here are some of the top selling titles at independent bookstores around the country. .. barack obama

senior. here's sally jay -- >> i want to start by congratulating oscar of nine her book which she will be talkingth about today and i like to start by asking you what led you to this project? >> i am a reporter with "the boston globe" and i do a political profile and at the time campaigning was beginning to mob were of looking at the cast of characters there is not much known about mr. obama's senior.ed s his mom had dividend is he states but obama's sea near was a mystery is the debt tot he was it important character if barack obama

won the nomination race should know something about his father. >>host: the subtitle of the book the bold and reckless life of the president's father is very telling and you can see he is quite bold and reckless. talk about his life and what characterize this his 46 sd years on the planet. >> obama's was certainly bold and reckless to run through the entire narrative but he was a very bold person from the beginning he was very smart which was his passport that emboldened him as a person to speak up all the time in the culture if you were lucky enough to go to school you don't speak uper he challenged his teachers and other students.is

his recklessness cloaked his life from speaking out as he became older he had a reckless life style and was very heavy drinker and was an alcoholic and hishe nickname was double double because when he went to ate bar his favorite drink was johnnieck walker black said double shot followed by chaser of another doubleher shot. this was just the opener and he could have 16 shots, of or double bubble and walkeds out of the bar standing upright and talky in. a very heavy drinking culture at the time but he was also a womanizer but the truce was obama misdeed year came from the third largest

in it was a polygamist culture it would have been unusual what was difficult about obama's sr. is he was the cereal barrier. you all live together the first wife has a prominent position in all within the homestead they all live together. but he would marry and go on to the next and never told the other wives who he was married to it was a mysteries of that was ackle reckless aspect but perhaps in a more profound way he lived recklessly within the social culture and he was born and grew up at a critical time right in the years before independence 1963 and after.

started yawner rather conservative path politically. this was very disappointing from our country. been quite conservative obama's sr. spoke out against the,ic policies for the british structured to allow outside forces to control the kenyan economy and he was one of the few who challenged 10 yadda he wrote publicly of challenging that the sans a made quite a few enemies butless it was reckless. you did not criticize and if you did it was at personal risk for cracked days after the assassination of a prominent nationalists at thei time very e beloved he9. was assassinated 1969 stapp and obama's sr. spoke up

very loudly against that. first so with many reasons be subtitled it doubled and reckless life 57 he is arrogant and a defiantir and recalcitrant. d is that fair? >>guest: yes. a as a biographer i felt myp job was to understand who he was with the personality of the four shots of whiskey and the woman i saying. i thought obama's sr. was wounded as a child. this is my armchairiol psychology at the very violent and alcoholic father who beat his mother and at one point* he tried to murder his mother. i got this from a number of people and one person with aho stent and also one sister

that the father was so mad at his wife he dug her grave and dug a huge pit stop and he takes a out there and literally starts to cut her throat and a neighbor saw this and called him off. the mother was so horrified that she decided to leave. she had three small children of which obama's sr. was the middle child and said i will go away.y. i cannot take this anymore and follow me if you can. wa she ran away not long after. that was not done in thewhat culture and you rarely divorce. obama's sr. was about 10 years old and several weeks si later he and his sister decided they would find their mother and took off. the only walk at night fifth with dave -- dangers animals and walked for two weeks than they finally get to the

village and the people thereor called the father who came and beat them for running away and drug them back to their village.te the point* of the story is the absence of the mother he was left of the violinwo father without a mother and was wounded by that. he never had full selfs confidence zero is having than the 21 up people to claim titles he did not have and it undermines msa human being.rmat >> ground from insecurity coming from an experienced a medical is trying to compensate for not dealing sure of himself.

>> a few are the armchair psychiatrists come to the conclusion of the day you feel the qualities of the narcissistic personality? >> yes and no. he always is one of the people having a serious of jobs -- series of jobs pretended to be better than his boss. mini kenya is befall our education was common in america and obama alwaysan look down and told them so in to go off on an junkets to pretend he was his own boss. he was a lie about who heto b was always pretending to be better. t he was kicked out of harvard

and came this close and was kicked out but he always claimed to be dr. obama because he felt that he was trying to compensate for the shortcomings. >>os there were some positive aspects who seem to be very attractive to women and the always has sponsors o our supporters all of the women that he married, he was very sexy, intelligent, mostly0s men in their seventies that work with them in nairobi he he was so smart and was passionate about kenya. that was the great love of his life.

he was concerned about the political drift of the country and argued with some risk that he had in mind. it was speaking up the powers that the that defies him as an independent an admirable person to some people. it was a huge size mickey finn to reduce the assassination and the obama p goes out to bars to say publicly that he hire the person that assassinated him.as and then go show that theyut did stage an assassination but very few people challenged him.

