so the question is, what made that day, what made that day -- what made the narrative of that day unfold exactly in the way in which it did? it seems to me, having read something about this anyway, that sly had something to do with it, the navy veteran, whose wife was going to go with back to civilization with representative ryan, and apparently the husband, sly, did not want his wife and possibly also his kids to go back. ..

with military force. impending invasion of the camp. because live tried to make the gesture that representative ryan spoke with his switchblade. seemed to me there is a double suicide plus homicide and was that also planned? or did that just happen? where events got out of control? he had a bunch of guys -- it seems like the old saying was maybe not orchestrated but it was somehow involved in the settlement and revealed itself as the day went on an events kept tugging away and going on and what happened, i'd don't know, people could stop it or something. i never figured it out myself.

you say is that he wanted to kill everybody and was intent on doing this even years ahead of time. i wonder if that might not have been true. in other words with is the events of the day precipitated it. if sly had not tried to assassinate ryan or make the gesture perhaps jones would have continued with his share rate for another decade or two or three or do you think he was convinced he was going to wipe them all out in a short space of time? his mother died one year before. >> what happened was leo ryan left jonestown not only with the media but also a group of defectors. so these defectors come back to blow the lid off of jones. it was so tightly controlled. jones had been rehearsing and few go to my web site and listen to some of the audio had been

rehearsing answers to reporters''s questions. asked towards the end of jonestown, all residents were this gravy with some leify vegetables but not enough protein or sustenance. the people who survived who lost 30 or 40 pounds. it was crazy how much weight. they were very weak. he had been rehearsing in jonestown what do we eat here? we eat well. that is not doing that. what do we eat? we have pork and chicken and steak. he was rehearsing that. he wanted that fantasy, that jonestown was this great utopia to continue. when those defectors left with leo ryan he knew they would come back and talk to the media and

talk about how horrible conditions were and they are rehearsing them in suicide droves and he is planning to kill everyone and won't let anybody leave. he knew the gig was up and what precipitated that? he was able to say after his security guards shot the departing party, some people are implicated in this crime and we always said one for all and all for one and the guy in the army is going to close in and torture us. and so it would be better to take this potion and flipped across to the other side. he believed in reincarnation. >> one more question. >> did you speak to the department of justice or other

investigators? >> i spoke with an fbi agent who was on the scene downtown after the massacre. he was the lead photographer down there. as far as the department of justice, most of their documentation including internal investigation was released in these files and that is what i worked off of. >> do the signing and all that. [applause] >> thanks for bearing with my cold. >> for more information visit the author's website, julia scheeres.com. >> condoleezza rice, george

mcgovern and jim lehrer headline this weekend as booktv brings the 20 eighth annual miami book fair international. follow the authors and discussions and join in with your calls and e-mails and tweets on c-span2. you can look, for exclusive book fair web tests at booktv.org. this weekend on afterwards mathew cannon and ralph nader on the end of america. >> ethnic nationalism, tribalism be personal religious fundamentalism are far more powerful than ideology. we are not immune in this country from these forces and when the melting pot has been thrown out and you're preaching multiculturalism what holds us together? >> his book is suicide of a superpower. from new york city the 60 second annual national book awards. find the schedule at booktv.org. >> next, roya hakakian talked about the 1992 killing of four

iranian kurdish dissidents and a trial that followed. this is about 45 minutes. >> what a lovely place. i think it was gertrude stein's concept that they brought to life and this bookstore in miami. the cafe and restaurant and courtyard. magnificent. thank you so much for having me. this is an absolute pleasure to be here in this wonderful beautiful place. so this will not shock you because you don't know me but i started out as a poet. the idea of writing about crime is the farthest thing that has ever been from my mind. i have never pictured myself in any way, shape or form interested in guns, blood, dead

