legal challenges against segregated loss. it met, the early churches could hold maybe 300 to 400 irregulars , but as the movement in many cases and as they express, by 1962 there were meeting in churches that were 600 to 900 large, and in the spring of 1963, of course, the action took place downtown in the city's civic churches and around the county. beginning in the 90's started researching the churches that were involved in the civil-rights struggle here in the city. end bethel was the top of those important churches. and so we began a campaign on national historic landmark that actually took us longer than it

took fred shows worth to dismantle leal said it -- segregation to update landmarks status for this church, but that was successful in 2005. and interestingly when national landmarks started studying the civil rights movement and began with the study of the freedom ride, just on the basis of shells worth and the bethel baptist church participation in the freedom ride it was named the national historic landmark because shuttles worth lived here, coordinated three emirates across the state of alabama from this place. a church members helped him pick up the freedom riders. he ran the whole operation right out of this place. as he had run much of the movement from bethel. now the church is on the restoration. a new church was built. it is currently being restored to the conditions just following

the first bombing. and we are working to develop historic her interpretation, and we hope that visitors will actually come out here and get the feel of what it was like from the real people who stood behind the movement for many, many years. because the story of birmingham is the story of common people standing up for their rights to a standing up in the streets of birmingham until they knew that rights are for all. and this was the only one, the leader actually had a local movement. that is, people that supported him through many years of many court battles, many challenges and many boycotts and many other kinds of campaigns against very, very restrictive local laws that finally in the spring of april, may with the help of keying in the staff grew into of one of

the most amazing testimonies of people standing up for their rights anywhere in history come anywhere this happened. >> up next, the letters that i sent to president obama from the american public, to now was the president reads every night. this is about 45 minutes. [applause] [applause] >> appreciate it. and i hope nobody is here. companies say is, takes requests. yes with all levy immediately if i try to do that. i appreciate you coming. there are a lot of people here who have been supportive of me during the whole process of writing the book. people who edited, traveled up the montana, people who helped in my reporting, so i appreciate you guys being here and share

your support tonight. so, the idea of this book actually, it was sort of born out of frustration. nba crystallized for me that the first of all the time that i flew on air force one i had taken this job for the washington paris, had been working for what, my assignment to write more personal, intimate stories about the presidency and what the president's life was like. and it only took me like maybe a week of doing that job to realize that the president as beverly have personal, intimate moments, certainly none that i was going to get access to. everything about his life is outsourced in this really crazy way. he as $94 mesa in the white house, six calligraphers write what he wants britain. seventy-eight people write his schedule every day. this huge army that helps to operate in this day to day way, and is scheduled is subdivided into 15 minute chunks.

the secretary who sits outside the oval office which actually has a reverse people so that she can look into the door with him and make sure things are running on schedule. he calls it the bubble. i think sometimes it really drives him crazy. a few weeks that i have been doing this job, and has been driving me crazy, probably also my editors crazy because i riding is there are going go by what have i not getting to the personal moments in a obama's life. so, finally after doing this for, you know, a few months, my attorney came up to fly on air force one. a way that works is pretty much everybody who covers the president like your name is put into this huge database. in every time the president goes on a trip they move through this database and able people get their turn to fly on air force one. so my name came up and finally got them all right, this is the moment or will see something, be

up close and might have a chance to experience with this is like a little different. so, you know, obama flies out of a private air force base in virginia. got dressed up, ridge of a car to drive over there, which it was like a battered pontiac grand them that we maddest to keep functional. it did not really feel appropriate to drive to the tarmac to get on air force one, is a rented a car. drove over there, weighted with these eight of the reporters, and as we waited for a return to board the plane, we waited for maybe commit i don't know, an hour, and then they led us up to my two entrances, they let us up this ', that is kind of back by, you know, though far rear of the airplane. we walked up, sat down. they said, okay, we are waiting

for the president to arrive at the airport. we waited for a half an hour and then we heard, okay, the president is arriving. as you have never seen reporters move this fast. in that scramble to get back off the plane to watch the president's motorcade arrived, and then we saw him walk six steps up the separate instance of the plan to the front of the plan. so those six steps were very illuminating. lisa what he was wearing and what, we all were frantically taking notes about him. we got back on the plane, we flew to new hampshire. we scrambled off the plane to what the president wants those six steps again back into his motorcade. we fall behind separately in a different car. this event and, actually, there was none of the time or space with the press to go in with him, so we were off site in a satellite location where we watched the speech on a closed-circuit tv, and, you know, taking notes of of the

event that way, so i'm sitting there feeling, honestly, i just frustrated with trying to write about the presidency in any kind of meaningful way. i was listening to a speech commander heard him say something that i have heard and talk about before, but it just sort of clicks. he talked about these ten letters that he reads every night, which are a sampling of the 20,000 the estimates of the white house every day and how these letters were what he felt like were his only direct connection left to be blood in the country and the people that the government, and he said that the letters were the days that sometimes captain sane when he felt like he was so barricaded. and i realized pretty quickly that that was something that could be deemed personal and genuine and was of the a wanted to turn right about. so that is what i did. started with the story for the post and rode along a piece about the process of getting these to letters to his desk. in the paper was generous enough to give me a leave for a year

