>> that was after words booktv signature program in which authors of the latest nonfiction books are interviewed by journalists, public policymakers, legislators and others familiar with their material. after words airs every week in on booktv at 10:00 p.m. on saturday, 12 and 9:00 p.m. on sunday and 12:00 a.m. on monday. you can also watch after words on line. go to booktv.org and click on "after words" and the book tea service topics list on the upper right side of the page. ..

still a trip to the museum here when i'm stupak williams high school so had the chance to come back and purchased been a program like this is special and it's also special to have somebody liked ben mezrich. i was talking to one of my friends and he was like that guy gets all the best stories. and that's true sao author of 12 books he says no one read his first six which i don't believe. but you know and i'm sure for the book bringing down the house which was needed to a movie with

kevin spacey called 21. i'm sure you know him from the book the social network and now i know we will be talking about this book called sex on the moon which is fantastic and so many ways but not the least of which centered here in texas and please is featured in the book from the johnson space center to a night on the coast i think will be familiar to many of you. so please welcome to dallas and to the stage, ben mezrich. [applause] >> so, am i wrong that when i heard the title of the book was a sex on the moon i thought that was a drink for college kids had. laughter to estimate it does sound like a drink. my wife came up with the title so i wasn't a dirty mind behind the title. laughter to the main character

did this breitman rocks on a bid and had sex with his girlfriend on the moon and so that's i'm afraid it's getting caught in a span filters. [laughter] >> as i was reading it i kept thinking the title and where did it come from. you get to a moment later in the book becomes evident as to why the book is called that. very quick, because i'm guessing that many people have not had the chance to read it so this is one of those delicate things you don't want to give away what happens but -- >> i tend to give away too much. >> phyllis about thad and what he is and what he does. you said he's the most complex individual that you have written about indoor books. take that, mark zuckerberg. [laughter] tell us about him and what mainly attracted you to tell his story. >> thad roberts came from a very hard background country

fundamentalist mormon family. he was kicked out of his house when he was 18 for that meeting to premarital sex, and then he decided he wanted to be an astronaut and he changed his life and kind of became a james bond and majored in geology and physics and astronomy at the university of utah and learned how to fly airplanes and scuba dive and spoke what i said five languages, and then he got into nassau's the five johnson space center, it's a co-op program so it's for college kids, but it's a theater to the astronaut training programs and he was achieving his dream. he is a big star and became the social leader with of the interns and then he fell in love with a young intern, and we've all done something stupid out of love. but thad roberts did is stole a safe of moon rocks from his professor's office, and as i said, spread them on a bed, had sex with his girlfriend and tried to sell them over the internet to a belgium gm dealer

whose name was axle. you couldn't have invented this guy. he's never been out in his life, he's collecting rocks and treats them every monday night in this huge center where all the guys treat rocks. his hobby i have never heard of is a sport where there is a wooden bird on a 100-foot pole and all of these men stand around and shoot with crossbows. this is real. i never heard of it. so he sees this data on the internet, i've got moon rocks for sale, and he's a big believer in right and wrong so he immediately called the fbi, he mailed the fbi in tampa and it became a big testing operation and thad roberts was taken down -- i always give it away but you know he got arrested. [laughter] >> you obviously have come off of the enormous success with not only the book but the fact they've converted to movies

which helps in terms of that notoriety. >> d.c. the titles and it's really annoying. sex on the moon is one they have to. >> they are locked in on that one. >> certainly you would say that you are working on this at the time that the social network was being filmed so there was some kind of overlap but at that point i always thought that in the way that actors and actresses are as good as the rules the choose, writers are only as good as the stories they pick. so what was it you just explained notwithstanding of all the stories you could have told what is it that attracted you to this particular? >> for me the stories come to me. i don't look for them anymore ever since bringing down the house i get 20 or 40 a week just every college kid who does something crazy will call me. i always wanted to write about nasa but when you think of nasa you think of the 60's, tom hanks and a little silver castle, and

this let me get inside nasa today. so out of the blue he contacted me, he'd just gotten out of prison on probation, and it was weird because i never met someone who had spent almost a decade in prison before so i arranged to meet him at a crowded hotel lobby. [laughter] but he was the nicest most charismatic and good looking smart guy who did something stupid. >> the nicest allin you had ever met. >> she really was and i was amazed no one had written about the story. there had been one article in "the new york times" mabey texas there had been more stuff but i didn't see anything about this and i couldn't believe it. the first thing i did is filed freedom of information with the fbi to get the fbi file which is thousands of pages. i even got when the fbi agents took him down they were wearing lawyers and i got the transcript of everything said on the wires and the first thing he said when he walked into the restaurant is if you are wearing a lawyer i am

