i understand from talking to him that he did a great deal of research on the brain, gathering together many, many studies. and i think it's going to be a very compelling book. >> tell us what you're reading this summer. send us a tweet at booktv. ..

broadcast live on c-span2's book tv. if there's time at the end for a q&a session with the author we ask you to use the microphone located at the center of the room so the home viewing audience can hear your questions. please welcome moderator of "the chicago tribune" and a the author of end of anchor. [applause] >> thank you. welcome back to chicago. he's a native son delighted to be here again. alice has a new book out and to put it in context 18 years ago you wrote the rage of a privileged class which talks about african-american middle class, african-americans being feeling in excruciating pain i think was the phrase. a new book is coming out this month, the end of anger which

basically says okay feeling pretty good. so what happened? what changed? a lot changed. but before i even address that the book is interesting because you're right i did write a book about range, and the fundamental point that one person after another made in that book and conducted well over 100 introduce for the african-americans and the essentials play that went after another wasn't really summed up with i don't care what credentials i have, a how hard i work, what networks i try to get into it's just not possible for me to get past the glass ceiling to the top jobs, not possible for me to be the ceo of the corporation and the president of this country etc.. a couple of things has changed. not too long after rage came out, which was in i guess it

came out in '93, the book itself in '94 and not long after rage came out use of from changes in corporate america you saw a small but interesting group began to rise you saw can become the head of american express. you saw a sort of change in this kosmas. of course with the recent presidential election you saw something that many people of many colors thought would never happen at least not in our lifetimes and that was the election of the president who identified as an african-american. and this is something that i found just interesting is that a new generation has come on the scene so a lot of the voice is

represented in rage are different than the voices represented in the end of anger and the end of the anchor there is a methodology let me just say a couple words about that. because even though i did as i said 104. i did even more for this book and interviews. i conducted a couple surveys. i did a survey of the black alumni of the harvard business school and 74 questions and also a survey of graduates of a program called a better chance which sends people for the most part for from rm areas largely minority of the secondary schools in the country and what i found fascinating as i began to look through the results of the surveys was the difference how people are responding to

questions about opportunity and access as a function of age or generation as i put it. the short story is that those people under 40 and i have a system that i organized where i call these people generation of three people, the people who were under 40 responded quite differently to those who were over 40 in terms of how much discrimination they received in the workplace and in terms of what kind of opportunities they thought were available for them personally and how difficult it was to make it in american society, and so once i saw this interesting general break out in the data we went back and as a small group of researchers we went back and conducted over 130 follow-up interviews with people in the survey in addition to 100 interviews conducted for the book.

so it was a somewhat different methodology but the country changed in some ways but also we are looking at a generation to some extent. >> is part of it is generational and part of it is the obama election kind of the capstone to the corporate gains there were made. one of the backdrops i have for the research in this book were a series of studies by the future trust, by "the washington post" indicating that there was a measurable increase in terms of optimism on african-americans. the most recent large poll was done this year and the was a "washington post" harvard poll and continues to show african-americans significantly are more optimistic, one, than they were ten years ago but to, significantly more optimistic

than whites when it comes to looking at how people see the strength of the economy and engage prospect with future and see prospects for themselves a national journal poll said that two-thirds of african-americans in the u.s. said the barack obama's policies would significantly help their advancement the number for whites was 21%, hispanics fell somewhere in the middle but there was quite a gap. >> it's gone down in terms of african-americans saying that obama's election creates more britain these for african-americans. it's gone down a bit since this election and certainly in my own survey it's not as high as 70%. it's closer to a round of 30 or 40% who are saying that it's going to help them, but i also think that the obama election is

not just one phenomena that accounts for all of this. i think that takes place against the backdrop of many things. it's certainly a huge event and one that for a least many people of color and others as well indicates things may be possible in this country and a lot of people felt were not possible even in a few years ago. it's an event which sort of i call it the final revelation in a series of things that happened but which cost a lot of people to sit back and say wait a minute let me rethink some fundamental assumptions that life always made about where this country is and where it's possible for people to go. >> so what if he loses in 2012? the gain use of from the election in 2008, would be a resumption of anger? >> first of all, i am very careful to say in the book