bodies. i try to stay away from them for as long as i can and as far as i can. and usually even when we are watching tv at home and someone draws out a gun i am the first person to reach for the remote control and change the channel. this won't surprise you but the fact that i ended up writing about an assassination was a complete shock to me. the way this fell into my lap or desert was mentioned earlier in the introduction, the political assassination that i wrote about took place in september of 1992 in berlin, germany and a restaurant and two gunmen and the other with a handgun walked into the restaurant and started shooting at the eight guests who had gathered over a dinner party

that night and shot them all four died instantly and the other four survived. of the four survivors, one ended up being my house guest for several weeks. i knew very little about him. he was a friend of a friend who was coming to town in connecticut where i lived and as i was trying to cook dinner in the evening, keeping him company, trying to be a good host he would be sitting across from me trying to help and making conversation and i made the mistake of asking what happened in september of 1992 and the rest was history. he would tell me a new installment what happened not

simply the night of the murder of which too many minds might seem the most interesting or intriguing part of the story, but what i found most fabulous and most engrossing was the way in which the investigation and everything else unravels. i would be making my dinner and doing -- going about my own thing in the kitchen and he would be giving me the next day with an investigation, until he came up to the trial and by the time he reached the trial which was about a year into his storytelling i thought that i should take a trip to berlin, germany the personal of course, i set this up to say that when you have a writer who has started out as a poet and is

generally very squeamish around anything having to do with blood, you get a crime story told in a way that few tribe--crime stories are told which is against everybody's advice rather than delaying of the crime so the readers would be interested in reading the stories they get to the gruesome crime halfway through the book and two thirds down being as squeamish as i am i get rid of it in the first five minutes of the book. and i hope, i hope you agree that in a way this was not only a poet's look into a crime but also woman's look at at the very male-dominated macho story. the reason i call it that is the

killers were men, the people who died were men. the people who subsequently got involved were men. for me to try to look at this intriguing story and say when i look at this, what is it that would make such a gruesome story really intriguing for all readers from a perfectly new perspective or completely let's say revolutionary perspective? and you will tell me if i have achieved creating that sort of perspective. so that is how it goes. get rid of the crime and i follow through pretty diligently because after i took my trip to berlin the subsequent characters

that i've met, one seemed to be more intriguing than the other and that wasn't because any one of these heroes or survivors were investigators were in any shape or form perfect people but rather that in there imperfection and fallibility they all together contributed to bringing about a very historic trial and verdict which by the accounts i have received from several legal historians happens to be one of the most important trials in the history of europe in the 20th century. you are probably just as surprised as i am why none of us heard about it. that is precisely why i decided

to write about it. it seemed like a very important story that has gone untold. so you know there are eight people sitting, two people walking in. one person stands guard. four people get shot and died immediately. four others survive. the first person who was in my kitchen talking to me was one of these four survivors. his name was privic. of the very first question asked him was, what did you do when you first got home? it may not seem a very smart question to many of you but i was really curious to me. what if one of this in this room

survived such an atrocious crime and the police come, we go to the headquarters and be interrogated or whatever they do, fingerprint, i don't know and it is all over and several hours later in his case four five -- 4:00 or 5:00 a.m. and you are all alone and you have to go back to your life as usual. you have to go back to your own apartment. what is that like? that was one of the first questions i asked. what happened to you when you were done? they said you can now go home? are will read a very short passage from the moment he arrived home and what are his thoughts and follow through with some of the other characters

after. his -- these microphones are wilting. it is ok? call. [laughter] >> sorry about that. i broke the microphone. thank you. call. all he wanted to do was make calls. he paced the perimeter of the apartment from his living room couch across the television set where the news was on to the balcony for air to the telephone on his bedroom desk to the stove in the kitchen where he was boiling water for tea over and over again. his morning routine had vanished. the thought of eating or going to bed did not enter his mind. he dials his secretary. won't be in today, he told her.