where i did go out to montana and, i think, they have been distinguished from that professor tunnel now. but when that there a rope and a the end of this year finally did get time on the president's schedule with the secretary was looking into, reverse people, all we talked about letters. and i will read a brief part of the books now that is sort of, you know, from that half-hour i have with him about what this bill means to him. the president said the hardest letters to reread the ones that made him feel remote, even powerless. people tend to write to their president when circumstances turn dyer, feeling it's a matter of last resort. what results is stay inside obama's purple folder was an intimate view of hardship of personal struggle, way of desperation capable of overwhelming the senses. some of the right for urgent help amended the act governing

was so slow that sometimes it took years before legislation could actually improve lives. a few times during his presidency obama has been so moved by a letter that he had written a personal check or minute phone call on the ride is behalf thinking it was the only way to insure a fast results, not something i should advertise, but it has happened. many other times he had forged letters to government agencies or cabinet secretaries after attaching a handwritten note that said, but can you please take care of this. these letters can be heartbreaking, just heartbreaking committee said. some you read in sick, gosh, i really want to help this person may not have the tools to help the right now. they used to thinking about the fact that every one person who wrote describing their story, there might be another hundred thousand going through the same thing. so there are times i feel pain that i can do more faster to make a difference now lives. he said his daily reading sometimes made in line for his

days of community organizing when he was making $10,000 a year and working on the cells of chicago. he just graduated from college and purchased a used car for $2,000 spent his days driving around the city to speak with residents about their lives. he became familiar with many of the same issues that will plug is mailed to -- newsletter, chronic unemployment, and struggling. his fellow organizers considered in a master of hands-on granular problem-solving. some of the older woman in the housing projects may have been divided into their homes and cooking for him. he looked around their apartments, keeping a log of maintenance issues in delivering that list a landlord. he helped arrange meetings with city housing officials to talk about problems. he established a rights organization, founded the jobs program, and let a chittering group of persons for college.

when he left for harvard law school after three years in chicago obama had set his path toward the future and wanted to become a politician, a job would allow him to listen to people's problems and enjoy the simple satisfaction of solving them. now he is the most powerful politician a wall, and yet fixing problems sues more difficult and satisfaction more elusive. i can say, let's go to the alderman's office of let me give an advocacy of some fashion. here, just because of the nature of the office and the scope of the issue you're removed it was a frustrating. sometimes what you want to do is pick up the phone and say, a tommy more about what is going on at let me see if i can see your social worker, advocate, a mortgage adviser, employment counselor. so when i think, very specific role, and i have to make a bunch of big decisions they you open the aggregate will end up having a positive affect. you can't always be certain.

that was one of the reasons obama had taken to respond in my hand to a few letters each night. he still writes, the satisfaction of providing at least one thing. so what i would do when i picked letter i would read about and really the part of the book that i enjoyed the most is i would then go and spend, you know, week to more than that sometimes, with these people who had written to the president and received a better response from him watching their problems unfold. you know, that was, by far, i guess, the biggest privilege in this for me committed a chance. the mail that comes into him and in that folder to letters overnight, it is so remarkably diverse. it comes from all kinds of people, people who despise him, people who love him, mostly just people who were writing about what is a joy on their lives, and these release yuri ways. they're like these journal

entries. people don't expect that he will ever read the doe spend time and be there with them while they were trying to form a school or filing for bankruptcy or making these big decisions, it was a huge privilege on how that works of a small-scale while watching how the president is trying to deal with those problems and some sweeping way. the bulk of the book really is stories that these people's lives, narrative journalism of watching how it goes. so the other passenger will read before i hope taking some questions is a slightly longer passage, but i think it will give you a feel for what this book is like. this is, a couple that wrote a letter to the president when there were just going through a brutal stretch. it is a woman and her husband lived in monroe, mich., which is this really bleak town in michigan halfway through --

halfway from toledo and detroit and actually, you would not either be in toledo or detroit. end the woman had lost her job, her husband ran a pool. susan douglas with cancer. she wrote a note to the president kind of telling him what things are like for him. he wrote back to my pretty inspirational note to her. they decided once they got this but the president told them that things could get better for them and they should take steps to make things better. but decided to do, the only way they get the things will be better was to file for bankruptcy and try to get a fresh start of this tremendous debt that had about seven airlines. i went there with them when they're going to the process. this passage abroad to read is the scene of their bankruptcy. they will get six on the morning

of the bankruptcy hearing, looking as if they never slept. did had broken her ankle but it will for another stroke of bad luck when she tripped going down the stairs in das debate about was the cigarettes. a headache that was turning to become a migraine. walked out and discovered three loves of unfold laundry. dishes on the table, and there is son, to year-old j.d., lake and wailing. he checked on the year rate and then escaped to the back porch where he had stored they have smoked cigarette from the night before. this was the latest concession, as much -- smoky its marlboro medium into shifts to moment to cut their consumption in half, but instead they're spoken twice as often, still burning $13 a day onto packs and wasting gas to drive to the minister of walmart that offer the best price. he smoked his have cigarette down to the edge of the filter inflicted into the air. i don't know if i can do this,

