here on the street in the his car when a black sedan pulls up alongside him. often unknown gunman draws a sawed-off double-barrel shotgun and blows through the driver's side window. surprisingly, george was not killed, just injured, but he took it as a sign that his days were numbered in tampa, and he high tailed it out of there to cuba. and more significantly, george's attempted assassination was yet another domino that was falling that eventually led to charlie wahl losing dominance in the local underworld, and he himself testified by the early 1940s the local mafia effectively pushed him out of the rackets. ..

>> mostly of nationally televised presidential and vice presidential debates. i've moderated 11 of those delightfully hairy events, and i have the psychic scars deep down throughout my soul to show for all of the 11th.

[laughter] my book is about my experiences as a moderator. but also i interviewed most of the presidential and vice presidential candidates about their experiences with these debates. and i interviewed him over a period of 20 years. and the title "tension city" comes from something that former president george h. w. bush told me when i was asking him about what those debates were like. and he said those daytime things, it was tension city, jim. so that's where i got the title. smart, right? anyhow, my own description of what it's like to be a moderator for all of these debates by analogy is, and it's in the book, is walking carefully down the blade of a very sharp knife.

one little push here or there, or whatever, and you can get cut and hurt very badly. in the book i tell the story of the so-called killer question, in which george w. bush was involved. it was in 1988 debate with michael dukakis. don't moderator of cnn asked dukakis. i'm sure many of you will remember this, governor, if kitty dukakis were raped and murdered, would you favor and a revocable death penalty for the killer -- irrevocable, by the way. death penalty for the killer. and as many as you may recall, dukakis began his answer very calmly, ever so common with, quote, no, i don't, bernard, and i think you know that i've been opposed to the death penalty during all my life. he went on to explain his intellectually-based opposition to capital punishment, and according to the punditry at the

time, he went on to lose the election because of that. there's an interesting back story about the question itself. it involves the efforts of his fellow journalists, panelists, all three being women journalists, to persuade bernie shah behind the scenes not to ask that question. the bottom line i discovered in doing my research is that the famous and distinguished journalist of this world are no different than real people. they also see and hear the same thing in different ways, as you will see. i also tell the whole story of the famous 27 minutes when in 1976 the audio went dead in a debate between jimmy carter and gerald ford, the debate in philadelphia. ford and carter -- the audio went dead as you may recall, ford and carter once that one

podium, the other stood at the other podium, and they just stood there silently for 27 minutes. why they try to fix the audio. they didn't speak to one another. they didn't even look at each other. and we knew he was a moderator offer them a chair. and newman said afterward not going to did not sit down, they did not even acknowledge that i had suggested it. [laughter] i interviewed both ford and carter about all of that, and both admitted it was a true embarrassment. carter said, i think amoco, i think to some degree elect american people size of the candidates and i don't think either one of us made any points on that deal. that was really true. the incident was one of many through the years when points were made, decisive points were made in a debate that had nothing to do with what was said by the candidates with their words. it was what they said with their body language. first debate, the first

televised debate, kennedy nixon, 1960. it was nixon's appearance that lost that debate and won it for kennedy. those who listen to that on the radio thought nixon was the winner, but those on television did not think so. the 2000 debate in boston between al gore and george w. bush is another example. i moderated that when. that was the famous sign debate which showed gore, every time bush would answer a question, gore would grimace and sigh and all that sort of stuff. and the reaction shot, and it -- it didn't -- it showed gore in a way that the voters didn't like. and the polls, after that debate, before the debate, they were neck and neck. and after that debate, gore fell behind and pretty much stayed behind from that point on.

in my case, here i was the closest person to those two candidates. but i have a rule, i always look at the person who's speaking, not of the person is listening because i do want to be part of any kind of reaction. so when the debate was over we were walking out of the hall. i was walking out of the hall with my family when my daughter said, dad, that was something what gore did, was in a? and i stopped and said, what did gore do? what are you talking about? [laughter] she told me about the sighting. i completely missed it and i was the closest one to it. you could say the same thing on the body language between the first they can obama debate 2008 in oxford, mississippi. i also moderated that when. you may recall mccain would not look at obama. he would not address any questions to obama directly. and that's despite the pleas of the delightfully charming moderator to get him to do that. he just wouldn't do it. and here again he came over in a

negative way to a lot of people. he seemed fidgety, he seemed nervous, he seemed angry. while obama on the other hand was more than willing to look at mccain and address the questions and to all of that. so he came over as calm and cool, and here again, obama took the lead after that debate. and he never lost it after that. bottom line here, which i have certainly include -- concluded is that voters want presidential debates to take the measure of -- the full measure of a candidate in ways that sometimes have absolutely nothing to do with what a candidate thinks about a particular issue. they want to know what he or she is likable, how he or she might act when the unexpected happens, when there's another 9/11, another katrina or something like that, erik has to do more

with personality. by the time these debates happen, remember, there are usually two or three weeks ago before the election. most people have already made up their mind. they are leaving. so what they're really looking for is who is this person. that's what they're looking for more than they are what the position is on social security or whatever else. so there some point in the books about general comments about interviewing and moderating, all kinds of things. and i talk about need to do homework and preparation. a lot of people think it's so you can write really terrific questions. no, that's not it at all. you do homework so you will be relaxed enough to listen to the answers. and my example always is, i'm interviewing a senator and i say, senator, do you think we should sell more grain to cuba? yes, jim, i think we should sell more grain to cuba but before we

do that we should bomb havana. and i say, what kind of grain, senator? [laughter] because that was a question i had written down. [laughter] you have to guard against that. everybody has to guard against that. one other thing i would say, finally, is that win, not if but when you read "tension city" you will see that my wife, kate, is all the way through the book. she is here. where are you, kate? [applause] >> i saw you. where are you? here she is. i'm sorry, right in front of me. [laughter] all the way through, because she helps me all the way through these things. but two ways in particular, disagree security issue as you can imagine for these debates. because the moderator makes up all the questions, and he or she

alone knows what the questions are. he or she alone decides which ones to ask. there is no advance word that goes to any of the candidates or anybody else. so if one candidates person could find out ahead of time what one of the questions might be or would be, would be a terrific advantage. so the security, in my case, about six or seven days before debate. i don't talk about with anybody, even on our own staff. i never ever suggest to anybody any questions that i'm thinking about or in any way whatsoever because i want to put anybody in a position to like him even though i know security is good. i want to make sure it's secure. so as a consequence, the only person i ever read the questions to before it starts is kate. and i always take every suggestion she has, and, of course, if she criticizes it, i take the criticism and i change it, of course.