there's still lot of angry people out there. that hasn't changed. there's a lot of angry people and some of the most angry people are the tea party types and what not. so it's not just black people who are angry. but also think the fact of the presidency even if he loses in 2012 won't go away, and the reassessment that has begun to take place in some minds would stop whether or not he wins. there will be a lot of disappointed people. again, of all colors if he loses. but i don't think it's going to change the fundamental way people are beginning to look out what is possible in the political arena. >> is there a real divide and african-americans fought or media fought? i ask this based on what cornell west recently said that obama is

a black mascot of wall street oligarchs and puppet of corporate speed and has become the head of the american killing machine and is proud of it. >> cornell was obviously rather upset. >> cornell was obviously a little bit upset at any of number of things having to do with obama. i know cornell hasn't spoken about these particular comments in this case. but she's consistently been a critic of obama along certain lines, and also it illogically they are in quite different places at cornell and barack obama. >> i think that it's always been a mistake to assume that any group african-americans are and is always a mistake to assume people are all going to think

the same way. we never have no other group i'm aware of ever had has. there have been differences. what's changed to some extent is the willingness to hear the difference is publicly, and i think that clearly cornell west made the decision that he was quite ready and eager to go public with any number of complaints about barack obama, and i actually think -- some of his complaints were having to do with operation tickets and things like that, but i think that it's healthy he feels free and the people feel free. no president should be above criticism even from a group that he happens to belong to. if you go back some time ago to the clarence thomas nomination, there was a consternation among much of the black leadership at that point when he was nominated

about whether to criticize this guy or not or whether people ought to just stay quiet and in the hopes he would be something they haven't demonstrated that had any inclination to be. whether or not i agree with all of cornell's criticism is beside the point. he certainly has a right to criticize them and there's nothing bizarre about that and i think it is something very healthy about it. >> i did talk to a number of people in chicago, black-and-white from the left who do complain and say that barack obama can go to egypt and give a speech or he can give a speech in the u.s. on the middle east and the world talks about the middle east for the next so why hasn't barack obama come to the west side of chicago oregon to detroit and talk about urban america? has he missed an opportunity to you think to put those issues

which i think it's fair to say george bush ignored that on a higher plane? >> barack obama has a set of issues the white president doesn't have and i can't look into his mind. i don't know what he's going to do if he gets a second term when barack obama tried to make a point it was a teachable moment after skip gates got arrested at his house by well outside his house actually by the police in cambridge i think he said okay this is clearly a case of de copper overreacting to something he shouldn't have done whether the good professor said to him she wasn't creating a public disturbance, he wasn't a danger to anybody he certainly doesn't need to be in handcuffs, so let me say that, let me use this moment to make some statements about police behavior when it

comes to african-american communities and take this occasion to say that the the police did something stupid. there was a firestorm reaction to that and it broke down very much along racial lines. the vast majority of whites respond to that was dismay and anger and the essentially say the president shouldn't be getting involved in this kind of stuff. one of the issues this president has that clinton didn't have is to be accused of showing favoritism to the racial minorities. clinton didn't have that issue. if you look at the tea party there was a poll done a year and a half or so ago by "the new york times" looking at the tea party respondents. the vast majority of people consider themselves part of the tea party were also agreeing that obama had given way to much attention to african-americans in the country, we too much

attention to african-americans, etc.. so it would be naive to think that he doesn't have this going on in his head. should he make some strong statements and should he have a strong policies as regards to poverty? of course, people claim he does, he just has talked to some other things that clearly that is a major issue and dealing with it as vigorously as with any other issue. >> you brought up the tea party and i feel when you say in the tea party and conservatism is going to cost controversy. i'm going to read a couple of paragraphs from the book. what it all adds up to is an america that is psychologically and politically divided in the most bizarre way. one american celebrating the rise of a black president and the beginning of the end of racism while the other drowns in paranoia and racial fear. in one american anger is mellow and in the other it explodes and

the future seems brighter than ever while in the other is cloaked in gloom. the biggest locus of anger these days seems to be not in the nation's black and brown communities but the white heartland where numerous people are struggling to make sense of what seems to be a world turned upside down as they see as increasingly alien one from which they are growing ever more estranged. >> there are lots of bases for those observations. one being the tea party people themselves, but actually i went out and spoke to a number of tea party people in an attempt to get at what is really bugging these guys and i found. it was like to do you want to take america back from? the people on washington, what

are you angry about? i had a store and people begin to my store and now america's not good for the common man. there was a lot of incoherence and part of what i draw from that is that these people have this outside anchor at things they are not even cannot voice or are uncomfortable voicing and we are looking at a country that demographically is changing. we are looking at a country which obviously is talking for the last what, 20 minutes where you have a person of color in the top job that some people, most tea party people it seems from the poll question whether he was born in the united states. why?