he said. you have to, jen said. i have five hours of work left. the late shift in at the airport, you have one kids screaming in another going to filter, but i have to drop everything and drove all the way to in our resource to improve the rear broke. i'm sorry, jen said, there is the choice. he went back inside and searched for an outfit. the last time he dressed up was for their wedding five months and 15 pounds ago. a pair of slacks dismiss the button. leyna found another pair of record khakis and smith in with an iron . a fifth nobody could not find a belt. he walked to the bathroom. once but twice, three times to not a tight and it ended up dangling above his bellybutton. dammit. he threw it back in the closet. you look good, he said.

general outside, and he disappeared. the study came out he did not ask for feedback. worry is skateboard's used the machines, a frayed cloth belts and oversized detroit tigers t-shirt and a baseball hat stained white. he tucked a cigarette behind his year and grabbed his car keys. he drove across the streets, a coffee with three creams and three shares. people love the highway and headed for an arbor. he give the radio turned off when he drove and thought about the other times to travel this highway. he lived in ann arbor for a few years in his early 20's, created -- did a college girl and worked on swimming pools. customers had often been giving cash, as we traveled with a stack of tortillas levels in his pocket. he celebrated a friend's birthday at the fence is sick us in town where waiters threefold his napkin money went to the bathroom and the cells look like

you're debris. he drove past the restaurant and parked in front of the courthouse. just be on the metal detectors treacly above those was a printed sign, a bankruptcy proceeding. he follow the sign to the second floor lounge where there were taking place every other wednesday for a year because the court room was always overworked . the lens would await room for these shares were raised around the room. the bankruptcy official it -- affiliate, the judge, said the table. he sat at the chair in the back of the room. wearing mismatched tin issues,

one red and one right. an unkempt and the grizzly beard. his jeans were too low. later he would learn that many of these people had been advised by their lawyers tillich's destitute as possible, reinforcing the impression a bankruptcy. it was the unspoken rule of bankruptcy court, addressed to the press. the stained baseball hat, the most dapper kind of a room his lawyer have the it never met mom and apology in pulled into the hallway. >> thanks for coming, sir. the lawyer had his hair slicked back with gel and casually tossed the pen into the air with his right hand. sheriff of a share. but to help. it was a good day for the lawyer. he would represent four of the other people, are the 1300 per case. already started sending a monthly payment check as part of

the payment plan to encourage one new debt in an attempt to erase the others. so, remind me again why you are filing to lawyer asks. lots of reasons, merely because my business with under. really, that he is a lot of money, brother to step in and ground pool, and discussed and 30 ground. >> we didn't give many orders like that. the lawyers tried been handed him a one-page form to fill up. he grabbed a pen and started to read. under 2008 and come he wrote 40,000. 2009, 23,000. he checked a few boxes, the bottom of the foreman and a bachelor. a kick lawyers said to me years of is going to go. the fish you will call us up and ask you a few questions. keep it destroyed and polite and there should not be anything too confusing. if all goes well you will be granted your bankruptcy. don't be nervous, i do this all the time, trust me, this is a piece of case.

he nodded and went back into laos where the fish you stood to announce the beginning of the proceeding. the room fell silent. he leaned forward. one by one people filing walked to the front of the room and sat across from the officiate at the white table. they raised their right hand, swore under oath and offer testimony. the soundtrack of a recession, case one, the prayer reason of filing for bankruptcy is that i was the owner-operator of a truck business that went bad and now have no truck in a business. case two, i'm in sales, and there is no commission. esso copiers and printers. a full-time job, and i made only 11,000 last year. three, my son is on welfare and not feeling good, so i am supporting all five of her grandkids. thirty minutes into the hearing the beck gives the flashiest of the table and called for chases daily court. he walked to the front of the room with his lawyer and they sat side by side with the wife

will table. the officiate stood back, a muscular man with a crewcut, a clenched jaw, and dark circles. he had been processing bankruptcy cases every other wednesday for 21 years, surprising what he called nonstop parade of misery for radiant to 4:00 p.m. it has always been on a hard job, but he has severed to wonder who was becoming unbearable. bankers to cases were at an all-time high with more than one-and-a-half people to up and a half million people philae during 12 months ending at the end of 2010. pressing 1700 bankruptcies in 2009, his busiest year ever, and he was on pace tac have 50,000 more. the preparation required 60 pages of paperwork. no amount of ground work made the face-to-face meetings any easier. people seem more desperate than ever, you thought, and more likely to snap. they shouted, cried, the office on the table.

