administering before i was dean because i was a friend of tony's and one of the group of friends who organized this award program with the help of a lot of other friends and of, of course, the lynton family. i didn't ever have the pleasure of knowing mark lynton. many people knew him did, but i knew tony well, and he would have been very happy, i think, to see his friends and colleagues gathering to do what we're here this evening to do. i guess a seasonally themed question one might ask is how is this awards ceremony different from all other award ceremonies? [laughter] part of the answer is that we make the awardees think for

their supper in the form of a panel discussion with a distinguished moderator who this year is taylor branch who i'll introduce in a minute. the reason we do that specifically has to do with tony who felt that particularly in nonfiction writing, there was not enough of a structured conversation about our craft, and there needs to be more, so we use this program as a pretext to do that, and, indeed, they have spread this concept to several of our other award ceremonies as well. it reminds us all of why we're giving this awards in addition to honoring outstanding achievements. it's to try to, and i think we've succeeded at doing this, create a community of people who do this kind of work, who care

about this kind of work, and are always engaged in thinking about how it can be done better. there's several former winners in the audience here. i see diane mcorder, any other winners i'm not seeing? so that's proof that this suspect just one -- this isn't just one evening in your life. this is your -- you're invited, and it's a part of conversations that go on through the years. i want to just mention also that this event is cosponsored by the nieman foundation and the columbian journalism school. the director curator and bob

jiles who is here. this is bob's last year as curator and i want to sort of toast him with my hail springs water. he'll come up in a minute and best wishes for his future, and next year, of course, you'll be at the cambridge ceremony, but also your wonderful successor, formally editor of the "chicago tribune" will be that presiding. it's a tribute of somebody who is a leader of something if they attract a great successor and make the job look easy and fun, which you've done. since you and i both have to raise money, you know that every time it seems like you talk to a donor, they said, now, i want you to partner with another institution. [laughter] but i said, this is honestly a

case where being partners has been fun and easy, and that's incredibly rare, so thanks, bob, thanks for everything over the years of the prize. i'm going to introduce, though not welcome to the stage, taylor branch, and then he'll come up and do most of the hosting duties in a couple minutes. i don't really need to introduce him very much because you all have read his work and know who he is. he's known first and foremost as the author of the definitive biography of dr. martin luther king, jr. spread out over three volumes and just completed a we think soon to be an hbo series, but even without that, it's a

really monumental life achievement piece of journalistic biography. i happen to know a lot of other things about taylor. i could go on and on. for instance, nobody may know this, but he and i had the same high school american history teacher in different high schools at different times in the south. it was a man named emmett wright, j.r. setting us out off on our course in life. we eached worked for the monthly at our journalism school, and i've been reading taylor's work my whole life, and there's a lot of it that's wonderful besides the mon monumental king biography. one other thing i'll note about taylor that is a very rare happenstance in the life of a

journalist is that in his younger days, he had a thankless political organizing assignment which is running the george mcgovern presidential campaign in texas. [laughter] he was codirector and the other codirector was bill clinton. another strand in his career has been the clinton strand, and he just wrote a book about a long series of very searching and private interviews that he had with president clip ton while he was president, probably the most, you know, realtime access any president ever gave a journalist with the possible exception and it drove him mad, and taylor is still here in one piece. [laughter] you'll be seeing him in a minute. before exiting the stage going to present the jay anthony lukas

book award presented to a merited nonfiction on an american topic that exemplifies the literary grace, commitment to research, and the social concern that characterized the distinguished work of the award's name sake. it is awarded this year to eliza griswold that faults from the line of christian my and islam. eliza is -- well let me read the citationen on the prize and why she's not here. she has a good excuse. eliza griswold examines the conflict between christianity and islam between the geographical line 700 miles north the equator where the two beliefs frequently collide. more than half the world's muslims live here as do 60% of the world's christians. beautifully written and

reported, this is an original construct for examining thee most important conflicts in the world today. eliza is currently in pakistan where she's kind of tied down by events, and there is a journalist and is being advised not to move for obvious reasons so we salute her in absence and invite her editor, paul, where are you to come on up? get the award on her behalf. [laughter] [applause] >> thank you to the sponsor of the award and journalism school, and eliza is in pakistan. i know eliza and she's chasing the story even if she's a hotel.

the aftermath of the killing of bin laden leaves effects on the ground and if anybody can get that story, eliza griswold can. the subtitle comes from christian and and islam has the title of the 10th parallel for the line that she follows in the book, but could have had the title common ground because the drama that she is working out of the book is very similar to the one that jay anthony lukas worked out. it's beliefs in a similar space. eliza tries to makes the point at the end of the book. the strife miss line ups and christians meet is real, but believers of different kinds shoulders together even as they follow different faiths is no

less real. the complicated bids for power inside them more into the conflicts between them. eliza is a poet, a commentator, a nieman fellow, but identifies with the tribe of journalists. at this price, recognizes and honors, and she'd be delighted to be here herself to receive the prize, and i know she's honored to get it. thank you. [applause] >> and paul, don't forget -- [laughter] >> i want to also recognize three finalists for the same award. some are here and some are not, but here they come.

jefferson cow yes, finalist for staying alive, 1970s and the working class. he talked about political and cultural transformations without shortchanging either. he traces how anxiety overtook a republic of security in the united states combining empathy with passion and making understanding his goal and con den session his enemy. americans living in 2011 will understand themselves better because of this brilliant excavation of the 1970s. come on up. [applause] [laughter] >> i do feel moved.

