with the salinity rising in the soil, however, it makes it a very acidic soil, impossible to grow any of the former dry grains and also impossible to grow any of the things the american agricultural engineers had been looking for such as citrus fruits. but it becomes the perfect incubator for a certain type of crop which we now know is open up. so it's kind of an interesting story that afghanistan had never been able to produce opium prior to 1950 when a u.s. aid development project makes the soil such. >> what do you teach here at george washington? >> i teach a freshman world history survey course. i also in the history department teach modern south asian hawaii hawaii -- history, and i teach masters courses on the geopolitics of afghanistan, and central asia. >> professor hopkins, people watching this might, it might

strike them that you're awfully young to be a professor. >> um, i was very fortunate that i completed my doctorate fairly quickly. i'm actually 33, but i did my doctoral work over at the university of cambridge that has a slightly different setup, and i was able to get my doctorate done fairly quickly and, fortunately, turn it into a manuscript. but that's been due to the support of an awful lot of people that made it possible. >> is this manuscript? >> that is my old manuscript. i actually have another book coming out in about a month called "fragments of the afghan frontier" with columbia university press. >> how did you get interested in this area of the world? >> that's kind of a funny story that nobody's really going to believe. i was applying for graduate school to cambridge, and the person advising me said just find whatever you want to do because in that application you have to put forward a proposal

for what you want to do. and it was, it was august of 2001. i had actually taken a break between my undergraduate and starting my ph.d.. i was going to go to law school at the university of washington. and i was researching kind of areas i thought i wanted to do. i knew i wanted to do south asian history, and i was looking around and said, afghanistan, nobody is doing it. nobody at all is doing it. especially from the historical perspective. so i e-mailed my then-girlfriend and now wife on september 10th, believe it or not. i found it, nobody's doing it, i'm going to do afghanistan, the early 19th century, and i know nobody will believe that story, but i kept the e-mail so i could say, no, actually it did happen that way. and then the more i got into it, the more kind of open territory i realized was there. which is an interesting comment

that after, you know, ten years of being engaged with afghanistan still the academic community, the scholarly community is very, very small in terms of people who actually have a longstanding, developing understanding of afghanistan. there are a number of people especially in washington that have a great and deep understanding of its current politics. however, that kind of longer view of afghanistan, especially pre-1979, is still something that needs to be much more fully developed within the academy. >> and finally, knowing what you know about the history of afghanistan and the area, what would you -- a prediction for what's going to happen in the next 10, 20 years. >> um, well, i'm a historian, so i get to talk about the past rather than the present. with that caveat, i'd say what's

probably most clear is going to be the ongoing u.s. role in afghanistan. and i think that probably everybody knows in the back of their mind what that ongoing role is going to be which is that, yes, there will be a troop drawdown, but i suspect bagram will become a -- that's the main american air base in afghanistan -- i suspect that will become a semipermanent, if not permanent installation. as far as the stability of the afghan state, really it goes back to what i was talking about earlier which is for the afghans to reconstruct that political compact upon which they've had a 200-year history of relative political stability and coherence. they definitely can reconstruct that. the international community can play either an obstructionist or a largely positive role in that, and i think how that's going to turn out is going to largely be dependent on how both the

international community and also stakeholders inside afghanistan act in coming years. >> benjamin hopkins is the author of "the making of modern afghanistan." published by palgrave. >> over the next several months, booktv will travel to several universities to talk with professors who have published recent nonfiction books. this month we speak with authors from george washington university here in washington d.c. and next month we head to george mason university in virginia. for more on our booktv college series, visit booktv.org. >> we'd like to hear from you. tweet us your feedback, twitter.com/booktv. >> next, ben mezrich tells the story of that'd roberts, a fellow at nasa's johnson space center who stole moon rock samples from all six of the

apollo missions and tried to sell them on the internet. [applause] >> thank you. and thank you. isn't it great to be here for late nights at the dma? it's wonderful. [applause] so thank you for joining us for this and, certainly, all of the other programs. i have to say, this is my third opportunity to host one of these conversations for this season, and it's just great. not only the wonderful talent that it's been able to attract, to bring to dallas, but also the fact that i always walk out, and i see a room full of people who love reading and writing as much as i do, and that great community that we share where we're able to talk to authors and talk about their works and enjoy that. i've always said that the dallas museum of art is a special place for me since i grew up here. i took my first field trip to a museum here when i was a student at williams high school, so to have the chance to come back and participate in a program like this is very, very special. and it's also special to have somebody like ben mezrich here

tonight. i was talking to one of my writer friends and told him what i was doing, and he said, oh, that ben, he gets all the great stories that i would love to write. he is now the author of 12 books though he says no one read his first six, which i don't believe. you know him, i'm sure, for the book "bringing down the house." i'm sure you know him from a book called the accidental billionaires which was made into a little movie called "the social network," and i know we'll be talking about this book which is called "sex on the moon" which is so fascinating in ways, and so many of the places that are featured in the book from the johnson space center to a night out on the coast in galveston, i think, will be so familiar to many of you. so, please welcome to dallas and welcome to the stage ben mezrich. [applause]

