 square feet. one time heives in the courthouse chatting with a woman who worked there. she said the town gardeners put a lot of effort into confining that tree within the square because otherwise it would keep on growing its its roots and branches cracked the foundations finally toppling everything in its path. in fact, the tendency to crowd out and destroy its neighbors earned it the pet name, strangler fig. [laughter] here in wakiki, it's hunkered

down in the condominiums built in the architectural style i think of as a very brady brutalism. [laughter] the park where i am sitting appears in an old black and white photograph on display there from a picture taken in 1898, a few days after the missionaries overthrown the queen and handed over hawaii to the united states. the park is pitched with the tents of the first new york voluntary infantry. the spanish american war had soldiers stopping off in this american city en route to the philippines to persuade people at gunpoint that self-government really isn't for everyone. [laughter] they named the camp after the president who put them there, camp mckinly. the united states declared war

in spain in 1898 and the mckin ley administration annexed hawaii. the united states became a world power for the first time, became what it is now. hoorah for hawaii when he heard the news from cuba. he was in the caribbean with the rough riders licking the spanish . the end results was american control of guantanamo bay. to roosevelt and his like-minded cronies, the most important objective of all the 1898 maneuvers was possession of far flung islands for naval bases and ports like guantanamo and pearl harbor. they pined for the bases for years the way a normal man

envisions his dream house. [laughter] all they ever wanted was a cozy global empire with a few islands here and there to park a fleet of battleships. that japanese dive bomber sank four of those battleships in pearl harbor december 7, 1941 is how i got interested in hawaii in the first place a few years back. the purpose of any initial visit was a quick jaunt to see the uss arizona memorial, the monument in the harbor per muched above the grave of the 177,000 sailors to died on the ship that day. unlike the flip-flop wearers on my flight, i didn't come here for direct sunlight or fun. [laughter] i came to hawaii because it had been atacted. after i checked that off my to-do list, i swung by the palace downtown curious to look

at the only palace in the united states. a guide led my tour group into the room where the white business mep and sugar planterred who sthaij -- planters who staged a plan against queen liluokalani after the protesters botched a revolution. she was in her room of the second floor in the palace sewing a colorful quilt. little flags stand guard around the quilt center's square and she embroidered a scene of a little man losing his hat in the wind. the guy chuckled over there, but i wonder it if it was the sly lament of a queen whose gone went away and not coming back.

i was there in december tweer. the week before i arrived there, american soldiers captured hussein who was hiding in his spider hole. when i was standing in the victorian cell of a poll knee shan queen, at that moment. iraq dictator was behind bars being guarded by pennsylvaniaians. [laughter] not that the queen, a constitutional monarch and accomplished musician and saddam, a mass murders famous for gassing 5,000 kurds has much many common, but there's still a link between the two overthrows, and more than tendency to indulge in what trendy government at the time was calling regime change. when the tour guide mentioned the day the hawaii flag was

lowered an the american flag went up, it was like he was going to cry, and i couldn't help but picture the scene from the tv news when a u.s. soldier celebrated the invasion of baghdad by climbing up the statue of saddam and covering his face with the stars and stripes, a gesture that was unfortunate as pr and improper flag etiquette. [laughter] it was telling to spend the morning at pearl harbor, one tattooed one on the american memory, and another afternoon at a site we forget entirely. the ground swell outrage over the invasion of iraq sited the war as a betrayal of american ideals. the sub text of the dissent was this is not who we are, but not if you were standing where i was. it was hard to see the look in the palace tour guides' eyes when talking about the american flag flying over the palace and

not realizes from time to time this is exactly who we are. what's more, hawaii is just as roosevelt's circle predicted, crucial to the military presence in the pacific. pearl harbor is still the herd quarters of u.s. pacific command like it was for all three 20th century wars in the pacific with japan, north korea, and north vietnam, so i started looking into hawaii's bit part in the epic global domination. americans and their children spent 78 years between the arrival of missionaries in 1820 and the american annex asian in 1898 americanizing hawaii importing religion, capitalism, and our second favorite religion, christianity. this parallels the

americanization of america. just as their puritan fore borers set off on their era into the wilderness of new england, they set sail for islands that they considered a spiritual wilderness. like nine out of ten natives of the americas were wiped out by contacts with european diseases, so was the native hawaiian population ravaged i smallpox, whooping cough and other diseases. just like the building of the railroads brought in immigrants, the sugar plantations founded by the sons of the missionaries required massive imports of labor from china, korea, portugal, and the philippines transforming hawaii into what it's become in which every race a minority, hence the plate lunch. [laughter] two scoops of japanese style