when i received a phone call about this prize, i was particularly moved. i received several academic awards or prizes and awards for this book, but to receive something named after anthony lukas on a book about the 1970s on which his shadow was cast with the book commonground and to talk about labor history in which his book "big trouble qtion also casts a big shadow was daunting but extraordinarily rewarding, and there's certain voices that one hears when one writes, and lukas's was one of those, and i'm humbled to receive this award. thank you. [applause] >> next timist is paul greenberg

for the future of the last wild food. paul greenberg has written a rivetting adventure from the outer banks to japan to norway in his pursuit of the good fish. self-sustaining, tasteful, and cheap. cod was a fish until commercial fishing decimated it. bass looked like a con tepider for awhile as did salmon. tuna will never be any of those things other than tasty and the example of whatnot to eat. greenberg's case is both highly readable and very important. come on up. [applause] >> i'll say a word or two. i'm really glad to see fish

recognized in the general scheme of things. often they are underwater, and it's no coincidence they are not recognized because they are under water, but there's many, many fish in the sea, but can't talk about them all, but want to leave you with one thing which is that this year is the greatest battle that fish have ever encountered, and that is as i speak, a huge amount of con cosh yum is preparing to turn the largest remaining salmon run on earth as a run site. there's unfortunately a $300 billion gold and copper deposit underneath the run. in the years ahead as people like bp, anglo-american try to turn our food systems into mining systems and oil

extraction systems, we have to ask ourselves, do we want to fill our tanks up? do we want to make telephone cable, or do we want to eat? if i could leave you with one thing. i say stop pebble mine. thank you very much. [applause] >> last timist is side hartham just awarded the pulitzer prize in a couple weeks for the emperor of all no mallties. he's compelling story, cancer is the central character. willful, unpredictable, and resistant. a history of cancer from the earliest mention in 2500 b.c. and treatments in the 20th and 21st centuries and notable successes and failures.

the book tells the story of human ingenuity, compassion, and hubris paternalism and misspent money and optimism. hehe is not here. just be coincidence we have of the four books, we're honoring, the two were the editors who made a really big behind the scenes contribution happen to be the two for those who could not be here. i want to welcome nam graham to the stage to accept. [applause] >> i just want to say quickly side would have loved to be here tonight, and i called him this morning saying, so, side, have you read the book? he of course said, yes, i was inspired by tony lukas and this exemplifies a commonground made

vast. thank you very much all of you. [applause] >> bob giles is coming up next to present another prize, but before i leave i just will say the last time i ever saw tony lukas, we had lunch. the purpose of which was him to sort of trick me into agreeing to do a study for the authors guild of which he was president on mid list books and how they work economically, and his last words to me were, so, great, you'll do it. bye. [laughter] we did it. it's amazing to me -- i would say that the quality of book length reported nonfiction that's coming out today is year in, year out as high as i can

ever remember it being. it's a real bright spot in journalism. i learned something from doing the report for tony, and now we talk about the new business model for news which is right over the next hill, but the business model for this kind of book is a pure will power and love and determination, but there's a lot of it on the part of the publishers, the writers, and the editors, and that's why we're in such a wonderfully prolific period in this part of journalism. that's a great thing, so, bob, come on up and take over. [applause] >> thanks, nick, and thank you for that nice send off. as a graduate of the school, it's been fun for me to be able to reengage with the journalism school in this way and for the neiman foundation. it's been a good thing for us to

become a partner in organizing and presenting and odd years of hosting of the book prize awards. the mark clinton history prize is awarded for a book length work of history on any subject that best combines intellectual or scholarly distinction with expression. the judges decided that the award should go this year to isabel wilkerson, for the warmth of other sons, the epic story of america's story of great migration published by random house. the certificate says isabel wilkerson has created a brilliant and innovative paradox, the intimate epic. at its smallest scale, this

towering work rests on a trio of unforgettable biographies. each of the three main characters began life in various corners of the post emancipation south. in different decades and for different reasons, each left the land of their an ancestors and headed north and west along with millions of fellow travelers in a powerful lyrical prose combining the historian's rigor with the novelist empathy, this book changes our understanding of the great migration and, indeed, the modern united states. isabel wilkerson, please come and got the award. [applause] [applause] >> the judges named one

finalist, patrick wilken, the poet in his laboratory published by peguin press. in this e gauntly written biography, he follows claude levy strauss to his career in paris as one of the world's most celebrated thinkers. along the way, he provides us with brilliant perspectives of structuralism, the movement he launched as well as an incisive an anthropology of french culture. this book tells us what it means to be an intellectual and what it means to be an intellectual historian. patrick, are you here? will you come forward, please? [applause]

[inaudible conversations] >> thank you very much the school. this award, and someone was saying to me just earlier that talking about studying him in the 60s and how his work was in citing mathematical formula that he came up with that involved skunk of the beast minus one. [laughter] i have to say i did mention that in the book, but my editor who is here, edited that out. [laughter] but really there was a lot to strauss, and i've just come from brazil and levy worked closely in brazil and left a portrait of indigenous people in brazil, and i have to say i'm working on some of the indigenous people who he studied in the 1930s and

40s and left a very moving portrait in the peak, his best accessible book, and still today, these peoples are really struggling against very, very harsh circumstances, violence, discrimination, and i think that levy who was seen as a very kind of difficult to understand intellectual, left this legacy, this very passionate defense of indigenous people on the brink, but thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you, patrick. i'm pleased to welcome, taylor branch who will lead the institution with our winners. taylor? [applause] >> thank you. i want to thank columbia journalism school for hosting this event again, all the

sponsors, and c-span for being here. i hope book loverrings will be able to -- book lovers can see it beyond this room. i have two things to say before quickly presenting this award. one is that i was happy that linda called me because she and tony used to go to other yell games, and to us, a work in progress was a discussion on who was later on the deadline. [laughter] we had many, many refinements on that discussion, but we stuck with it. the only other thing i want to say is that i'm leaving here tomorrow to go to home to atlanta to finish, i hope, an oral history with my mother, and i encourage you to do oral history with yourselves, your relatives, your families, not just for work or anybody else's

work, but just for the sake of your family. oral history has been a wonderful tool of a career, but it is also a -- a family exercise that will help knit us together. now, to this award, the work-in-progress. the -- the lukas committee has awarded the award this year to alex tizon for his book "in progress, big little man, the asian male at the dawn of the asian century." alex tizon takes readers on a personal journey of self-discovery that is also a deep exploration of what it meant to be a man of asian dissent in the western world from the earliest days of asian migration. beginning with an account of his

family's arrival in the united states as philippine immigrants in 1964, alex tizon creates what promises to be an elegantly constructed deeply personal work of sociological observation exploring the historical, psychological, and underpippings of a stereotype so deeply embedded in western culture that asian men believed it themselves. alex tizon. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> and we have two finalists here.

first joe for the fiddler on motico run published by simon and schuster. while we have works on race in america, joseph appears headed towards his own wonderfully distinguished achievement. the author informs us is one of the few, if only, african surnames to survive slavery in america. most americans however, are now white, and according to their chronical here, some are fiercely rasist and harbor many myths. the judges expected his project to result in an excellent singular work of nonfiction. joseph mozingo.