but anyhow, no, i do run the whole thing by her. and one thing she did in a very first debate i did was also an earlier dukakis passion george h.w. bush debate in 1988. my first debate. we were in winston-salem, north carolina, and i was just really whining about -- we are ready to get in the car and go to be taken to the hall for the debate. and i was as nervous as hell. and i started whining about all the pressure. and kate kind of -- she didn't throw it against the wall. that's not her style, not literally but she said just wait a minute. you think you've got a problem? think about those two candidates. they say one thing that is slightly wrong or slightly this or do one thing this way or that way, it could cost him the presidency of the united states, which is arguably the most powerful position in the world. and you think you've got a problem? i remind myself of kate's words

every time i do one of these debates. september, i will be out on book tour. hopefully i will see some of you out there. you will recognize it as the guy going door-to-door saying hi, i'm jim lehrer and i don't know if you've have read my book, it's "tension city" and i hope you'll buy. i bunch of years ago, several books ago, i'm sure all authors have learned that it helps to have a gig at some time when you go out on book tour, and act so to speak. i developed 11 books ago and act. it was when i was pedaling a novel of mine called "white widow," which is the story of a trailways bus driver in the 1950s who had a mad love affair with a passenger, beautiful woman passenger, but only in his mind. but with real world consequences. it was based on my expense. i didn't have a love affair and

all that stuff but i worked as a ticket agent and he can't get a trailways bus depot in texas in the 1950s, and that's where the experience gained that led to this book. so to prove my authenticity, as a ticket agent on book tour, every place i went, bookstores, libraries, lecture platforms, public television stations, street corners, i would do this. may i have your attention please? this is your last call for can't middle trailways 8 p.m., to houston, now leaving from lane one. all aboard. don't forget your baggage, please. [applause] >> be forewarned, boys and

girls, ladies and gentlemen, if you see me coming on book tour for "tension city" i will figure out a way to do a bus call because it does to our figure out a way to make it relevant. i've got a few weeks how i can make that relevant. but i will. but now enough about me. and let's get onto the real business of this morning. our first author is roger ebert, known and admired as america's premier movie critic. he began his labors in 1967 with the "chicago sun-times." he was the first movie critic ever to win the pulitzer prize. his television programs with partner jean sissel and later with richard roper, were also the best of the class. his memoir, life itself, will be published in september. it is an honor and a privilege to present to you roger ebert. [applause]

>> good morning, everyone. you will hear my computer voice that lives in my laptop. it enables my dream to speak better. he doesn't sound as good as my

wife. so i'm going to ask her to do some reading this morning. this will be from a chapter in my book about appearing on talk shows. [applause] >> good morning. i'm going to reload the garage but before i start, i want to just say one thing. on behalf of roger, i would like to thank everyone at the grand central table, this is a new relationship for him, and from the very beginning they have been stellar. and we just want to thank them this morning. [applause] >> and one of the thing. yesterday at the airport it was really dicey, touch and go as to whether if we would get you because of the weather. they canceled our flight. another flight was four hours a

day late and someone jokingly said to roger, you know that guy was predicting the end of the world. do you think this is it? and rogers said, no, i have to go to the book expo breakfast in new york tomorrow. [laughter] [applause] >> anyway, here we go. gene and i were invited to appear on a tv show in milwaukee named dialing for dollars. we weren't so sure because good series of film critics appear at such a show? how would it make us look? boys, boys, boys our producers said. do you think the audience for dialing for dollars is going to be thinking about things for that? she put us through a guy run -- a dry run. she spun an imaginary drum and pluck out a three by five card on which he had written her own name. and the winner is, congratulations. he won 1 dollar.

we started to get other indications. we were invited to baltimore to appear on a morning show hosted by a young woman named oprah winfrey. oprah who was not yet opera breathe into the green room to chat. i like her. she explained we would appear after a segment with a vegetarian chef, and before the wrapup segment to be the chipmunks performing with hoola hoop's. [laughter] the show did not go smoothly. while the vegetarian chef knocked over the blender and all the zucchini sprayed all over the energy sofa, during the commercial break oprah covered the sofa with the "baltimore sun" and told us to sit quietly and don't rustle. [laughter] in the wings we could see the chipmunks waiting with their hoola hoop's. oprah moved to chicago not long

after doing the same abc station where i just had been hired to review movies on the news. morning shows in those days invariably had to post out and they caught a lot of criticism for risking the channel seven slot on an unknown young african-american woman, especially when she'd be going up against phil donahoe at the height of his popularity. >> timeslot before oprah's premier i was actually a substitute host. i remember in particular interviewing about a new perfume she was introducing. what is the perfume made from? i asked innocently. then i realized she had no idea. she replied, oh, flowers, you know. and things like that.

although some strange stories have gone around, it is not true that oprah and i ever dated. we went to the movies once. she asked me if i went to the movies all the time, and when i said i would at least five times a week, she said, why don't you take me sometime? so i did. >> i'm glad that was the last time he took her to the movies. [laughter] it was after that first movie that we had our historic dinner. she told me she was being courted by both king world and the abc station group to go on to syndication. but she had her doubts about king world. if you fail in syndication you are off the air, she said. its merciless. if i go with abc, they owned stations in major markets so i more protected. we were at a hamburger hamlet on rush street in chicago. i took a nap can and i wrote

here's what i'm making a treaty right now, i said. writing down $500,000. gene makes this income is a figure on making twice that. we are on half an hour. you are on an hour there times do. you are on five days a week, we are on one. times five. you are in prime daytime, we are in weekend worth at least twice as much. 500,000 times two times two times five times two, opera study did not get and said, okay, roger, i'm going with king world. in the fullness of time, johnny carson invited us on his show. we had done a lot of tv by this time, but we were both terrified. we sat in the same dress him for moral support. the door open and it was johnny carson. standing there live in the same room. we jump to our feet.