lunch and another scoop of salad air lifted from a church pot luck from anywhere, usa -- [laughter] it was served with asian protein like beef or loco moco, a ham berger patty served with a fried egg to remedy what has been the ham berger's most obvious defect, not enough egg. [laughter] sugar plantation workers shared food at lunchtime swapping noodles for spare ribs and bread. that habit was passed down evolving into the plate lunch now served at diners, drive-ins, and lunch trucks. in 1961, the late man established the rainbow drive-in, the joint where i bout

my plate lunch. he was an army cook. the mostly hawaii born-january these american soldiers in the 142nd combat team served in europe and north africa in world war ii becoming the most decorated unit in military history and earning the nickname the purple heart battalion. their motto was remember pearl harbor. their argument was that they were americans, not as the u.s. government classified them and their families, enemies aliens. rainbow drive-in's menu offering many items reads like a list of what america is supposed to be like, a neighborly mishmash. barak obama, the honolulu born president of the united states mentioned once on a trip home his craving for plate lunch listing rainbow drive-in as a

possible stop and that makes since because his kennian mother met his kennian father at the university of hawaii, and his mother's remarriage led him to his half sister. he's the first plate lunch president. [laughter] i see the history of hawaii as a painful tale of native loss come bined with a multiethnic saga described with mix place where -- i'm the descend didn't of cherokees who were march at gun point on the trail of tears, but i'm also european immigrants who left for kansas for the same reason asian and portuguese plantation workers sailed to hawaii. whenever i eat plate lunch, i think back to the lure of my

swedish great grandfather's voyage across the atlantic. all he brought with him was a big hunk of cheese, befriended a german whose only food was a big hunk of sausage. the sweed shared with the german, and the german with the sweed. growing up, i knew america as two places, a country built on the destruction of its original inhas been tans, and a -- inhas been at that particular times, and a -- inhabitants, and a welcoming land of people who share their sausage and cheese. [laughter] in 1899, the poet published the "white man's burden" about the new american empire of colonies and people. four years earlier when he visited washington, d.c. for the first time, he met theodore roosevelt, and he drug him to the smithsonian to show off

glass cases full of native american artifacts. he said he never got over the wonder of the people after ridding the originals of their country more completely than any modern race had done honestly believed they were a godly little new england community setting examples to brutal mankind. of the five countries the united states invaded or acquired in 18 # 8, hawaii is the only one that became a state. that said, i have come to understand that even though hawaii has been a state since 1959 and an american territory since 1898, a small, but defiant network of native activists question the legality of both developments and do not consider themselves to be americans at all, which is pretty easy to pick up on when they march past you down the main drag of honolulu on the 50th anniversary

of statehood carrying picket signs theying we are not americans. [laughter] so -- [applause] >> oh, thank you. [applause] so, if you have questions, a microphone carrier -- [laughter] will find you. >> hi, sarah, big fan of yours. you mentioned your nephew in your novels, how is he and how old is he now? >> he's almost 11. how is he doing? [laughter] you know, i don't know. i vice president seen him -- haven't seen him in awhile. i like to travel with him. we went to some mayan ruins in mexico and guatemala, and you know, he's quite a budding wordsmith. [laughter]

i mean, he asked if he could sit next to me on the plane home. i said, i don't know will you be a pill? he said maybe only a chewable. [laughter] teaser. >> i'm real curious how you go about doing your research? what is your process from start to finish? [laughter] >> what is my process from start to finish? well, let's see. you know, i read a bunch of books first, a lot of, you know, i read some of the official histories, then i read some, you know, primary documents or diaries, memoirs, that kind of thing. i had a lot of missionary memoirs this time, lucky me, and -- [laughter] and, you know, official

biographies of all of the, you know, players, and then i just start going and doing reporting trips where in this case i went to back and forth from my home in new york city to the islands i think seven or eight times. i would stay sometimes for a week or several weeks where i represented an apartment -- rented an apartment including the building where jack lord stands on in the opening crediting of hawaii 5-0. [laughter] i spent time in the mission houses which houses the missionary papers reading their letters and diaries, and then the state archives of hawaii that has a lot of the government papers and the monarchy papers, and the bishop museum archives, and you know, they have various treasures and arty facts and also just reading a lot of old newspapers on microfilm, the