so am i wrong that when i heard that the title of the book was "sex on the moon," i thought that that was a drink that the college kids had in south padre? [laughter] >> it does sound like a drink. i was not the dirty mind behind the title, but the main character did spread moon rocks on a bed and had sex with his girlfriend on the moon, and so that's -- you know, i'm afraid it's getting caught in spam filters. [laughter] >> yeah, whenever the e-mails go out. >> i know. >> as i was reading it, i kept, you know, sort of processing the title and where did can it come from, and you get to a moment in the book where it becomes very evident why the book is called that. >> right. >> very quick, because i'm guessing many people have not had the chance to read it, so this is one of those delicate things where you don't want to -- >> right. i tend to give away too much. >> tell us about thad and what he is and what he does. >> sure.

>> you said he is the most complex individual that you have written about in any of your books. >> yeah. >> this take that, mark zuckerberg. [laughter] >> yeah, right. >> so tell us a little bit about him and what mainly attracted you to tell his story. >> well, i mean, thad roberts, basically, came from a very hard background, a very fundamentalist mormon family. he was kicked out of his house when he was 18 for admitting to premarital sex, and then he decided he wanted to be an astronaut, and he changed his whole life and kind of became james bond, and he majored in geology and physics and astronomy, and he learned how to fly airplanes and scuba dive and spoke five languages. and then he got into nasa's johnson space center. it's a coop program, so it's for college kids, but it's really a feeder to the astronaut training program. so he was achieving his dream. he was a standout, he was a big star. he became the social leader of all the interns, and then he

fell in love with a young intern and, you know, we've all done something stupid out of love. what thad roberts was he stole a 600-pound safe full of moon rocks from his professor's office and, as i said, spread them on a bed, had sex with his girlfriend and then tried to sell them over the internet to a belgium gem dealer -- >> whose name was? this. >> his name was axle. he's never been out of antwerp in his life. he collects rocks and trades them every monday night in this, you know, huge center where all the guys in antwerp trade rocks. his hobby is toppen jay which is a sport where there's a wooden bird on a 100-foot pole, and all these men stand around it and shoot at it with crossbows. this is a real sport i had never heard of. so he's this guy, and he sees this ad on the internet, i've got moon rocks for sale. so he immediately called the fbi.

he mailed the fbi in tampa, and it became this big sting operation. and thad roberts was taken down -- i always give it away, but you know he got arrested. [laughter] >> don't cross that line. you, obviously, have come off enormous success with not only the books, but also the fact that they then are converted to movies which, obviously, helps in terms of that notoriety. >> they always change the titles of my movie, and it's really annoying, so sex on the moon is the first one i feel like they have to keep. [laughter] >> you're locked in. and certainly you had said you were working on this at the time "the social network" was being filmed, so there was some kind of overlap. in the way that actors and actresses are only as good as the roles that they choose, writers are only as good as the stories that they pick. so what was it -- all that you just explained notwithstanding, of all the stories you could have told, what was it that attracted you to this particular topic? >> for me, the stories come to

me. i don't look for them anymore. ever since bringing down the house, i get 20 or 30 e-mails a week, just every college kid who does something crazy will call you. [laughter] you know, i'd always wanted to write about nasa. i think it's amazing. but when you think of nasa, you think of the '60s, tom hanks in a little silver capsule. and this let me get inside nasa today. thad roberts contacted me, he had just gotten out of prison, and i'd never spent someone who had spent almost -- met someone who had spent almost a decade in prison before, so i arranged to meet him in a crowded hotel lobby. [laughter] he was the most charismatic, smart, good looking guy who had done something stupid. >> the nicest guy you had ever met. >> he was. maybe in texas there had been more stuff, but i had not seen anything about this, and i just couldn't believe it. so the first thing i did was i

feeled a freedom of information act with the fbi to get the fbi file which is thousands of pages. i mean, i even got when the fbi agents took him down, they were wearing wires, and i got the transcripts, and the first thing thad says is, if you're wearing a wire, i'm screwed. [laughter] so that's on tape. [laughter] yeah. so it was wild. it was about a year long interviewing everybody i could. >> i see. and so there's one section in the book which i think is just great, too, where there's that correspondence between thad who's going by the name orb? >> yeah. it's a play on roy orbison who was a geologist, it turns out. >> which i didn't know. >> and you reprinting those e-mails. >> everyone was very excited i was writing this book. he actually, nasa gave him as a gift for solving the moon rock caper, they named an asteroid after him, so there's an emmerman asteroid floating