[applause] [inaudible conversations] >> well, since i vice president -- have not written the book yet, i limit my comments to thank you very much. it's difficult to do this research and so expensive. i just -- this is just a wonderful thing, and i'm deeply honored, thank you. [applause] >> and the other finalist is lawrence williams for breasts, a natural and unnatural history. [laughter] in breasts we discover toxins associated with lower iq, lower immunities, behavioral problems and a higher risk of breast cancer contaminate breast milk. how have millions of years of

evolution and environmental change transformed such a mysterious gift of nature into a worn down machine haunted by the pressures? [laughter] in her quit-witted and i want mat voice, williams proposes to tackle a deadly serious underlying question, why is it threatening the continued evolution of our species as a whole? florence williams. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> as paul greenberg said, it's nice to see fish recognized, and it's nice to see breasts recognized. [laughter] i think breasts get a lot of attention, but not always on the stage of the columbia journalism school. [laughter] my book is really an

environmental history of a body part, and it's just -- it's really nice that two environmental books i think have been honored tonight and are in the vain of tony lukas, so i'm very hop -- honored and thank the committee and my editor jill from norton for believing this this odd little book, so thank you. [applause] >> well, if our discussion flags, we might invite florence back on. [laughter] . .

what we are really here to talk about is the craft of creating the kind of nonfiction that tony lukas did, which has special challenges of being a specially ambitious, difficult and taking a long time. and i want to open -- we just want to have some dialogue about the craft and then take some questions from you, from the microphones, very briefly. isabel, i want to ask you a question right off the bat. your book is both broad and very intimate as the citation said. i was planning to use that word myself. did you ever think of doing one or the other, or were you resolved to do a blend from the beginning, that is a broad history of of the migration together with intimate portraits of chosen representatives?

>> i resolved to do both because i felt there was no way to capture the whole of this experience without first having it a narrative in which the reader with he carried through the journeys of these people as if they were these people themselves. and that meant that i needed to have three people coming from different experiences, different states in the south following the three different tracks of migration during three different decades and having the reader follow them through the course of that narrative as it unfolded in their own lives for a lot of these people. but those stories in and of themselves would have been random experiences of ordinary people had there not been the context and the background and the history to give meaning to the decisions that they were making and therefore there had to be this blend of both. i was obviously influenced by, and inspired, by common ground. i have it trilogy of

protagonists he did with the book. it deals with many of the same issues as his book did and as a matter fact i actually teach a boston university in the same classroom where he talks. so this is so very special to me, indeed. just so you know the room attracts people, students always are coming into that room. there is something very spiritual and meaningful about the room, as if they know that he has been there. and so, the meaning of the decisions of the people had to come from the archival word and the additional work return to me from a journalist. it started as journalism because i approached it as a journalist and as in anthropological expedition into the lives of people. and then it became history once the people passed away and suddenly journalism becomes history, and the stories become our -- archival and i had to

look at that. i ended up using a structure, "the grapes of wrath" because "the grapes of wrath," while that is fiction and it is a masterpiece and i'm not comparing it in that way, but the structure was quite useful to me because i needed to have a way to incorporate that conjectural met uriel, that background which would give meaning to the lives that were being described here that you are being immersed in. but without intruding into the narrative itself. in other words not to have some important and significant fact in truth upon the moment, the special moment that was occurring as the narrative was unfolding. and so i used inter-chapters as he did and i found that to be a lovely way to be able to keep the writing of a certain level and yet not interrupt the narrative as it was unfolding. >> that raises a lot of issues and we will get into some of them later and it is a little unfair that your book is already

done and i can't. >> for alex's who's is not dumb but i do want to say at the outset that her work is a great work of art so if you haven't read it, you should read it. it is quite transporting and we will come back to some of those issues. but i want to raise one issue to you, alex. also on a very general nature. narrative nonfiction is difficult enough. you are doing narrative nonfiction with a first-person narrator. in other words putting yourself in the story. was that a necessary choice, a hard choice, and what problems does it raise for you in the construction of a book like this because a narrative nonfiction in the first person is relatively rare in the genre. >> taylor that was a multipart question and i have trouble with multipart questions. i'm going to just go with the first part of your question.

first of all, i just want to say thank you so much to columbia university and the lenten family. thank you for having a work in progress award. thank you so much. such a great affirmation. i fully expected to have a relatively, a small audience for this book and to receive this kind of award from these organizations is such encouragement for me to continue on so thank you, thank you, thank you. as far as the decision to go first-person, it was very difficult because it is a vulnerable topic to begin with and to write it in the first person, i felt like i have a 5-month-old golden retriever who likes to get on his back and just open up his legs. as vulnerable as he possibly

could be. and in writing this book i feel a little bit like my golden retriever, completely opening myself up without being too concessional about it. and so there is that fine line that you have to walk when you are writing first-person. you want to be -- you want to be personal without going too much into private areas. i think that is something that i learned from a writer in oregon named barry lopez who i consider one of my mentors, one of the keys to writing for him is to ride in a personal way without dean to private or to delve too much into private areas. and it was difficult for me to decide, especially with this topic but i think that if i had attempted this topic without using the first-person that it ran the risk of becoming just