screwed. that is on tape. so it was wild. it was about a year long he interviewing everybody i could. >> and there's one section in the book which i think is just great with there's the correspondence between thad who's going by the name robinson. as the machine was a geologist as it turns out. >> i didn't know. but you are reprinting those e-mails and -- >> he was very excited i was writing this book. he actually nasa gave him as a gift for solving the paper he named a master right after him so there is an asteroid floating around somewhere but yeah, everything in the book is reprinted directly and a lot of the dialogue is actually coming you know, straight from the transcripts and everything. i do get attacked a lot in the press for my style which is a very kind of dramatic cinematically of telling a non-fiction story, but the reality is that everything --

everything here is from the files. >> you brought that up so that something i wanted to visit about. certainly that came out a lot in bringing down the house. i wonder if you could talk about that technique you employee as a writer commodores controversy. how you imply that and why. in "the new york times" review that came out yesterday she hated you. [laughter] i mean i think that's part of it. it was the sort of hangover from that. so tell me why we do it that way. >> it's been like this my entire career. i am a cinematic linker and this is the kind of stuff i like to read. it's a form of journalism i guess that all the information i interviewed just about everybody, thousands of pages of court documents, all the fbi stuff and then i sit down and tell the story in a very visual way and there are going to be journalists who do not like.

but you know, i don't necessarily right for him, i write for me and the people who like this kind of book and the reality is it is a true story and it's as true as anything else on the nonfiction list. you see a biography of cleopatra. come on. nobody knows anything about cleopatra. and you see a biography of abraham lincoln and, you know, obama's biography has invented characters. it's a process, you know, you have to take the facts and then write in a certain way. i choose to write it in a very cinematically. for instance i will interview thad roberts and the other kid there today, this guy gordon in the book. so i know there was a conversation that took place ten years ago between these people and i don't know the exact words so one journalist might say they talked about noon rocks, but to me that is a very boring and week way of telling the scene.

so i describe what they did with the moon rocks and there was some journalists who don't and there would be a controversy forever that certain journalists will never like it with the social networks and accidental billionaires' marked the zucker byrd said not true. and he called me the jackie collins of silicon valley which i loved. but, you know, he never pointed out anything that wasn't true. she never said this isn't true. he just said the whole thing isn't true and then he didn't read the book so why don't know where you go with that. so i think their reality is it is a very true story. he meant to have sex on moon rocks because he wanted to be like having sex on the moon. he spread among the dead and had sex on the moon. they have a problem with that theme saying he just put them under the mattress but that isn't true, she did this on purpose and so i use the facts

but i tell it in my style and, you know, some people like it and some people don't. >> you are saying some journalists might not like it. or to a journalist or -- >> i never saw myself as a journalist. i saw myself in the entertainment business and i only stumbled into true stories. i always hated nonfiction and grew up watching really bad television and i was a fan of pop culture and movies and the nine entities and 90 kids in a bar and i was hanging out in a bar in boston called crossroads which if any of you go there it is an mit dive bar. [applause] there you go. i like that. if you can imagine an mit by far is a bunch of geeky guice -- i'm sorry, i am a geeky guy, too. [laughter] these guys have all this money and there was a hundred dollar bills and in boston university 100-dollar bills. i don't know what it's unlike in

dallas. >> thousands. [laughter] >> allin boston university them because it's all college kids. and i couldn't figure out why so i went over to the house and in his laundry was $250,000 band it stacks of hundreds come and i thought he's got to be a drug dealer but he wasn't it the next day we flew to vegas and i ended up joining the team and said i want to read this story so was my first true story, so i can give dillinger nonfiction book i wrote like a thriller because that's what i had been writing so it wasn't like i'm going to sit down and write nonfiction. it's just i was writing fiction then ran into a true story and that's been the way accidental billionaire, same thing. sitting at home and i get an e-mail that to in the morning and it's a harvard senior actually from houston, and he said - best friend co-founded facebook and no one has ever heard of him. so i got for the drink -- this all involves drinking -- and and walks eduardo and he's angry and