around the sun somewhere. yeah, everything in the book is reprinted directly, and a lot of the dialogue is, you know, straight from the transcripts and everything. you know, i do get attacked a lot in the press for my style which is a very kind of dramatic, cinematic way of telling a nonfiction story. but the reality is that everything in here, you know, is from the files. >> well, you brought that up, so that's something i wanted to visit with you about a little bit. >> yeah. >> certainly, that came out a lot in bringing down the house. i wondered if you could talk about that technique that you employ as a writer. >> my controversial technique. >> your controversial technique. it sells books. >> exactly. >> how you employ that and why. i have to say "the new york times" review that came out yesterday -- >> yeah, she hates me. >> she hated you. i think that's part of it. that was part of the hangover from that. >> right. >> tell me why -- >> it's been like this my entire career. so i am a very cinematic thinker, and this is the kind of

stuff i like to read, and it's a form of new journalism, i get, but i get all of the information. i interviewed just about everybody, get 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 it. um, certainly janet was one of those. >> janet was not -- >> but, um, you know, i don't necessarily write for janet, i write for me and the people who like this kind of book. and the reality is it's a true story, and it's as true as any other thing on the nonfiction list. you see a biography of cleopatra, right? i mean, come on, nobody knows anything about cleopatra. and you see a biography of abraham lincoln, and you see, you know, you know, um, obama's biography has invented characters. i mean, it's a process, you know? you have to take the facts and then write it in a certain way. i choose to write it in a very cinematic way. um, so, for instance, i'll interview thad roberts, i'll

interview the other kid who was there, this guy gordon who's in the book. so i know there was a conversation that took place ten years ago between these people, and i know what was said, but i don't know the exact words, so one journalist might, you know, say they talked about moon rocks. but to me that's a very boring and weak way of telling that scene. i know they talked about moon rocks, i know what they did with the moon rocks, so i describe what they did with the moon rocks. and there are some journalists who love it and some journalists who don't. and, you know, it'll be a controversy forever in terms of certain journalists will never like it. with "the social network" and "accidental billionaires," mark zuckerberg came out and said, it's not true, and he called me the jackie collins of silicon valley. [laughter] which i loved, it's great. but he never said this isn't true and this isn't true, he just said the whole thing's not true. and then he said he didn't read the book. so i don't know where you go with that.

[laughter] so i think the reality is it is a very true story. um, he laid the -- you know, he meant to have sex on moon rocks because he wanted it to be like having sex on the moon. he spread them on a bed, and he had sex on the moon. janet had a problem with that scene saying he put them under the mattress, but that's actually not true. he did this on purpose. so i use the facts, but i tell it in my style. and, you know, some people like it and some people don't. >> right, right. so you're saying some journalists might not like it. what do you think of yourself as,? are you a journalist? >> >> i always saw myself in the entertainment business. and i only stumbled into true stories. i always hated nonfiction. i grew up, you know, watching really bad television, and i was a fan of pop culture and movies. and then i met these mit kids in a bar, and i was hanging out in a bar in boston called crossroads, it's like an mit dive bar. [applause] there you go, i like to hear that.

if you can imagine, an mit dive bar, it's a bunch of really geeky guys -- sorry, a bunch of geeky guys. [laughter] i'm a geeky guy, too, but these guys had all this money, and it was all in $100 bills. and in boston you never see $100 bills. i don't know what it's like in dallas, you probably do see them -- >> thousands. [laughter] >> boston you never see them because it's all college kids. and i couldn't figure out why. so i went over to the main guy's house, and in his laundry was $250,000 in banded stacks of $100s. i thought, you've got to be a drug dealer. but he wasn't, and the next day we flew to vegas, and it was the mit blackjack team. and i ended up joining the team, and that was my first true story. so i kind of fell into nonfiction, but i wrote it like a thriller because that's what i'd been writing. i was writing fiction, and then i ran into a true story. and that's been the way,

"accidental billionaires," same thing. sitting at home, and i get an e-mail at 2 in the morning, and it's a harvard senior. he's actually from houston. and he said, my best friend co-founded facebook, and no one's ever heard of imhim. so i go out for a drink, and in walks eduardo. and he's angry, furious, you know, mark zuckerberg screwed him, and he wanted to tell his story. and suddenly i was in another true story. so it's been this weird kind of stumbling my way through nonfiction. >> in bringing down the house you were part of that culture, and that's what brought you -- >> yes. >> okay. i want to stay with this for a minute because it's interesting, i think, in terms of what readers expect when they sit down with a book as to what it's billed as. i think that we all have that kind of classic notion of the willing suspension of disbelief, so your point with cleopatra or abraham lincoln, i think, is well taken. in "bringing down the house," there were scenes that were

created to help move the story along. right? >> you know, i disagree. >> okay. >> there was definitely claims by people who were not on the mit blackjack team -- >> who said that -- >> who said that those scene didn't happen. >> right. >> but the reality is it plays pretty close to what really happened. there's a scene, you know, i think the big scene that people talked about is when they use the strippers to change in the chips. and i was told that by two members of the team who were there. so maybe you can discount their story. i definitely interviewed a few strippers, and you could probably discount their story, right? [laughter] but the reality is, i mean, you can only go so far in terms of how many interviews you do. all journalists make choices, you know? >> absolutely. >> so, you know, it is what it is. i think with "accidental billionaires," of course, it's much more heavily vetted. obviously, there were teams of lawyers, and everyone's involved in the terms of making a movie like that.