he welcomed us into the show, and then he disappeared. raja, gene said, you and i do not belong here. we belong at home in chicago watching this on tv. the door open and is one of johnny's writers. johnny me ask you for some of your favorite movie so far this year, he said. then he left. gene and i look at each other in care. name the movie you like, gene said. gone with the wind, i said. [laughter] gene telephone our producer in chicago. will you please list the movies we liked? [laughter] when johnny retired and jay leno won the late-night war -- when johnny retard and jay leno one late night, would begin between himself and david letterman. there was speculation that dave which a network. gene and i were guests on the letterman show that very evening that was scheduled to be

announced. that we didn't discuss it with them. indeed, we never discussed anything with them. apart from two occasions, leno albertini circulated among dressing rooms chatting with all his guests before a show. but letterman never did. that wasn't because he didn't like us. in fact, be for genes that we actually held the record for most appearances on his show. my guess is dave waited for the starting gun at the beginning of every show and didn't believe in dissipating his energy before the red light went on. leno on the other hand like to be everybody's friend. he genuinely did like the movies. he was obsessed by them, in fact. and in the dressing room before the show he would debate our latest reviews and usually find fault with them. talk show guests are preempted by a writer, and the host is on with notecards suggesting questions and the expected

answers. you guys are the ideal guests, leno's rider, steve told us once. your segments always run long because jade won't shut up about the movies. gene and i one of the carson -- sorry. >> gene and i were on the carson show once, following chevy chase to a just promoted his christmas release, the three amigos. and we talked a little and then johnny said, roger, what's your least favorite christmas picture? we were looking directly at each other when he said that. and i noticed an almost invisible expression flashed across his face. i knew what the answer had to be, and i believe in a second johnny did, too. i paused. the three amigos, i said. there was a stranger audience

reaction. audiences expect guest on talk shows to be nice. chevy chase say the moabite quickly sank, looking forward to your next picture. carson did one of his double takes and said, gee, i wished i hadn't said that. i said, me, too. >> one of the reasons for the success of our show and our interests as talk show guests is that like the victims of some curse in a fairytale, we were compelled to tell the truth. we were critics. we couldn't tell diplomatic lies. we had each other to keep us honest. there might be a temptation to say something diplomatic, but the other guy would call you on it. if i tried to talk around johnny's question, gene would have jumped like a wall. he would say you were saying just the other day how much you hated chevy's movie.

neither one of us couldn't pass up an opening. if johnny is asking gene a question you would also certainly have said, the three amigos. the other time in gene and talked privately with letterman was all president. david leyton talk to in his office after the show, a producer told us. gene got all wound up. roger, he said, this could only mean one thing. he wants us to do a talk show for worldwide. as it happened, that was the night when i experienced the biggest genuine spontaneous laugh i had ever witnessed on a talk show. gene was telling a story about the time he and john wayne went into a greasy spoon at 2 a.m., and the waitress came over, saw john wayne and crossed herself. [laughter] what was the name of the movie he was making, dave asked? chisholm.

chisholm, gene said. there was a moment of silence. i was sitting in the chair next to letterman. our eyes met, coupled. dave and i and the audience, and after a while even gene broke into uncontrolled laughter. this was a good omen for our new talk show. they were probably want us to move to new york, gene said, fretting. after the show a producer took us upstairs and dave surprisingly modest office. we set in two chairs facing him. i've got a problem and i think you boys might be able to help me. gene smiled confidently at dave. they continued. now, you guys were both on the show we did at the chicago theatre, dave said. oprah is on the same show. remember that night? we did. something happened that night. i don't know what it was, but oprah has never come back on the show again. and she won't even talk to me.

you know oprah. has she ever said anything to you about it? [laughter] she never said a word to us, we say. people often seem to assume that since we were from chicago, we all hung out together. the truth is if you have access to oprah, you respected if you don't ask for a lot of favors. you don't assume if you're my grandchild i might have to call one of her producers and get you a ticket to a taping of her show on your birthday, but that's about it. okay, that doesn't surprise me, dave said. but now how about michael jordan? he also won't come on my show. [laughter] and i have no idea why. is it because oprah said something bad to him? [laughter] gina and i looked at each other. gene was actually close to michael but we didn't have a clue. right, said dave, crackling his knuckles. that's what i expected. okay, well, thanks for your time. great show tonight.

[laughter] >> when people asked letterman what he had to interview chairs, his usual answer was says glenn ebert. after gene's death in 1999, david had me as a guest more time to promote my first grade movie book, and then never again. he didn't get mad at me or anything like that. it was simply that gene and i were a double act. as the producer told us long ago, individually, you're nothing. together you are stars. ..

[applause] >> kate and i have a talk show, talk show story to tell. kate, as most of you know, is a novelist, and we happen to have novels out at the same time, and we appeared as, you know, husband and wife, husband and wives who had novels out at the same time, we were on the today show. then move inside a little town in texas north of dallas. she called her mother and said, mother, i'm going to be on the today show in the morning. she said, great. so we did the today show thing, and right after the show, an hour or so later, she hadn't heard anything from her mother, so she called, kate called her

mother and said, well, did you see it? what did you think? she said, well, you didn't have your hair combed right. [laughter] our next author this morning, our next author this morning is ann inright, an award winning novelist from ireland. the first of her novels was published in 1995, "the wig that my father wore." her fourth won the booker prize in 2007. she's also had a distinguished career as a produce ore of quality television programs in ireland. she is here on behalf of her new novel, "the forgotten waltz." ann inright. [applause] >> listening to jim earlier, i got really worried about my body language. i thought i might, you know, do

it all wrong and then after roger's wonderful presentation, i stopped worrying about it. too good stuff. [laughter] um, it's lovely to be in america where the readers have been so kind to me. um, i was thinking about the sparks of the book, "the forgotten waltz." they're always somehow a secret. it takes you a while to remember them or to uncover them. but my father looked at me on christmas day in 2008, and he's in his mid '80s. whatever age i am. i spent a year on the road in 2008 trying to look well known. and he looked at me and i'm too fond of my daughter to talk about him. my mother said this, oh, your hair wasn't combed right or whatever. but i don't talk about my father