furious that marked zuckerberg screwed him and wanted to tell his story. so i was in another true story. it's been a weird stumbling my way for nonfiction. estimate there's been an experience for you for example in bringing down the house, you actually were part of that culture and that's what brought -- because i think most -- i want to stay with us for a minute because it think it's interesting in terms of what readers expect when they sit down with a book how it's marketed and built as. and i feel we all have that kind of classic notion of the suspension of disbelief so you're point with cleopatra is well taken it is true bringing down the house there were large sections cannot large sections but there were scenes that were created to help move the story along. >> i disagree. there was definitely claims by people who were not on the mit black jack team who said those things didn't happen, but the reality that please close on what happened there is a scene like the big scene people talked

about is when they use them to change in the chip and i was told that by two members of the team who were there. so maybe you can discount to their stories. i definitely interviewed a few strippers and you could probably discount to their stories. but the reality is you can only go so far in terms of how many interviews you do and whether or not you believe it happened to read all the journalists make choices. so it is what it is. an accidental billionaires' of course it is more heavily vetted. aaron sorkin writing the screenplay of those social network there were teams of lawyers and everyone involved in making a movie like that. so it's pretty accurate to be i would say the social network was very closely to what least what they believe happened and the other guys you couldn't invent, right? [laughter] six foot five, olympic twin rowers. when i first met then i walked in the hotel room and i don't know if it was tyler, you can't

really tell, tyler is like you look at us and think we must be the bad guys. if this were in the 80's movie we would be addressed as skeletons keep chasing of the karate kid. it put in the movie a that ended up ralf called because he is the original crotty kid. i love that line. so that was cool. [laughter] but anyway there's a lot of different sources and different opinions of what happened. >> we touched on a couple things i want to make sure we talk about. when you talk about the cinematic quality of your writing and i want to hold that because it think the audience would be interested to know this sort of jump that you've made from sitting at your desk body yourself pounding of these books and the translation to the biggest green because i think that is an experience in its own. let me hold on that and say that one of the things we've seen particularly in these last three books is you are sort of drawn to a particular type of character it seems to me young and smart and pushing the

envelope of what ever it is that they are doing. is that a fair characterization? >> it's always been a guy is so far but it isn't by choice that is just who calls me. >> what is it about that world that appeals to you? >> i live vicariously through them. i still pretty much income and the idea that you could go from that to rock star or sitting alone in the room suddenly a billionaire were kid living the high life in vegas. it is a vicarious thrill ride. >> it's interesting because it can to make the .1 as a result of his upbringing and coming to houston and not knowing anybody he wanted to be the guy people recognize as the social leader and the person coming up with all of these not exactly pranks' but who could get into the space

shuttle simulator and pushed abounds but building up to that climax. >> absolutely this is a kid that made everyone's loves. he was on cbs sunday morning and that is what he said. i've needed people to love me and there is no bigger need than that and he didn't have that growing up and that is what he did. and yet i think there is that transformation i like to write about. >> you were saying you met with eduardo and the winkle foster wins, but here it's slipped. he is your main source with house that a different writing that and were their moments even his story began to seem fantastic were you able to check certain things because there are some moments that stretch the bounds it seems to me. how do you go about betting whether what he is telling you is correct or if he's spinning

retail? >> with mark zuckerberg i spent a year trying to talk to him and he refused. he knew i was talking to edgardo and it was his right to say no but again, i spent a year and he was very nice but in the end no, no. thad wanted to tell his story and i got hundreds of hours of him on tape telling at and in the beginning he wasn't telling me the truth and was a matter of once i have all the files i could confront him and say that isn't what happened here of course with the fbi and according to the court transcripts and according to the of the people there and then he would back off and wait a little bit and say okay this is what really happened. so yes there is that aspect of it and if i am a journalist, that is the main form of my journalism is seen where people are longing to become and it was -- in the end he was open and honest. i said listen, here's the deal. especially with my book they will be picked apart so you need to tell this route.

and so, he did. in the end he did and he was open and honest with me and there is that thing i did start to like him a lot and as a writer that is where things get tricky because if someone is extremely likable what he did was pretty bad. this guy stole our national treasure, and then gave their lives to get moon rocks and still look for petty reasons. when you look objectively its portable but at the same time you're sitting with this kid and he's screwed up his life because he just felt it would be cool it's hard not to feel bad for him and start to like him and anybody that meant thad roberts would love him he is a very lovable guy and he did a very bad thing. for the author that may be my main problem for the subject is

i want to be a part of it. so, yeah, i guess that there is that. i think that he does come across very sympathetic and i think that you don't know where this is it a bad as he's coming through these other establishing at nasa you see that he's talented and working hard and trying to improve himself i think there is a question as he sat in his interviews with cbs this sunday morning program brough to he doesn't know why he did what he did and he looks back on that some of the puzzling aspect. and if you do get the sense that part of it, personally that made him great also led him to the rail and kind of go down this other path. >> absolutely. >> you talk about writing in a cinematic way. he referred to that a couple of times already in our