so, you know, it's pretty accurate. i would say "social network" hued very closely. those are another two guys you couldn't invent, right? 6-5 olympic twin rowers. i remember when i first met them; i walked into a hotel room, and tyler, i don't know if it was tyler or cameron -- you really can't tell. [laughter] you look at us, and you think we must be the bad guys. we'd be dressed as skeletons facing the karate kid. and so i put that the in the movie, and then that ended up -- and ralph macho called, and he's like, i love that line. [laughter] that was cool. anyways, there's a lot of different source, there's a lot of different opinions of what happened. >> well, we've touched on a couple of things i want us to make sure we talk about. one, you've talked about the cinematic quality of your writing. i want to hold that because i think the audience would be interested to know the sort of jump you've made from sitting at

your desk by yourself pounding out these books and then the translation to the big screen because i think that's an experience in its own. so let me hold on that and say one of the things we've seen particularly in these last three books is you're sort of drawn to a particular type of character, it seems to me; young and smart and pushing the envelope of whatever it is that they're doing. is that a fair characterization? >> yeah. young, geeky, it's always been guys so far, but that's not really by choice, that's just who calls me. >> so what is it about that world that appeals to you? is. >> i think i live vicariously through them. i was a geeky guy, i still pretty much am. and the idea that you could go from that to rock star or mark zuckerberg sitting alone in a room suddenly a billionaire or mit kids living the high life in vegas. even thad roberts, he's a guy who went to almost being an astronaut to stealing moon rocks. it's a thrill ride for me.

>> what's interesting is you make the point is as a result of his upbringing and him coming to houston, he really was determined to reinvent himself. he wanted to be the guy that people recognized as the social leader and the person who was coming up with all of these not exactly pranks, but, you know, how could get into the -- who could get into the space shuttle simulator and push the bounds. >> right. >> i guess that, obviously, does help drive the narrative in terms of building up up to that climax. >> yeah. this was a kid who needed everyone to love him. he was on cbs sunday morning, and that was what he said, i needed people to love me. he didn't have that love growing up, and that's what he did. and, yeah, i mean, i think there is that transformation is what i like to write about. >> you, you were saying that you, obviously, met with eduardo who was the winklevoss twin. >> right. >> not mark. but here it flipped.

thad is your main source. >> right. >> so how was that different in if writing that, and were there moments where even his story began to seem too fan tastic? -- fantastic? there really are some moments in here that really kind of stretch the bounds, it seems to me. >> right. >> how do you go about vetting what he is telling you is correct or whether he's just spinning a tale? >> right. and mark zuckerberg just refused. he knew i was talking to eduardo, but i spent a year, and he was very nice, but in the end, no, no, no. thad wanted to tell his story, and i got hundreds and hundreds of hours of him on tape telling it. and in the beginning he wasn't telling me the truth. and it was a matter of once i had all the fbi files, i could confront him and say, you know, that's not what happened here according to the court transcripts and the other people who were there. and then he would back off and he would, you know, wait a little bit, and then he would say, okay, this is what really

happened. so, yeah, there is that aspect of it. and i guess if i'm the journalist, that's the main form is seeing where people are lying to me. but, you know, in the end he was very open and honest. as i got to it, i said, listen, especially with my books, they will be picked apart. so you need to tell the truth. >> right. >> and so he did. in the end, he did. and he was very open and honest with me. and you know what? there is that thing where i did start to like him a lot. and as a writer that's where things get really tricky because if someone's extremely likable, but what he did was pretty bad. i mean, my dad who was an engineer and a scientist read the book and said, you know, i hate this guy. [laughter] this guy stole our national treasure. men gave their lives to get moon rocks, and he stole it for, you know, petty reasons. and there is that. and when you look at it objectively, yeah, you know, that's horrible. but at the same time you're sitting with this kid and, you know, he's tearing up, and he screwed up his life because he

