similar vision of getting out. there's a lot of historic sites to see as you're doing covering these book festivals. and the idea at c-span came, let's get some buses and have public policy from are across america instead of it being ghettoized just in a couple of east coast cities. i think it's been be a great success because it's given c-span the ability to cover events like this. >> doug brinkley, you're nowlying since katrina in austin, since you left new orles. what's your day .. >> i'm a professor of history at rice university. i'm teaching three classes right now -- >> which is in houston. >> and i teach just fall, and then i have nine months off to work, and i've been working on a biography of walter cronkite who went to school here in austin at ut, and all his papers are at the briscoe center here, so i've been meticulously going through those. i'm coming out in may of '12,

simply could "cronkite." >> we've been talking about "the quiet world: saving alaska's wilderness kingdom,

good evening. my name is paul holdengraber, direct herbalife and the new york public library is all of you know my goal at the library simply to make the lions roar, jamaica had the institution levitate and when successful, jamaica dance. i would like to thank tonight sponsors, proud sponsor of the new europe public library and have been at the new york public library for seven years now and they were also members of the new york public library lawyers for the library committee. it was founded in 1924 and forward thinking of purchasing solutions to diverse clients in seven major practice areas, corporate energy and environmental tax financial services, real estate, litigation and intellectual property. the thank you very much.

[applause] briefly let me tell you about some of our other events coming up this evening. next week i will be interviewing mr. at ko is part of the rolex speak afterwards. we will have jesse dorman, bringing you know, peter fellowes and many others. the following week i can see a humvee. the following week diane keaton and just before thanksgiving. followed right after thanksgiving with mary beard, josh ritter, the state and steve earle. join our e-mail list to find out more and stay on top of what we are doing next season. the spring season will open victor rita lee and oliver stone in conversation. tom brokaw will happily sign

books after our conversation i once again it is a pleasure to thank our independent books. [applause] the first 10 people who say not after her event tonight can become friends at the new york public library. obviously all of you are already fans of the new york public library, the support even for will get tom brokaw's new book out for free. now, you all know who tom brokaw is and for the last few years, i have asked the various guests i invite for a biography of themselves, written by themselves in seven words, a haiku of sorts. if you really want to be modern, which may be tom brokaw and i will talk about, a tweet of

sorts. and so, tom brokaw sat in the following seven words. and they are seven. some people ask for seven then they give me 27. you know, seven words. he knows what an assignment is. he says, curious, talkative. i'm grateful for that. as paul says, and patient, forget full. tom brokaw. [applause] ♪ ♪ ♪ >> that was for you. you love frank sinnott trip.

>> i tonight had mixed experiences with frank's a notch or obviously in my was the voice and he was larger than life in any way and i encountered along the way and not always a pleasant way because i was a reporter and he didn't like being in the news and especially the way he got himself into the news. so he would do something inappropriate and we would report it and then the next day his public relations person would come to see me and say, you know, frank doesn't think you are aware that he is underwriting an orphanage in mexico were some good d. it doesn't excuse the bar brawl in which he was involved in last night or whatever. a mentor or not set of circumstances one evening here in new york we had a mutual friend, a kind of legendary figure by the name of swifty lazare who was a great agent and swifty had invited me to dinner

and it turns out he had also invited frank's wife and then frank was going to arrive later. i said my god, what is this going to be late? and i'm not sure can come and sat down and looked at me and said kid, i watch you every morning. i was doing the today show at the time. he said i got tickets for my concert if you want to come. he turned on the charm and of course i was instantly seduced by all of that because he didn't know which one is going to show up. but he was absolutely wonderful. >> i had another occasion later where he made one of his greatest problems with juan carlos and he made at nbc because we had the best sound facilities and audio wizard who worked at nbc came to me because he knew i liked sinnott trip and said stick on tonight.

it's going to be about 2:00 in the morning, but you want to hear this. i went to the sound station when the back where no one could see me and frank came in at 2:00 in the morning and i saw the artist because he worked with the orchestra and the score and juan carlos and he was just all business. the model focused that he had in doing take after take after take. and i thought, that's who he is because he was so good at it. >> i promise you we won't only talk about frank sinnott chart, but it's a story that you also mentioned he was the voice and there is one thing you are a norm for tremendously, it is your own voice. >> it is, but it's widely imitated as well. no one does it better than david gregory. so i get picked up on a lot and

not sign. it is a form of flattery. i can't sing a note. if he comes off the wall if i open my mouth. >> i'd like to begin quite simply by referencing the subtitle of your new book, the time of our lives. the subtitle reads, we are, where we've been and where we need to go now to recapture the american dream. and when i read that subtitle, i was rather struck by just how loaded the terms are. and for a foreigner who has been in this country for 30 years, i would like you to explain to me what it means these two words, american dream. >> everyone has their own

interpretation, but i suppose if there is a kind of consensus, it is the american dream that our children will have better lives than we will, that every succeeding generation has a little better life in some fashion. it has gotten reduced to what i call a quantitative better life and i think that's what we have to re-examine, how many houses, how many cars, how many jacket, how many toys can you not in that part not to be the measure of the american dream. what i try to do in this book is to turn the thinking some to the quality of life. let's make that the measure of the american dream. more tolerance in america, more opportunity in the workplace. reforming our education system so everyone has an equal opportunity to move themselves forward. to do something about our political culture so it doesn't say walled off from the ordinary americans.