conversation to tell me when you're sitting down to write these books are you already thinking of what may happen in the movies -- >> i'm 100% that way. >> is started with my first book. called threshold in 1996 i've always been a systematic writer and then with bringing down the house when it became a movie suddenly i had a kevin spacey became my first readers i was writing books and he's one of the first to read it. and now space and mike who plays a dog in this industry so why do know when i sit down that, you know, this could be a movie in volume picture in -- i am not texturing justin timberlake running around nasa billion picture in a very visual -- not that i don't think he would be great, which he would -- i'd kick during a very visual setting in that way because i think there is a synergy now. books become movies more and more frequently i feel at least i've been fortunate in that

respect. and this one we feel is the same people right in the social network, same producers and kevin spacey and dana sorkin, sorry, not sorkin, dalorka. but movies are much more fun. when i said michael vroom in boston for three months of solid loneliness, you have to be picturing a big screen in your head. >> would you rather be watching a movie or reading a book? >> i love reading and i am sad that in a way i like the kindle and it is a great device but because books are so wonderful and i read all the time and i watch a lot of tv and movies and i kind of consume all forms of entertainment but books are great, i you grew up with books and i wish they could last forever. >> the hollywood aspect has obviously been good to you. i.t. to into the golden globe as

kevin spc plus one. estimate it was amazing. it was a weird experience because normally someone like me wouldn't be sitting anywhere near actual celebrities because i write books in hollywood that means you are down here. by kevin was -- debose kevin kunkel dittman, mcginn fox and brian austin green lynn scarlett johansson, and then right behind me was bruce willis. was crazy. i had to go to the borat or manly netflix reva netflix and i run right into brad pitt and angelina jolie. you guys really are good looking. [laughter] it was a wild experience. i see myself as just a guy from boston. i'm always kind of just wandering around the corner of these things and was just a wild experience. >> tell yourself how involved you are in the production and in

the actual creative process behind the film. obviously there in the sorkin -- >> when you get a guy like sorkin -- >> i had in writers i've talked with over the years were writers that i know that have had books made into films. there is one school of thought that's mine and mine alone. there's john grisham like the famous for saying once it goes i could care less. it's not mine anymore. tell about your creative involvement in how your creative involvement will be an "sex on the moon." >> for me i mostly involved in when the screenplay is written. erin came to boston and we sat in the hotel room and i wasn't finished reading was a strange situation to that i was literally handing him chapters and writing the screenplay so that was a really cool thing and then once they are onset the director is god. he runs it and david. and thus that really just

fronts. i'm very and if they have any questions that no control once you sell the book of the asking things and have input and with a story like this i will be involved in that but this kind of like what a john grisham says anyway once you sell it is theirs. it's your book and their movie and it's hard to say that, but at the same time i've been very lucky. i love 21. i thought it was a great movie and i love the social network. so so far it's been great. you never know what is going to happen. >> would you ever just write a screenplay? >> i've done a couple of screenplays and i did a draft of some of my earlier books which hasn't been made yet sadly but it's a different format and for me. they have to want me to. i still time as a struggling writer.

they don't necessarily want you to adapt your own for whatever reason. it's not normally the first thing they'd like to go to. so, we will see. >> who should pay thad? >> i get asked that again and it's going to be up to the director and producer it's got to be a good looking guy that can be both athletic and like a mountain climbing guy and a geek. i've heard of people like justin timberlake and rob patton said it would be cool if people couple little bit. this definitely a lot of younger guys that could pull it off. i think it is a real juicy role for a guy. estimate the stock about the other aspect of the book business which i think is also interesting to coax which is you are now on a whirlwind promotional tour 5 a.m. flight in the city and multiple interviews a day. how does that square with the writer we always think of as

being cornered often the rest of the world as he is seriously trying to get that last chapter right to be dropped in the world of the media push. >> it is a culture shock because you spend half of your life locked in a room and the other half talking to people. i like the entertainment aspect but it's weird having schedules because normally you don't care what time it is and you get deep into whatever the project is and have control over your life and when you are on tour you have no control but it's also a wonderful and i will say that my tour has changed dramatically. i remember my first book tour, my first stop was from the tunnell radio which is a radio station that only errors in the callahan tunnel in boston. so literally a station in 100 yards of the tunnel and it's a traffic station someone got the idea of putting authors not gone. no one wants to hear you because they are trying to get the traffic report and then my second stop is a massachusetts