when asked why he broke into an endless saab. were you rob? is your mother dead? is your daughter missing? the secretary's frantic questions. all he would say to her was turn on the news. he took a shower under the rushing water. he sat with his eyes wide open. if he closed them the image of an extended arm in a black leather sleeves would place his mind. it was not until the streaming water struck his body that he felt his right cheek and temples and remembered blow to his right side when he fell off his chair. the age of real-time news had not done and reporters were not yet looking for him. on an ordinary morning he would have reveled in the peace but against the up or within him this quiet was the antithesis to peace. he returned to his desk and made

another call. it was to a friend on the editorial board of a meeting daily. hello there. this is privic. hey, there, privic, modifying the last syllable of the name of privic told him to. he told germans who had trouble remembering his name that it was like paris. then you have me. a slight mispronunciation, he figured, with a small sacrifice for the sake of good new monarchs. he crafted a single sentence to distill the ordeal for the busy journalist. i was at the restaurant where the four men died last night. i heard. let's have coffee one of these days to talk conover.

privic, taken aback by the lukewarm reply was forming his next sentence when the reporter excuse himself and rushed off. the reporter's quick dismissal caused a wave of panic in him. for years he had carefully collected journalists the way others collect stamps. in their company he founded captive audience, spinning tale with the skills he had been perfecting since childhood when he and his friend who could not afford to go to the movies will their allowances together to buy a single ticket to see and recounted in 90 minutes over a span of ours so elaborately that the real film if the others ever did get to see it invariably fell short of the description. journalists had always been privic's most formidable allies. after is visa expired the same editorial writers saved him from

deportation by writing a scathing piece on germany's repressive immigration policy. but now to whom could he turn now? as he brooded the telephone rang. the same voice in the receiver once more. i am sorry, privic. it took me a bit to register what you said. did you say you yourself were at the restaurant last night? that is what i said. then we must talk instantly. so they got together and introduced privic and rights of the metal for real the very same day in the paper. what becomes the thrust of this murder in the beginning in september or october or november of 1992 when it had happened was whodunit? there were on the one hand the

exiled iranians who had their own opinions. there were politicians and journalists who were circulating other possibilities. and there were a slew of ideas that were circulating around. that was the dominant feel of the first three months. very quickly thereafter, a very wonderful and one of the most important and most intriguing characters in this book got assigned to the case, prosecutor. he discovered that the truth -- i don't want to kill the plot line for you but he sides with a one possibility within the slew of theories swirling around that this is a government will

sponsored series of terrorist attacks and assassinations and after his assignment to the case the story shifts from being a whodunit to will they do the right thing? will the people who have power, will the people who can and have the ability to bring justice to these victims do what is expected? and act nobly? and do what really the law clearly mandated them to do. and so that leads to a trial which opens with a year after the assassination and nearly four year proceedings, very

dramatic four year courtroom proceedings that finally leads to a historic verdict in april of 1997. it was mentioned during the introduction that there a confluence of characters in this book and that was part of the challenge of putting the book together. if -- it is 5 fictionalize said i would have eliminated at least 20 of them and easily stock to my leading man who would have been the prosecutor and investigator and done away with everyone else and endowed him with all the great qualities and abilities to save the day. however, it was a piece of nonfiction and i think -- despite all the advice i was

receiving, rather than simplifying story for fictionalizing the story readers are very sophisticated nowadays. they have read some much that they can actually manage a multi character story and they can keep track of numerous characters going in and out and don't need a singular hero. certainly not in the 20 first century. we have given up a lot of our old myths and whatever dreams we once had about singular heroes saving the day and we understand that a confluence of characters, personalities, events need to come together in order for a great triumph to take place. so the great character of this book in a way becomes its own plot line and the narrative

itself. and what i hope you will find is that the unraveling of the events take a life of their own and that becomes the line we follow. when i took my first trip to berlin to assess and see whether the other 8 goals of this were as appealing as the one i had discovered in my own kitchen i ran into the widow of one of the four men who had died in a restaurant that night and immediately after she opened the door to me and i entered the apartment she asked me where in the united states i lived and i said at the time i lived in new york and i was coming from new york and she said this was practically the third sentence

out of her mouth. he wished she had been here on 9/11. and i said why? she said because she too had lost a loved one, her husband in september 17th about ten years earlier and she knew exactly what the widows who have lost their husbandss, she also had a daughter and the children who have lost their fathers were going through. and she wished she had been here after 9/11. she had been in new york after 9/11 because she thought that all widows. all the people like her, women should come together and create a network of widows who had suffered through an act of terrorism because it knew no national boundaries.