and to take some risk to do that, later they would say he was paid for assassination. i don't know if that is true. it is not a possible there were many political assassinations during this o ps. period of it is hard to tell the strike by a car down the nairobi street and has received deathve threatsis because of what he said.e's there is some degree of a truth but obama lost his own jobs himself. >> talk about his four wives come icahn we have the brief

history of his near the life? >> it was a mystery not only with biographers but also to the wives who never knew how many people he was married to. his first wife was a canyon he was 23 and she was 18 and they had two children together. he went to hawaii where he met the president's mother and dunham and mary'spr hair hair -- merriest her and tells her about life number one but does not tell her about the two children they a were together one year and leaving behind our president w who waso one-year-old then heh meets a woman in a white jewish woman from the suburbs of boston hoof it falls deeply in love with

him and says follow me toesid narrow the she had never been outside of united states never had been on a plane and she follows him one month later and rigid is to the airport in nairobi, she is not there. he tells her about wife number one but not wife number two which is the president's mother and suggest that life number blind come and live decemberise she was having nothing of it and refuse to know that person in. with a very difficult marriage he was drinking heavily going out with other braman and bruce was very unhappy and i spent a couple of sessions witht. her and she e put up a lot and when he began to strike one of their children she left and lives ind nairobi to this day and entering a period of decline been he almost mary's his fourth wife and they have one child together.ur

but the fourth wife i don't think she knew anything of the previous three. after he died it ended up in a huge legal brawl. wife number one and number four went to court over his assets which were not a huge. he had about a $50,000 but it lourdes is a question that there is no divorce of kenyan culture he never divorced his first wife, but if he did than they did notncl exist including the president's marriage and at the end of the day the judge upheld the last five to say really she was the wife was married at the end. it was respective of his life many of his eightcame children became involved in all those should inherit so

it is a reflection of the chaos that the mother of the president and where she went to university of hawaii to meet barack obama's sr., how did they meet? what was the nature of their relationship? >> day that in a russian class which was very popular at the time. they're both very smitten with each other she was writing letters back to friends in seattle and had not want to do go to honolulu out all. but after six months she writes to her friends to say she is dating africa and to say i am in love and becomes pregnant and soon afterwards which must have been veryd

difficult and stood out in a big way and also a very difficult choice. they left honolulu going to the island of maui nobody attended the wedding.ffic an end been a he is becoming difficult to get a hold of the emigration record not all the we were led to believe they live together, he was out about six months after they gothe married and then there comes a time when he had a choice of where to go because he was so smart to graduate five beta kappa and offeredama offered a lot of money from

a new york university but decided he had to go have the best so he chose harvard and did not have enough money to take his son or why so they left -- left them behind a stayed in touch but he was wrapped up in harvard and they never saw each other again until about 10 years later when he goes back to honolulu. >>host: what did she see in him? >> i don'tidanrt profess to be n expert but from what i know she had a hunger for whate was different she became ans anthropologist and, interested in the exotic and the other. p. was very bold and she traveled widely and a very sexy. she was drawn to other cultures and that is what he was. >>host: barack obama, jr. fa when he is about 10 months w

old and when he was 10 years old deco talk about both of those periods and the exposure of his father's. >> is first was when he was very a little his father was gone buy the time he was nine months old and does not remember anything of that. the visit when he was ted was very complex. obama's sr. at the time was on his downward curve he, had jo lost three jobs in was just fired and publicly on the outs with the powers that be in did not know what to do. his third wife was in the process of divorcing him and it barely speaking terms of any of his seven children. he goes to honolulu to develop some business contacts but he had it he may get back together with anne g dunham to get barack and go back to kenya. but the truce was anne

dunham had her own notions s of what she wanted to do and with the very biocentric closer but very matching carriage to drop to near two of his father but always talk about his father's so he knew him.l, start out well to visit and gabbana, jr. looks very excited and he describes looking at his father held very thin he was of little cast to his skin and noticehe a that his grandparents are getting quite a bit of respect but at the end of the month he was tired of the man he was posse and hek. wanted his life back with the difference is culminate with obama's senior says and

the father said turnoff the television and go back to your studies and it erupted into a huge fight. and had been a four week visit. and that is the last time the president saw his dad.ea they did write letters in his twenties when obama wass trying to understand who he was to be a black man in america but eventually that faded. >>host: barack obama, jr. goes to kenya in search of his father's legacy of 1986. what does he discover?ne >>y it was a hard journey for him. his mother had always describe the more positive side b fontaine her boy to feel that he was a good manor