just, you know, thought it would be cool. and, it's hard not to feel bad for him and then start to like him. and i'll tell you, anybody here who met thad roberts would love him. he's a very lovable guy who just did a bad thing. and so for the author that may be my main problem is i get very close to my subjects because i want to be a part of it. so, yeah, i mean, i guess there is that. but, um, yeah. >> i think he does come across very sympathetic, and i think that you, you know, i mean, you know where this is headed. but as he is coming through these other -- he's establishing himself at nasa, you see that he's talented and he's working hard, and he is trying to improve himself. i think there is a question as he said in his interviews with cbs, the sunday morning program, that he doesn't exactly know why he did what he did now that he looks back on it. so i think that's a puzzling aspect of it. but i think you do get the sense that part of his personality

that made him great at those things also made him derail and go down this other path. >> absolutely. this was a kid who could do anything and then decided to do this. [laughter] so, you know -- >> exactly. >> you talked about writing in a cinematic way, you refer today that a couple of times already in our conversation. so tell me, when you're sitting down to write these books, are you already thinking of what may happen in the movies? >> yes. i'm 100% that way. >> when did you start doing that? >> my very first book which none of you read called "threshold" in 1996. i've always been a cinematic writer. and when bringing down the house became a movie, kevin spacey became my first reader. so i was writing books, kevin was one of the first to read it and now scott rudin who is like a god in this industry. so i do know when i sit down that, you you know, this could a movie, and i'm not picturing

justin timberlake running around nasa, but i am picturing -- not that i don't think he'd be great, which he would. [laughter] i'm picturing a very visual setting. i'm picturing it this that way because i think there's a real synergy now. books become movies more and more frequently, i feel. at least in that respect this one we sold to the same people who are making "the social network," same producers and dana and sorkin -- not sorkin, deluca. so, yeah, i do think that way. but, you know what? movies are much more fun. so for me when i sit down in my cold, darkroom in boston for three months of solid loneliness, you have to be picturing a big screen in your head. >> all right. would you rather be reading a book or watching a movie? >> reading a book. you know, i'm sad in a way that i like the kindle. [laughter] you know? and that it is a great device. >> right. >> because books are so wonderful, and i read all the

time. and i watch a lot of tv, and i watch a lot of movies. and i kind of consume all forms of entertainment. but books are great. i mean, i grew up with books, and i wish that they could last forever. >> right, okay. the hollywood aspect has, obviously, been very good to you. i think you had said that you went to the golden globes as kevin spacey's plus one. >> yes, it was amazing. it was a weird experience because, you know, normally someone like me would not be sitting anywhere near actual celebrities because i write books, and in the hollywood that means you're down here. sort of up there. but my table was kevin and nicole kidman and keith urban and megyn fox and brian austin green and scarlett johansson and then right behind me was bruce willis, and it was crazy. >> you find yourself -- >> i had to go to the bathroom, and you only get three-minute breaks, and so i'm running into the bathroom, and i run right into brad pitt and angelina yo

ri, and it's like, whoa, you guys really are good look. [laughter] it was a wild experience. i mean, i really see myself as just this guy from boston. i'm not, you know, i'm always kind of wandering around the corners of these things, and it was just a wild, wild experience. >> tell us a little bit about how involved you are in the production, in the actual, the creative process behind the film. obviously, aaron sorkin adapted the book -- >> when you get a guy like sorkin, you do whatever he says. >> in writers i've talked with over the years or writers i know who have had books made into films, there's one school of thought; it's mine, it's mine alone and i'm going to protect it. ..

>> would you ever write a screenplay?

>> i have done a couple. a draft of one of my earlier books which has not got made yet, sadly. it is a different format, and for me the books are my name bread-and-butter. but for me they have to want me to. i spent along time as a struggling writer. i don't want to go through that again. the truth is they don't necessarily want you to adapt your work for a -- for whatever reason. we'll see. i get asked that a lot. that, again, will be up to the director and producers. it has to be a good-looking guy who could be both athletic and it like a mountain climbing guide and the deep. kind of challenging in that, you know, you can't -- i have heard names like timber lake. i mean, there are definitely a lot of young guys to pull it off.

at the kid is a real, you know, it's usual for a guide. >> the stock all look the other aspect about the book business, you are now on a world wind promotional tour, five day and flight, multiple cities in interviews. cordoned off from the rest of the world about trying to get that last chapter right and to be dropped into the world of the media pushed. >> is the culture shock. i love it. like the entertainment aspect. is bridge every schedules because normally you don't care what time it is and you just write and get deep into the project and have a lot of control. and in your note for your of no control. it's also wonderful. i will say that might tours have changed dramatically. this is amazing. my first stop was something called tall radio which was the

previous station that only aired in the callahan tunnel in boston. [laughter] it is literally at 100 yards of the tunnel, and it was a traffic station that someone get the idea of putting doctors on. so no one wants to hear you. and then my second stop was in needham, massachusetts, public access television station. i had written a book called threshold. somewhere in the book i mentioned that in the siege of them may not be worse because we will be able to genetically cheese our children. it was a little sense in the book. i show up and there are two chairs like this. in one is a dwarf. [laughter] it was my second submit to topless a stop my life. i sit down and start to think, wait a minute. this is not good. [laughter] and it was a debate. i was like to my consideration