that this was sort of a global problem. that had evicted her and any american woman in the states. and it was in listening to her that i really decided that this type of story. the value of this story was beyond the parameters in which i was thinking about it initially. that there was something to which she was saying that something about these acts of crime, these particular act of crime which had been sponsored by radicals ideology, in this case the government of iran bonded all of the victims regardless of where they came from and i found that extremely moving and it was the moment that really gave me the

incentive, made me resolute about wanting to write this book. last but not least i want to introduce her to you and have you listened to her frustration and experience because we are just coming out of the tenth anniversary of 9/11 and i think much of what she told me in her grieving process reminded me of the stuff that i was hearing being said on radio and television in the past few weeks. hernandez -- her name shoreh is. she and her husband had daughter together and her name is sarah

and i refer to sarah and the daughter of privic who appeared in the previous section and her name is stalin may --salome. two girls almost the same page and a mom and privic who we already met. something very interesting that happens is while privic the survivor is trying to gather documents be britain attracted to the courts to see the truth about the case. will try to feed the proper information to the journalists here and there, in the midst of all this and god knows recovering from the trauma he has experienced his 10-year-old daughter is having fainting spells. nobody seems to at least for the

first few weeks be able to diagnose why she is having these. so he takes her to the doctor and open up in the doctor's waiting room. amid the glare of the fluorescent lights in the exam room privic waited. sometimes kissing, sometimes stroking the hand of his daughter salome. she looked even more frail and the hospital gown. he felt restless on behalf of his 12-year-old dancer who had been told to remain still until the doctor returned. 32 fainting spells compounding several pediatricians forced the daughter and father and daughter to see a cardiologists. two fainting spells on her part and guilt on the father's part.

ever since the morning after the murders privic tried to keep her away from the fallout. his first phone call had been to his ex-wife to shield salome from the news. before taking care of her on tuesday, there weekly day together became through the apartment to hide all signs of the case from view. photos, letters, phone messages, newspaper clippings but the more he hid the more she wanted to know. how did it happen, dead? how many were there? did anyone hit you? they came, they shot, they left, nothing happened to me at all. wishing to move on. but her questions continued. did you have blood on you? did you scream? did you cry? did you cry after?

are you scared? the depth of her curiosity astounded him. once he held enough! and she stopped asking but he knew she had not stopped thinking. the dream of becoming a dancer had turned her into a reluctant leader and so he designed intricate plans for her meals. instead of an elaborate dinner he lined up an epicure the array of tiny appetizers which he paraded before the ballerina at intervals. in got small tidy apartment brimming with music the father surrendering to the daughter's women's agreed to be a dance student in the tutelage of his coach. the tone deaf and hopelessly uncoordinated. his performances were memorable. what he lacked in talent he compensated for in which. when he failed to remember his step he limped across side across the floor. as he dragged a foot he created

an imaginary audience not with german for good day but with his own courage and german concoction, farce. nothing like a bit of vulgarity to bond the part-time father with his preadolescent child. what he could not fathom was that joy, however abundant, was no substitute for safety which he no longer felt. nor could he imagine her days in school among classmates who treated her like a sensation. only some of the questions she asked where her own. the rest were once the children mocking her father as the super hero on the nightly news incessantly badgered her with while she stared into their faces and blinked back tears. when the first fainting spell