satoshi talked about the positives size but he goes to kenya to find his siblings and quickly realizes his father and was not a great person and was a broken man and an alcoholic and it is heartbreaking to him. my eighth feeling is he wanted to know his dad but not everything because it was a painful journey.evfuo it was the bold book and quite honest and tells the truth.ink. that is as much as the new. >>host: there are offspring are half siblings that barack obama has around the world that connect him to his father. what are the relationships like with the offspring of barack obama sr.? >> he had eight children on the one of them died in a

motorcycle accident so there are seven left. he is not particularly close to any of them. there was a period he too did get to know. he does know the two oldest the, best but it is a very complicated family. those in nairobi 21 to beal closer to him but one brother who lives in china who looks quite a bit like him who had totally backed off he was beaten by his father and was awarded by the experience he wanted to do nothing of the name of an obama or nairobi had used his mother's name but whened the president began running he opened himself up and the two got to know each other

and enable dmarc to take said name back because it was his name and he could feel that there plus some dignity. he was the president said they have had a meeting of minds. >> we will open it up to you. when you see the 44th president of the amended states comedy you see inequalities in him now you could based on research? >> absolutely despite the lifestyles they are very different men.and the president is about control and reserve the other is the opposite. they are both very smart love or hate to thenk president he is a very smart man. they were both ambitious and created themselves out of fearer may little and made

something of himself and graduated from the university of hawaii as did the president to come from modest circumstances which is an extraordinary achievement and also passed off as mediators the president tries to bringher competing elements together and his father did the same thing. he tried to bring the polarxtre extremes of kenyan politics trying to find a common ground not that many people follow the suggestions and they both had to deal with not having two parents and what that meant.ews

>>host: what surprised you the most of this barack obama is senior character? was there any particular element of surprise? >>guest: one piece of news that i did find it surprising that i wonder about today that is important to the president. in defy all he would be interviewed every year to have his the seven nude and he said not to worry about his baby. that he is putting him up for adoption and my wife is the making arrangements to put him up for adoption prepared did they really do that? maybe. be it would have been better for all bodman not to have a mixed-race baby and a complicated his profile.om but i don't know if anne dunham would ever have put her baby up for adoption but they may have talked about

there was a home for unwed mothers that i think he was referring to. i could present that to the white house that the one thing the president responded to and he does not think they would have done that where she was told him. but the mother tell her child that? bb or maybe not that was one of the most surprising pieces. >>host: we will open up to yourngch questionse,th. >> i'll just like to sayisto your book brings a veryy' interesting angle with the s background of the first black president of the united states. but my question is, with the illusive birth certificate? [laughter] >> it to be honest i didn'tt

pay much attention to that clear the obama was born in honolulu you can look in the newspaper to see a record and with is a migration files there is a notation in barack obama and junior born in honolulu 1961. i never thought about it again.ge >>host: it this is the first exposure to your book but itms seems very sad. a, when you answer the question is what about your own emotional journey?

would you address your own personal feelings? >> about the journey wore my own sadness? >> the life story and people involved. i am curious to see if you could separate yourself. >> i definitely got drawn into it i spent two 1/2 for three years on the project and a lot of people in nairobi k had known obama's senior. he had huge promise and his life was a tragedy. the harvard peace was interesting to me. of there were detailed recordsard, of what happened to obama at harvard in the about this guy who gets to harvard from nairobi in the '60s and he did it. it was new math. computers were starting, it was a whole new thing and not all they got their his exams but define his thesis

and would finish it.do harvard allowed him to come back for one more year to finish his degree but immigration began looking at the kennedy women and marriages and did not like it. of a that about getting rid of him every year they had to look at his profile. so in the last year they think he has a multiple wife said thehey go to them? administrators and say will you sign off? remember they already did internally and said he could come back. here he has not enough moneyn' and too much sex and did not look well for harvard to you can see this in the records. did miss traders get together in say be will drum up something and get rid of them. sen within three weeks they send a letter to say we don't have enough money. you have to go back to

nairobi. it broke him degrees were gold only 500 men and women who had college degrees. it two was a passport not own eight you would be quite significant h and a university of a wide degree andrv ph.d. from harvard and they tell him to go back.ants notations all over the documents. kaltbaum recalls. been never told him. you need to go back and harvard says they don't have the money. it was a lie and from therebe hegi begins to collapse and pretends to be a doctor because he has earned it they do he did not have it but this was on the. a long answer to the fact that i do feel sadness because i do h feel he could

be a success and his eight children come if they are confused about him. the obama brand for the president they looked at their name also to say who is obama's? they had put their data by a. he had no mother and did not know how to nurture. four out of five children who were sure the kids have written books about tt themselves bio like biographiest but the two are on a journey to a understand themselves and his own memoir so there is a fair amount of human damage and pain and it is a sad story. his cement the president might not identify and the personality could compensate but does he identifies with hist father's native country?