well, i find they prefer to see america represented by a different kind of person that they are more congenial with. they don't like this idea and again this is my take but it's a take it is informed by data. they don't like this idea that these folks who don't represent america back in the 1950's the way america looked back in 1950's are taking over as they see it and so i think it is an attribution to one an exaggeration of how much is being taken over bye whom, but number two, if this sort of anger at other kind of dynamic which also happens to encompass people coming over from the southern border, etc. which on sells a lot of people and says to them this america that is evolving is not the america that

i knew and loved which is the america of the 1950's. so what is going to ease that ander? >> in 2008 in the primaries when he talked about bitter people clinging to their guns and religion and he got enormous flowback he may have lost texas for that. >> i don't think the issue is religion here and in large measure i don't think it begun. i do think the issue is that there are just a hard core set of people who question everything about this presidency and the direction of the country, and i'm not sure that that's going to go away any time soon. i guess the spin on that is the folks stuck in the old paradigm tend to be rather old.

so at some point they're going to give way to some other people >> you write in the book about the impact that riding on the west side when you were a young person had on you >> i'm happy to be back this weekend in chicago, and i came from the west side of chicago in the housing project and so for me, a fundamental part of my childhood was growing up in a neighborhood that was literally set aflame first in 1966 as a result of a disturbance aggravated by the police and then in 1968 the result of course of the fascination of dr. martin luther king. i remember quite clearly as a very young person walking along madison street which was the

main commercial corridor and the neighborhood after that time of their nine hits and still be able to feel the heat from the flame, the five-year that it consumes. there was one day during the 66 riots where we literally had to hit the floor because bullets were flying and we were fearful that something would happen. so not only shaped my view of what was happening in america at that time and the course of a preteen and teenager it shakes you if your community and neighborhood but also of the press in some ways. and it's hard to think that far in some sense. >> each year gets harder. >> yes. >> i basically became a writer of that, and the short story is that all i remember reading the

newspapers at the time even as a kid i did read the newspaper and remember reading the newspaper at the time and thinking that the neighborhood was being reported about in the newspaper. the neighborhood full of thugs and criminals and crazy people was not really the neighborhood that i knew, and thinking that there was a need or at least i received in my ignorance and arrogance i suppose the need for another voice that could inform the discussion, and i went to high school with aspelin technical and at that time when i enrolled and started high school and i sort of thought i would go into some sort of scientific field. i had originally thought my favorite subject was mass but might be something related to math, maybe business or something like that, and the

thing that made me change course was something that happened during my senior year. my senior year in high school, i had a teacher named mrs. clean air and i always had these fights with my english teachers because i thought english was boring and that a large part of it at least taught at leni tech at the time was answering questions i knew the answers to and i considered it a waste of my time. so i had this big battle about whether i was going to do the english assignment, and i remember saying to her in the midst of this heated discussion i didn't see the point during these assignments. they were a waste of time. i didn't see what to do this stuff and she said to me well, okay, you are obviously a bright kid and what you decide to do is find so what are we going to do

here? and i said well, it seems to me that the point of this class is one, to make sure i have an understanding of the english language and research skills and i can make a coherent argument, so why don't you testing on that? she said why don't you mean? i said have me write something. she said fine, what are you going to write? i said why not a history of riots in america. she said okay. and i went off and several weeks later come back with i don't know how long it was that like a 140 page manuscript and she takes it home, comes back the next monday and this is okay i'm going to give you an essay for the course, but i don't -- i'm not really capable of evaluating this material and i make it from

the project. professional what? and she said send it to gwendolyn brooks, you know what it is. i said that is of fort lauderdale illinois. she teaches at such and such college. so i send it to hurt and a few months later i heard from her. she called me and she said look, young man, i don't know what you intend to do with your life and you ought to be a writer and that made something of an impression on me. [laughter] so from there it totally redefined myself and i went on to become a columnist for the chicago ton vv kurson times and might have was set. >> we both know clarence page very well. he tells the story how he got hired on "the chicago tribune" when the 1969 west side gone up