much, and he doesn't talk much at all. he's a quiet man. and these silences in our lives, i think, are the most interesting thing. he kept looking at me christmas day, as i say, and i knew what he wanted to communicate to me was how delighted he was with me, basically, and how proud. and he's allowed to do that because he's my father. and, you know, that's allowed. i realized that i hadn't seen much in fiction of what it is to love a daughter, either a grown-up daughter as i am or a young daughter. the victorians wrote about fathers and daughters, dickens and henry james, you know, updike, longfellow has an amazing scene. but modern male writers, it seems to me, don't write much

about family men. i think it's turning again now in recent years, but for, you know, the formative years of my writing life, the family man was not the man you met in literature. and how man loved was not something you were necessarily going to find out by page 63. um, this despite the fact that on the plane the guy beside me did nothing but organize pictures of his little daughter to music from maybe the age of 6 to the ainge of 10. so this -- to the age of 10. so this unspoken thing, this unwritten thing, i mean, i'm always interested, as i say, in the silences. it's very benign and yet somehow still a taboo subject was part of the secret argument of the forgotten walls. it is the kind of, the underground stream, as it were, that surfaces at the end of the book.

it is the sweet water that runs underneath it. i was born in dublin, reared in dublin which is a writing town. in, you know, manhattan if you want to make your mark, yo go out and make money. in dublin, you go home and write a book. that's what we do. it's painful at times that you're talking to somebody perfectly normal, and then they suddenly turn around and write a book. but when people say, why did you become a writer or how did you become a writer, when did you decide to become a writer? i don't know that i decided at all. i think it was just the kind of thing that somebody like me did in dublin, it was an arranged marriage, and now i'm very happy in my arranged marriage. i love my arranged, you know, career. [laughter] but i don't know whether i made a decision. the just writing books a girl like me, everybody knew it was what i would love to do, it was what i was destined to do.

i came from a very ordinary family, if such a thing exists. i'm not sure it does, actually. but i came from a very middle class background, and there were books in the house. there was no money in the house, nobody in ireland had money in the '730s. -- '70s. but this kind of sense that writing was something available as a career meant that when the adolescent roar of i need to say something, i must express myself some way arrived, i was ready to run with the ball and not drop it. but i don't know what kind of child i was either. i don't know if people do know what kind of child they are. i mean, i read all the time. i remember my mother used to say to me sometimes you say, oh, you were here before, she'd say. [laughter] if i said something serious and wise, oh, you were here before, meaning that i had been through many lives in the past. and i remember thinking something similar about my son

who's 8. he's just been in the school drama production of sleeping beauty. and because no boys wanted to -- he was the prince, he was the king, and he was the huntsman. [laughter] and he came off the stage afterwards, and he said to me at the age of 8, he said, you know, the stage is where i feel most alive. [laughter] and i said, you were here before. [laughter] but that mystery that i see now in children and that my parents, perhaps, saw in me is also very much part of the book. the strangeness and, you know, the powerful strangeness of children. anyway, that child turned into this writer. i got a job by accident in television, and i worked at that for a while. it was great fun. it was a bit of a kind of wonderful car crash.

i got out in 1993, and for the next 14 years i stated at the desk, and i wrote not very many books because i'm very slow. and maybe, you know, four novels. ireland was a bit ambivalent because i had no rain and very little whiskey. but the rest of the world thought i was okay. and i had that amazing irish tradition to pitch myself against, to pluppedder and to use -- plunder and to use. and i was doing all right. in september 2007 i came to new york, i read in barnes & noble, in union square and to princeton. i thought, this is really nice. i was short listed for the big prize. where i come from. and i thought, this is a life, this is a life. and then two weeks later something changed which was i won.

the dumb thing. [laughter] and the world changed very suddenly. the world, i hadn't changed much, i hadn't had time. i thought i might work on becoming somebody different, but for the moment i was pretty preh the same. but the world looked at me with a different kind of -- you could see it in people's eyes, that they were looking at some idea of success. um, and over the course of that year, 2008 i realize that whatever that look was about, it wasn't about me, the about them. whatever they brought to this idea of success was about how they felt about success and failure. and i had spent 14 years at the desk. and if anything, it's like being on an emotional roller coaster with the mute button turned on, you know, the swoops and the

highs and lows of the writing life that nobody even hears, these entirely silent highs and lows. and if i'd learned anything by then, i had learned that success and failure were the enemies of talent, that that's not what it was about. and suddenly here i was a success. and the funny thing about all of that is the work was finished when i finished the book. and i realize now that i had a new job chofs not writing -- which was not writing, it was being the thing, you know? instead of writing the story, i was the story. and this unsettled me. but there i was in 2008 with my father looking at me with a nice look in his eye, and i was wondering what i could take from this experience, this very turbulent year that i had put in away from my desk.

and it was quite a serious his for me -- business for me to think this through and to see what i could carry away from it, what would be good for the work as opposed to what would kill the work. and if there was any solace i could take from the whole experience of having everybody, having an opinion about me one way or the other, the solace i took was from this new person i had met which was the reader, and these were the people i met in all those towns in america, in houston and in boston and in san francisco. and i met them in sydney, and i met them in ireland, and i met them in yorkshire. and these were the readers. and once i realized this somehow in my bones, i knew i had a way to proceed. i knew what i was going to do, i was going to write them a book. sounds easy. so i wrote a book for them. it's called "the forgotten

waltz." and it is narrated as a woman named gina who is no better than she should be. she engages in a glorious mistake. well, wouldn't you? [laughter] and that man has a daughter. so the same themes that were in the gathering of family love, of biological love, that indescribable thing and sexual love, that often described thing, those two same tensions were in the forgotten waltz as in the gathering. and gina is a, she's what's normally called younger woman, she's what's normally called an older man. both of their marriages break up because this sort of series of mistakes they make, these lustful mistakes turn into a

different kind of life for them both, and it's a love story, the book. what was i -- i forgot what the beginning of that sentence was. [laughter] i want today write about adultery -- wanted to write about adultery because i thought i'd have more fun writing about adultery that be i would -- than i would about marriage. but it was also a very good boom time subject. ireland had been through this amazing boom and bust, and i was looking at boom literature after the wars in america, after the second world war in america, and adultery's a great summit for a society in transition as the ties loosen, as money makes things more possible and more available and different kinds of choices are made. so, um, i also wanted to make it somehow a morally-poised book.