be, i said there may not be. it became this -- then there was no budget. after the interview and did we go outside and the door fed to give me a ride home. [laughter] i don't know. it was a strange state. >> your next book the lead character was coming in facts -- >> i am a big fan. i watched game of the province. i think he is awesome. >> you have said that you don't have your next one line up right now. obviously you would give -- enjoy this and continue with the media push. how will you begin to decide to acting all of these e-mails. what will you be looking for for that next project? >> i looked through all of

these. 99 percent of them are really bad. every person who commits a crime now is sending e-mails. you know, i need that sort of young kid really smart here is not a bad person in that gray area between right and wrong. this is the first highest, the first person who actually committed the crime. the elements that are light combat trail and sex and those kind of things. and then there has to be, you know, some level of fun for me. there has to be a place i want to go. six lusty year. for me going to vegas, awesome. i wouldn't go somewhere that would be horrible. does the things i look for. >> you will be looking for that type of character, that type of story. >> yes. of was thinking it would be cool, prince harry. i don't want to write william. harry has a story. if you know he has the story.

so that's what i'm looking for. if anybody knows him. i done now. i don't know what's next. next. >> what are you reading? when you are not working on the book and all the time you're spending on research, what are you reading and what riders inspire you? >> right now game of darn it is amazing. those books, just amazing. >> the hbo. >> i started one before it. now i'm reading the mall. those books other reason that kindle is great. carrying it around. but those are great. i read a lot of what comes out. i read -- i thing sebastian youngbear is a phenomenal nonfiction writer, and he is hard core. at cal will go to tennessee and in the man himself. i'm in vegas and he's in afghanistan. good for him.

i read it all. but u.s. everything. i love the hundred games trilogy. >> do you see yourself, are you more comfortable with herself as a screenwriter as opposed to other authors? >> i have a lot of writing friends. overall i don't know that many screenwriters because i don't live in l.a. you know, i don't have a lot of close friends or our writers. i haven't can imagine parole hearing of the daunting club. a wonderful book. the few other local writers. you know, we don't sit around in turtlenecks and drink coffee. it's not that deep. >> starting to come upon the time. bin will be doing a book signing immediately after this.

i want to ask you a couple of more questions. but who would really like the audience to do, 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 a soap and then wrap up the evening. if you have questions you might begin to think of those. let's begin more and then turn it over to the audience. how would you describe how your writing is chased? if you made the joke that nobody had read your first six books, what would you tell me is you graduate from harvard, knew you wanted to write books, magazine articles dollars screenplays, balm starbucks. you lock yourself away. how did you feel like you have matured as a writer and are better than you are now? had you learned? >> i locked myself in a room and wrote nine novels. deep, dark stories. none of them got published.

190 rejections. then i read john grisham and michael crichton and narrowed a thriller. my first six books were thrillers, and they were pretty trashy. fine, pop culture, medical thrillers. if any of the site, and i hope you didn't. instead of the underwear model, antonius a bottle. he played a surgeon. there is a scene where i was watching with my dad is a doctor now. he leans over the patient's chest. he goes, we have a subdural hematoma and my dad turns to meet does, you know that is in the head, right? [laughter] i think i've gotten a lot better than that. i think my style is improving. i feel strongly that "sex on the moon" is my best book.

bringing down the house for me was a transitional moment because i realized i couldn't write a true story. eroded in six weeks in vegas, literally in the hotel suite each night. publishers haiti when you see eroded that quick. it was crazy. that became this emersion technique. go inside and let the story. i will say, those days of rejection are kind of the most noble and romantic time in life. you should look forward to the rejection. [laughter] i, being a geeky guy, had much rejection in my life up until that point with women, but then -- [laughter] -- it became bucks. i would put them on the walls, and each one would become this thing where i would have to beat the rejection. i will say when i got into public and finally started selling my book, every person i worked with qaeda at the

rejection letter from, which was kind of to wheel of your stuff. i go, what about this? he didn't love this, right? un from the rejection. there's this huge wall in publishing. it is impossible. it is a tough business. it is that climb over the wall i think that makes you better. valve yell i am a very different writer. >> he said this is your best work and your best effort, what is it about it? >> most of the geeky guys i wrote about before were unable to get laid. this is the first character in which falling in love became his problem. it was his downfall. it was rudy new for me to write a romance, a love letter that he wrote from prison is in the book, the access i had to him.

even when i was with the mit kids. this was different, a kid really laying out. this is my life and i screwed up. there is more in it. during writing this book i had a kid. a lot of you probably know it changes your life in a dramatic weight. i think that is confused. you know, you are not sleeping, but you're also dealing with, you know, massive, your understanding things differently, and i tried to get inside the skin said more and more. >> i can't do anything better than that. [applause] >> the book obviously is "sex on the moon." we will do questions for about 50 minutes. there will be a book signing immediately afterwards. if you ask questions, come down. we have standing microphones. we will call when you. fire away. yes, ma'am.