in flames the tribune looked around the newsroom to find out who they could send who knew the west side and there was nobody. clemens gets hired. did you have a similar experience getting into the business? >> not exactly but i think i got in on some of that same energy. the beginning was the 1965 riot. you're talking about a time when for reasons we probably need not go into in depth needed to become most see no need to hire anybody black so they didn't have anybody black on the staff and the "l.a. times" really noticed this when he exploded in 65 and they said we won't be in danger and the only person they can think to send out is the sales person who they say okay you're not a journalist go out

there and cover watts. but he wrote was sort of representing what you expect from somebody that had no idea what journalism was. there were stories like that as the "washington post" and 68 would arrive at the same thing. a few of them had one or two people but most of them had nobody, and so after that there was this sense my god there is a huge story and a huge community. they don't understand it or aren't comfortable out there. we need to hire some people to do it. i was hired a little bit differently. , but then what i did get to high year that as was my first john i was almost 18 with "the chicago sun-times" was as a columnist for something called viewpoint for schools and they

realized they didn't have any voices that were people of color at all on this page and after doing that i got called in to the editor's office and he said to me i've been reading your column in the viewpoint for schools. what do you think starting monday if i give you a column in the reel newspaper? and i sort of looked at him and foley incompetent 19-year-old said that's what i want to do all the time, so sure. that's what happened. so i wasn't hired as a direct result of the riot but there was an awareness at that time in that era that newspapers were at an advantage having no color and staff. >> we watched this business get shaken to the core and the basic

underpinnings of journalism now if you were running coming out of the west side of chicago now would you advise him to go into journalism? >> coming into the west side now why would a first of all say the gerdemann tree is different. first of all, i don't know anybody that got hired the way i did even back then. that was kind of unusual and a tribute i think to what i like to consider the vision of jim hoeven who saw this kid who was eager and in some ways ignorant and said we see something here. let's do something with that. it is contracting particularly print is contracting radically and virtually every large 1i know of has and the future is

jerry uncertain. so if i were advising -- and also, the road to journalism is a little bit different. more and more it's become the path of gentry has become getting a graduate degree from a school at northwestern or going to columbia and getting a degree from there. so you find more and more people of the large institutions of those kind of credentials. i think what i would say to a young person who wants to start on the career today is it could be a hell of a field is so much uncertainty have to be prepared to increase the uncertainty if you're going to embrace this career. >> i would invite you to come up to the microphone and i would be glad to take your questions. >> it's been a struggle to diversify newsrooms and we've now seen as those newsrooms have shrunk journalists and african

american journalism going into alternative fields are you better off these days looking for a.com job than a newspaper or "newsweek"? >> newspaper in "newsweek," those are very different jobs. what we are seeing in journalism is one contraction of mainstream journalism but number two, three different years developing. there are lots of space co.com jobs out there that a one-third but many of the traditional jobs today. so, these are jobs that were going to appeal to people who for the most part are young and willing to work for very little money in the hope that they will leverage this into something better in the future. i think it's a hard call for a lot of people going into this field in particular right now because it is a field in such flux and journalism was never a

profession that you went into to be rich unless you have hopes of being a network anchor or something, but it was a field that not too long ago particularly with a larger publications you could depend on a good career, that is a long the case, and so i think that for young people looking at a profession, the need to acknowledge this and say okay, despite that this is something still were trying to do. >> questioned? >> maybe we should say thanks to photo march, made in the u.s.a. and the audiovisual system which is the microphone stand. i didn't come here prepared to know what you're talking about, i didn't read your books and i assume it was about the black experience. i saw a psychiatrist some time ago in the 70's and i will never forget what he said early on. with regard to my history of mental problems and implement he

said at least you're not black. compare that to barbara par rahman who i saw in the 80s she didn't tell me she was terminally ill with breast cancer and she died at the age of 37 in 1986 and is still living in his 90. >> i am getting to a question but of the words i used before don't overrule my questioning i recommended a book called sex, murder and meaning of life -- >> do you have a question somewhere in there? if people want to hear your book recommendations ensure they can find you after. >> the question is about language. i use merriam-webster. if we don't know the words meaning as we are going to be in trouble. it's like speaking other languages. i don't believe in using words that make us more distance than we have to be. i think we should go back to negro and caucasian.