because if i was going to write it for the reader -- i had two first readers. my two first readers were two friends. one of them said that girl is a bit of a strap. [laughter] she's a husband stealer, as we know, she's a marriage breaker. and the other said, i was with her 1,000%. so i thought, this is what i want. this is what i want, i want a morally-poised story that people can extend the range of their experience by reading. i get cross about or love the book has come out in the u.k. and ireland, and everybody has an opinion about it which is one of the benefits of success, i suppose, and one of the downsides too. but while i have liked most and i hope the american readers will like it too, the women who came up to me last weekend in whit

low where part of the book is set and they said, and one of them said i read it in one go. another one came up to me in dublin and said, i stayed up all night to read it. so, you know, i know this is a book about passion, love it's a romance, it's the foolishness of love and the grandeur in that foolishness. but you won't want, i mean, it s not a fluffy book. it's a bit pink -- [laughter] but i don't write fluffy books. this time around i've written one for the reader. that's all i have to say. thank you very much. [applause]

>> and now to a master of nonfiction, eric larson. his six books have, his six books have covered subjects from the galveston hurricane and serial killings to invention of the radio. now in his new work, "in the garden of beasts," he tells the story of the american ambassador to germany during the beginning rise of adolf hitler and the nazis. eric larson wrote for newspapers and magazines, "the wall street journal" and "time" magazine among others before he began putting his end results between hard covers. i give you eric larson. [applause] >> so now i'm on book tour, and i think i met all of you last week, i'm not sure. [laughter] this kind of thing makes me very nostalgic for my very first-ever

book event. i'm sure you all recall my very first book, "the naked consumer." [laughter] yeah, that's a book that nobody bought. one guy read, and he reviewed it and hated it because he was a target of the book. it was about how companies spy on individual consumers. at the time i was living in baltimore, but i did get a call one day to go up and do a signing at a bookstore in lancaster, pennsylvania, three hours north. so i thought, okay, now my career's on the way. so i went up to do this signing. it was a sunday afternoon signing, and we all know how those go. one of these things where you sit at a table where 40 books and expect people to come up in droves, and then you sign their books, and they buy them, and everybody's happy. so i sat there, happily, somebody at this bookstore had made a plate of chocolate chip cookies, and i put it on the table as an inducement. so i was there for about three

hours, and i sat there for the first hour and a half and nobody came to talk to me. nobody even made eye contact with me. far from it, they were even looking at the books around me on the shelves, but they were not coming near me. there was something odd about me, and there was at that point. [laughter] at about the hour and a half point, i looked up, and this woman was coming towards me with the biggest smile. and i thought to myself, now is when it starts to happen. so i'm getting out my pen. she comes up to the table, and she says, how much are the cookies? [laughter] so this morning i'm going to talk a little bit about this new book of mine, "in the garden of beasts," thank you, crown, for a great job on this, it's almost universeally referred to by its acronym, itgob. when it came out on may 10th,

none of us made the connection, but that was the anniversary of the infamous book burning in berlin. may 10, 1933. i don't know what that means either, but i'm glad to say that the book is now actually in it sixth printing. one of the things that i pride myself on, probably wrongly, is finding stories to tell that once were a big deal but have been largely forgotten for one reason or another. so you may ask why on earth, what was i thinking setting a book in nazi germany? but here's the thing, this is exactly my kind of book because it's about a period that people think they know a lot about -- i certainly thought i knew a lot about this -- but really, really don't. i'll tell you how the idea came about. the idea hunt is a tough time for me. i'm not like other writers. when i finish a book, i don't have a backlog of ideas that i absolutely must begin working

on. i always start with a blank slate, i don't know why that is, and it's a terrible time. my good friend and publyist, penny simon, who many of you know refers to it as the dark country of no ideas. [laughter] about five or six years ago i was looking for my next idea and just to sort of shake things loose, i said i was going to follow my own advice, the advice that i give to writing students which is to read voraciously and promiscuously. just read everything all over the map. so i went to a bookstore. went to a bookstore and just started browsing the history section to see what covers, what kind of books moved me and bored me, so forth. i came across a book had always been on my wish list to read. 1200 pages, it was a little swim candidate -- intimidating. teensy print, some of you are thinking it's a bible, it was the rise and fall of the third like. had never read it. sat down, decided to start

reading. i loved the book, if one can be said to love a book about third like. read like a thriller. terrific book. maybe i'm a little slow about things like this, but i was about a third of the way through the book when i realized, wait a minute, the author had been there in berlin from 1934 on. he had met all these people we know today to be monsters; hitler, hemler, goebbels, the whole bunch. only he had met them at a time when nobody knew the ending. we all know the ending, with he, obviously -- but he, obviously, did not. suddenly, i started trying to imagine what that would have been like to have met these people at a point when you didn't know how things were going to turn out. suppose you were sitting in a café in berlin, and you saw hitler driven by. would you have felt a chill, would you have been thrilled, or would it just have been background noise.

i thought it'd be very interesting to do a book in the point of view of characters in berlin in this early era. what i needed, obviously, were a couple of real life characters. outsiders, ideally americans because i write for an american audience. so i hit my favorite library washington in seattle, at the university of washington. i should say, also, that i am a tremendous fan of libraries, librars everywhere. i like to think of myself as the indiana jones of libraries, rappeling down the 900 levels of the tuohey decimal system. -- dewey decimal system. [laughter] i'm not you you can -- sucking o the librarians, this is the true. melville dewey was a anti-semite, i don't know if you knew that. if you would give me a choice between a night with kate balloon chet and the a night

locked in the library of congress, i would take the night of kate balloon chet in a heartbeat, but i do love libraries. [laughter] i started reading histories, the books by the great masters of this era, richard e advance and so forth. but also i liked reading the personal memoirs and diaries. and there are many that came out of this era. some point i came across the diary of a man named william e. dod, -- dodd. and soon after i came across a book written by his daughter. try to imagine for a moment you are william e. dodd, you are 63 years old, you are a mild-mannered professor of history at the university of chicago, you're chairman of the department. you are tired of the demands of academia. you're tired of the engulfing needs of graduate students. all you want to do is finish a book, actually a multivolume