lately he had been forced to call in the court-martial. heat that of his job as similar to that of an emergency room physician, after a while, you have seen a lot of the same pain and suffering. you know the stories. people are unemployed, homeless. i don't want to say you become jaded, but you have to look at their problems objectively and move toward an efficient manner to the base case. he looked across the table, chases stanley klein, case number 104-5682. so, what caused the bankruptcy? i went into business and a bad time at bat location, and a lot of my debt stems from that. he looked down and study the filing. not long ago he had believed most bankruptcies resulted from a portable mistakes, now he was also short. cease he saw in the paper work is familiar combination of bad luck, declining wages, housing

for closure, and an employe of it, the story of michigan's economy at 2010. sometimes a steady the case and not immediately of one of his in his expressions, there but for the grace of god go i. he continued to do his job because the paychecks captain on the rise of the white tablecloth. he looked across, is everything you filed your accurate? yes, sir. then i have no further questions , that completes your exam. he stood up and walked out. the lawyer fallen into the hall and squeezed his shoulder. no further questions please there will bring you the bankruptcy. j not it. he shook the lawyers handle walked up to his car and drove back. he called gen. it's done. let's celebrate. they met at a mexican best to cover restaurant with a launch austria's cost for all laws and $0.95 a game big enough to split. she leaned her crutches are the law and the rapture arms around jake. they spoke their have cigarette and went inside.

a beer for him and are written for her. 11:15 a.m. he had to work later that night, she had to take j.d. to the doctor. the restaurant was empty. they sat on the same side of the booth holding hands. j took off his hat, smart, and raised his glass. to bankruptcy, to fresh starts, to 2010. so, you know, the book, i think, it reveals a lot of what was gorgon the country of a course of that you that i was reporting for gin n.j., you know, one of the heavier stories over the course of the year the file for bankruptcy got it, continued to have doubt -- mounting bad debt. the end of the year and that book it is really heartbreaking that they decided there would take their first trip to new york city because an autograph dealer there had been riding him again and again and again busy

today and get a letter from the president. eventually the judge in new york , sold the letter for $10,000 so that it pay off these debts. so that was one fill your, a direct case where this exchange had a profound impact on these the lives. other stories in here are certainly more hopeful and, you know, the mix of that envelope ranges from, you know, sort of this kind of devastation to a kid driving north to end up ready for class president of cells, but one of the things i find astounding about this process is not just that the president reads sad letters every day. for me read that for a year and having no control over everything, i mean, it is pretty humbling in terms of just what people are going through in their lives in the country and people tend to write when things are difficult for them as a

journalist. i know that most of the feedback i get is people who write because they are upset about something, and i think what he reads reflects that. so, i also think it is a fixture of what he does and he will continue to read all ten as long as he is in office. so far the mix of letters in their has not gotten easier to read, probably get more difficult. we will see how things change from time to time. but i would love to talk. questions, anything? more uplifting stories of a compulsion. [laughter] is? >> you say he gets 20,000 a day overeat? >> a day. it is a crazy process that requires an army. so mailing used to be handled and said the white house itself before the anthrax scare and then decided it was too big a risk to have the stuff coming in there. they took over this office

building in downtown brown the ninth floor of this building 50 employees with 100 internes and 1500 volunteers sort through this daily mail that comes in. they're very specific about measuring the metrics of the male, so e-mails are automatically categorized into one of 75 folders that people are likely to read about. then measure every day. today we get to be percent of carmela occupy wall street, half of it was negative, half those positive. they take these metrics and make sure that the ten they give to obama reflect the general feel of what's coming in. so pretty much the people who select these letters are the staffers in that office, you know, people who it is their first job in d.c. and they may be work on the campaign, go into marie 300 of these a day and pick five over the course of the day that are representative of the main issues that are coming in, but that also standout and so, you know, that stick with

them. those letters go to the director of the office of staff who selects a hundred potential letters and extend that he feels like represents what came in that day. so it is -- it requires an army. >> and how many did you read it? how did you pick? were you looking for to representative or you just looking for the really amazing stories? >> luckily i could kind of do both. it was part of a reporter's dream in that -- and you could take one day and just by the fact that a dozen letters of already been reduced to ten, those are going to be ten really probably pretty good, compelling stories. so to then be able to epic, was able to read hundreds of letters of the course of the year and to be able to pick from this huge wealth of letters, it was -- it was hard to pretend i wanted to follow. i did, i mean, a few things for me where i wanted to pick,

wanted the mix. i want to stories like j&j, but i also wanted stories that were funny or fun, so that was one thing. i was looking for letters that impacted his presidency in a profound way, and some of the letters in the book really have been transformative for him and also for the people who wrote. letters that he has used to pass measures of legislation by talking about the letter again and again and again. ..