another kind of sociological yack piece about race and particularly about the asian male experience. i felt like it needed a face and i guess my face was as good as any. [laughter] there is one personal -- you have a couple of personal references in your book. it is mostly a third person book that one in particular that i want to mention because my mother, it who i am doing the history with, has a series that just bloomed and she said it was an occasion for her agreeing to do with -- as you mentioned a night blooming series and the book. how does the night blooming series to get into the wonderful story? >> first of all i should preface this by saying i interviewed over 1200 people or this book. that meant primarily it was a casting exercise. in other words i was looking for the three people who would ultimately become the

protagonists in this book. i went to senior centers and i went to catholic churches in los angeles where everyone was from louisiana. i went to baptist churches in brooklyn where everyone was from south carolina so i went to a great deal of trouble to narrow down to these three people. however during the course of all of this i realized that i had not actually heard my own family story and i set out to also make sure that i have talked with my own parents who had been part of this great migration. my mother had come from rome, georgia to washington d.c. and i like to tell people that she had come from rome. people say wow, she is from rome? wow. [laughter] and then i say georgia and they said oh. and my father had come from virginia, from southern virginia to washington d.c.. had they not been part of the great migration i would not have existed so i realized i had

spend a lot of time understanding and in fact have spent more time with other people's parents and grandparents than i had spent with my own parents and i realized i needed to talk with them. my toughest interview by far was my mother who absolutely did not want to talk. this is a generation of people, and this was a class of people ultimately all of them, wondering why this was sort of an underappreciated part of american history is because the people themselves did not talk about it. they didn't even tell their own children about it so every reference to my family in this book, and there are not very many of them, because i felt that the story needed to be about the whole, these three people that represent the 6 million i did and wanted to be considered something so personal about me or my family. but i did not know any of the things that are in the book better about my family before beginning work on the book and that is a stunning thing when he realized that i had and raised by these people and had not

known. the story of the night bloom series came by accident. my mother left the story and i found it riveting when she told me about it. i happen to have had some catholic -- casablanca lilies on the living room coffee table and she happened to see them and she said it reminded her of the night looming series that her mother had grown so she proceeded to tell the story and the story was that this was a gangly orphan of a planned that exist primarily for the singular moment sometime in the middle of the night on a day that cannot be foretold until -- unless you are watching it very carefully. it blooms of beautiful lily like bloom in the middle of the night and you have to be watching carefully in order to see it. in other words it blooms when no one is around to see the magnificent moment.

and her mother have been -- my grandmother happened to be in rome, georgia, a wonderful gardner apparently known on their block for roses and others. and she would watch this thing and wait. it was apparently not further to look at because 365 days of the year it was horrible to look at until this one moment. she would tell people. she would go and she would tell amanda poindexter and ms. lily belle nelson and others in the neighborhood -- mcnamara these people that i knew before my mother told the story -- that her night blooming series was about to bloom and if you want to see it you should come by at midnight and we can wait and watch it with sweet tea and homemade vanilla ice cream. so that is what they did. my mother amber that because that was one of the rituals of growing up in the south that she had to four when she made this great -- as to the 6 million people who are part of this

migration, which is similar to the leap of faith that any group of people whether they are coming from europe across the atlantic or across the rio grande or across the pacific. everyone has to make -- most of us are descended from someone who had to make this difficult decision and to leave not just the harshness of their lives that might have propelled them to leave but also the lovely moments, the recollections. she remembers those steamy summers, summer nights in rome, georgia on given street where they waited and waited. that would be the one time when her mother would let her sit out on the porch while these people are waiting. at the moment that it was opened and it took a while for it to open, it was said that you could see the face of the baby jesus in the bloom, and when it opened, my grandmother's friends would all compete to say that they could see it. oh there it is right there. and my mother said she never sought.

[laughing] she told that story and i decided to include that in the book is an example of the things they left behind. >> a wonderful story. alex, another choice that you made that i would like to ask you about has to do with gender. asian immigrants in the united states obviously are both genders. you are focusing on one. is that for a journalistic reason or because you are of that gender, and how was that made? >> well, you write about what you know. [laughter] but it was a deliberate decision to focus in on men, partly because i think that the stories of asian women, asian women particularly in asia have been explored. in fact if you google looks on the asian mystique or the

mystique of asian women, you will come across scores of books, but if you google books on asian men, very few, very few books. i think it was a story that i could tell and was a story that i could tell with personal insight, and my story serves as sort of the skeletal outline for the story i am trying to tell. so if there is a memoir element to it, but the memoir is only a portal into the larger issues that i'm going to try to address. i actually think it helps to have a face attached to these general ideas that i will be talking about. >> now, just from what is in the proposal and what you were saying, it sounds like there is a slightly contrasting

methodology here that you are visiting places, some of the chapters in samples that take you to places that are residents from asian history but it is not necessarily interviewing lots of asians in communities in the united states. it is not a methodology like isabel's. is that correct. >> that is correct. the book has a memoir tone to it and i'm calling it a sociological memoir. but, i am trying to do what isabel already did, which is to tell a specific story and then to interweave within the specific stories that context, the larger context, the history. for example, my first chapter -- my first chapter is about a trip that i took to a tiny island in the philippines and for those of you who have never been there the philippines as a nation of about 7000 islands and many of

them are just rocks that are spread out from the ocean. i took a trip to one of these islands, sort of in search, i guess you could say i was doing my roots search but i happened upon this one island where ferdinand magellan, the great explorer, the great were to get explorer, was killed. all that there is no single person in this room who could besides my two daughters who could tell me the name of the warrior who killed ferdinand magellan. no. i would like to tell this story. growing up in the united states, i saw no image is, certainly no statutes and read no accounts of anybody who looked like me or who resembled my history as being worthy of praise, worthy of recognition.