series, about the old south that, interestingly enough, you have called the rides and fall of the old south. the rise and fall of the old sows. one day in june, 1933, precisely at noon your telephone recks. the guy at the other end of the line, much to your surprise, is franklin delano roosevelt, newly-elected president of the united states. he asks you to be america's ambassador to germany. america's first ambassador to nazi germany. this post has been empty at this point for about five months. here's the thick, he gives -- here's the thing, he gives you two hours to decide. what he doesn't tell you is that one reason he hawz called you -- he has called you, apart from the fact that he knows through a friend of his who is a mutual friend of dodd's that you speak german, the main reason he's calling you is that nobody else

wanted the job. three weeks later you are on a ship to germany, you've got your family with you; wife, grown son, and your 24-year-old daughter martha. see, this is a father/daughter book too, you see? is and she is one heck of a daughter. i'm a, i'm a father of three daughters, and that's, i think, partly my fascination with this whole thing. she, martha, was the one who hooked me. she's smart, she's sexy, she has a way about her that enflames the passions of men young and not so young. at the ainge of 24 she has -- able of 24 she has already had ab affair with carl sand berg. one of the reasons i do my own research is like little, delightful moments like when i was going through marcia's -- martha's papers. i came across a folder that con taked two locks of -- contained

carl sandberg's hair tied t with black coat string, looking like little broom heads. and i'm here to tell you that his hair really was quite blond and very coarse, very coarse. [laughter] by this point she has broken two engagements, and she is now in the midst of a divorce from a dead marriage to a new york banker. possibly an oxymoron, i don't know. but she came -- i hope there are no new york bankers out this. she came along to perlin for the -- berlin for the adventure, and she falls in love with the nazi revolution. she finds it intoxicating at first. she was not alone. quite a few people thought hitler was good for germany. you could quarrel with his methods but, you know, he was restoring the nation's pride. he claimed all he wanted was to make germany an equal among other nations. in fact, the night before the dodds left new york which is

where they had gathered in order to catch their ship the next day, they went to a fancy dinner party on park avenue here in new york at the home of a very wealthy we land throe pis, one of the most prominent of his day, charles r. crane. made his fortune, the family made the fortune from plumbing equipment and supplies. and i can't speak for the women out here, but you men have seen the crane logo staring up at you from yourals around the country -- urinal around the country. [laughter] crane take dodd aside as he's leaving this dinner party, and he tells him, let hitler have his way. let hitler have his way. he also advises dodd in no uncertain terms to avoid all social interaction with jews while he's in berlin. let's hook at the world through martha's eyes. she finds herself in a vibrant, charismatic city. we always think of that world as

drab, black and white and gray because those are the images we come across. some collar footage now has come to life, but now it's black and white. she saw color every where are, the brightly-colored trams that ran on all the main streets in berlin, the, the fact that almost every balcony seemed to have red geraniums on it. at christmas there were christmas tree lights wherever and christmas trees everywhere in berlin, so much so that dodd writes in his diary, he writes in his diary that you would almost think the nazis believed in jesus because there is so much evidence of this love of christmas. there were these glorious cafés that sat hundreds of people at a time. movie theaters that sat up to 1500 people at a time. one of the most popular movies of the day was king kong which was said to be hitler's favorite movie, king congress. king kong. there was dancing every night,

the roof of the eden hotel, and a strange place, a five-story building with five distinct restaurant/nightclub venues in it, one of which was a terrace bar which had an artificial thunderstorm complete with a light dusting of rain over the diners. and an american wild west bar. this was in hitler's nazi germany, hitler's berlin. american wild west bar where you would order your martini and be served it by a german in a cowboy hat, many of these germans being members of the nazi party, so i like to imagine being served a drink by a nazi in a cowboy hat. the kind of thing that delights me about history. ..

>> his experience was wonderful. he just had the best time. he loved the germans. every day a young woman put violets on his pillow, so he comes to germany bearing this personal history and expectation. what he finds -- what he finds is pathology. i'm not talking metaphorically, but his general and a secret dispatched from the state department described hitler as people who in any other place or

any other time would be receiving treatment somewhere. this is in 1933. here's his daughter, martha, who in effect falls in love with the pathology at first. i realize that the two stories provide kind of an ideal vehicle for looking at this era. i didn't want to write about dodd or martha alone, but the two together captured something much bigger. they also both undergo a very satisfying transformation. also something else that their stories shed light on why it took america so long to realize the danger of hitler and why apiecement ultimately happened, but the true message of this book lies in a little quote, sort of a couldn't een graph that i stuck at the end of the

book for die hard readers. it's at the end of the book after the index. i'll read that because we're all here interested in books. this is the message i wanted to convey from the book. this is a quote by christopher from his book, "down there on a visit" and he lived there in the 30s and came back in 1945 to visit berlin after the russian assault destroyed the territory that i write about in the book. he writes, "i walked across the snowy plain of the tear garden, a smashed statue here, a newly planted plant there, the gate with the red flag flapping against the blue winter sky, and on the horizon, a gutted railway station like a skeleton. in the morning light it was raw

and frank as the voice of history which tells you not to fool yourself. this can happen to any city, to anyone, to you." i can stop there. thank you. [applause] >> that is our breakfast. i leave you with the reminder to take with you one thing i said in the very beginning which is don't forget your baggage please. [laughter] thank you very much. [applause] >> for more information on book expo america, visit bookexpo america.com. >> on booktv, joined by author david sobel.

who was copernicus? >> he turned the earth inside out and saying the earth was actually moving around the sun when a time everybody thought earth was the center of the universe and did not move. >> what did that revelation create? >> havoc. that's what gallieo went to trial and he was trying to predict the positions of the planet that would make sense and realized if he didn't put the earth in motion, he didn't have to move the sun and stars and everything that was confusing came better. >> tell us about copernicus? >> an administer for the catholic church for his day job.