>> i can go watch and be there while they're going through this. so, other questions? thoughts? criticisms? open to all things. yeah. >> i thought -- i read the book. >> oh, cool. thanks. >> i thought it was excellent. i thought it was something that should be read in schools because i think that was a very -- i think that was one of the messages that sort of came out of it is that, you know, is that you can, you can connect, you can, you know, make your voice heard. but i thought the story about the health care, about the woman in ohio who was so ill and the fact that her story would kind of clinch that health care deal and was absolutely amazing. >> wow, thanks so much. i really appreciate that. yeah, the story that she's referencing in the book which probably is the letter that over the last three years has had the

most profound impact on the president, it came from a cleaning woman in the ohio who wrote a letter to say, basically, my health care premiums have skyrocketed, i can't afford to pay them anymore. i've had to choose between being able to keep my house or pay my health insurance. i'm giving up my health insurance. the president immediately recognized sort of the potential of this letter. he was just beginning to try to pass his health care reform, and so at the white house they talked about, well, maybe we should bring this woman here and have her talk to some major health insurance companies. so they called her to see if she'd be willing to do that. at that point two weeks had passed. during these two weeks right after she'd given up her health care, she had been diagnosed with leukemia and given a 35% chance to live. so it was this really, um, you know, sort of impactful moment for both the president and this woman whose name is natoma canfield.

he then decided, okay, i will go there. he gave a major speech there, um, and sort of turned her into this major icon for his health care reform bill. and, you know, they wrote back and forth more than once, and for me the most sort of moving and hard part, probably the hardest chapter in the book to report because i've been there with natoma while she was -- her immune system was so fragile that she was, basically, barricaded in her own house, and her sister and i spent time with her and went to chemo with her while she was just scrapping tooth and nail for her life. what fortified her was not only these letters she was getting from the president, but also because she had become this icon of health care reform, she then was getting letters from all across the country, people writing to recommend, you know, eat mashed potatoes if you're struggling with the chemo, people sending checks. and for her during this incredibly bleak time, i mean, i think it kept her alive, and

she's still alive, still in and out of the hospital. but, yeah, that was the case where it was a letter that really just impacted the president and her in a pretty profound way. thanks for reading it. i really appreciate it. um, yeah. >> i was really struck by the access people gave you to their lives. i was sort of imagining you, you know, at the breakfast table. it seemed like you were right there for all these moments. so what does that look like? you just show up and visit with them for a period of time or what? >> kind of, yeah. it's a tremendous privilege to be able to do, and it's kind of what i usually do for the paper too. so in this case i'm always amazed just as a journalist in general by how willing people are to open up their lives to a writer. i mean, which is not an easy thing to do. to have me, you know, to have me go to your bankruptcy hearingbe with you, it's a are -- it's a lot to ask of somebody. >> or your chemo. >> yeah, your chemo. in this case i think people

write to the president oftentimes because they want to know that their lives matter and that their stories count and that somebody is listening to them. and so then in these cases when i called and said, you know, the president did read this letter, what you're going through does matter, and i want to come, and i want to write about it because, you know, it -- i want to write about it in this up-close, honest way across the board people were totally open and willing to having me do that. um, and, you know, just in terms of how those trips usually go, and there are other people in the room who do them, my experience with them is the first, the first day of a trip like that can be, um, a little bit awkward or hard. people are nervous, and, you know, it's -- those days are the hardest. usually by, like, the second or third day that you're there, you kind of stop being the writer/reporter, and you start being you, i or joe, and that's when you get to the best stuff because you're at this level of

intimacy you need to be there to get. which is why i knew i wanted letters where i could spend time with these people because just going back and reporting on why people wrote, you can get to a certain layer of depth, i think, just being there while things are unfolding, it's a different kind of thing and kind of helps you get to that next level. >> i'm glad you add the epilogue because i was -- before i finished the book, i was looking on the internet whether natoma, how she was doing. you get invested, so thanks for including that. >> yeah, sure. thanks. >> did anybody turn you down? >> nobody turned me down. and that honestly, it made it hard to pick the letters i was going to write about. so usually in picking a letter the other thing i was looking for was i wanted, you know, there were some big issues over the course of the year that i knew i wanted a letter about the oil spill, i wanted -- so finding, sometimes i would say, okay, here are ten letters i could pick about immigration. and then i would call, you know, ten of those people ask and have

these initial sort of half hour, 40-minute conversations just to kind of get a feel for if it was going to work. and sometimes narrowing those six, seven, eight, ten to one was, yeah, brutal. and, you know, i feel like i could have written 100 letters. nobody would have read it after the first ten. [laughter] but, you know, it's, it was hard to narrow it down to that number. yeah. >> so were there, did you take ten trips, was it ten trips or or did you spend time with people who didn't make it into the book? >> i never -- good question. i never made, i never went out of town for a long trip and then said, okay, this is going to be on the cutting room floor. i made more than ten trips because sometimes just because of what people were going through i would go for a few days and then come back and go again for, you know, to be there for a big bankruptcy hearing, a first day of college. so it ended up being more than ten trips in that way, but i never, you know, i never went somewhere and felt like this

really isn't going to work. and, you know, also just in my job for the paper where i do the same kind of thing, that doesn't happen very often, and i don't think it's because i get there and i'm getting incredible material and, you know, i'm not good at what i'm doing. i think a lot of it is that people are just, people are really interesting. and if you get, if you get to that level i think with almost anybody, people's lives are really interesting. and if you can, if you can write about them in textured ways, there are very few people whose lives you go and you find, jeez, this is just really boring. i think if you -- [laughter] if you were feeling that way, you're probably still at, like, a very surface level. so, yeah. yeah. >> did the white house approve the ten letters that you selected? >> they did not, no. i had to battle with them for access to be able to read letters and to say, basically, i want to do this book, and we need to work it out so that i get to read the letters he reads.