and for me to go to the silent until the story of the warrior who killed ferdinand magellan, for me it was, it was important for me to actually stand on the sand where the battle took place and i don't know if i can fully explain why. it was an affirmation to a certain degree that men that looked like me did have strength, could stand up, could fight and could win. and that was the message that i did not grow up knowing. i didn't know that growing up. >> thank you. we are going to take questions after just one more. we have two microphones on the side and to reach the c-span readers even though we may not need them. please stand up if you have a question to ask. isabel, i wanted to ask you one other thing on the methodology and the interviews that you did,

usa 1200 interviews. this is a very very personal question. how did you know you didn't need 1201, because there is a tendency here to always think that the next interview is vital. >> that is why i got to that many. i mean, many people considered it to be way more than necessary. i knew that i had gone enough when i had a core group of about 30 people any of whom could have been and one of them in particular. it is just interesting that the methodology was quite well thought out. you know, i had the three major destination cities in the north. there were three major subsections of the south that they would come from. there were three decades i was looking for, looking for a variety of socioeconomic

situations through all of that and yet when it came down to making the decision, i really needed to make sure that there was a connection somehow. none of the places that i actually went led me to directly the people that i ended up with but they were all necessary to through the process. and i went to so many places in los angeles for example. there are all kinds of louisiana clubs in los angeles where people maintain their connection to their experiences and hometowns. there are places where many people who are of creole descent will gather together and it's covered all of these entire underground of people who had re-created their experiences in louisiana's and texas in los angeles and it seemed as if the more discovered, the more i went to them the more i found. i went to so many of them that i went to this one place and a woman recognized me from one of

the other places i have been. she said, i have seen you add so many of these places and i've heard the questions you have been asking the people. you have talked to so many people and i've heard you do this and i've listened to what they have said to you and i think i have the perfect person for you. and i thought, whenever you hear that you were thinking while there is no you could really -- no way you could know. i'm a journalist and you are not. i know you are being very helpful and i appreciate the help but you would never think of that would be the way that you would find anyone. i was grateful to her and i took the name down and i didn't think much would, that because it was sort of like someone matching you up on a blind date and they in they couldn't possibly know what you really want. and i met with this person and he was a physician who was in this very granholm in los angeles off of crenshaw. he met me at the door and he insisted upon serving me lemon

pound cake with vanilla ice cream on rosenthal china which i did not really want but which he insisted that i have. and he then proceeded to begin to tell me a little bit about himself and they listened and asked questions. then ultimately he said to me, i love to talk. i love to talk, and i have my favorite subject. [laughter] and at that point i realized that i didn't need 1201. i had found that one. [laughter] >> this is one of our three characters and for any of you who may be ray charles fans and know the song hide nor hair, if dr. voter has got her eye know i'm sure because he is medicine and money to, was written about her character. dr. foster. one last question about dr. foster. he is not the most emotive character to me because i think

ida mae, the other two. however, your portrait of him is in some ways more searing in his honesty because here is a person who is the epitome of someone who made it in migration through many many vicissitudes and yet in many respects he is his own worst enemy. dr. king made a phrase once a long time ago saying we bear all the vulnerabilities of a status starved people and when you get some status it is like you can never get enough. that seemed to be one of his great -- any per tray that. is really an aching portrait of somebody who has it made but nothing is ever enough for him and in that sense he is kind of a tragic character. it is really a literary portrait. do you know a lot of dr. foster? have you ever met anybody like that?

>> i have to say that i've never met anyone quite like them. him. he is a doctor do at certain times you know, the interview would have to be over for the afternoon because he had to make it to the racetrack so he was truly singular in that way. but i would have to say in some ways i think that there is a lesson for all of us who love narrative nonfiction because it is an example of how we really are seeking characters, protagonists who are fully formed human beings meaning for all of their flaws and strengths, he is someone who will over time made himself and his full self available to me to be able to portray and it's a a two-time and it took effort. it took taking him to the race track. i actually took him one time, just going with him to the hospital. instead of seeing him in his home he would be in the hospital. those are really difficult

things on this project. and yet, he was a vulnerable figure. he was a strong figure. he was a wildly successful person who seems never to be able to achieve enough to satisfy whatever longing he had within him. so in that way he was a universal figure, not really representative of any particular group or caste or race in this country that he represents the vulnerabilities in all of us. and i think in that way he is an enduring character which is what we are seeking to do a narrative nonfiction. is a gift to be able to find an individual such as he or the other to through whom we can understand a different part of ourselves. >> i wish we could talk about the other two but i don't think we have time to do that. you will have to read the book. are there other questions? yes sir, you will question. the microphone is right there. >> i hope it is okay the judge asked the question. is not stopping right now. i was a chair for the jury for

the work in progress and i found it a very loving experience after many years as a book critic getting a finished product. i'm thinking a lot about what went into it. kind of assuming that well this is the book the author wanted to write, not just the book the author could afford to write. and i was moved by a lot of the explanations of how i won't be able to do the book i want to write if i don't get some more money. i may have to give up this book or it may have to truncate it in a way i don't want and after the experience i thought, they this should be a nonfiction bank, the goldman sachs nonfiction bank. you apply and 45,000, i could do a book 25,000 so-so. but i wanted to ask you this crass question about the relationship of money to the kind of book you can do. just to give east to examples without naming names, i remember

one proposal had a 100,000-dollar advance but the person -- what i'm going to need this to be able to do it right. my reaction was no, just go to the library and read the seven books on the same subject that have come out of the last years and you'll save a lot of money. another with a 9000-dollar dance where i thought my god, $500,000 should go to this wonderful project. did you think, both of you, about what kind of book and i actually afford to do? do i want to do a book that is not the book i really care to do, but i have to do it this way because i don't have enough money for the research backs i can't go any further. not just in regard to your own case but when you think of other projects, that nonfiction writers are doing. how much should they write or writer be bound by what is affordable? >> i will take it first and then you can. >> we are in the kitchen now.