people think the church was opposed to that idea. in the until later, and he had studied law, and he was also a medical doctor, so he was the bishop's personal judicial and was nevertheless afraid to publish his books because he was worried about ridiculed and said i'll be laughed off the stage, so he decided not to publish the book he spent his whole life writing, and then a young brilliant mathematician who heard about his work came to visit him and talked him into publishing. >> who was that? >> his name was redicus, from martin luther's own university and copernicus lived in a part of catholics where the lutherans were banished. even with all of that going on, copernicus managed to keep him there for two years, breaking

the law, and together they got the book into shape and the young man left with a copy of the manuscript and got it printed in and it changed the world. >> why today are you writing about copernicus? >> i actually have something new to bring to him which was the idea of writing a play about this unusual meeting between the old recluse and the young mathematician, different religion, different backgrounds, different sexuality, but they overcame all of those things for the purpose of an idea and they tell the world about that idea. >> a more perfect heaven comes out in october 2011. >> thank you. >> michael moore, it's may 2011,

you have a book coming out in september 2011. it doesn't have a name. >> it does as this this morning. >> what's the name? >> here comes trouble. >> why that title? >> it's actually -- it's, you know, they are short stories that i've written, but they are nonfiction short stories, so they are stories from my life, and i wrote a couple dozen stories about the years before people knew who i was, before my first film, so these are from when i was a snap child all the way through my 20s, and it sort of shows how i ended up like this, and i believe the book covers what. i saw a picture of it here today. i don't know if they got it, a picture of me as a 2-year-old, and across the top it says here comes trouble. >> were you trouble as a #-year-old? >> well, not trouble as in

getting in trouble, but my parents did say and not trouble. my mom taught me to read and write when i was 4 years old. it's a dangerous thing to learn how to read at an early age. when i went to school, i was already reading books and i was singing along to the alphabet, and you know you learn this early on as a child. the other kids are not going to like you if you are too smart, so i had to like kind of like fake, like i was trying to remember the letters, like, a, b, c, d -- like, you know, just so they would like me. i would come home so bored with school. why did you teach me how to read? it was so early.

the nuns saw this, and they one day decided to skip me. i was in 1st grade, sthai moved me to 2ndgrade. i was all excited. mom, mom, i'm in second grade. she said, no you're not. i want him with children with his own age, don't move him up a grade. i got moved back, and then i was just bored through most of school, so what does a child do when he's bored but, you know, cause trouble? >> who or were your parents? >> my mother, veer ron cay moore, who passed away in 2002, a wonderful great mother to have. i write about her in the book. my dad is still with us. he is turning 90 this summer. his name is frank moore, grew up on the east side, both my

parents are irish catholics, and my mom's family were actually pioneers in the area and came there in the 1830s in michigan which was all wilderness then, and then my dad's family worked in the factories and all that so there's been great influences on me and fortunate to have them. >> how often do you get back to flint? >> i'm there every month. i live in northern michigan. my dad is still down there in flint, and i spend a number of days with him there. he's still driving and goes to mass every day, goes to the gym. you know, clearly, i didn't obey him on that level, but i'm in flint quite a bit. of course, my friends are still there. >> politically active family in >> i wouldn't say active, but

aware. one of the first things i remember is my family debating kennedy and nixon. my no , ma'am was nor -- my mom was for nixon and dad for kennedy. i remember them having this political debate and my dad was appalled because we're catholic and how can you not vote for the catholic. in the early part of the 20th century, and republicans back then, you know, they were -- when they said conservative, they were don't spend money you don't have. not a bad idea. conserve the air, water, the gifts god gave this earth, and of course they were a party of lincoln again slavery and discrimination and all of that so i have that kind of republican mother and father who was a hard core roosevelt democrat. >> what about active in the uaw politics?

>> my dad was a uaw member -- well, still is. he's a retiree. he built ac spark plugs for almost 35 year, and my uncle was in the sit down strike in flint in the 1930s. >> laverne? >> yes. >> did you know him? >> yes, he was in the sit down strick, which i think this year is going to be the 75 anniversary of that this strike in flint that really created the uaw and really made it and got its first contract with general motors and united a labor movement in the 1930s across the country. >> at what point in your life do you remember your sense of political right and wrong come into play? >> oh, that's a good question. you know, i had a cousin who lived in new york city, and her

dad was a state assemblyman, a roosevelt democrat. she would come there one summer to michigan, and then we go to new york city. her name was pat, and she taught my sisters and i a lot about politics at a young age. i remember in first and second grade she having me memorize john f. kennedy's inaugural address. i was able to do it. by second grade -- this is a little freaky about me -- here's this little kid wondering around and trying to do the accent, ask what this country can do for you -- so it was very much -- i don't know, i think if you come out of an irish catholic tradition, you can't help but not be engaged in what's going on around you, and also you can't help but not have a sense

of humor about it too because it's the thing that protects you from all that is but i think being part of that whole situation. >> you were about 9 years old when jfk was assassinated do you remember that? >> i remember very well. >> did you write about that? >> yes. we were watching educational television, and they broke in and switched over to nbc coverage and announced it and it was all over the church and praying that he would live. two days later, i'm on the carpet in the living room at home watching tv, and my mom is videocassette -- vacuuming and they bring oswald out, and here you are at 9 years

old watching somebody being shot to death live on television, and i remember yelling, mom, mom, they shot oswald. i reached over and pulled the plug. i said look at this, and you know, she was the kind of mom who, of course the first thing is like not another -- this week is already dark and horrible, but it was my childhood to witness this, and how do i explain this? so, you know, strong memories of all of that. >> michael moore, 1968 richard nixon is elected. what was your view at that point? did you care? >> well, actually i write about this in the book. you know, this is not really a tell-all type book, but i did campaign for richard nixon. i was in 9th grade, and i'll tell you what happened.