>> the question? >> it wouldn't be bad for people to be scientifically literate and black-and-white is like should we -- to you think you would be better to talk about this in a way that makes us closer instead of saying black and white or for that matter the opposite sexes that makes us more different than similar? >> sure. okay, fine. do i think you would be better for us to talk about ourselves in ways to bring us closer? of course i do. another question is what that is and i don't think it is as simple as substituting negro for black or caucasian for white. negro is just obviously a mispronunciation which is a spanish pronunciation for black so i'm not sure that is the way to do that but in principle, absolutely. >> [inaudible] obama is good for white people especially to put him in power

for israel. obama [inaudible] illinois has been noted in the chicago reader to have 400 tons in which obama cannot sleep except in jail. >> again, search is there a question? >> considering how racism is indebted in the criminal justice system where you say blacks are diluted to say things are getting better where more than half of people in prison for black. >> that is a good question. i think actually that is a good question. the bureau of labor statistics

just last month released statistics which show that black employment is higher, black employment rather is lower than it has been since they have been kept. we are seeing a situation where in the economic sense african-americans have been hard hit by this current downturn in the recession, and we are also as the questioner in the case over the last 35 to 40 years see a huge uptick in the number of african-americans that have been cursory that and having to deal with a criminal justice system such that its current trends continue roughly one-third of african-american males. >> the studies that i site don't

give any kind of objective assessment of whether things are getting better or not. they talk about people's attitudes and take on one the future which by definition is unknown and number two, with a pre-sivas their options which for many people is broader than it has been. i think that we as a society felt for a long time at least many of us did if we get a handle on racial inequality we will solve the issue of the equality in this society. i think in some respects, not all of them, some are going to get a handle on that issue i think what we are finding is that the issue of inequality is much more complicated than many people thought it was and that dealing with the decline of the zero and racism which has

immeasurably declined is not the same of creating equal opportunity societies. >> you suggest in the book, you break out in generational change that african-americans are still more likely to have been predawn by shady lenders for instance as you see the mortgage crisis now when asked about that and when you talk about the end of anger is there a growing economic divide among african-americans is this people that have succeeded are feeling better about racism or those that haven't succeeded economically feel a lot different? >> you do touch on something he alluded to before >> in answer to that direct question, certainly those who are doing economic and better felt a lot better about their options in life as measured by my various surveys including

mine but even people doing not so well at all if you ask the question are african americans better off now than 15 years ago for instance the vast majority of people say african-americans across class lines say yes they are do you think your children will have a better life than you do? to say yes i think they will. i think on the one hand you do have a sense that the options and opportunities are not nearly as bleak as a function of race than it used to be but you also have people who make a personal assessment based on where they were and where they are. among the states i don't really references. i did a small survey of people who were involved with a group called the fortune society for

people reasonably out of prison or who have been diverted into programs to avoid going to prison and we asked them about their options in life most of them not needless to say are unemployed. they acknowledge they will have a hard time because their prison record getting a job. so people are totally out of touch with reality. that i do have a chapter that deals with the predatory lending and the reason i have that chapter in their as an example of how even policies that on their face are not explicitly racist in any particular we could end up harming particular communities, and i think we have a textbook example in the case of how various neighbors were targeted and various groups were targeted in a way that ended up devastating those communities and people who happen to own

homes and no one ever had to get together in a room and say we are going to target black people to do that. >> i'd like to ask about the education in the united states to your sister-in-law was a co-founder of the charter school network in chicago and many of them including your sister-in-law's network and it's done very well and yet is a very controversial issue still in the city that comes down to an economic divide, ongoing argument whether traditional schools wind up being short changed because the emphasis on alternative schools. >> i don't think it's any question of the schools in boston and new york but i don't think it's any question that a charter school was well designed and that's the important stipulation and the charter schools also but i think without

question the charter schools are well-designed that have the leadership and dedication can do wonders and communities where your public schools have not. they can take care to a lot of schools that essentially have given up on and oriented towards college. first of all get them to believe they can actually go to college which is part of what they need to do in certain areas, and get them unprepared for a life that they otherwise wouldn't have, they just stay in their neighborhood schools but the reality is not unless something radically changes in this country the percentage of people and charter schools will always be a relatively small percentage and so the issue on ec is not that one ought to get rid of the charter schools which in some cases are doing a tremendous job, but we've really need to wrestle in a serious way with how we make public education

better. estimate it's not a far leap to get into what's going on in wisconsin and ohio and indiana and this may go to some of the issues you talk about your sense of what we have a growing divide between the government class and the rest of america. >> in guaranteed pensions and things like that that the taxpayers have to pay for and that now as ever economic ties become less and less certain, certain papers are less willing to pay for that but i think that is overlaid with a lot of issues and ever since the last five that it's been taken has found a greater divide between the top income and the lower quintile.