>> asked what books you read now. i'm curious to know what books he light and read as you have grown. >> low, my parents had a rule that we had to read two books a week before we were allowed to watch tv, which seems very draconian now, but i was obsessive television. for me i became a speed reader. anything counted them any kind of book. i get into science fiction. then i graduated take hemingway. i love the sun often rises. from there i go through times of different types. i have literally read every genre. i was reading candace bushnell nonstop for one year. i don't know why. it was great. so i shift from thing to thing. i don't myself. growing up it was most the size section.

>> accidental billing errors, you did not interview marks a record would be lower matted him. you take their advice and into account? >> i feel like in that book is. their a lot of it is from at bordeaux. a little bit more marked. i did also have sean parker who is on the other side. and i also had a lot of people who new markets in the well, high-school friends to my college friends. people who work at facebook. that is made people want to talk to me. there were a lot of sources. it would have been great if market talk to me, wonderful, no question. but i don't think there is any way you could like it that book or movie and say it is not true. people who were there other than mark say that is what happened. so, you know, yes, eduardo definitely had an ax to grind.

john parker was a pretty good source and a wonderful person, crazy. i think kimberly it caught him perfectly. looking more and more like tustin template. so you do have to take that into account. i feel like you can tell which teams are coming from which interview and which aren't, but is one of the issues. >> other than "sex on the moon", it may be, but which of the books that you have written, which was your favorite to write? >> americans. not as many people read. >> a quick follow-up, are you still shopping and the americans? >> the book, a true story about a kid from new jersey, played football, never been out of new jersey, gets a phone call from princeton university college, gets a call from an alum who invites him to japan. pacts a dufflebag of flies to

japan ended up working for a guy named nick leeson it was a 26 year-old trader bankrupt the entire biggest bank in england by betting assets of the japanese stock market. he goes to jail and the main character of my book becomes this hotshot hedge fund cowboy, falls in love with the daughter of a japanese gangster and makes a single deal that makes $500,000,000,000.5 minutes and has to leave japan very quickly. all takes place in japan. six underground. it is kind of a story about expo actress living large in asia. i thought that was a fun book. extremely well on wall street. every wall street i had a copy of it. outside of wall street it did not really catch. reworked and the movie for a while. spacey is involved. stole the to numerous studios. bring on the house is if you want to know what i write, is what's right.

between those three really. >> to questions. sex for coming by, by the way. >> they do. >> i'm curious, your latest book, what was the incentive for the subject wanting to talk to you and have his story written? and am also curious about this label of nonfiction. have you thought about putting it out under fiction and avoiding the controversy? >> first of all, is the publisher's decision. they looked at it, lawyers look at it, editors looked at it and they say it's true. that on the one hand, but on the other hand, i feel strongly it is non-fiction. clearly nonfiction. you go through chapter by chapter in any one of my books and every scene can be documented both in court documents and interviews. yes, it is written stylistically in a way that reads like a thriller, but there is no way to call it fiction because everything in that scene

happened. obviously it is always going to be a controversy. always journalist searching out james wright. that is the whole thing, but in the opening of my book and say exactly what i'm going to do, so there is no scandal, and that upsets journalists because they want scandal so badly. they always come and say, you recreated dialogue. well, yeah, it says on page one that i'm going to recreate dialogue. but it's not made up. it's retreated from the people who were there. that's the other thing. they expect me to shy away. i am happy to talk about it. a very valid form of nonfiction that goes back to hunter s. thompson, tom wolfe, beyond that. plenty of riders. the designation is really up to the publishers. i think it is clearly nonfiction. the second question was about why did he come to me. you know, that is a great

question. obviously he saw himself as a movie character. when he did the crime the james bond theme song was going through his head. [laughter] so he wants to be famous or infamous, which is tricky. 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. he had the moon rocks for one week. he used them, no question about that, but he felt like he had served so much time a telling his story was the right thing to do. not that he is proud, but at the same time he feels like he did this crazy thing and there is no reason why he should not tell people. does he feel bad about it, yes, ashamed, i don't think so. but that is a question. people come to me because they want to get famous. that is definitely part of it, but they also looked at it, we have this sports crew that nobody knows about. they want people to know about

it. yes. there is that. >> i thought one of your best books was reagan. hoping you could talk a little bit about that. >> well, takes place in dubai. a two-story about a kid you had 1 foot in the world of harvard and then 1 foot in the tough streets of brooklyn. he worked at the merc exchange in new york with a trade oriole. very physical exchange for you're fighting for inches on the trading floor. then he went to dubai and set up the dubai merck, basically. he said of the old trading. and it's a crazy story. a very short trip for me, in and out. you know, you guys like the hot weather. a little weak. it's a wild story. the whole world of oil, which i knew nothing about and had heard