whaling newspaper, that kind of stuff, and then going to historic sites and interviews curators, tour guides, and then i did some other interviews with various locals, you know, some of them independent activists, you know, one of my interviews was with a woman who was a good friend of mine who was a missionary descendent, that kind of thing. yes -- oh, sorry. oh, sorry, microphone. [laughter] >> hi, sarah. >> hi. >> i was curious to know if you saw the annexation of hawaii as having a modern ripple effect in causing the birther movements? [laughter] >> i don't -- i mean, correct me if i'm wrong, but i mean, it's not a word i enjoy saying because i like english.

[laughter] i don't know that they're entirely up to speed on the history of hawaii in the 1890s. [laughter] i believe their focus and concerns are more prompted by anger at who the president is in trying to find ways to, you know, not make him be the president unless i'm wrong about that. [laughter] i don't think there's too much. i mean, i guess the two things are vaguely linged in that if the united states had never annexed hawaii, a person born in honolulu would not be eligible to be president and therefore would not garner such, you know, loathing as the current one, but no, i don't think they are that linked, but i'm not sure. [laughter] yes, you pick. [laughter] oh, mike grace.

[laughter] >> i drove three and a half hours to be here with you. >> thank you. >> i'm from loredo -- >> that's a button with my face on it. [laughter] >> you're close to my heart, and we're both 38 years old, there's a connection there. [laughter] when on tv shows with david, is he like -- or like -- >> david letterman? what am i supposed to say? i think on david letterman you know is a youthful hero of mine, and he's actually a real reader who has always been nothing but nice to me and my books, so i have nothing but kind thoughts to the man which makes a terrible story. [laughter] oh, he's very nice to me and

helps me sell my books. [laughter] that's a terrible story. [laughter] i write nonfiction, and if you have to tell the truth -- [laughter] but thanks for driving. [laughter] the rest of you probably road your hippy bikes here. [laughter] >> when you come up with an idea for the next thing you want to work on, do you come up with a bunch of ideas and one sticks, or are you sitting around one day and you're, yeah, that's it. >> yep. [laughter] it's different every time, but like i don't have my next idea, so sure i have a million ideas every day, most of them lame at this point. [laughter] you kind of know it when you see it, like the last book, my one about the puritans, i started --

i mean, i always wanted to write about the puritans, i mean, who doesn't? [laughter] because i love john's sermon, the model of christian chart specifically, and i thought about that for awhile, and wrote that book after ronald reagan's funeral and that sermon was read there and because it's the sermon where we get the image of new england and america as a city upon a hill, and it's a sermon about charity and generosity and that it was so closely associated with president reagan, a president whose administration was not about charity in generosity, but gutting every social program designed to help one's fellow man, so it was just a little kick i needed, you know, to get cracking. [laughter] i thought it was a good time to revisit that speech just because, you know, winthrop in

the sermon about charity and generosity, he said we should be the study on a hill, and to him, it was two-sided. yes, it could be the way we talk about the image now that, you know, that this place eventually the united states, then just new england, would be as a city upon a hill is to be a beacon of hope and light, and you know, to the world, but he also meant it two ways second way being we could fail and everyone can see our failure, you know, we'll up there and everybody sees the failure and he defines that failure as the colonists' failure to take care of one another, so i don't know. that's why that one. [laughter] >> yes, sarah, i noticed --

>> hi. >> i noticed on your food plate you didn't talk about poi, and does jim neighbors have his show over there? >> i don't know what's been happing with jim neighbors in the last 40 years. [laughter] what about poi? poi is still, you know, a very prized food amongst the hawaiians. it's just not a staple food. it's -- it's an objective almost religious devotion. it's the mashed terro root. i personally -- let's say i haven't craved it for awhile since i left hawaii. [laughter] there is a whole story there. one of the people i interviewed, a doctor whose grandmother's worked for the last queen of hawaii, he walked me through the creation myth, i mean, i sat

down to interview him and asked a question about the overthrow of the queen in 1893, and he answered by going back to the beginning of time. [laughter] as you can imagine, it was a very long interview. [laughter] and during when he was talking about the beginning of time, you know, he talked about, you know, the earth's mother mating with the sky's father and all that, and the object of the union was the stillborn, and when that child was buried up sprouted the first terro plant, and then the next sibling was the first human, and so the people saw the terro plant as the older sibling and the number one sibling whose job is to care for the younger siblings and the terro is the staple food and not just what a cheese steak is in phillie --