came over salome he thought she had starved herself but when she fainted of full stomach he blamed himself and his complicated life for his daughter's malady. the cardiologists returns to the exam room without a definitive diagnosis and advised that he observed her closely for a few days. he tried hard to keep her out of his own gloomy world but the killers or the mere idea of them robbed her of a happy childhood. now it seemed the vacuum he had surrounded her with it surrounded her. unlike salome, sarah wanted to know nothing. the difference is salome's father survived and sarah's father had died. in november she asked shoreh where her father was exactly now and if he was in pain. in december she had asked if she could buy him christmas gifts and leave them under the tree

until he returned. in february she asked if her mother intended to marry another man and if so if he was going to move in with them. by large she no longer asked. if she heard the name of the restaurant on the radio she rushed to turn it off. she recognize the faces of family or friends on television she walked out of the living room. to help sarah and her mother cope with the husband's loss shoreh's parents moved in with the two of them for a few weeks. their presence strengthen the two of them go shoreh could not tell them that it did. sentences failed her. what she had in abundance with tears. parents stared at her over breakfast and waited in vain for her to form a sentence as simple as how did you sleep? her sentence failed her.

she rarely felt hunger. she barely tasted a perfunctory bites she took in front of them to assure them of her appetite and reassured them of her appetite. parents legally government clerk and housewife, led is serene and predictable lives. the security of their life had given shoreh the courage to rebel against them. and mary a rebellious man just like herself. what it would sarah not have been better off with ordinary parents? than a pair of extraordinary ones for only a time? all day she turned these thoughts over in her mind blazing with a year. to help with his extraordinary ness and brilliance. she would mumble to herself. her husband and rage turnout. stick with me and you will be famous like you deserve to be,

had promised her when on the first night they met. had deathbed his path to fame she shouted and her head? once again he had abandoned them. of her pregnancy and delivery she had been alone. remembering his absence she withdrew more and more furious each day. you wondered if it had been a warning to prepare her to raise their child alone. reason had abandoned her. she no longer thought of him or his absence as involuntary. he had left them yet again. the thought came to her when she saved their old family movies. spend one night watching real the phils to finally once and only for a few seconds walking with her along the race track where sarah ran her first competition. the footage keenly resemble their lives now. as if through them her husband had sketched their future.

everyone moved be proposed and smiled following his instructions but he, there director, was invisible. his vision filled the screen yet he would not be seen. just like now. thank you for listening. [applause] have been told by the wonderful people who are running this establishment that you ought to wait for the microphone to reach you before you ask your questions. >> what is the significance of the turquoise palace? i haven't read the book yet. >> what is the significance of the turquoise palace? there is a moment. i would like to think it is an exciting moment with in the

trial where the key witness, somebody no one knew even existed, shows up and he becomes sort of the smoking gun for the attorneys in the trial and it is during the dialogue, during the q&a being conducted on the stand that you will know the answer to your mystery. [laughter] >> given your background as a poet i wonder if you have ever read nonfiction prior to this and if not, did you have any thought about fictionalizing it and telling a slightly different story in that manner? >> this is a work of nonfiction

as it stands. my previous work in english was a memoir. and actually, after i pieced this together undecided this is really what i want to do at least for the foreseeable future. that what i love doing is going out and finding these stories that are immensely significant that have either fallen by the wayside, never made it to the headlines or were dismissed or shoved under the rug. i might sound paranoid here but perhaps conspiratorial reasons. who knows? a found that i love the notion of finding these stories and some of them at least in this case are so fabulous that you

could hardly come up with fiction that can outdo this. we will find out if i did it justice but if i have done it justice than you agree with me that it is so beautiful, so astounding that just in the way that it unfolded to have fictionalized it would have been to diminish it. i also found that in some great way there were several dozen of these political assassinations that had taken place and i only write about one and that is because this one happened in a magical way at the end of the five years. >> did you receive significant cooperation on the survivors's families and the families of those that did not survive?