about, this kid i knew and invited me when bringing down the house came out to ring the bell at the merc exchange. al went down there to ring the belt and look down on this incredible sea of tough guys from brooklyn pushing and shoving and throwing tickets. one clerk, a small guy. he hired a bunch of people behind him his entire job was just told him on the trading floor. this is so cool. that is what made me write that. also working on that movie as well with summit, i think. you will see is that it's going. >> yes, ma'am. >> i want to read something funny to you about recreating dialogue. this is sites program. measured pored over thousands of pages of court records, fbi documents and has interviewed most of the participants to reconstruct this asha's 11 style

heist. already the novel has been snatched up by hollywood to create a film. >> that happens. [laughter] you know what, people use the world novel interchange we nowadays. i hope that is not my fault. it will always be a controversy in my career, but i think most people are coming around to this form of a new nonfiction, and when i tore in england and europe, they have no problem with it. not even a discussion. they're like, why are american journalist so upset that you're writing, and i don't know what to tell them. it seems to be more controversial at the new york times and it is anywhere else. >> yes, ma'am. >> i wanted to ask you, your next big project, when you're looking for that story, do you prefer to write about a story that is unfolding, like in

bringing down the house. >> that is ideal. >> i liked the idea of getting it right when is happening, but it is hard because at that point you don't know where it will end, and you don't want to spend years of your lives chasing something that doesn't happen. but that would be the ideal. you're in the mix of it as it is happening. both happened a number of years ago, so that was a little bit different. you can try and recreate, but, yeah, i would love it if it were actually happening, but you have to know the ending. >> can you share with us what pat is doing now. >> you know, he got out of prison and went back to the university to get his phd. he just recently left utah and release still wants to go to space. that is his dream. obviously not at nasa, but he says may be in the private

sector one date. he is a smart guy. a question of overcoming his own demons. he has a she's. he is very spontaneous and needs to control himself. you know, i hope the best for him. he served his time and paid his dues. if he is smart he will study and he is brilliant and he will get his ph.d. and move on. he is a good kid you did a bad thing. >> his response? >> he liked most of it, not all of it. he did not like the idea that this guy was rewarded for taking him down, some of the ways he was described as being delusional and the fantasy aspects, but he also said it was hard to see yourself from someone else's eyes. he liked a lot of it and felt like captured living and being at nasa and all that stuff very well. overall he liked it, but i don't

-- you know, there were things he did not like. >> any other questions? yes, sir. please. >> and curious. [inaudible question] >> right. [inaudible question] >> you know, i think it is all about mars. that is the next step. even though obviously when you think about it, are we going to spend billions of dollars to do this, that's crazy, but we spend billions of dollars during all sorts of things. why not do something that is incredible. the moon landing, no real point to that. [laughter] but it was incredible. changed our lives and our world. it was wonderful. i feel like we should do that again. i would love to see all of this money put into getting it. that would be my dream. it is sad, the space shuttle ending. it is sad to see these things,

they advance the human species just by existing. i feel like the race to mars would advance us in ways that we can't tell yet. that is my very pro-nasa speech. i hope that we find a mission to mars. >> what was nasa's response. >> they were not happy. they were embarrassed. a guy from the inside. there were not thrilled and did not want me to make him into a hero. all these sorts of things, but i feel like they have not responded. so when people there read the book i feel like they will love it because i think it makes nasa look cool and will hopefully get people to want to be involved. i think it will like it, but i thought facebook would like the social network. eventually they did come around to it. you know, it is not a hit job on nasa, that is for sure. >> one last question, and then we will call it an evening. yes, ma'am.

right in the middle. [inaudible question] >> dad did the crime with a girlfriend and another girl and took the fall. he is the only one who was involved that went to jail. the girls did not. the approbation and never spoke again. it was sad. they had known each other three weeks. >> love. when he was in the court room. the judge or the prosecutor asked, you knew this kid for three weeks to reply would you do this? i'm still trying to figure out. it was one of those things. they have moved on with our lives. there were not happy i wrote this book. a theseus in taxes. she did not want to be involved. >> thank you so much. >> thank you for being here. [applause]

[applause] >> for more on of 38 and his book visit ben mezrich dot com. >> here is a look at some upcoming book fairs and festivals this month. the brooklyn brook festival begins on september 15th with authors including walter mosley. literary walking tours will be a feature of this year's baltimore -- baltimore book festival. in st. augustine of florida heritage but festival focuses on local literary history. and from the national mall book tv brings you live coverage of the 2011 national book festival. watch two full days of live event coverage, author interviews, your calls, and