[laughter] it's a member of the family kind of so it's been very cherished for very long, but then, you know, a lot of the -- it's a rare plant. it has been for the last, you know, century or so because so much of the land that used to be used to grow it got turned into sugar plantations. >> hi. >> hello. >> i -- i know i don't like these things. oh, my goodness. okay, all right, all right. can i swing? i'm kidding. all right. i know this is -- i have to say who is your favorite author? two parts, but yes, i mean, just curious. >> i don't really have one favorite author. there's two i return to again and again when i'm writing like

if i'm stuck and i just want to revise myself and not just give up and, you know, eat cereal in front of television or something. [laughter] one of them is moby dick. i'll crack it open at random and read, and its language is so weird and the story is so strange, and it's just reminds me of -- i mean, it's a jam-packed little book, you know? [laughter] it's like cold water splashing at my face because it reminds me of what a book can be, but it's so different from the way i think and speak and write that it doesn't, you know, it doesn't bleed into my story telling, and the other is charles adams, the cartoonistment i -- cartoonist. i have a big stack of his collections and flip through those. he's also just so delightful and

strange and funny. it's like on those two -- it's just like a flick of a switch in me, you know? >> and i also wanted to ask, i'm doing a lot of research on my family and the history, and i'm part cherokee, but are you thinking about a book -- i mean, there's so many books on you, the -- well, i mean, not going to say that because there's not enough -- not the way that congress is going right now, so have you thought -- >> about the cherokee? >> yes. >> i did write a long essay about the trail of tears in my essay collections so i doubt i would revisit that, but there is a little bit, you know, i do revisit some of the history of that tribe in this hawaii book

just because it's the same organization in boston, the american board of commissioners for foreign missions, they are the group that acceptability the missionaries to hawaii. they are also the group that sent missionaries to the cherokee nations and christianized, westernized the cherokee, and that same group started this school up in connecticut for heathen youth where all of these ships, new england ships, you know, # the china trade coming back with kids from all over the world, and some of them were put in this school including the boy who is basically the first hawaiian christian and two of the cherokee men who they studied there as boys, and they were a couple of the ones who signed that treaty against the will of the rest of the tribes that gave the u.s. government permission to legally start the

trail of tears, so there is a real concrete connection with this group of mission tear and how -- missionaries and how they really got around. [laughter] >> here's one. i don't know. hi. >> hi. i also drove three and a half hours, but from corpus. [laughter] do you have any words -- obviously libraries are important or assume so in your research, and as a former librarian because budget cuts are awesome, do you have any words to advocate, just telling how important libraries have been to your process? >> oh, in case texas legislators are watching c-span at 7 a.m. on a sunday morning -- [laughter] >> i thought i'd try. [laughter] >> i mean, i'm not going to reup vent the wheel. yes, libraries are important to

me. that's where the books are, you know? [laughter] i mean, when -- i spent the first 11 years of my life in a tiny, tiny, tiny town in oklahoma with no library. at the school, there was one shelf that had some books on it, and you could take those home, but, you know, you went through those books pretty quick, and when i was 11, my family moved to a college town in montana that had more than one library, you know? that first summer my -- i mean, anne -- they had sidewalks also. [laughter] we liked to roller skate, and that first summer we spent -- moving from oklahoma to montana probably sounds like one, you know stick to another, but it was a college top, and to us aves like we moved to paris. [laughter] that first magical summer we had roller skates and sidewalks and roller skated to the library every day, you know?

we thought we had move the to civilization. no offense, oklahoma. [laughter] you know, when i was in high school, i would skip school a lot. i would skip -- that doesn't sound good. stay in school, kids. [laughter] i would skip school and go to the library, you know? [laughter] so libraries are not just like for me work as a writer, obviously, but in this book i was helped tremendously by archivists and libraries and the institutions i mentioned in hawaii. i mean, some of that would be impossible without them, you know? the, you know, i cant tell you what you can learn from microfilm of old newspapers and i mean -- and not all of that or even much of it has been digitized and is available widely, so i mean, i can't imagine -- libraries are so

crucial and vital, and i don't know how to talk about life without them, you know? it's like oh, there's not anymore eggs, you know? like what? [laughter] so yeah, i wish i had something super zippy to say about it, but i think they are so important and you don't know how great a library is unless you are born into a town that doesn't have one. put it that way. >> okay thanks. >> sure. [applause] >> we lived in hawaii years ago, and we need the history, but it's interesting how the natives are conflicted about being americans, being hawaiians, and it is a different state to live in.