>> a friend of mine who is also a writer and a journalist herself read the earlier version and was really touched and deeply moved by the quality of the interviews and information that i gathered and i could have fooled her and said it was a fantastic interview and they would only open up to me. in truth precisely because the story had not been covered. i shouldn't say have not been covered. the story had been covered but from certain angles. from deeply political angle, and in pieces because it was a five year span. one day there was a very exciting day at the trial and one day a big article in the newspaper and two weeks later there would be something else but never in one big kind of

tapestry of the full story and in all of its glory. and because they had not happened i think all these people, the survivors, the widows and people who lost loved ones were waiting for someone to show up. i don't think i exercised any fantastic skills to get them to talk. they were waiting for years for someone to show up and talk. the rest of it was just on record because the trial had already concluded and all the material was there and there was an archive that i simply went to and they were all fortunately cataloged on shelves. otherwise it would have been impossible.

>> i am a little bit unsure. the german cooperation from the authorities. am i to understand that there was a hesitancy or a lack of cooperation from the authorities for a crime like this committed in their own country. i find that to be unusual considering the western european country and general attitude of this type of thing taking place on their own soil. i can imagine there is german business interests involved with iran that are strong interests but for something like this that is that dramatic that sounds to me to be something unexpected. not an expert on it but from common knowledge. >> you are right. one would think based on what one knows about germany, about europe, about the standards of practice that this should have been unusual.

this should have been treated as completely unacceptable. crimes like this which had happened in austria, france, sweden, switzerland, italy, kurdish -- greece, united states. i am sorry? [inaudible] >> argentina, they were happening and oftentimes what would happen was that either -- if the perpetrators were arrested, in some cases they would not be arrested. they were really good and got away or sometimes because of precisely business interests that you refer to, the authorities would be a little slower than usual in apprehending them and they would slip away.

there were a couple cases where they slipped away and in the case of another assassination in 1989 in vienna, austria, one of the perpetrators was apprehended and two weeks later was put on a plane and deported to tehran and the authorities cited national interests because of our national interests, we will not prosecute. it is because of that that more crimes are happening and in my view, eventually, even though from 1980 when the first case occurred until 1997 when the verdict from the case was issued, there is a 17 year lapse, there is a burgeoning or gathering of mementos of these assassinations precisely because

they seem to be able to get away with it. because of trade interests and business interests and because given that the united states no longer had an embassy in tehran because of the crisis of 1979 and because the united states was no longer present have a political or any other interest in iran it had become sort of beacon of hope, tehran or iran in general as a place for europe to slipped into and for this balance of power finally between europe and the united states to happen within the middle east the as this foothold in iran. so they were of diplomatic interests as well as trade and business interests. by 1992 when this happened trade relations between iran and germany are at a peak and the

german -- the iranians are absolutely certain that there is no way germans would jeopardize those trade relations over a silly tribe. so what makes the story really fabulous is that the germans precisely wanted to do what iran had hoped german administration politicians involved did want to make the trial go away. did want to make the case go away but it just wouldn't. and so the process of how it wouldn't go away, how is that two powers come together to cover this up and yet it seems to go on and take on a life of its done makes a really wonderful.

>> how has it changed you to a wrote a memoir >> i thought i might try my hand at fiction but there are so many stories that if told and properly told by people who can have proper access, proper

knowledge because i was in a privileged position with this story. being iranian or having been born and raised, clearly had access to a slew of things that a non iranian would have a harder time getting at so i think there are individuals -- individual writers who are particularly positioned to do certain stories and i think we know it not just to the public but to history to literature, to rediscovers these stories and show what it is about them that beg revisiting. i think -- aside from the fact -- i keep talking about this has a great story, as a great story but in addition to the fact that it is a great story, it is also

a very essential story for all of us today who want to understand what in the world is going on with iran. it seems like the more we spend time -- and i say we and the we i am using includes whitehouse to ordinary americans who are just well-informed, the more we spend time learning about it, reading about it the less we understand it. seems like a terribly enigmatic place. and i think part of the reason -- i don't find it enigmatic. i find it in part tragic but not so enigmatic. part of it is because there are fundamental narrative's we don't know about each other. there are certain fundamental stories that we need to know about each other. and i believe that this is one