that was a process and a long process. but i, once i had that access, um, you know, they were not -- i picked whatever letters i wanted to pick which, um, i think honestly that worked for them because what, why the president likes to talk about these letters, i think, and why they like to the talk about these letters so much is they want to show that he's listening to everybody. so the fact that i knew i wanted to write about, you know, one of the letters in the book is from a republican in texas who writes this really angry e-mail late at night. i knew i wanted something like that in the book. but also, like, i think for them they wanted to show that, you know, yeah, he hears that person too. he reads whatever comes in. so i made it work out. yeah. >> -- [inaudible] book was teaching journalism and poly-sci. >> i don't want -- >> seems like it ought to be. >> thanks, i appreciate that. i don't know if it is. i hope it'll be. um, you know, maybe i can pull

some strings at montana and have one class of 15 kids read it. [laughter] but that's probably the extent. but thank you. yeah. >> has the president read the book? >> i don't know. he's gotten a copy. um, i doubt he's read the book. just in terms of, like, how much he has going on. and, also, i was thinking about in the other day because in, like, a more, like, thinking, wow, like maybe he's read the book moment, i was just thinking about what he reads, and then i remembered that everything he reads is, like, very public, and they release -- the white house occasionally releases like here's what's on the president's reading list, and it would probably look really weird if he was reading this book about the mail he reads. it would look conceited somehow. [laughter] there are probably -- >> [inaudible] >> i'm sure he does. but, yeah, i sent him a copy, and i sent him a handwritten note. i don't know if it got through the mail room, but, no, i think it did. so he has a copy. i don't know if he'll read it or not. yeah. >> hi. my name's bishop.

>> hi. >> and i vice president read the book, but i'm planning on reading the book. >> cool, thanks. >> were you in contact with the president while you were writing? i know you said you had an interview -- >> i was in contact with his staff, and there are some people, very few people, but there are some people who work in his administration that i know well enough at this point that i could sort of, you know, if i was writing -- part of, the book was kind of an education for me because these chapters are all about different issues, so one of my challenges was, like, to learn about, for instance, education policy and learn about it enough that then you can write about education policy in an interesting way. it's hard. so during that i would be talking to people like, you know, arne duncan and people on his staff and trying to learn about what they were trying to do with education and learn that way. um, i wasn't talking with the president about any of it until the end. >> right. >> um, and then i went in and had, you know, 30 or 40 minutes to sort of talk in general about

the letters and also talk specifically about the letters in the book. >> did you, did you ever get to visit the office? >> i did, yeah. which is just a crazy and really cool place. i mean, it's, it's like this building is this filter between the public and the president. and so if you send an e-mail, it lands on one of computers there. if you send a letter, it goes there. if you call the white house comment line, there are 35 people that sit at a phone bank and pick up the phone and try to keep those calls to two minutes. by far the most fascinating, there's a gift room. you know, hundreds and hundreds of people send the president gifts which is sort of a strange instinct, and they send these really, really weird things. sometimes, like, you know, just, um, like when he was interested in getting a dog, the white house received a handful of different puppies that were mailed -- >> oh! >> yeah. and it used to be worse. in reading about the history of this mail room, the presidents who were big game hunters would

sometimes receive gifts from across the world of big game animals; tigers, different things like this that would just land at the white house. so the gift room is probably the coolest place. it's really strange. >> [inaudible] >> yeah, the gift room. [laughter] exactly. exactly. spent some time with the tiger. [laughter] could be a book. that room is really cool. >> so i have a question with the, i'm sure there were letters of threats that he would receive. what do they do with those letters? >> yeah. the first thing that happens to any mail is it goes through this weeklong screening process where it's scanned for chemical threats, radiological threats. so that happens first. then it comes into this office, and the reason they have this huge staff is there's a rule there that every single letter has to be read because who knows, you know, buried in one of these letters could be some kind of credible threat. so that's why, you know, they've decided we need to make sure that a person reads every single one of these letters.

and letters that are threats are flagged immediately, and, you know, go places much higher than to me. but, you know, also like on the comment line even people calling in to the white house, they -- all those phones have a red button that automatically transfers both suicide calls and threats which is astounding to me that enough people call the white house with either because they're going to commit suicide, or because they're calling with this threat that they have a button on every phobe that just automatic -- phone that just automatically transfers it. yeah, it is sad. i mean, people call there for all kinds of things. yeah. crazy place, you know? it was, it's just, i think that whole building is like this window into, you know, the window, this window into the relationship between the public and the president and, you know, both the fact that things get to him which is great and also what it takes to get things to him which is really illuminating in this other way too. so any other questions? >> i don't remember if you talked about this in the book or