is a public access television station and i had written a book called threshold and i mentioned in the future there may not be doors because we will be able to genetically choose our children. it was a little sentence in the book and i never thought of it and i show up at this public station and there's two chairs like this and inform is a dwarf and it was my second stop of my life and i sit down and i start to think we the second this isn't good. [laughter] and it was a debate. i didn't say there shouldn't be floors, i said there might not be. >> you mean people won't want to choose floors? but then there was no budget and so after the interview ended the go outside and he had to give me a ride home. [laughter] so, i don't know, it was a

strange day. >> you're next book the lead character. >> i am a big fan. in the game of thrones. >> you said that you don't have your next one lined up now and to continue to the media push. how will you begin to decide if. will you be looking for for that next project. >> it's like every person commits a crime. i need that young kid really smart too small a bad person who's in that gray area between right and wrong. this is the first heist that i've written and then there has

to be all those elements on the effect seemed all those kind of things they don't like, and then there has to be some level of fun for me. so there has to be a place i want to go. because you spent six months to a year doing it so going to vegas, of some. i wouldn't go somewhere that would be horrible. so yeah, those are the kind of things. estimate for the next project you are looking for that type of character. >> you know he's got a story so that's what i'm looking for so if anybody knows him -- >> e-mail address. >> i don't know what is next, wait and see. >> what are you -- what are you reading and doing when you are not working on the books and as you say, just all the time that you are spending with the research what are you reading

and what writers cents by year you? >> right now the game of thrones is amazing. they are just scared because of the hbo? >> i was like this is agreed. now i'm reading them all and those books are the reason the kimball was great because reading of -- carrying them are not serious. i read a lot of what comes out. so i read i think sebastian yonder is a phenomenal reuter and he will go to afghanistan and so good for him. i read it all. i love the hundred games trilogy which is odd that i would like that but it's really good. >> are you more comfortable now with screenwriters as opposed to other authors? >> my friends -- i have a lot of writing friends but overall, i don't know of that many because

i don't live in l.a. and they are all there. but yeah, i don't have a lot of close friends who are writers, i have a couple, matthew pearl who rode the dante club. a wonderful book come he is great. a few other local writers, but you know, i don't -- we don't sit around and drink coffee in turtlenecks. [laughter] but yeah. >> we are starting to come up on the time. he will be doing a book signing immediately after and there's other evens obviously with late nights at dhaka dma. what we would really like the audience to do is if you have a question please come down to one of the standing microphones at the front and we will take you in order for 15 minutes or so and then wrap up the evening at that point. if you have some questions you might begin to kind of think of

those but let's just continue a little bit more and then turn over to the audience. how would you describe how your writing has changed? nobody had read your first six books saw what he told me is he graduated from harvard and you knew you wanted to write books, not magazine articles or poems, but books curious if you lock yourself away. how do you feel like you've matured as a writer and better than you were now? >> i look myself in the room and wrote nine novels and there were dark stories that take place in bars in new york city. none of them got published or got 190 rejection slips by everyone in new york and then i read john grisham and my book and read a thriller and so my first six were thrillers and they were pretty trashy. they were fun but pop culture, google scientists and one of them was a tv movie called fatal error if any of you saw, i hope

you didn't and i apologize, starting antonio jr., the underwear model coming and he plays a surgeon. he's actually great, but there is a scene where i was watching with my dad who is a doctor now and he leans over the patient's chest and goes we have a subdural hematoma and my dad turns to me and he's like you know that's in the head, right? [laughter] i think i've gotten a lot better than that. [laughter] but you know, i think my style is improving. i feel that sex on the moon is my best book. i think bringing down the house was a transitional moment in my life because i realize i could write a true story, and i wrote that in six weeks in vegas, so literally stayed in a different hotel for each might. publishers say the heat when you wrote it that quickly. but the reality was it was a crazy like a was living and

writing and was just knots, and that became this emerging technique where i just go inside and live the story but i will say anybody out there that wants to be a writer, those days of rejection are kind of the most noble and romantic times of your life and you should look forward to the rejection. i, being gay geeky dhaka had rejection up to that point, but then it became books and i would put them on the walls and each one would become this thing i would have to beat rejection and i will say that when i got into public and finally started to sell my book every person that i worked with i had a rejection letter from which was kind of cool and they were like we love your stuff. what about this? [laughter] you didn't love this, right? so, you learn from the rejection and there's a huge wall in publishing that's impossible to get over. it is a tough business. but it's that climb over the