>> that is a good question. the answer is yes and no. , clearly wanted to know where he was in where his blackness came from city has gone several times but he has no experience and has no connection.t his father is dead and has a remote relationship and there is pandemoniumwh sometimes they have reached out to him. their risk of flight between two of the siblings and threw things through the window somebody call through to say you have to help out. i think he put it at arm's length to protect himself slow while he does embrace th his heritage in think he is

connected to the culture now. >> of their questions from our audience? >> i wrote about your buck the biggest bang a was thinking washt helping volume was seven for president obama's to readon this. of did you consider waiting until he was out of the byis house or was there of purpose to publish it now w while he was in a white house? >> not at all. the key was not the president nobody would read the book.gn [laughter] the reason it is significant is the piece of history that helps to understand a very significant event in american politics. love him or hate him he is the first black president which is significant.wh how did he get there?w. we care about this now

historians will care in 20 years but if there is english to the president which is not an easy booktv dealt think it would be different now or five years from now but i don't think for a personal reason it would have mattered to him but i do think the book had to be published during his presidency because that is what it is germane to. >> do you have any research on how many presidents have had normal childhoods with normal families and have they not a normal family may>> give you more incentive to be president? >> what is marvell? i don't pretend to know what that is.ye that it is hard to define but there is a number of presidents who has only one parent who has dysfunctional homes but chaos at home can

send you and a couple of directions to make you or break you. but how you interact makes all the difference. i say if obama, jr. was raised by his father and have the personality at the table every day guiding him i don't think he would be the president. our president to find himself very deliberately. to can feel him choosingth figure out who he is if you had that there resell the sorg command he would not bery the president but every situation is different and hard to generalize. >> you mentioned baracks obama maternal grandparents who were very prominent and important in his lives with a very respectful relationship can you talk about how they responded tom.

him? >> a think they tried very hard and it was shocking thing we're taken aback but they loved her so much they were not n particularly happy are in either side that theyl w would get married and turmoil but but they did their best. obama was not an easy as personality but they tried to support the marriage and when it was over they were plentiful to that little boy and obama, jr. was raised and his mother plus pursuing her own dreams. i think they did the best that they could.

>> where is the of rivalry between harvard and yale? >> i'm not sure? >> he would be upset with harvard because his dad was not granted it immigration? did that come out he preferred to go to yale?he >> he went to harvard actually. >> there is no real connection. >> they both went to harvard >> i am sorry 87 talk aboutow how barack obama senior that his and and what was his last-- like and how did hee? die?t >> he ended his last days of a very fitting manner four barack obama sr. working in the treasuryu everyday he would head to the bar and a group of them would come as the day rundown the firstt

there and the last to leave a and he had a driver take him home because he was pretty drunk and amid the friend said do not drive home and typical obama refused and said good night i will see you tomorrow and headed off in his car and 10 minutes yfnd later crashed intoa eucalyptus tree and died instantly.y some people have maintained he was murdered because of his political speaking is in the medical records is quite tr opposite that he drove itself into a tree and therend was not foul play. that was the end of it. >>host: how was the reaction to his death? >> he was very loved and quite a character and was widely mourned. there was no bad feelings sell it was a sad andas

unexpected and. >> what was brock obama's reaction? >> i don't know a great deal about that he make some reference to receiving a phone call from kenya. he was deeply saddened and i think he felt he could learn about his father'sha o sell it closed the door in more ways than one hveer could never talked to him again or learn who his father was. >>host: we are out of time.fo thank yonout very much and only for this discussion but for this very revealing book. thank you for coming. [inaudible conversations]

one of the best-known literary voice is coming of the 1960's who is still a well-known poet for her free verse. she was born here and grew up on mold 80 straight straight -- mold rainy street for she spent much of her youth which she remembers very fondly which

is called after occurred grandmothers address. it is now known as hall of fame drive running by the women's basketball hall of fame on the east side of downtown. was a fairly a prosperous middle-class suburban area but since there been renewed -- renewal has been completely redeveloped apartments, iraq center, auditorium, but the sa talks about the shock of coming here of demolitions that was your grandmother's old home to see the rose is still growing and the house has been torn down.