not. has the volume increased with obama? because i know, you know, there is this, um, because he has talked about the letters, and he has, you know, complained about not being able to have his own blackberry and that kind of thing. and so my guess would be that people feel as though he's somehow more accessible. is -- >> i think definitely the volume, especially at first the volume was, like, more than they had ever seen. like, right when he was going into office -- >> of any president? >> of any president. i think that's partly the historic nature of his election, partly it's that letters, especially e-mails, are much easier to send now. people can go, you know, letters, letters are one thing. e-mails, like, you can go to the white house web site, and you can send an e-mail very quickly, and people do, you know? thousands of people a day. and so the volume at the beginning was, like, skyrocketing high. and it stayed, you know, it came down a little bit, but it stayed

very steady, and i actually had coffee with the director of the mail room today who said they've noticed it's already climbing again, and she thinks that for the next year before the election it's going to be crazy in there. you know, people, people write, i think, probably more when politics are big and in the news and in their minds which is a lot of the time but, obviously, it ebbs and flows. so, yeah. >> great book. >> thanks so much. thank you for coming, everybody. i really, really appreciate you guys being here and, yeah, thanks for all the support. i hope those of you who vice president read it en-- haven't read it enjoy it, and thanks to those of you who have read it. appreciate it. [applause] >> this event was hosted by one more page books in arlington, virginia. for more information visit one more page books.com. >> you know, that's the kind of story which on the surface does sound very intriguing for me.

for me to go forward with it, she would have to have a personal in for me because i'm not one of those journalists who's going to show up and knock on doors. i have to have the story, and it would have to have the elements that i'm looking for. when it's already in the paper but other journalists running around it, i'm also not a gun for hire. i have to wallet to write it as my -- want to write it as my book. i would love to see an e-mail from her, ben at ben mezrich.com. if it's something you have the handle on and i can get in and talk to everybody and they want to tell their story, oil, i did write a book about oil, but it was more in the new york merc exchange and dubai. it's intriguing. but, you know, also i start and stop stories all the time. i'll get dozens of these, i'll look into them, and i'll be like, you know what? it's going to take too much time, or it's going to be too dangerous. i also don't like to put myself in real danger so i would not write a story where i had to get

involved with mob people or go, like, i've gotten those e-mails too. i mean, really crazy e-mails from people who have done horrible things. i mean, everybody e-mails me. it's like when eliot spitzer went down, the mad.com was e-mailing me -- the madam was e-mailing me. yeah, i'm going to explain to the wife that i was hanging out with a madam for a year. i got letters from charlie sheen's people. julian assange. i do like the stories that are off the beaten track because no one's heard of them. >> well, sex on the moon. this was a big trial. he got arrested in orlando -- >> 100 agents, helicopters, they closed a major highway, and yet they covered it up. i'm not going to say nasa -- i don't know how nasa covered it up, but they were very embarrassed by it. was it public or not? i don't know how public it was. i mean, it was a federal trial, i would assume it would have had

to have been. >> yeah. >> there were reporters there. it was written about so little, and it didn't really just -- it never exmolded. there was a wonderful l.a. times article about it which was a four-page article, and that was really it. and that was, you know, years ago. >> did nasa cooperate with you at all? >> no, no, no. so nasa was not thrilled, and they told everyone not to speak to me which makes people want to talk to me. [laughter] i actually got axle amerman who is the belgium mineral -- >> never been out of antwerp in his life. his wife's name is crystal, and he collects rocks. he meets every monday night with a bunch of 50, 60-year-old guys, and they trade rocks. and he gets an e-mail out of the blue, do you want to buy a moon rock, from the u.s.? is so immediately he's excited. he's like, but then he starts to think, wait, something's fishy here, and he decides something is going on, so he mails the fbi in the united states and says you might be interested in this, and the fbi creates this whole

case using axle as their main source, and axle became my source. he reached out to me. wonderful guy. i spent a lot of time talking to him. and nasa people were feeding him things that they wanted me to know. and then i decided, okay, i want to go to nasa, i want to see what it's like. so i just went on their web site, nasa.com or whatever it was, and i signed up for a level nine tour which is an internal high-security tour. they only let, like, ten people do it a day. i figured they would cross-check my name, but it's a government bureaucracy, and we all know how that works. i show up, they give me a security badge, and the next thing i know i'm inside nasa. and then that'd roberts starts texting me, okay, go through that door. so i was walking through nasa, the ultimate guided tour by the guy who had robbed nasa. and then i was able to get all the court documents. i have a little group who help me. i have a lawyer who's kind of, like, one of those guys who can

do anything lawyers, and he's got private eyes who could go to tampa and get me the court records. >> well, those should be public any way. >> i got the fbi files. they took a year. i was actually amazed they sent them at all. it was redacted, but it was thousands of page, and literally -- so i knew everything thad had been saying was true. i had what was in his pockets when he was arrested. the fbi, you see how hard they work when you get one of those files. they really go into it. they had research on moon rocks for 200 pages just to know what a moon rock is. so i did, you do get all the information that way. but, um, yeah. yeah. >> this is booktv's "in depth" program. 202 is the area code if you'd like to talk with ben mezrich, 737-0001 in the east and central time zones, 737-0002 mountain and pacific time zones. you can also send us an e-mail,