wall i think that makes you better, and i feel like now i'm a very different writer than i was in the beginning. >> you said you think that this is your best work, your best effort. what is it about? >> most of the geeky by is that i wrote about before were unable to and this was the first character -- [laughter] in which falling in love became his problem. and it was his downfall and it's really new for me to write a romance, the love letters he wrote or from within the book. the access that i had to him even when i was with the mit kids, this was different. this was a kid fleeing about saying this is my life and i screwed up. so there's more in it than anything i've written about before and during writing this book i had a kid, which a lot of you probably know, it changes your life in a dramatic way, and i think that is infused to me

any way because, you know, you're not sleeping but you're also dealing with, you know, massive sort of understanding things differently and i try to get inside this kid's head more and more. >> i can do better than that. >> thank you very much. i appreciate it. >> the book obviously is "sex on the moon." we will do questions for about 15 minutes and then there will be a book signing immediately afterwards. >> please, if you ask questions we have standing microphones at the front and we will call on you and five-year away. >> you asked what books to read now. i'm curious to know what books you have liked and read growing up. >> my parents had a rule we had to read two books before we were able to watch tv which seems draconian now that i have a kid but i was obsessed with television so for me and became a speed reader but anything

counted, so i got into science-fiction. then i graduated and the sun also rises and i kept reading at and from there i go through periods of different types of books. i've read every genre there is to read. i was nonstop for one year. i don't know why, it was awesome. so i shift from to sing. i don't limit myself. so yes, growing up it was mostly science fiction. >> an accidental billionaires' you didn't interview mark zuckerberg or the people mad at him. do you take their bodies into account? >> i feel like in that book it is clear that a lot of it is from eduardo. i think the movie is a little bit more marked but i did have shom parker who was on the other

side and i also had a lot of people who knew him extremely well to college friends to people that worked at facebook even though they sent along an e-mail not to speak to me that made people want to talk to me, so there were a lot of sources. it would have been great, it would have been wonderful, no question, but i don't think there's any way that you could get that movie and say that it's not true. i think the people who were there other than mark say that that is what happened. so, yes, eduardo had an ax to grind. you can see the twins all the time they have an ax to grind. sean parker was a good source and wonderful person. i thought they caught him perfectly and sean is looking more and more like justin timberlake and that is a positive thing but yes, you do have to take that into account and i feel like you could tell

which scenes from a it was the fresh point of view and which aren't, but it's one of the issues. >> yes, sir. >> other than "sex on the moon," it may be but which of the books have you written, which one was your favorite? >> ugly americans is a book that not as many people read. estimate a follow-up on matt, are you still shopping ugly americans? >> it is a true story about a kid from new jersey that place football and had never been out of jersey, gets a phone call, princeton university college football player, gets a call coming in fights them to japan, he packs a duffel bag, flies to japan, ends up working for a guy that some of you might remember was a 26-year-old trader who bankrupted the entire biggest bank of england by bidding of the assets of the japanese stock market. he goes to jail in the main character becomes a hot shot cappoli in asia, falls in love with the daughter of a japanese gangster and makes a single deal

that makes $500.5 minutes and has to leave japan quickly. that takes place in japan and the sort of underground of japan is kind of a story about leaving large and asia as a was a fun book that sold well on wall street. every wall street got a had a copy of the but it didn't really catch but we worked on the movie for a while, kevin spacey and dena are involved and numerous studios so hopefully it will get made but bringing down the house looking for me is if you want to know what i write so between those three really. >> thanks for coming by the way. >> this is fun. >> and terry is on your latest book what was the subject incentive for wanting to talk and have the story written and also and carries about the sleep

of nonfiction have you thought about avoiding the controversy? >> first the publishers of a look at it, their lawyers and editors look and say this is true, so that's on the one hand on the letter and i feel strongly that it's non-fiction think it's clear the non-fiction and you go through chapter by chapter any of my books and every scene can be documented both in court documents and interviews, so yes, it's written stylistically in a way that reads like a thriller but there's no way to cut fiction because everything in that happened. so, you know, obviously it's always going to be a controversy because there will be journalists searching out james. that's the whole thing. but in the opening of my book i say exactly what i'm going to do so there is no scandal and that upsets journalists because they want scandal so badly so they always say you recreate a

