you will. one of the things i have my high school kids do is i get them to go look at english-language newspapers from all over the world. you can see how from each case the stories are written a little differently and in order to really know a stronger deeper truth you need to see those differences and think about how things look from other people's point of view. do you have friends and get into a disagreement? do you ever disagree with your friends? it is hard but what you should do is try to imagine to yourself, what is going on from your own point of view.

instead of the debate which is up there, destructor academic undersea, we have students debate from one perspective, and have them debate the other side. read a position paper that involve multiple points of view. such a valuable thing for young people, and from 15 minutes before they have to learn both sides of an issue and then they can't get stuck in one point of view. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> we are talking with james robbins about his latest book this time we win. tell us about it. >> it is about the tet offensive in the vietnam war which was an outstanding victory for u.s.

forces but was reported as a defeat and has gone down in history as a defeat. the purpose of the book is to clear that up. >> how do you go about that? >> going back to some original documents and declassified things talking to people who were involved in reviewing the case that it was a defeat and show how some of the points made about it are wrong. >> did you explain how cbs at the time and over history have gone wrong? >> yes. the whole front of the book is about power in contemporary wars like iraq and afghanistan people use the tet offensive and that analogy but use it incorrectly. i start from contemporary sources and go back and retracing. >> can you list a specific thing that was your inspiration? >> other than my publisher wanted it? i have been studying insurgency and counterinsurgency for 30 years and it is one of the most

important aspect. i have known people who were involved in it. one of my dear friends was an adviser to lyndon johnson. i quote him in there. it has been in the background of my life for long by so good opportunity to write about it. >> tell us what your next project might be. >> i'm looking at a variety of things. maybe something on the 1862 su uprising. we are coming up on the 150anniversary of that. it depends on what the publishers want. >> thanks very much for your time. >> if you would like to watch this program again -- >> now the final event from today's coverage of the 2,011 book fest, andrew kersten talks about the famed attorney clarence darrow. [applause] >> good afternoon. thank you for coming. we are delighted to be here.

clarence darrow, "clarence darrow: american iconoclast" is the title of andrew kersten's book. you don't see darrow although he participated in many signal cases in american legal history. .. his personal life showed many foibles which you'll find it here, but the first thing i

would like to ask him really is why we should care about clarence darrow. >> thank you. good afternoon. i think darrow is important for us for a number of reasons. i think first perhaps he is a very interesting historical figure that was involved in a number of important legal cases and political battles, and i think just knowing about them helps us understand our heritage but in addition, the battles that darrow that if you look at his career as a labor lawyer, his career fighting for average people, those battles, the structure of the battles, the context for the battles hasn't changed all that much and so i would argue that one of the reasons why you might want to know about darrow and read about darrow is because darrell's world is still our world today and to help understand our world you should understand a little

bit about darrow and what he went through. i also think as well that darrow is an important guide to know because we should identify with him as a lawyer, a lawyer for the downtrodden, a lawyer for the as he would have said but also darrow was an intensely political person and that political persona that he builds also influences us today. >> okay, lots of attorneys participate in cases before the supreme court etc.. what was remarkable about his career? >> i think it comes back to the politics. early on in the 1880s darrow comes to chicago and quickly finds himself in a sea of humanity as he noted. there are thousands of lawyers in chicago and now a thousand plus one. he had a hard time establishing a career, but he wasn't really interested so much in a legal

career as a political career and darrow took cases because they fit into his political agenda. in the courtroom i argue it was a way for him, it means to an end and a means to a political and so if you go back and a think about darrow what makes them sectional is his political career, the thing that he built and i think that he was known for war his politics. >> so you are saying he used the law as a means to his political ends? >> i think so. in the defense of what he would have considered and how he defined liberty and freedom against those forces that were aligned to him and the aspirations of the average people, workers, immigrants, african-americans and he fought for them in various places. so his cases, if you take for example the scopes case which i'm sure we will talk about, you