of them. during each presidency in the united states we hear iran is cast in a new light somehow. always a dark light but with the angle >> and all that and we hear one take on the country and yet it doesn't need -- lead to greater comprehension or greater understanding or anything. i think perhaps part of it has to do with the fact that there are really important narrative's that we aren't telling the outsiders. there are insider stories we pass on to reach other within the community of iranians and don't manage to pass it on. and then there are stories that somehow in addition to being

translated would also need to be interpreted and passed on. those are the kind of stories that even as human beings when we start to fall in love or become friends that are among the first things we exchange with each other. where did you grow up? what school did you go to? basic information. not simply about the facts or the data of the location and population of the country but also the fundamental demotions for fundamental events that change the nation or shape the nation and it is for writers like me who probably lived in that overlapping space between the two cultures and countries to figure them out. >> we shouldn't wait for a book

of poetry about murders? >> a book of poetry about murders. there is an idea. i hope when you read it you find some passages are pretty poetic. thank you. thank you so much for coming. [applause] >> you are watching booktv on c-span2, 48 hours of nonfiction authors and books every weekend. >> so my good friend this is not just another straightforward chronological biography of davy crockett cradle to grave. nor does it focus on the great slice from the crockett possibly personal the alamo. there's more to him that the

last few weeks of his life and it is not a regurgitation of the many myths and total lies perpetuated over the years. this is a book for people interested in learning about the truth or at least as much as can be uncovered about both the historical and the fictional crockett and how the two often became one. and hopefully the readers will gain some new historical insight into the actual man and how he captured the imagination of his generation and later ones as well. so now a few for spoonfuls from crockett:the lion of the west. the first is just a graph or two from my preface. the authentic david crockett was

first and foremost a 3-dimensional human being. a person with somewhat exaggerated hopes and will check fears. a man who had as we all do both good points and bad points. he was somewhat idiosyncratic, possessed of often unusual views, prejudices and opinions that govern how he chose to live his life. crockett could be calculating and self aggrandizing but also valiant and as resourceful as anyone who wrote the american frontier. as a man he was authentic and contrived. he was wise in the ways of the wilderness and most comfortable with deep in the woods on a hunt. he also could hold his own in the halls of congress. the fact that distinguished him from so many other frontiersmen, the enjoyed fraternizing with men of power and prestige in the fancy colors of philadelphia and

new york. crockett was like another and nineteenth century in the glove. he fought under andrew jackson in the indian war. only later to become jackson's bitter foe on the issue of the issue of removal of indian tribes from their homelands. crockett's contradictions extended beyond politics. he had only a few months of formal education yet he read the bard. he was neither a buffoon or great intellect but a man who was always evolve in on the stage of the nation and its adolescence, a pioneer whose dreams reflected a restless nation with a gaze pointed toward the west. perhaps more than any one of his time david crockett was arguably our first celebrity hero. inspiring people of his own time as well as the 20th century generation.

the man, david crockett may have perished on march 6th. elite team 36 in the final assault on the alamo but the mythical davy crockett the bigger still valid interval part of the american psyche perhaps more so than any other frontiers and lives powerfully on. in this way his story becomes far more than a one node walt disney legend. his life continues to shed light on the meaning of america's national character. a spoon full from a chapter entitled killed in a bar. david crockett believed in the wind and in the stars. the son of tennessee could read the son, the shadows and the wild clouds full of thunder. he was comfortable amid the

thickets, quagmire is and mountains. he hunted the hickory maple and sweet gum forests that had never felt an ax blade. he was familiar with all the smells, the odor of decaying animal flesh, the aroma of the air after a rain and the pungent smell of the forest. he knew the river is lined with sycamore, popular and willow that breached the mountains through steep sided goerge class with strange sounding names with many indian influences. and the many different trees like the wolf and the elk and the aba at. he saw the dimensions of lakes and streams studded with ancient cypress. dog days arrive not with the heat of august but in early july when the dog star ha rises and sets with the sun. he carri