>> the body farm is a 4-acre facility on land of university of tennessee a research area that i have been looking at the question how long is the individual said? a 4-acre facility that i have been trying to document >> what prompted you to make the body farm? just to give you some history i taught 11 years at the university of kansas

19631971. ever for the kansas bureau of investigation and in the late '60s, they're having trouble of cattle rustling. they take the cows over the hills and they are gone the bad guys bring in the refrigerated trucks over oklahoma texas colorado and they kill the cows in the field and butchered them. hang it up in the refrigerated truck and drive off and the rancher comes along three weeks later to find all of the carcasses.

the question is how long have they been dead? they need to know where they need to begin to look. at that time was a man named harold who wrote the letter asking me if i could look at cal carcasses to tell how long they have been dead. thereby isn't much in the literature. almost nothing. and nothing to do with cows writing a letter that we don't know the answer to that but if you have a

rancher willing to kill a cow to let me look at it i can give you some data. at the end of the letter it is interesting what your mind is thinking about. i said we really need for the reinsure to give me for cows. one in the spring, summer, fall and winter because a major factor of decay is temperature. nothing ever happens. just like so many things it never got off the ground i came here june 31st 1971 i wrote to the forensic pathologist over in memphis and said i have just

accepted a job at the university of tennessee and i will be joining your state in a few months and he wrote back immediately and said would you serve the of forensic anthropologist for the system? i said sure. and he rates and the medical examiner somebody is on the staff that should have said to identify skeletal remains but he said dead bodies for about then the pot the body starts to come in. that is the stuff that you saw. to make a long story short,

how long has somebody been dead? it began a perfect opportunity so i went to did dean and said i need some land to put the dead bodies on so i can study the length of time of death. he did not say anything and picked up the phone of the university and found the agricultural campus to identify those to take care of the land and i went to see him and the 1960's university raised p.i.g.s.. favor getting out of that business and had the extra of a pig barns and gave me a born and that was the beginning of the body farm. in the 4 acres and i mentioned would refer started, it did not start until 1980. this outboard is 60 miles

off campus. it takes 45 minutes to get out there and do your research and 45 minutes to get back. i was getting a lot of bodies. the program was going. i said i need some closer and what you referred to as the body farm began in 1980 but 81 history it was november 1971 and a facility for which we studied the changes that occur for how long they have been dead. >>host: where to the bodies come from? >> from the medical examiner

system and in tennessee, if your body is up in the medical examiner system there are a number of those bodies that are not claimed. many bodies are not claimed. in tennessee and john doe or jane doe it cost about $700 to bury john doe or jane doe. and the way the economy is today they would much rather give it to be for nothing and sell i began to have

bodies coming through the system. as as time went by and lourdes got out i had a body farm, people wanted to know if they could donate their body. yes. they could donate their body. the most buddies we came out came to the medical examiner system. 2003 the most bodies we got came to the donated ones and from then on they have steadily increased we did 144 burials last year witches' essentially one every two days. the great majority are those who donate their bodies for

research for the skeleton to end up. in. >>host: have you ever rejected a body? >> we do. we don't take bodies with communicable diseases. i am dealing with the students and you don't want the student is a graduate program to come off with a disease. >>host: how long do keep the body before it ends up in the lab? >> that depends on what to research it is involved. if you have a graduate student working on a short-term project in the major research go ring on is them master's thesis normally do not stay there more than one year.

two long-term effect of the projects and we have five bodies buried. the compounds that has been given off. they were there nine years. we are in getting data so be our leading them but that now more than one year. >>host: any other high profile case his or memorable? >> i have a couple. rucci valenz, buddy holly

holly, the big bopper that was a disc jockey from texas they died february 3rd february 3rd, 1959 with the airplane crashed thousand of clear lake iowa is the crash this song the day the music died was based on that crash. i did in x-ray autopsy of the body of the big bopper. they took off in the middle of an eye of a blinding snowstorm if they should not have been plying the private getzlaf and was confused and split into the ground. of the same thing with the kennedy boy who got confused and fluid into the ocean. it skids across the foreign field and stops the only

person to exit the plane was the big bopper he is catapulted through the windshield of the roof of the plane to land on the other side of the fence. when he is found the other three are still in the plane. the richardson family had often wondered if their loved one had survived the crash. they asked me if i would do an autopsy. base of me on television just like you. people to watch your programs. they want to know if i could do an autopsy of the big bopper to determine if he will could survive the crash

and was calling for help. i said i think i can do that but the other effort the other is you know, charles lindbergh, his first child was kidnapped from new jersey where they lived and was killed and a man allegis convicted and executed i was only one of two forensic anthropologist who have the skillet hidden material of the lindbergh baby. >>host: this facility has made a difference in the study of forensic anthropology. >> it is the only one that existed for years. literally i have lectured around the country convincing universities they should start a body farm