can argue the scopes case was about john t. scopes and getting in trouble with the law and it absolutely was that it was also part and parcel of darrow's campaign against the war on education in the 1920s as well as the war on science and that is how he turned those things. these were wars that he wanted to be a part of an wanted to fight for, expanding the ability of teachers and students to engage in free inquiry. that is one of darrow's lyrical and. >> in a strict sense the state had passed a law providing that no one should teach the theory of evolution so in a strict sense, that case was about does a teacher teach evolution which is against the law and is he guilty of that and he was in fact guilty. so darrow knew he was defending a person who had actually broken this law but what you are saying is he saw it as part of the wider battle? >> right. the scopes case was kind of a

put up job and it was brought together by city boosters and by the aclu to make a stand in tennessee. but before that darrow have been writing and thinking about the ways in which certain forces in society were attacking free scientific inquiry. and in addition to the attacks on evolution and the scientific and supple. darrow have been looking for a way to argue that in court and he had been arguing it in print but now he had an opportunity to make a stand and the goal for the scopes case was actually to lose and dayton tennessee and take an appeal all the way to the supreme court to talk about the right of teachers and students to learn in an environment without the influence of outside political forces. >> the case actually became moot and it was never argue before the supreme court. but, if you have seen the film

inherit the wind, it is based on that trial and in it, darrow faced off against williams jennings brian, another attorney who was famous in his time, the same as darrow was actually and that is one of the classic set pieces and american legal history. i'm wondering if you could talk -- they were also friends prior to that at least. i'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about the history between darrow and bryant. >> i do think that darrow and brand were friends and there is the great scene in that movie. i love inherit the wind. it is one of my favorite movies and there's a scene at the end where bryant and darrow are sitting on the porch rocking in the chairs together and then poking fun at each other and sort of making nasty comments to each other. they were old friends and their friendship had been forged in the 1890s and this is another piece of evidence that i use for my argument about darrow's

clinical career. brian as many of you know as the head of the populist movement in the united states and in 1896 brian came to chicago at the democratic party convention, a convention that was said and built by clarence darrow and his political mentor. it is fair there that the party selects brian to represent not only the people's party but also the democratic party, the fusion kind of politics similar to our own day. and ryan aral very well. darrow dumb for brian and their careers follow a kind of path together. they end up on different sides of arguments. in the 19 tens, brian is in the wilson administration and as wilson moves towards the war, brian resigns his post as secretary of state. darrell then comes in shortly after the war is declared as a part of a team for the propaganda of the war.

so darrow and brian had this long career and many intersecting points before the scopes trial. they were old friends, they knew each other. they love to bait each other in the press and fight about evolution and things that brian thought were very important in brian led the movement for those state laws not only in tennessee but elsewhere in the south. and so then they finally get together and have it out. it is like two old friends fighting something else sort of. when brian dies -- i think many of you know brian dies shortly after the case and you would think if they were great enemies and adversaries, clarence darrow would have had something nasty to say about william jennings bryan to reporters but he says something kind and loving about a man who had an enormous impact on american politics and life. the other main historical figure at the trial, h.l. mencken, had

something very different to say at that moment. mencken said, and mencken had kind of the nasty tone to it, that god had thrown a lightning bolt down at darrow after the trial and missed and hit william jennings bryan instead. darrow is much more graces -- gracious. i didn't write it this way but when i was reading and writing about them together i thought of john adams and thomas jefferson. there was a friendship that was always there but a friendship sorter fraught with difficulties and strong opinions and certainly brian and darrow were like that. >> mencken also wrote an absolutely scathing obituary of ryan, which if i have my history right was the only time he was talking to retracting something. he was not sure if retracting what he he said bailout the paper to eliminate that version perform further additions of the paper and did a kinder one which