i was just so very much for robert kennedy. he was assassinated and mccarthy didn't get the nomination, and he and johnson were responsible for the war, and i just could not get behind humphre yerks. richard said he had a plan to end the war, and that sounded good to me. i left home at 14 and my parents let me go to the seminary to be a priest, and i remember the bishop one day asked me to come over to do some yard work, and i think he had heard that i was out campaigning for nixon, and he wanted to ask me about why, you know, why are you doing that? he wanted to educate me about

nixon's past and all this, and his name was bishop hicki, was the arch bishop in washington, d.c., and in the 1980s, a very outspoken advocate for war in central america and all of that, but it was like, it was one of those early encounters where somebody is trying to set me straight and, you know, of course then nixon was elected and did all these horrible things and continued the war and all of that, but, you know, obviously i never looked back, but i never wanted to admit that either, so i just have. >> what happened to the priesthood? >> what happened to the priesthood? well, i went when i was in 9th grade, and somewhere between 14 and 15, the hormones kicked in. i liked girls, and i read the rulebook, and i figured this isn't for me because girls look really good, and there's just

something about that. i thought this is a good idea, girls. i went in to tell the priest or the dean or whatever that i decided not to come back next year. before i get a chance to tell him that, he says to me, mr. moore, we've decided to ask you not to come back next year. i said what do you mean? i came in here to quit. you can't kick me out. i'm quitting. no, we are asking you not to -- well, good, we're in agreement. i said why do you want to kick me out? i'm a good student. he said, because you ask too many questions. i said, then, of course, i did, i was a little inquisitive and wanted to know why women couldn't be priests. why is that? it didn't make any sense to me. you know, or the whole thing about, you know, when life

begins, human life, and the concept of a fertilized egg being a human being, and i was like, well, why, you know, sperm is life and an egg is life, sperm doesn't have a battery pack on it, i mean, it's a living thing, why don't we protect that and stop women each month from losing these eggs. no, that's not a human being. i thought a fertilized egg is, but a stem is not a flower, i mean, you don't say your birthday or pull out your driver's license. it's not nine months from before you were born. it's when you were born. you know, you're a human, so i don't know that was way too advanced at that point, and they probably thought i was trouble, i guess? >> what did you study at the university of michigan in flint? >> i went to the university of michigan flint for a year and a

half and had a double major of political science and theater. the year and a half i was there showed me, and i dropped out. again, i was bored with school. i had just been elected to the board of education at 18 years old. it was right after 18-year-old got the right. it was in the davidson school district, and 18-year-olds were just given the right to vote, and i decided to run, and i became the youngest legislated official in the -- elected official in the state of michigan, and so i was learning more about political science doing it than i was sitting in a classroom, so the first day of my second semester my sophomore year, being a commuter campus, you always had to drive, never enough parking. i drove around for an hour looking for a parking spot, couldn't find one, after an hour

i said screw it, i'm dropping out, and i did, never been back since. i told my dad i just dropped out of college. he was like why? i said couldn't find a parking space. he said that's not a reason. i said, yes, it is. i'm sick of it. stay in school kids, don't drop out. >> what does your dad think of your work, and what did your mom think of your work? >> very proud of my. my mom was very proud of me, of course, especially with writing because it was something so important to her. when she was growing up, my grandparents, i can't tell you what color the walls were, because it was nothing but books. all the walls were book shesms, and -- shelfs, and they read, they read to each other. a lot of that was passed on. i tell the story in the book of

my great, great grandfather coming from pennsylvania and new york, and then they took a boat down lake eerie and came to michigan and had big crates and everybody brought big pots and pans, and they had some, but they had crates of books, and it was education and being literate, being aware of the world around you was something that was important. >> will you be doing the book tour? >> yes, i am going -- i'm going to do a book tour this fall. actually cleared the ducks for the fall, and i'm going to travel the country and do what i think will be an interesting book tour. the last one i did was in large arenas and we had, you know, it was an amazing tour. we had people in the university of florida there in gainsville,

like 14,000 people showed up to hear me speak, and very humbling on some level, but i'm going to do a little of that, but i want to hit the back roads. i want to go to some towns who normally don't get offers. i might get a camper or something and some kind of minny bus and do libraries and bookstores a little off the beaten path, and i like going to places too that are not the typical an arbors and where there's an echo chamber. i like going to different places down south, like going to military towns. i like talking to people who maybe disagree with me or think they disagree with me and it's good for me to listen to them, and i want them to know that

while we have our political differences, we're all americans, all on the same boat, we sink or swim together, and we have all of us more in common with each other than not. you know, if you get out a piece of paper and make a list of everything we disagree on, it's a much shorter list than that of what we all agree on. we want schools for our kids, drink clean water and breathe clean out. women should be paid the same as men. there's a list of thing that we have agreements on an and the things we disagree on. if i don't want a gun, i won't have one. if you want one, go buy one. if you don't want a kiss another man, then don't. i don't think you'll like it. but if somebody else wants to, get married. i mean, come on. >> what reception do you get in a conservative town or military

town? are you energized by the back and forth or does it get hot? >> military towns never get hostile. there's soldiers and people, navy, marines, and their spouses and their children. you know, i really stood up for them even though i was from the very beginning gerntion the war, i did not like how they were being treated or given vehicles that were killing them, that when they come back, where i live in northern michigan, i have a movie house that i run for the community, and i instituted an affirmative action policy at the theater for it that says anybody in the military can come to the movies for free, but we want to hire iraq and afghanistan veterans,

and i -- i said to the rest of the town, we need a sign in the window that says that because they are coming back, and our arms need to be open to them. those in the vietnam era know the importance of what they are going through and what they are processing coming back from an unpopular war, they need the love and support of their community, and so i've been active in things like that, and doing things for the troops and whatever, so i get a very good response. because i mean, our troops are essentially from the working class, and they are african-american and hispanic and from groups of people who already know what the deal is. they don't come primarily from

bel-aire, california, but they come from where i come from, and i understand that. >> was it tough to write this book? >> yeah. >> because it was personal? >> yeah, it was very hard. i put it off for a long time. i have been wanting to write this book for a couple decades, and then i really started writing it down a couple years ago, and i spent a lot of time on this book and spent many nights sitting in the chair at the computer and laughing, you know, one minute at my stories, and then the next minute i'd break down and start crying because i'm, you know, when you read this, you'll see some of the things i've been through, but it was very cay thardic in that way and personally i'm the proudest of this of anyone i've written, and i stood out with

that in mind even though these are nonfiction stories, i said, you know, the nun in my head said that i must treat this as literature, and i'm going to reach deep until all i've been given from my parents, from those good nuns, and from the life i've lived to tell these stories. >> what would your editor say about working with you? >> what would my editor say about? >> working with you. >> she'd say, here comes trouble. when i told her the title, she was like, oh, yeah. she just told me the title is very popular at the publishing house. i said, yeah, i can understand why, but the problem we have with me at the publishers is that i want to do a 60 city tour. i'll do