we are in the kitchen now. i will just be completely honest with you. i did not take money into account at all when i conceived the book, when i planned the book, as i started writing the book. i should have because i needed the money and i still need the money, but i think that the part of me who wrote this proposal and who wanted to write the book was determined to write it one way or another, if it took, as isabel's project did, 15 years. than i would have to work 15 years on it but it is the only book that i need to write and so the money part of it i didn't take into account. i probably should have been maybe i will the next time around. i was just so delighted and grateful that a publisher wanted to publish it, and that there is

some interest in it. know, so that is an interesting question. i have never considered it before. certainly this prize that i have received is going to help a lot. it will cut -- it will help me in the next year or two to live because it is hard to write when you are trying to figure out how to pay the vet will. [laughter] or the mortgage. >> all daughters are expensive -- all dogs are expensive. >> dogs are very expensive. anyway, that is all i have to say about that. >> i would have to say that i believe that narrative nonfiction is art and thinking as an artist about the work, the work has to be done by whatever means necessary. and for me it took 15 years in order to do it. i did not know it was going to

take 15 years at the outset. i'm glad i didn't know it would take 15 years because i would not have done it. i don't regret having given it the 15 years. that is what i felt these individuals deserve and it is really for books in one and three full biographies and also the back story and the history of 100 years from reconstruction until essentially the beginning of the 21st century. so there was a lot to be done. and you know, throughout history, writers have found a way to make it work. it shouldn't be this hard. there should be a greater appreciation for the work that goes into it. there should be a greater appreciation by the culture in general, what goes into nonfiction in particular because these are real people. this took a tremendous amount of resources in order to travel to these places to see them and to arrive from halfway across the country and to find that i can't even talk to the person because the person is in the hospital. once i came to new york and

might protagonists was in a coma, so this is a tremendous amount of resources that are necessary in order to do it to a certain level. and yet if you have that sense of ambition which is exemplified by tony lukas, then you do what you must. he taught at austin university. i have taught at multiple universities. i've taught at princeton, taught at emory, i've taught at boston so you do what you have to do for the work and you hope that it will find a readership and it will find an audience. that is the ultimate fulfillment of the work. >> can you both recommend this kind of work to other writers given all of the vicissitudes? what you are saying is, what you both said are these are oaks that you had to write but you do consider it an art and a calling. i certainly felt the same way and i would recommend -- i would

recommend it to any writer provided you feel that way about it but you have to feel very strongly. what do you think? >> yeah, absolutely. i think that being a writer is not just a total privilege. you have to live intensely especially when they were writing about the kinds of issues that isabel is writing about, issues that i'm writing about. there is a saying that i just read, live to the point of tears. i forget who said that. live to the point of tears and to be a writer, you have to constantly be on the point of tears. to me that is the only way to live. not just tears of sadness but tears of joy to back but live that intensely. i highly recommend it to anyone who is called to do it. >> thank you. taking it a little bit into the craft of writing these books and now we have -- i would like to

close with arlene. >> alex, there is one thing i have to do. here's your check. so i would think you would want that. [applause] >> thank you. >> booktv has over 100,000 twitter followers. be a part of excitement. follow booktv on twitter to get publishing news, scheduling updates, author information and talk directly with authors during our live programming. twitter.com/booktv. here's a short video from c-span's recent trip to florida where local content vehicles partnered with bright house networks and tampa st. petersburg to give you a closer look at the local literary scene's. >> who was allen dawson? >> allen dawson was a mother born in scotland in 1900 who comes to the united states in 1921 when she comes a leading

communist labor activist and is the first woman ever elected to a national leadership position in a merit -- she was born in scotland in 1900 a place called bar hand which is an industrial village on the outskirts of glasgow. working-class poverty. i mean, her family is at the lowest level. her mother's family to give you an idea in 1890 there were 12 people living in a two room house, and this kind of poverty is difficult for us in the united states to even imagine today. but that is the kind of poverty she came from. it was normal in britain at that time for children to go to school until they were 13 years old and then when i graduated from what we would call elementary school, they would go on and go to work.

soshi at the age of 13 goes to work in a textile mill in scotland and she spends almost her entire life in the textile mill. she is a textile worker from the age of 13 until the age of 65 when she retires and comes to florida and dice the next year of a disease that is attributable, a lung disease attributed to having worked in textile mills. it is also fascinating because she is 13 and 1914 which is when world war i began, and so the period in glasgow and in scotland between about 1910 in 1920 particularly during world war i is a time known as -- it is a very turbulent time in terms of labor history. there are all sorts of radicals that are a part of the labor movement there from people who

are socialists at the very, you know, not at all really radical. i mean they are just talking about alternatives to capitalism to the extreme of communist coup were very vocal after the bolshevik revolution in 1917. even though i can't find any record of her being involved in any of this labor unrest, she is clearly exposed to it and she is exposed to the ideas that were part of that time period. so i would say that is when she gets the radical ideas that are in her head. she doesn't become a communist until 1926 when she is working in new jersey and they strike -- start the strike there. but it is during this time that i think she's exposed to it. after world war i, there is massive unemployment in britain. within weeks after the end of the war, more than 500,000 women lost their jobs because of the

end of the war munitions. the textile industry had been pretty much on hold during world war i because of the difficulty bringing in cotton and other materials to fuel the textile mills. but after the war, there is disbelief, okay we are going to be able to crank up our textile industry again. this doesn't hold true because what happens is the united states and several other countries have stolen britain's market for their textile goods. so they ultimately, the textile industry in britain never recovers from world war i that there is this brief period right after the war where there is new investment and so her entire family with the exception of the two people, move south to a little village outside of manchester. mill gate, and there they have just momentarily, momentary

prosperity but then it collapses and she and one of her brothers lead the family to the united states. they come over in 1921 and get established in passaic, new jersey. she immediately goes to work on the night shift in this botany mill which interestingly at the time you been though there were lots of women working on the night shift, and was against the law for women to work the night shift in new jersey. it is just that no one enforced it but they are able to bring her younger siblings and her mother over. her father dies before they are able to get over. he does while she is in the u.s.. it is from that working the textile mills that she happens to be the place where there's this massive textile strike. passaic is fascinating because it is a city that has always been a city of immigrants. in the 1920s, the textile mill owners would send

representatives to ellis island to hire people at different ethnicities so -- and who spoke different languages so that they couldn't organize unions in the textile mills because they couldn't talk to each other. and so in 1926, there were more than 35 different languages spoken in the textile mills of passaic, new jersey and i wondered you know, is that still true? i looked recently. there are more than 30 different languages spoken in passaic high school today and obviously they are different languages. they are different ethnic groups that have come over to passaic but it is still very much a fascinating town for immigrant workers, or at least half of it is. -1/2 is -- was very posh in the 1920s. the people who live there often worked in new york city, took the train in. i mean they have these big homes with the large porches and things like that. but then bulk of the population