is very unmencken like. in chicago's darrow figure greatly in chicago politics and andrew contends that the move to chicago was central and darrow's development. why don't you talk a little bit about that. >> the trouble about writing about the early parts of clarence darrow is we only had darrow's words for what happened and what he thought about his childhood. and in some of the other biographies which are very good and i encourage you to read them, we tend to draw direct line between his freethinking parents in this great attorney for the. and i think that is true to a certain degree, but i also agree with what henry adams said about his famous family, that it was more atmosphere than influence. there is something wherewith he darrow's but you can't draw that line because in those moments

where i didn't have a lot of paper trail for darrow i watched where he went and if you watched darrow when it comes to chicago in 1887, you can tell he is on the left. you can tell he has some radical tendencies. one of the first things he does, he visits the anarchists in jail and he talks with them and he writes back to his hometown newspaper, his former hometown, ashtabula ohio and says these men should go free. he is very clear on that. but then watch what he does. he doesn't become their attorney. he doesn't become the attorney for the. he joins the political machine of john al and when the political winds change he becomes a lawyer for the chicago northwest railroad. it is only in 1894 that i say that darrow has kind of an epiphany in 1894 strike. and in the summer of 1894, darrow writes to his friend

henry lloyd and he says don't you know he writes to lloyd, that history is being made very fast in america and it is all against liberty. he saw the forces assembled against working people and that is the change the switch in that moment and from 1894 on darrow becomes a great defender of the poor, the downtrodden, the union is -- the unionists in trouble so it is a story about chicago and what chicago was like and it radicalized darrow. it is that moment at the pullman strike that darrow changed and became that lawyer for the. >> he was also, people remember leopold murder case and he defended those people and they think of the scopes trial and leopold when they think of darrow. actually early on in the first part of his career he was known

as a labor lawyer. we were talking before and you mentioned that this part of his career has been not a -- he faced certainly but certainly not highlight of. >> maybe they there are great no movies about the early part of his legal career. his major chunk of his legal career from the 1890s through about 1921, he is a lawyer for radicals and for unionists. and the story what i found in talking about darrow is this is the story people don't remember so what i wrote the book i decided very strategically to show the big cases -- we know about darrow into one small chapter to force people to read a little bit in more depth about these cases that he had about working people so there are the cases that stem from the pullman strike and then there is a big case in wisconsin in oshkosh nat 98. he is a lawyer for minors for

many years and pennsylvania and out west and then finally he is a lawyer for the unionists who blew up the "l.a. times" in 1910. it is often said that then, because of that trial and the subsequent bribery trials, that darrow no longer was a lawyer for the labor movement. there are a number of cases -- there are other dynamite cases, literally dynamite cases, that darrow defended and he knew how to defend those cases. he had done it several times. there is one inbred granite wisconsin for example. for example. there are other cases like that in chicago said he continues to dabble in those cases but the big cases he wants to make a political statement shift. this is one of the truly frustrating things about clarence darrow is he moves and cfsan and winnows his cases. unfortunately i think that you really can't add up everything darrow did and said to come up

with a philosophy of life. he didn't work that way. as i wrote, he was dogmatically anti-dogmatic. the harder you try to put him into a pigeonhole, a philosophical pigeonhole or a political pigeonhole the more he would try to come out of that. what we can say is that over his long career he held a couple of things very dear and one was that he was interested very much so, in the fight to expand the opportunities with liberties and freedoms for average people, for workers. he was also committed through his entire career and if we want to come back to the leopold and loeb case, to ending capital punishment. he did not believe the state had sanctions to kill anyone at any time. and finally he believed firmly, since the 1880s, in civil rights and expanding civil rights particularly for african-americans. >> okay. you actually write that at no

time in his life to clarence darrow subscribe to any clearly defined grand philosophical tradition. you said privately i don't think these words are in the book, maybe they are, that he was a flip-flopper of sorts. why do you talk about some of his flip-flops? >> right. well, so if i was a part of the early bohemian movement in chicago and so this sort of predates the big one at the turn-of-the-century. he is a little bit before that. he is a little bit before the greenwich village folks but darrow when he was a bohemian at the end of the 19th century, wrote a lot about raking sort of victorian social structures. marriage was one that he wrote against and lived a bohemian lifestyle. but he also was a pacifist. he wrote several tracks and he would take these on on a lecture tour, that is pacifist believes.