it is -- like i said, interesting how they are not always considering themselves part of the united states, but it got to be very aggravating to hear people go over and visit and say, well, back in the states. [laughter] or back in the u.s.. we would say you are in the u.s., or we would go back to visit and hear people say, well, how -- now that you're back in the u.s -- we said we are living in the u.s.. we are in hawaii. well, hawaii is not really a state. things like that. >> uh-huh. >> it's been like that since 1959, and i guess you heard a lot -- you heard that -- >> well, i watched -- i think those shows jack car did in hawaii after statehood, and he does ask this crowd of people

what do you think of the united states, and they all yelled back, you're in it, you know? [laughter] i think some of that dislocation and i think some of that is just a by-product of what happens when, you know, when one country on a continue innocent, you know -- continent colonizes an island thousands of miles from the shore. yeah, in some ways it's a completely american place to me just because it's so militarized and there's training grounds everywhere, it's exceedingly religious, there's a lot of really crummy commercial architecture which is, you know, a bit of a specialty in this country. there's so many things about it -- i mean, especially, and then you have all those hotels and resorts, with all the hotels and the resorts, and then all

the military bases, there's a writer i like that wrote the two great contributions of the american civilization are annihilation afun. [laughter] he was writing that about las vegas in a piece about, you know, all the old nuclear tests done in the nevada desert, but that applies to hawaii as well. on the other hand, it is still so much, so often the sovereign independent it once was. the language, english speakers who say they don't speak hawaiian because if you ask directions from someone they would tell you to go malka or maki. that means towards the mountains and maki towards the ocean. it is such a singular place, and

it still has some vees tajes of its siping lar cull -- isingular culture that's it's lost in a way. maybe that's why "lost" was filmed there. [laughter] i have a friends who is a teacher, and i was talking about some king, and i was butchering the pronunciation, and i said i hate saying hawaiian words in front of hawaiians. he said it's funny you called us hawaiians, baa i don't think because as one. i said what do you mean? you were born here and live her. he said, i know, but, you know, my family, his ancestors came from japan and germany, and he's just, i don't know, and compared to -- it's like that in new york where i live. it's this very different place

with people from all over the world and all different foods, but everyone who has been there awhile considers themselves new yorkers. it doesn't matter where you are from or where your ancestors are born or whatever your skin is, whatever, it's a big jungle and like fairly happily so, so there is something -- there is this lost quality about hawaii and the identity of the place and the people and that, i think, is, you know, the result of this kind of, i guess it's sort of kind of americanization and what happened when the missionary offspring overthrew the hawaiian queen in 1873. it was a severalling from the hawaiian past. you know, one of the other things she did when she was locked up in her cell was she translated the creation myth, a

genealogy telling the story from hawaii from the beginning of time, the slime that credited the earth up to her own ancestors, and one reason she did that after her overthrow is she's thinking about that, and that long, long hawaiian past that has just been, you know, severalled, and i think there's still, you know, it's like what is that called when you have something is amputated? is it lost limb syndrome? >> [inaudible] >> thank you. there's always going to be that there. i mean, it makes it a very fascinating place for that reason, you know? >> sarah? sarah? back here. >> hi. >> back on the subject of book

ideas. i'm interested to find out where you came up with the idea of the -- >> book ideas, where i came up with the idea for my book on presidential assassinations. i don't know. [laughter] i don't remember. i think i was writing about president lincoln and it occurred to me in lincoln research. i don't have a snappy story. >> i find your style dry and funny. do you ever intertape the idea -- entertain of branching out into fiction because you mentioned that -- >> no. >> staying with the truth? >> yeah, that question comes up because it's an insult to nonfiction. [laughter] just because something is true, no, no, i'm not a liar. [laughter]

there's times of other liars whose books you are willing to buy her. [laughter] fiction doesn't have to seem plausible. like nonfiction is about things like that can't be true, but it is, you know? [laughter] fiction you have to write stories that seem like they could have happened to people who might exist, but you don't have to do that when writing about a weirdo like abraham lincoln. this story, it happens as the first missionaries leave boston harbor, they are en route to christianize the hawaiians. while on the water, the new hawaiian king decides to abolish the old religion. you put that in a fiction-type story, that seems like, you know, like, no. [laughter] that's too easy, but then the