dialogue. will that says on page one i'm going to create the dialogue but it's not made up dialogue is created from the people who are there. so no, i don't have a problem with it. i love talking of it. the expect me to run away from oprah, but i'm happy to talk about it. i think it is a very valid form of nonfiction that goes back to tom wolfe and goes back beyond that. there's folks plenty and the designation is up to the publishers that i think it is clearly nonfiction. the second question was about thad, why did he come to me. that is a great question. he saw himself as a movie character. when he did the crime the james bond theme song was going through his head. [laughter] and so he wants to be seen this or infamous which is tricky obviously but at the same time, he also feels like he's been an enormous amount of his life in prison, seven and a half years

is like murderers get seven and a half years, so he has the moon rocks for a week and he used them, no question about that, but he felt like he had served so much time that telling his story was the right thing to do. it's not that he's proud he did it but at the same time he feels like he did this crazy thing and there's no reason why he shouldn't tell people. does he feel bad about it? yes. is he ashamed of himself? i don't think so. but people come to me because i want to get famous i think this a friendly part of it, but also a look at it like the mit kids like we had a sports career that nobody knows about and want people to know about it, so yes. >> i thought that one of your best books was rigged and if you have a chance to spend some time in dubai. >> it is a true story about a kid that had 1 foot in the world

of carver, a harvard business kid and one is from the tough streets of brooklyn he looked at the exchange in new york where they treated oil and there's a very physical exchange exciting for inches on the trading floor and then he went to dubai and set up the oil trading will begin to buy at the time and it's a crazy story that takes place and in dubai, very short trip for me you like the hot weather. for me it's a little weak, but it's a wild story, the oil which i knew nothing about and i heard about that story, this kid i knew and he invited me when bringing down the house came down so i went down to read the bill and i looked at this incredible siege of tough guys from brooklyn pushing and shoving and throwing tickets at each other and there was a clerk that was a small guy so he hired a bunch of people behind him

whose entire job was to hold him to the trading floor and i was like this is cool so that's what made me write rigged and we are working on that as well so we will see if that gets going. >> i just wanted to read something funny based on the conversation about recreating a dialogue. this is tonight's program. the reports over thousands of pages of court records, fpi transcript and documents and is interviewed most of the participants in the crimes reconstructed as ocean 11 style heist has a story of genius and duplicity. already the novel has been snatched up by hollywood in a film. >> that happens. i think people use the word novel interchangeably. i hope that's not my fault but this -- it will always be a

controversy i think in my career but most people are coming around to this form of new nonfiction and it's funny when i tour in the england and europe and they have no problem with it. there's not even a discussion of it. why are american journalists so upset with your writing and i don't know what to tell them. it seemed to be more controversial as "the new york times" than it is anywhere else. yes, ma'am. >> i wanted to ask you for your next big project when you're looking, do you prefer to write about it in the project about a story that is unfolding over the retrospective like a social network. at that point you don't know where it's going to end and you don't want to chase something and then it doesn't happen. it would be the idea has the story that you are in the effect of it as it is happening.

both of this happened a number of years ago. so, that was a little different and you can try to recreate it yourself. i would love it if it were happening but you have to know the ending. the other question, yes, ma'am, please. >> can you share with us, i hope i pronounced this right, what thad is doing? >> he got out of prison and went back to the university to get his ph.d. to really think that he's just recently left utah and still wants to get to space, that is his dream of the slain not in nasa but he says navy in the private sector monday. he is a smart guy. it's a question whether he can overcome his own demons. he has issues. he's very spontaneous and maybe he needs to control himself. i hope the best for him and he served his time and paid his

dues and study and is brilliant and get a ph.d. and move on that way. >> how has he responded to the book? >> he liked most of it, he didn't like the prominence or the idea that he was rewarded for taking him down come he didn't like some of the ways that he described it as being little delusional in the aspect of it, but he also said it was hard to see yourself from someone else's commesso he liked a lot of it, he felt a captured living being at nasa and all that in the beginning very well. there were things he didn't like. >> any other questions? >> yes, sir, please. >> [inaudible] stelle equine did you find out

that -- >> i think it's all about mars. i think that is the next step. even though obviously when you think about it we are going to spend billions of dollars to try to do this and you think it's crazy but at the same time we spend billions of dollars doing all sorts of things and why not do something that is incredible? when you think that to the moon landing there was no point to that, right? [laughter] but it was incredible, wright? it changed our lives in the world and i feel like we should do that again. i would love to see the money put into mars. that would be my dream. i think it's sad the space shuttle ending. it's sad to see these things that advance the human species just by existing, i feel, so i feel like the race to mars would advance us in ways we can't tell yet. so, that is my theory pro nasa speech, but i hope we find a mission to mars. >> what has the response been?