he idolized particularly the russian pacifist. during the first war, war breaks out in year. he disregards those words that he wrote and he comes out completely for the war effort. first the defense effort to war mobilization effort in them when the united states declares war darrow allows himself to be used as a piece of propaganda. he is one of those four minutemen. people felt terribly trade by darrow for doing that and you can read these in the letters that are sent to him. people are crying as they are writing these letters. they write in a letter, i'm crying as i write to you. i cannot believe you have done this. i can't leave you said this. how can you defend yourself? and what darrow said was well, i am a recovering pacifists. he has been cured. [laughter] but there is really no way around this.

for darrow a larger goal was always preserving democratic institutions and creating avenues so that average people could enjoy liberty and freedom and at that moment in 1914, 15, 16 and 17 darrow thinks that if the keiser wins those things will be snuffed out in europe and possibly the united states said he sees a larger battle at work. that said he comes to regret his participation in the war effort after the wilson administration and extra connie and lost to go after working people and people who have a different political view on the war. that is just one example. there are others. >> erdogan said for example the kidnapping was in a crime. it was a profession. and then he ends up defending to kidnappers and murderers.

he didn't mention that in court that he at once that it was a profession so darrow could say things. i also think that darrow loves to get people's goat so he would say things that will would rile up a crowd. there is really no doubt about it that he sifted and went out and changed his views on things. i think perhaps like we all do and more importantly he also, he was willing and capable to lead movements that he once supported and he would abandon them. is like the labor movement and it had abandoned him when he was on trial in l.a. for racketeering charges. >> two things i was going to come back to the bribery cases but the four minutemen and you mentioned, it is like the u.s. information agency sends writers out to talk and in cultural exchange programs. these are people the government used basically to put its views and darrow, the paradoxical thing here is that darrow was

sort of well this iconoclast don't tread on me sort of person and yet he spoke for the government in this case. >> absolutely and in the book i try to be critical of darrow in those moments when they seem to matter very significantly when he changed his opinion. darrow was a larger-than-life political figure and i think we don't have a person like darrow. it is sort of hard to understand that when he talked people listen and they waited for him to say something on whatever social issue was affecting the day. and so the fact that darrow would give a pacifist was a terrible loss to that movement. there are others who win the war broke out were quite true to their principles like william jennings bryan. when he saw the writing on the wall he left the wilson administration knowing he could not support an administration that went to war. and so i think when it comes

back to darrow what we can say is he was not a systematic thinker and that he was always willing to give up a little bit to get a larger goal. >> the bribery cases -- this is one of the spots on darrow's career. it is actually ambiguous still in a historical sense but he defended to people who had almond the "l.a. times" printing plant and killed several people in the process. and, during the course of that, people on his legal team were charged and then he was charged with trying to bribe jurors. he was never convicted of that, but it is an open question. there are historians that argue that he did it and there are other historians who point to

those historians in say so-and-so says he did it. what is your view on this and what does it say about what type of lawyer he was? >> let's start with that. even when he was in ohio as a young lawyer who darrow reviewed each case as if his life depended on the outcome. he internalize those cases and he carried the angst of those cases everywhere he went. on his 80th birthday "the new york times" reporter went to chicago to visit with darrow and ask him how he was, and darrow looked at the reporter and said do i look 80 years old to you? in the reporter said mr. darrow you have always look 80 years old. he carried the pain of those cases and so he internalize those cases. as i said at the beginning of the book if you are in trouble he was the lawyer you wanted and he was the friend that you needed. he would do anything in his power to overcome the