missionaries show up and get the news, oh, guess what, the old religion has been, you know, banned and outlawed, and there's nothing to replace it, and here we just sailed into a spiritual vacuum to, you know, sell our christian lairs, and to them it just seemed like god was on their side and it's a gift from god, but put that in a made up story, i mean -- but this just doesn't work because it just is unbelievable. [laughter] you know about the story of how john adams and thomas jefferson died on the same day and it's the 50th anniversary of the declaration of independence, july 4, 1826. you put that in a novel, that's so laughable, but, you know, it's fact. therefore it can be as implausible as possible, anyway.

fiction? [laughter] >> i know i'm a groupy and preorder everything you write as soon as i hear it's coming out. >> thank you very much. >> however, this one -- >> oh, where's this going? [laughter] >> this one when it came out, it was the title, "unfamiliar fishes," i had no idea what you were going to be writing about and it was like where -- >> that's because i hate subtitles. go on. [laughter] >> what inspired you to use that title? >> oh, it's a quotation from a letter written by one of the first hawaiian writers, david marlow and was almost 30 years old when the first missionaries arrived on maui, the island he lived on at the time, and they

taught him to read and write. the missionaries from new england had to invent a written language for hawaiians, and so 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 wrote "hawaiian antiquities" a compendium on the classical hawaiian culture dying away thanks to the coming of the westerners, and it's a very beautiful and useful book, but -- he came -- he was very under the influence of the new englanders, learned to read and write, became a teacher and a minister, and -- but being a writer which is to say grumpy and full of misgivings, as he saw the years wear on and saw more and more white people

drowning his home land, and not just the missionaries, and maui was a stopping point for whalers during the golden age of whaling so there's hundreds of whaling ships stopping in hawaiian ports at the same time, so as he saw all of these white people coming in, moving in, you know, dropping by, sailors on leave, they are probably not the ones to make the best impression. [laughter] he wrote this really sad letter to these native friends. saying something like when a big wave comes in, 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 men from the important countries come here and see that other people are small. they will devour us, so it was kind of prophetic.

i like pulling unfamiliar fishes out of that just baa my book is about americans, and the americans who came to hawaii in that time in the 19th century, they are not like regular joe americans, you know? you got your bible-something killjoys, you got your sailors on leave, and then a bunch of, you know, capitalists and conmen and other dreamers so these -- something about pulling that out, unfamiliar fishes, captures those siping lar types who -- singular types who ended up there. >> one more question. >> sarah, your first book was a media study from a listener's point of view, have you thought about doing another one since you've been on npr? >> read a diary of me going on book tour talking to

interviewers? yeah, that didn't occur to me. i had say that year, that was my first book listening to the radio for the year. it was a prison sentence. [laughter] it's been more than a decade since i've been let out, but no, i mean, the one thing about that form was i had to listen to the radio every day, and i don't know if you listen to the radio, but it was kind of trying as a project, but there's something in the form that definitely captured the time. the year i listened was 1995, and i mean, i don't really listen to a lot of different kinds of radio anymore, but at the time, i can't imagine it's gotten more violence, the talk, you know? like when i turned on the radio,

i think maybe on the first day, this was right before oklahoma city, before, you know, before especially with the right wing talk radio that people started wondering, hey, maybe you shouldn't talk like that all the time, and the reason i wrote it was because the 1994 congressional elections, and the freshmen congressmen when the republicans took over the congress called themself the the ditto head caucus and i thought radio had a huge impact on the country, and i was unaware of that side of it, but, you know, i would hear before oklahoma city, you know, i heard maybe on the first day a kid with a paper route calling in a talk show saying there's another kid training to horn in on the route, and the host said get a gun. they said it? but then a week into it, i was

visiting my parents in montana and there was a big snowstorm, so much snow the streets were not plowed yet so i went cross country skiing in the l of middle of the night and it was wonderful, and then came back, turned on the radio, and they said you could solve the well mare mothers by giving them jobs by posting them at the border to gun down all the illegal imgrants. when i say it was a prison sentence, it's not like it was hard having to here slayer songs all day long, but it was very dark and violent and terrible things i had to listen to, you know, that -- so i don't, yeah, i mean, and i think we forget that or -- i mean, i don't know. i would like to forget it, but i can't. after, you know, oklahoma city, when that happened, there was