lived in a very densely populated area close to the textile mills. her house was maybe two blocks from the mill where she worked. she was the leading woman in the labor movement in the seventh -- second half of the 1920s. she is involved in three major textile strike, the first one of passaic new jersey where she lives and works as a weaver in the botany worsted hill there in passaic. that strike lasts about a year and a half and ultimately they are successful, the workers are successful. from that she becomes an activist in a lot of different areas. she is involved in the protest against the execution of sacco and vanzetti. she is a speaker at several of the international women's day celebrations in new york city. she is part of a women's delegation that goes to russia to evaluate the women in russia versus women in the united states and they come back and issue a rather fascinating

report. i think in reality when you look at it carefully, there was a bit of bamboozling going on and when they were in russia because the picture of the women in russia was not totally accurate. although, when they came back and looked at the role that many working-class women had in the united states it was pretty appalling in the 1920s. then she becomes a true labor activists. she is involved in the big textile strike in new bedford massachusetts in 1928. during that strike, she ultimately, when the strike ends, and that strike is unsuccessful, she is arrested by the police chief one more time and in a newspaper interview he asked her how many times she had been arrested. she said so many times i have lost count. from that, she goes to continue

work in the textile movement, labor movement in massachusetts. but 1929 is really sort of the culmination of her career. she begins by attending the a.s. of l. united textile workers union of which she is a delicate and being expelled because she is a communist. that is the first part. from that, she helps to organize a new textile union with more than 100,000 workers across the country and that union is the national textile workers union. she is elected vice president at the national level. soot that point she achieves that particular goal. she then is involved in the 1929 communist party convention, which is sort of a watershed convention for the communist party. up until that time the communist party had in several different

parties that were not working together. and at that convention, they sort of solidified. they renamed themselves the communist party usa. they take the focus where their primary concern is the workers of america. it is really a workers party, so she is involved in that. then, almost immediately after that she is sent to gastonia north carolina where the third of the three strikes in which she is involved -- she is the codirector of the strike there. she is the first union speaker to speak to the workers in gastonia and in gastonia comes -- it is the least successful and it is also the most violent in terms of the fact that two people are killed in gastonia. the police chief was killed. what is his name? orville at her home. although the union people are blamed for it, there is just as much evidence that one of his own men probably shot him in the

back. there is a single woman textile worker, ella mae wiggins, who was also killed by vigilantes during the strike. she remains today as a bit of a character from the time and nobody has ever really written about her which is unfortunate. she was a poet. she wrote a variety of poetry, the most famous demille brothers lament talking about the suffering of a mother who must leave her children while she works 12 hours a day, six days a week and a textile mill. ultimately in the 1960s or 70s, pete seeger, turned that into music and so it is also a pete seeger song of the time. from the textile strike in gastonia, the government tries to deport her because remember she is a scottish immigrant. she is forced to go back to new jersey just prior to the shooting of the police chief so she misses out on a lot of fat,

which from herb point was positive but from the historical point of view was somewhat make it up because she has been ignored by most of the historians who have looked at the gastonia strike or even the other two strikes. anyway, they tried to deport her. unfortunately the judge in new jersey says this is ridiculous. this is a trumped up charge and throws it out. so as a result she retains her u.s. citizenship. now, what is fascinating about this is that many of her associates including a fellow who was -- william murdoch who was from scotland too, is deported but at a later period of time and they are deported because of the red scare. there were people that she worked with in the 1920s that are deported in the 1950s and they are only connection to the communist party was they were in a textile strike in massachusetts in 1928.

but it made great publicity for the government to throw out all of these individuals. the reason she is not supported i think it's because in 193-5436 she marries a hungarian and so her last name changes dramatically from ellen dawson to ellen. one i found her obituary in the paper just said mrs. lewis canty, scotland native, no mention whatsoever of all of her radical activities. this is passaic new jersey where she had been involved in all of that. so it is kind of fascinating that she sort of gets hidden away or tucked away. i think in the long run is why she survived. in the 1930s -- remember the 1930s as the great depression and most workers are struggling to survive. i think from what i could tell she stops being a radical as early as 1931. that is the last time i can find any reference to her being involved in any kind of labor

activity whatsoever. there is at least one story -- historians who says she remains part of the spin-off group of the communist party until about 1940 but i'm not sure that is really true. what happens is, at the end of 1929, and remember we talked about the communist party mentioned in the beginning. while the guy who is head of the communist party usa is a fascinating fellow by the name of jay love j. love stone and he goes to russia to meet with stalin. his attitude was okay i'm head of the communist party of the united states so that makes me on an equal level with stalin who is head of the communist party in russia, which was a major mistake, because in 1929 is one stalin start solidifying his power internationally and uses the common term which lenin had started to take control of commonism worldwide. and so, j. lovestone is really fortunate to get out of russia.

fortunately he had a couple of friends who were in the military who were able to smuggle them out. otherwise he would have probably been killed in russia in 1929. anyway he gets back to the united states and he is persona non grata. stalin has taken control of the communist party. lovestone is thrown out and so are his primary supporters and ellen dawson was one of his primary supporters. she is thrown out the national textile unions workers as well so 29 was a big year for her getting thrown out of things. to labor unions and the communist party usa. a form another group called the communist party usa majority group, which the term majority group is really a joke because they never were probably more than 500 people at the most if that women. the other part of the communist party was hundreds of thousands or at least tens of thousands. what we see is that in the