booktv@cspan.org, or twitter.com/booktv is our address. patrick in new london, connecticut, you're on booktv. >> hi, guys, how are ya? >> good. >> ben, a question for you. when you're an author and then you become a screenwriter, too, what's the difference aside from the obvious having to consolidate down into the two-hour movie format? and also does it get frustrating? it seems to me like whenever you watch a movie after you've read a book, 99% of the time you can always say there was something left out. i mean, i just went to the movies, i just saw a movie that was in theaters -- not yours, by the way -- but i was amazed at, i think, important things get left out of a screenplay that were in the book, and i understand you can't fit it all in, but can you talk about that a little bit? >> sure. first of all, i'm not a successful screen writer yet. i have done one or two screenplays. i did one adaptation of ugly americans that didn't get made. so when i sell my books, they usually bring in somebody else

who does it, and it's a process. screenplay's a very different animal than a book. all of the interior sort of dialogue and all of the motivations and all that stuff kind of gets left out, and they have to write it very succinctly, very action-driven usually. and, yeah, you know, off movies are not as good as the book. i've been very lucky. social network, you know, was a phenomenal movie. you know, they have to pick and choose. you can't put everything that's in the book onto the screen. it's a shorter format. and also it's not always relevant. but, yeah, i've seen movies before where, oh, they left something out. and then i've seen movies where i've felt like they put way too much in. so it's all the strength of the screen writer. and as someone who adapts their own work, i think the hard thing is cutting things. most writers, you know, make the mistake of putting too much in. you want a screenplay to run quickly. you want it fast, exciting and not spending a lot of time talking.

and in books you can get away with that. but my books are very written like screenplays. i get attacked for that as well. i am always thinking of the movie when i write. i visualize every scene, i imagine justin timberlake running around doing it all, and that's how i sit down and write. so when i write, it's as if i'm writing a movie, and i write it in a book form. but, yeah, they're differentment people who write screenplays don't usually write books. >> michael depool low tweets in, what are your upcoming projects and storylines? >> well, that's a good question from michael. [laughter] michael's in boston, right? i think i know michael. >> you know him? >> yeah. >> oh, okay. >> he's an incredible fashion designer who works in boston. he -- >> yeah. >> he wants me to tell secrets. i am working on a big, new project, but i'm not yet at liberty to say what it's about. it might be a female main character which would be very new for me. i've never written a female main character before. so if i write that book next,

that will be it. but i'm not sure i'm going to write that book. i vice president really decided yet what my next book is, but i'm also working on a couple of television shows. i have a scripted show that i'm working on, and then i have a show, a reality-type documentary show where i go inside stories every week which i've been working on sort of, like, you know, how there's always macho guys on tv? i'm the opposite of that. i'm the guy who doesn't succeed against the wild. [laughter] i go inside these stories every week -- >> [inaudible] >> well, you know, all the stuff that people pitch to me, essentially, and i become a part of it, and you can see the story, but then i get right out. um, so that's another show i'm working on. i don't know yet specifically what my next book is. i have an idea what it might be, but i haven't fully decided yet. >> mud stick tweets in, ugly americans, are you familiar with carson block, muddy waters and

the china media express fraud? >> no. [laughter] that sounds really intriguing though. i am not. i have actually been pitched a bunch of china stories. thai tricky because, first of all, there's so much corruption. it's dangerous, spending any amount of time following around the people -- there are people making fortunes in china right now doing crazy things. but it's a little bit dangerous for me to do one of those stories. i don't know specifically what story he's talking about, but, um, you know, there's been some good ones there. >> robert e-mails in, are you familiar with richard hogueland's work in relationship to our moon? >> richard hoagland? you know, it's familiar to me, but i don't know. i think if he gave me more, i might know who you're talking about. >> that's all we got. mario in miami, good afternoon. you're on booktv with ben mezrich. >> [inaudible] when he makes a real story and the real person, like, a book --

[inaudible] >> right, great question. yeah, good question. a lot of people want to know, you know, a lot of people who come to me to tell me their stories want money. [laughter] i mean, i think -- i have two types of people telling me stories, people who want money, or people that have so much money, they just want their story told. which is often more fun. but i, it depends on the situation. i'm not really trying to write biographies of people. i really want to write my books that are about true stories that, happen, so it's a little different. i have in the past, bringing down the house, i gave them 10% of pretty much everything, and then the movie was sort of separate. they can become consultants on the film, it all depends on the movie situation. you know, some of the books they don't get anything, um, obviously, the facebook book, you know, they're all way richer

than i'll ever be for the rest of my life. it's just different for every situation. i, my goal is to write the story and not have -- the problem when you're paying the characters is that you can become beholden to them in a way. it's not, a weird partnership when you write a story about someone because they're not going to write everything you -- like everything you write in the book because when you're telling a true story, they have to tell all the almosts of the -- elements of the story, so you want to have some independence, you want to be able to write the story as it happened and not necessarily as they want you to write the story. and so it's nod a paid-for-hire kind of thing where someone said i want you to write my story and, no, that's not how it happened. it's more like this is an incredible story, and i want to write it, and we have to work something out. if someone gets paid, it's because they're enabling the research, they're consulting on the facts, and they consult on the film. and if they're consulting and helping with the