>> this was a guy from the insight who stole a secret of their campus. they were not thrilled, they didn't want me to make him into a hero and all these things the but i feel like they haven't responded since the book has come out, so when people actually read the book they are going to love it because i think it makes nasa look for a cool and want people to get involved. i think they will like it but i thought facebook was like a social network and eventually did. they did come around towards the end. but it isn't a head job on nasa, that's for sure. >> one last question and we will call it an evening. yes man in a little. >> [inaudible] >> thad to the crime and then took the fall for that and said it was entirely him and he forced them to do it so she's the only one, him and this guy and they went to jail and the girls did not. they got permission and she never spoke to him again. it was sad.

they've known each other three weeks. it was a quick love. [laughter] and when she was in the courtroom and i feel it was the judge for the prosecutor asks her you knew him for three weeks why would you do this and she's like i'm still trying to figure that out. succumbing you know, it was one of those things. they've moved on with their life and they were not happy i wrote this book. i talked to the main character and she asked me to change her name and wanted nothing to do with it. i feel she's in texas, but she didn't want to be involved, so. >> thank you. >> thank you for being here. [applause] >> for more on author ben mezrich and his work, visit benmezrich.com.

well, it was on july 18th of this year that borders announced it would be liquidating the rest of its stores. joining by phone from new york is news editor of publishers marketplace. what happened in the weeks leading up to july 18th? it seemed borders was going to be resurrected or saved. >> it did seem as if border is was going to be saved. what happened is that the companies which were a private equity company based out of i believe arizona, leche owns direct brands, which had also known to what used to be the book but of the month club. they cut $250 million in assets and also assumed 220 million liabilities. everything was good right up until the beginning of this week when all of a sudden everything started to fall apart.

creditors for borders had objected. they thought that they were not entirely forthcoming in the sense that they were not absolutely sure they would keep boarder's going as a growing concern. so they were worried about this and they couldn't exactly come out and say one way or the other. so depending on what vantage point you are looking at, whether they've pulled out or the bid was canceled and ultimately borders elected to go with their backup plan, which was to go with of the liquidators. in doing so, they avoided having to pay the breakup fee because let's say another had come that wasn't, that bid would have had to pay to give $6.4 million. this way because the liquidators were coming and there was no breakup fee through the court system, and in fact liquidations started today and was approved

at 3 p.m. yesterday in bankruptcy court. >> when using liquidation started, sarah weinman, what does that mean? >> it means today out of business sales are happening in as many as 399 stores. there is a caveat. in court yesterday, they're taking notes and writing about, a late breaking development took place where books a million which is the third largest book chain in the country, they stood in an offer for 40 stores, 22 superstores and eight small restorers, and the details were still being worked out as of today, but the judge approved it provisionally. the creditors had some concerns as well, and to the best of my knowledge they are still working that out, which means that a good 369 stores are beginning liquidation proceedings. by that, it means there were i

believe 40% seals, customers that have borders plus rework cards can use them and other discounts up until about august 5th. the cards are dealt with until the liquidation sales are finished. it means that landlords will be able to market those real-estate properties to others once all these stores close at the end of september. they are trying to get everything sold as quickly as possible and sell furniture, all the contracts they had with various other companies are coming to an end, so it's over. >> you are saying the stores will be closing at the end of september. how many -- talking little about the direct impact, how many employees, puts the revenue base. >> there are about thanks and 700 employees who are going to lose their jobs at this point. if the books a million things come through, let me lead to the

retention of about 1,000 to 1500 jobs but that is still a very small amount of the overall number. the 10,700 employees about i believe approximately 4,000 full-time employees working on the ground in stores as well as those in the borders michigan headquarters. that's a tremendous loss to the overall economic climate and it is a lot of, you know, good hard-working people who are now going to be thrown into an economic climate that is hardly favorable but this point. it's very interesting to see there's been a grass-roots campaign online by various people in the publishing community to figure out employees about to lose their jobs with other potential publishing and book type of jobs that are available. but it is also doing is shining a light on what's going on with independent bookselling.

of course independent bookstores will be greatly impacted by the rise of the superstores like the workers and barnes and noble through the early 90's and in 2000. so it will be very interesting to see what they will be able to do not just as borders retracts and closes up the shop as barnes and noble transition to digital company and of course what has happened with respect to the explosion of the e-book growth. >> sarah weinman was the fiscal health of barnes and noble? >> it is an interesting spot right now. they've had record sales but because they had spent so much money in terms of developing the line and in terms of their digital business they have had to suspend their dividend for the last two quarters, and wall street isn't entirely been happy about this. they've a