prosecution and i think with the bribery case and there is also some j. anthony lukas and a wonderful book about the idaho bombing of governor stenberg make the case that darrow may have been involved in a bribe there as well. that was the case before the l.a. case. and it would be odd for naumann leading the defense not to know i think if your lieutenants are out doing that. there is sort of circumstantial evidence that would suggest that darrow knew what was going on. when his lieutenants were arrested in los angeles to darrow is running to them on the street corner trying to alert them that the police had said a sting duress burt franklin and some other people there on charges of bribery. what i think and alan dershowitz is very critical of darrow and perhaps rightly so but i think what we missed is the context for those cases and what we have to understand is this is an era

before collective bargaining and buckley had in the year before collective bargaining was a class war and i really mean war. where there were armies, private armies hired a capitalist to destroy unions and the way they destroyed unions is also by using violence and agent provocateurs and sometimes the unions would do violence on their own but sometimes they were instigated into violence and there were spies inside the labor movement reporting on things. when darrow went to los angeles and began to look at the case against the mcnamara brothers he said my gosh, you have left evidence a mile wide behind you. they have got you. and so he tried to create an alternative explanation for the explosion, the gas leak. in fact he spent thousands of dollars hiring an architect to build a model of the "l.a. times" that would show that a gas leak could then blow up the

building. it didn't work. what would you do? the people are on trial. yes they blew up the times. they didn't mean to harm anyone. so you wonder the mindset there that they didn't mean to harm anyone. this was an act of war. they were trying to fight for the working class. they saw it. the case had political implications not only in los angeles but across the nation. the outcome of the case was that darrow arrange for long-term sentences for both of the men. they went after darrow after the case. not necessarily because he had tried them but they wanted him removed -- to remove the person they thought was a political bone in their side. getting rid of him was even better than putting the mcnamara brothers away and when darrow

arrange for a plea agreement in that case, the labor movement abandoned him. eugene debs wrote several scathing letters to clarence darrow saying we will not support you any more. you did not have authorization to make that deal. then it goes back to darrow's first and primary commitment was to his clients and if you look at the pictures, this is a photographed trial. you can see the man age in those three years in los angeles. he was stuck there for three years trying to defend those men accused of the bombing and then himself. >> okay, well he moved away from a few different movements, the labor movement, the progressive movement just in following his own interests. he came to view individual rights as a greater cause, as you say it. >> i think so and of course he is getting older and there are

limits for him to get on a train and go where the labor movement needed him and for a while they didn't want him. there is a kind of a divorce there are but he had also become sick out west and he had an operation in los angeles. he was a little tired of that life of wandering around for the labor movement. and so at the end of his career, he had decided that there are a couple of goals he had in mind. one was to fight against capital punishment. one was to fight for freedom of inquiry and another one was to fight for civil rights and if you look at those cases in the 20s, i think that is what he is doing and that is where his legacy resides is this sort of sifted and winnowed, distilled subfive at the end. >> this l.a. case at that time,

darrow suffered what we today would call depression off and on throughout his life. i sanders said in his correspondence, he never used that word but it would appear so from the outside and in any event the "l.a. times" was a dark time for darrow and andrew describes the kind of turnaround plan a killer that darrow had defended shows up by surprise to visit him and offers to kill his enemies. so why do you talk about that? >> i love that story. clarence darrow had about 2000 cases in his career and you can see them how i really extrapolate it to make an argument in the book are collected in coverall 2000 cases. one of the cases that darrow talks about in one of the people he talks about in his autobiography is a good and disappointing read. it is a man by the name -- i would imagine his name was

george bessette and he would have had the hard t at the end. george bessette was a typical clarence darrow guy. he had been in trouble all of his life. they were actually about the same age and you can see the diversions past that this man and darrow had taken and darrow had all sorts of things happens and it didn't happen to his friend george. what happened to george, you've been in trouble most of his life and there it in a bar fight. he had gone into a bar and was drinking and two off-duty policeman came in and they knew george and started picking on him. words lead to pulled guns and george -- george was shot in the stomach and lived but he also shot a police officer who died. george's mother showed up at clarence darrow's law office and said would you please take this case? darrow said i don't have the time or the money to do a capital case like this right now. i am sorry, can't help you.