we are clearly becoming a society where those who have wealth are doing progressively better as those who are doing worse. they are simply screwed up with the picture, and i certainly don't have the answer to that but that goes beyond issues of race. this is something fundamentally screwed up about that and we need to figure out how to get the right. >> we are out of time. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you for attending today's discussion in supporting "the chicago tribune" commitment to literacy. the book signing will take place in the courtroom please exit the room unless you have a ticket for the next program. thank you. [applause]

[inaudible conversations] about his book the end of ander. we will be right back with more from the 2011 "chicago tribune" printer's row with speed in just a few minutes. >> we ask what are you reading this summer and this is what you had to say.

send us a tweet to let us know what you plan on reading this summer. you can also e-mail booktv erik -- booktv@cspan.org. >> we have this view that we are divided cells and have reason over here and a motion over here and the 2rf war with one another if you are emotional your not rational and if you're a rational and you're not emotionally and society progresses to the extent reason which is trust were taken suppress compassions with our untrustworthy so this body is led to the human nature that we are fundamentally rational

individuals who responded straightforward ways to incentives and its lead to a lot of academic disciplines that try to study human behavior using the method of physics, emphasizing what they can count and model and ignoring all the rest and its lead to an amputation of human nature where we emphasize things that are rational and accountable but ignore inarticulate about the things down below. and so it's created a culture in which we are good at talking about material things the bad debt talking about emotions, really good at talking about health and safety and professional skills but character and integrity we often have little to say. the greek philosopher said we live in a system we still have the word for the important things like virtue and honor but we don't have a basic understanding of how they fit together. he said imagine we have science words like a neutron or gravity but we didn't really understand how physics work and fit

together. that's where we are. and so i do think we have this imputation that blows in a certain way in the direction, this sort of prevailing breeze we are not always satisfied with. i mentioned i went to high school and my folks still live in one in pennsylvania just west of here and you see the parents there and in many places around the country attracting a certain style of raising their kids and so you go to an elementary school and the kids, the third graders come out and are wearing these 80 lb that if the wind blows them over like beetles on the ground because we want them to study and homework and get ready for the harvard emissions test. they get picked up in volvos because in that town it socially acceptable the luxury cars a long as it comes from the country hostile to those u.s. policy. [laughter] they get picked up by this creature i wrote about in an

earlier book who are highly successful women taking time off to a sure their kids get into harvard and they weigh less than their own children. [laughter] and they're doing a little exercises during the moment of conception in the delivery room cutting the umbilical cord themselves, the baby sort of plops out there in the may ander and flash cards. [laughter] and they turned into little achievement machines and they are not really happy with it. they don't think this is the most important thing that the tiger mom down the street is doing it and they feel into the system they think ridiculed but they can't renounce. they are often in a system where they character matters most but they don't have a vocabulary for it so when people talk about morality oftentimes we end up talking about shopping and so we have the bin and jerry's ice cream company on the foreign

policy and i joked in one of my books ben and jerry should make a pacifist toothpaste doesn't kill germs just asks them to leave. [laughter] a whole foods market, the grocery store where all the cashiers look like they are on loan from amnesty international. [laughter] my household we buy their seaweed snacks for kids to come home and say mom i want a snack that will help prevent colon or rectal cancer. [laughter] and so, you know, i think though this is sort of the world we are trapped in but we realize that is actually not all there is and there is more to life that we should be experiencing so i was thinking about this problem and became aware of this other sphere in life where they were looking into some of the deeper things and awfully it was and theologians it wasn't really

philosophers but it was people who study the human mind in this incredibly exciting period in the study of the mind and it's being done across a wide range of spheres like the nero cognitive science, psychology, the neuroeconomics, people are looking into the human mind, and it is a resolution consciousness if you want to put it that way because when you synthesize their findings across the different spheres you start with three key insights and the first is that while the conscious mind rights the autobiography of the species, most of the action and the impressive action is happening on consciously the low level of awareness. one way to think about this is the human mind to leave the mind can take 20 million pieces of information which it can process about 40. and all the rest is being done without our being aware of it. and a lot of the things going on our somewhat odd and my favorite finding from the university of buffalo scholar is people named