1930s the communist party goes underground, and you know the communist aspect of this is really fascinating because during the cold war historians really couldn't write sympathetic views of communist. american communists because all communists were bad and evil. it is not to say that there are some communists out there who weren't very bad and very evil because there certainly were, but there were others that -- whose heart was in the right place. joy dave and who was the american wife of the british philosopher, c.s. lewis, who wrote things like the lion, the witch and the wardrobe. she once said back in those days everybody was either a communist or a fascist. if you are a fascist you want to rule the world and if you were communist he wanted to save the world and that is pretty much ellen dawson's approach was she was concerned about the plight of the average worker particularly the textile worker. these people were working 60

hours a week, getting paid salaries today that don't even seem realistic. a family living on $14 a week, family of four in gastonia north carolina, $14 a week of which most of the money went back to the company to pay for the company house for the company food and stuff like that. it was a terrible time for a lot of american workers and i think her focus was trying to help those workers. that is why i think her story was important. >> what made you write a book about her? >> i was living in north carolina. i was living in a small town about 20 miles from gastonia and a book at just -- john salmon's vote gastone in 1929 which is the best book about that particular strike, came out and i read the book and i was fascinated by it. went down and take a look at the old mill which is abandoned now.

i was looking for something to write about that would allow me to do research both in the united states and in scotland, and my wife's -- i had missed it but my wife said why don't you write about ellen dawson, because she is scottish and sure enough went back and there is just this one mention of her being scottish. so i started exploring her and she makes cameo appearances if you will in several books about the three strike she's involved in and the women's labor during this period back in time but nobody had ever focused on her. so i thought okay, this is a good idea and the more i learned about for the more fascinated i became, fascinated with her as a person. because you know, as a labor historian, labor historians often don't necessarily get to focus on the winners. we get to focus sometimes on the losers, but the loser still tell us an awful lot about the world

and the ideas that they presented or are maybe valid today because it is one famous labor historian, ep thompson said, we haven't resolved all the problems of society yet. so maybe some of their ideas just got overlooked. but, so i got fascinated with her and so ultimately to do this book, i did research and 35 different libraries or archives on two continents in three countries, the united states, england and scotland and everywhere from the british library to the library of congress to probably the most fascinating place with this little local history museum in oh, a little village just north of manchester. and i discovered it on the internet and i was going down there. i had for five places i was going to do research so this

place was only open on wednesday night and sunday afternoon. so i was there waiting for to open on wednesday night and it turned out it was just old guys that lived in the village that has live together in this little museum of their world. at 1.1 guy took me in it n.a.b. says -- there was a certificate of a -- where each new baby they would put their name and everything. he said, see that one? that is my name and the one above it is my brother. we were the last two that they ever did in the church. so i go and i tell them what i'm doing and i said, there were two things i really need to know. one is, when was she here? when did they come, how long did they stay in when did they leave? i'm trying to find out what happened to her father because the british public records office was supposed to have all the death records but they didn't. and the guy said okay, we have got the red looks. he takes me over to the shelf and he pulls out these big

leather-bound volumes and opens them up, one for each year and it is every place, residents in the village who live there, when they moved in, all the details so i found exact it when i got there, where they lived in all of that. and then i said her father, he just disappears. he said oh we have got the death records so he pulls out this leather-bound book and i go through it and sure enough he is right there. the two most important pieces of information i needed from bad area, those guys had saved. and do you know what? when the village council close instead of sending all these records to the public records office which is what they are supposed to do, they threw them into the dumpster. he said i want you to meet the guy who climbed into the dumpster and rescued these books. so it is a historian. the challenge is so much of it doesn't survive and some of that

does survive is just by pure luck. but that was one of the two most important experiences for me that i had. the other was i discovered, when i started this, wanted to find out where this woman is buried and i want to track it down. it with e. f. for 104th birthday. i am a and low diet i guess it is called, which is a jos into passaic. i'd gone to saint nicholas which is the church where she went to church, where she was married, where funeral was held in pasaaic, thinking, being from from the south i thought okay there will be a churchyard wright decided. oh no, not in new jersey. they have these enormous churches, like five football fields for one church. so i go and i find the cemetery and there is no guide so i'm

wandering around. it is getting close to dark. it is below freezing and i'm wrapped up with everything i can. i'm just wandering around looking for the gravestone and finally i got to the point where i can't stand the cold anymore and it is almost dark so i said i can't do it. just at that point i saw her grave, dawson. it turns out it was the grave of her mother and her and two of her sisters. so i went over and i stood there and it shows i think the kind of emotion that for me and the fascination i had with this woman. i said you know, my lips are nam and really having difficulty talking. i said you know, i want to introduce myself. i am david allen. ion mirror biographer and i just wanted to promise you will not be forgotten. and that is really what i wrote this book because there was a

woman, a fascinating woman, woman who should not be forgotten who has they said just got cameo appearances in several books about the event she was involved in but nobody had ever focused on her. to me that is what makes this book special is the fact that this is a really fascinating woman and her story deserve to be told. oh yeah that is why i did it. >> what are you reading this summer? booktv wants to know. >> i will be reading an interesting book about memory and people who have extraordinary memories. there is also a new book out on the history of espn which has just been published and i've heard some comments on it and i'm looking forward to reading it. i'm a sports fan myself. when it comes to others, social animal, by the columnist from "the new york times."

interesting insight about -- and what motivates them so quite a few things. >> visit otb.org to see this and other summer reading list. >> where standing at the sight of -- former site of the el dorado gaming club. now a parking lot although the sister building across the street, you can get an idea of what the el dorado used to look like in the 1930s. it was one of the largest swankiest gambling clubs in town and you would go there, play roulette and play some of the local games of chance and you

would also play bully that. believe it was the big money-maker for organized crime in the 1930s. it was basically like the florida lottery where you had a number of, numbered one-to-one hundred. they would throw them in a second people would pick up a number or they would throw them into the audience. people would grab at the bag and whatever number they grab that would be the number of the day. the guys who really ran the el dorado was the dean of the underworld. charlie at a number of lieutenants, chief among those george. he would come here and collect all the receipts every night from the el dorado. one-eyed in 1936 he is sitting here on the street in his car waiting for the gambling receipts when they lack sedan pulls up alongside him. when unknown gunmen draws a sawed-off double barrel shotgun and blows through the driver side window of george's car. surprisingly george was not killed, just injured but he took it as