.. the door. the last person he would expect to see is a common criminal from chicago. he had hopped on trains all the way from chicago to los angeles. he was dirty and smelly and there he is in the doorway,

goerge! he says i am here to help. what do you mean help? i have been falling birth franklin, key witness for the prosecution in that bribery case. i am going to kill him. he later made the comment in his autobiography that no greater friend is the man who is willing to kill for you and so darrow gives him some cash he probably couldn't afford, enough money to get back to chicago on a train. that is the kind of friend that clarence darrow had. when the labor movement -- when his wife--he and his wife were not getting along, darrow is reminded what george's life and career and life and politics really mean. he has been fighting for people

like george and they came to help him and he recovers out of that depression. he almost killed himself in los angeles. he mounted a spirited defense against the prosecution which he argued and i tend to agree was politically motivated. >> further on, looking at the arc of his life, you would think from the politics he did as owls and was heavily into the democratic party politics at he would support the new deal but he was critical of fdr. it turned out to be very critical of the administration. this is another paradoxical display. if you find a unified theory of

his life, why don't you talk about that? >> i am halfway through researching for a unifying theory. in 1934, franklin roosevelt has run into political trouble with his anti depression agency which is the national recovery administration. it went by the acronym and are a. i want to make sure as we go forward, it is not the nra you may think of. they tried to solve one of the basic problems of the great depression which was prices and constant undercutting of goods and services. the great depression you can interpret one way as a problem. consumer purchasing power, not making enough money, and people not having enough money to buy goods and services even at those

lower prices. fdr tried to put a floor on some of that by creating codes of fair play with the industry, 500 in all. small business men and weapon objected because in the codes there was a preference for larger corporations over smaller businesses. finally the letter-writing and telephone and local political campaign against the nra worked to the degree that congress pressured franklin roosevelt to create an administrative review board for the nra or congress was going to do it so roosevelt decided to do it. it was the simpler and safer course. someone needs to head this review commission and he tapped clarence darrow thinking that darrow who has made a career on the left was sympathetic to the new deal which struggled to help

out the forgotten man and once darrow was in there and there were some problems but it is okay. the problem is you can never be certain of what every is going to do. he issued a report after report condemning the nra. his law partner edgar lee masters wrote to franklin roosevelt and said this is a huge mistake. you don't want darrow. as only a poet can put it and i will probably get it wrong, he is going to saying the nra which will die and that is exactly what happened. masters was right. others things he said in the letter were not right. maybe oversold the case. but darrow did fanged the nra and give birth to what scholars call the second new deal. but darrow is not a libertarian. he believed government had an

important role. in improving the lives of working people. context is very important. his experience with the federal government going back to the 1880s was one in which there was trouble or a fight over working people, which side of the federal government to come in on. they send in the national guard and start shooting workers and the strike is over. everyone went back to work. darrow witnessed how the federal government was and that always an ally of average people. when he saw the new deal perhaps creating cartels answered industries like the auto industry he was wary of that. that doesn't make him a libertarian. he believe the most important kind of political system for working people is the local system. and working people have to be very involved in local government because that is where you get the kind of leverage to improve average people's lives. >> one more point and i would like to open it up for

questions. you said nothing about his speaking style. we had an interesting conversation about that. in many accounts in the book begins and we will end at a trial with darrow summing up he is in tears and everyone in the courtroom in tears as well. >> when he can get the judge crying he knew he had won. absolutely. there's only one record and i have found on the history channel of his voice and it comes in the late 1920s and sound like cement being mixed. he was a heavy smoker and use his voice professionally for decades and so it is a little gruff and it is a speech about crime and punishment and he is arguing against capital punishment. a is a master in the courtroom of drawing people into his argument and his closing statements could run on for 12

hours. teaching for living i am doing pretty well if i get 60 minutes that i can keep people's attention. it is a different age. the way darrow was able to draw people in was using inflexion. you could hear him for miles an he could come down to a whisper and draw in people to see what he was saying. the ebb and flow in his movement that kept him going and he believed in what he was saying and he used the illustrations for example -- he was terribly funny too. his would comes through. he said the only difference between the factory owners and dale is in prison you get to sleep there at night.