something president clinton said that stuck with me when that happened he said, you know, if there's talk of hate, stand up and talk against it, and that was something that was nice to hear after, you know, a few months of listening to violence calls to murder in between commercials. [laughter] so i don't see a recreation of that experience, lovely as it was, but it was -- i did, you know, it was my first book, and i learned a lot by writing and publishing it and it's a very like dark and kind of angry raw book, but i think that comes from what i had to listen to. maybe one more question just quick? could p maybe be slightly more hopeful? [laughter] that's me and my darkness. >> i'll have to work on hopeful

i think. do you see a parallel between the missionary effort that you write about in here and the dulles brothers who enjoyed life in the 50s? >> i don't know who the dulles brothers are. >> john foster dulles. >> i've been to that airport, yeah. [laughter] >> who brought us the overthrow of -- >> oh, some of the other american regime changes. >> yeah. >> it does seem to be a habit of ours, you know? we don't like the guy running guatemala? i know what to do. or we don't like the guy running iran, i mean, these things, or, you know we don't like the guy running cuba, that kind of thing? i mean, the thing it's one thing for a government to want to hope for foreign leaders who would perhaps, if not act in our interests at least, you know, not -- you know, but the thing about the united states is at

our founding in the declaration of independence defines our belief, our theory of government is that it should be based on the concept of the governed so by definition the ideas that americans would go abroad and try to among key with other -- monkey with other country's rulers is a contradiction, you know? it is at best hypocritical. is that what you talk about? >> also the religious fever they brought to it. >> the difference with hawaii is the missionaries, the original missionaries, the one who came in the 1820s and 30s, they weren't the ones who overthrow the queen. it's their children, the ones born in hawaii who most of them attended the school founded by the missionaries to educate the children, that's the school the president went to, it's those

children, the hawaii-born hawaiians, or hawaiian subjects who overthrow the queen, and religion played a little roll. the queen was more of a devout christian than the guys ever were. the original missionaries in hawaii had -- they were supposed to westernize and civilize them as best they could, but they also had strict instructions not to mess with the government or get involved with political affairs because political affairs are of this earth, and they had to get as many hawaiians into the king adopt of -- kingdom as possible. a few quit the mission to work for the hawaiian government, but they had to quit their jobs as missionaries to do that. you know, there's one ex-missionary who helped with the framing of a new constitution when the hawaiian king made hawaii into a constitutional monarchy. there was one missionary who quit the mission to work in the

judiciary because he octobered to the fact that the -- objected to the fact that the headquarters back in boston was taking donations from slave states before the civil war. the missionaries stuck to the plan partly because they didn't have time to do anything else. they were incredibly burdened overloaded people who they had -- i mean, they wanted to -- they wanted to make everybody christian and everybody had to read bibles. they had to a, invent the written language, b, translate the bible and because they are seminary educated new englanders, they translate it from greek and hebrew to hawaiian, publish that, teach everybody to read, and run this school, and preach their sermons, and, you know, because it's monarchy, they have all the

other commands and demands that the aristocrats place on them. the missionary wives had to drop everything and sew dresses for the queens and chiefly women, and they had to build their houses and build their churches. they were so overworked and overburdened that they really didn't have time to, you know, do any talking, but their children, you know, their children did, and religion really had very little to do with it because like the man after the overthrow who becomes the president of the republic of hawaii, he and the queen went to the same church. the queen was a solid kris chap, and, in fact in her book, her memoir, which i recommend called "hawaii's story by hawaii's queen," she writes the book, it's her story, but she's also

publishing in 1898 to argue against annexation, and she uses two arguments against annexation, well several, but two being that this doesn't seem christian. she basically implies god will smite us if we do that to her little country, and the other is it doesn't seem in keeping with, you know, the commands of democratic republican government. so there's that. [laughter] i would like to thank you all for coming. thanks, austin. you're always been so good to me. i'll be upstairs signing books. [applause] >> to find out more, visit the author on facebook at facebook.com/sarah jane vowell. ..

for every native speaker of english there are three economic native speaker and the number is likely to jump to sixth in just a few years, so this is a time when the english language is changing very quickly and it's an exciting time to be the speaker of the language for people who speak it native lee and notte. >> you focus on 30 words i understand. how did you choose