dennis are disproportionately likely to become dentists. [laughter] people named lawrence are likely to become lawyers because unconsciously we gravitate towards things familiar which is why i named my daughter the president of the united states brooks. [laughter] ebit and some of the things going on on consciously are sort of impressive. it's not the tangled web of sexual urges that freud imagined. it is just a different way of understanding the world. and often yielding superior results. one of the tapes i read about is if you have a tough decision you can't make up your mind tell yourself you will decide by a coin flip and then flip the coin but don't go by the flip, but when your emotional reaction. are you happy or sad it came up that way and that is your unconscious mind having made the decision telling you what it thinks. and then the third area that happens unconsciously is the

most important how do we really two people, how do we understand situations and received the world, these are the fundamental factors and whether we are going to have a successful or unsuccessful life and a lot of that is happening on consciously. the second insight is that emotions aren't the enemy of thinking they are the center of thinking. people have strokes and lesions and can process are not super smart, they are super done because what the emotions do is assign value to things. they tell you what you what, what you value, why you don't value and if you don't have that valuation device you cannot make rational decisions so they are not separate from reason they are the foundation of reason. malae middle-aged guy not comfortable talking about demotion particularly. one of the scientific experiments i ran into i still think it's at the truth which is they took the middle-aged guys and put them brain scan machines and had them of a horror movie and describe their feelings

toward their wives and the brain scans were the same in both circumstances. laughter could just sheer terror. my wife says to me writing a book about emotion like don be writing a book about gluttony. [laughter] it's not a natural thing. and yet emotions really are the center of how we perceive the world and value of the world. they are the center of our brain organizes itself. >> what are you reading this summer? book tv wants to know. >> [inaudible] people who have extraordinary memories. there's also a new book out which has just been published. when it comes to others there is

a columnist for "the new york times" [inaudible] quite a few things have come up. >> visit booktv.org to visit this and other reading lists. >> this is where it really gets interesting. one of the individuals was a slave to washington was a woman named onie and she was a young woman probably early to mid 20s who helped martha washington to address her committed cooking, household kind of work, and she found out somewhere in 1795, 1796 that martha washington was planning to give her away as a gift for a wedding of one of her

relatives. now what this meant was that whatever promise the washingtons had made to their sleeves at some point you would be free wasn't going to be out the door. so onie began to make her plans to get out the door. so one night in the spring of 7096 while of washington's more in the living room having dinner, onie went out the door, and you can see them calling her, where is the suit, onie, where is she at? onie was gone. she made contact with the black community there and she has her other personal possessions and then she vanished. as it turned out, accidentally she was discovered to be in new hampshire. the washingtons found out by a complete accident so they decided to go after her because

even as president of the united states, someone who declared himself as antislavery, you would have thought she would say she's gone, i'm representing the country, let it go. they wouldn't let it go so they went after her. initially now they were embarrassed about it so they try to do it in a subterfuge way to meet with her and sit down and say if you come back, then all is forgiven and we will let you free. onie was well i am free now so i don't really see the point of this discussion. i'm not going back. so that program failed. then washington decided we will send the slave catchers after her and have my nephew go and figure out a way to kidnap her and bring her back.

but so she was able to get away and the washington's never got her back. she never went back into slavery and lived to be very old, i think well into her 80s she became active in her community and even though she never went back into slavery the rest of her life she was basically a fugitive given the law of the country at the time. think about it. this is a young woman who basically challenges the most powerful person in the country. this is the president of the united states with all the military and political power in the country at his beck and call that is so driven by her own desire for freedom not to mention she writes about or talks about the inspiration from the haitian revolution which had happened in the early 79 these and whether you were illiterate or not, every single sleeve in

the country knew about the haitian revolution but she was also by the american revolution. so think about it. and the people enslaved to jefferson and these other presidents, they were there at every moment when the discussions and the debate about american democracy, american freedom, the principles of the country were happening. they get more of an easier and access to those debates and discussions than any of the journalists, scholars, people writing about the government at that time. so how could they not be influenced? how could they not understand these contradictions much more profoundly than anybody else out there? most of them didn't have the opportunity to escapes and get away, but she did. she was one of the people who said i will risk it all. the washingtons wanted to punish her and send her dow