then he would go in and get them crying and everyone went free. i guess that is what you pay for. >> we have time for a couple questions. >> i read a speech he gave at cook county jail and wonder how close in your estimation for your reading did he come to be an anarchist or staying there or what? >> great question about his political -- >> he did speak against law enforcement. >> exactly. in addition he often had a dim view of voting.

my mother once said if voting truly mattered it would have been outlawed years ago. his criticism of the women's movement for the vote can be seen in the structure of antifeminism but he also had serious questions. it is not the expansion of the vote that matters but how you use the vote. there is a class dynamic that is very important. i think he would disagree with the anarchists' along some lines. a certain amount of anarchism involved violence and he would defend you but never condone it. he would understand it. he wouldn't advocate it. he thought politics was a very important and working people had to work together politically to make the world better. were anarchists' may have questions about opting in are opting out of politics. digital darrow would be there.

he can be seen as a socialist like philip randolph. he never joined the party but believed that through organization and the movement both in terms of at your place of work but also in terms of politics that you could make the world better. and the great promise of america of liberty and freedom can belong to anyone no matter the accident of birth. doesn't matter where you were born. you have these the opportunities that you have to fight for them. but he also understood at the same time that the prison system as well as the legal machinery was aimed against working people. his criticism of capital punishment was along those lines. when he testified about ending capital punishment which i might add, darrow was not a great deal litter of organizations.

the one organization he did julie and became president of was an anti capital punishment group. he believed one of the problems with the death sentence was far too often involve the average people. in particular african-americans. he said that was evidence that something is wrong. he also thought that the legal system destroyed working families's lives and for every one person that was in daily a whole family was destroyed. it is a little bit sad because we have these debate today but they sound similar to the middle of the nineteenth century. like we barely moved from there. what do we do with prisons? darrow is very clear. most people who are in prison do not belong there. he never advocated not having prisons because some people need

to be kept away. he believed they needed rehabilitation. nathan leopold was eventually released in the 1960s but this kind of incarceration and waste of human capital darrow was dead set against. >> and a pacifist too. >> absolutely. >> one more question? >> i was able to read your book last week. it was excellent. in the book you talk about him being a darkly pessimistic man. if you could talk about how he was political but pessimistic. contradiction. why do you think -- second question is his relationships with golfers and debts. how did they differ in approach in labor matters? >> one of my favorite darrow stories is a young lawyer

catches the old lion outside his office one day and he says how are you today? terrible, he says. why? what is the matter? things turned out better than i expected. it is one of those puzzles. why someone who is so darkly pessimistic would engage in these battles. if it is that bad that there is no hope, why do it? when he turned 61 there was a birthday party for him in chicago. people came and did funny things with darrow sitting up there and finally darrow comes to speak before a crowd and a reporter writes darrow gave several the arguments for suicide. he was a dark guy. only thing i could come up with was this idea that it is the

battle he is interested in and putting the ball forward in football terms. he doesn't hold great promise that anything he does will be a decisive victory but he is committed to fighting for liberty and freedom for working people land so he feels called to do that. he is a hopeful pessimist. who knows? maybe it might work out. but you have got to keep fighting. he had the means to do it. he had a difficult time with the labor movement. he was put in adversarial relationship. when he was allied with the leadership, things work well for him. when he put his clients over the needs of the labor movement, it

is like brian. debs and darrow have a great falling out and deb's his very angry at darrow for his defense of the mcnamara brothers but also when he was arrested and sent to prison, darrow goes to see a the president. he won't make it. he is an old man and because darrow and others have gone, they are old friends. the same goes with golfers. they had a terrible falling out yet i think there's no evidenf

>> and did he get caught or punished at the end? >> he was never punished. the south hates him. his name appears in a ton of richmond newspapers, but he is never punished because he is counterfeiting the currency of a government that is emphatically not recognized by the uni