i think that is getting at the american dream. and that is a question that comes up time and time again a psycho across the country from people on main street, people in power. they are worried about whether their children why would they have. so i asked them to examine what does that mean. what do you mean how what you have? because happiness can be achieved in a thousand different ways and we have to have a continuing threat in who we are as well. that should be a part of it. >> and the word recapture is important because in some ways the he speaks of something that was lost. >> will i do think it has been lost to some degree. if you just look at the polling of this country now, the confidence in our institution are down to single digits in many instances. as people think of the country is very much on the wrong track, not on the right track.

they express overtly anxiety about the future their children will have us a look at the workplace disappear. i once did a series on nbc nightly news about auto workers of america and i took five generations of them. i saw my great grandfather who had been worked in the original ford factory in beaten up with the goons who may try to organize his son of the 1950s, big benefits, good salary, good retirement program, not a house in michigan, a big fishing boat. his son was outsourced all across the midwest, racing from ohio to indiana to these other outline plans that were not part of the central for system. and i said what he going to do about the 10-year-old they said in unison, we've got to get them working on computers. so that is the transition.

there was a time if you had a strong back in a good pair of hands and good workers who could find a good job in america and get paid for it. we were the manufacturing capital of the world. 40% of the american economy now in financial services shuffling money and creating new instruments. >> don't you think that worries parents for the next generation for their children to do better than they did in their own times when they were productive is something that is always existed? do you feel it is exacerbated? in that even during the worst day of the 60s, i think the greatest generation as i called him, when they shake their heads about how their kids are behaving as if they're so smart. they're so well-educated and they travel so easily. i can't believe the starting salary that they get at a law firm or ibm are one of those places. i used to take the temperature

of a generational line because i was covering the 60s a lot and even though they were not happy, they can see where they were the masters of the world and the i.t. of her children could say i'm going to take a couple years off and travel the world and then come back and serve my career where they were starting businesses at a very early age, the boomers or enduring inventive things and their parents were looking up at him with a sense of awe. not the parents are looking at the children with a sense of anxiety. and by the way, if you're looking at them across the dinner table because they are moving back in with them, the kids are in big numbers. and they do it for a couple reasons. one is economic. they can get a job. they can afford urban housing. the second is the number said to mean i parents. you know, they're my best friends and the best counsel and a single corporation to

duntemann got another. i'm not going to go work into that. >> parents are doing a good job in educating their children. >> yes, but educating them for what? that is the issue. i mean, i believe that a society is always best served by a strong, liberal parts hurting but in a modern economy you also have to have specific skill sets to work in high-tech manufacturing and therefore there is a boom going on in america in community colleges because they are affordable and they are teaching young people practical skills to take to the workplace. and other young people look at france to go off to college and emerge as temper some of them to now, this this is to ask him a 10% have debt of $40,000 when they get out of college. that is a big load to start life with. >> what you say reminds me so much of my own father when i went off to university just

before he went off to university, both my parents from an old vienna. my father sat me down and said, you know, paul, just don't forget that the word university comes from the word universe. don't forget for one second that you might be going and studying literature and philosophy of law as it were back in those days, but right across the street is the medical school. go and look how they cut up the body. go unlock or what other people do. and i was reminded by this in part by this fabulous quotation you have the former president -- it's fantastic. you are not expected to know, but you're expected to wish to

know. >> i love you to elaborate on that because i thought that was very inspiring. >> i waited for burgee freshmen incoming speech and then his baccalaureate speech and then i made it occur to him i'm ripping them off as fast as i can. it was real hollywood wisdom of the best kind. and he was a very literary figure. a renaissance scholar and he would give wonderfully wise speeches to incoming freshmen and those leaving him. he would also say to them that he did, i think i was a baccalaureate speech in which he said, do not become hostage to the orthodoxy of others as we leave here. and at that point, we are going through the jerry falwell robertson influence in american politics. the moral majority. and he found that tyrannical as

a political east coast. you seem to university and he was threatened by the way for taking it on. but you seem to university students, you know, he's remained to reason to think them to be independent but we lost and far too early. we had in my judgment to you and our life anymore, too few. i also quote john kershner hooded populace wisdom about how we should conduct ourselves in a civil and social society. >> do you feel he was seen that because in some way young people are not adventurous enough when they go to school? >> now, i think this is a pretty adventurous generation now. i don't think they have the low scores they once did because they find it in instrumentation these days. they find it on this name. and how much they search for to get that kind of wisdom, i don't

know. but they're utterly fascinated, with good reason to be new technology. i have aligned a good university campuses in which i say i never expected in my lifetime something as transformative as this is for communication and research and commerce in ways that we can even participate. online universities are exploding, for example. o'dea spends most of his evenings in online academies of one kind or another reading great literature or learning new things. then i say to them, but you are not going to reverse global warming by hitting backspace. you won't get rid of global poverty by hitting delete. and i ended facing it will do us good to wire the world if we short-circuit our souls to put your feet on the ground. >> you also say that you worry

david jay when someone will write a song called each week is just a street at the time goes by. >> i also look into the audience is in sight to the young people, no text message will ever replace a whispered i love you were holding hands on a first date. >> so the new technologies, will you see their value, what worries you about them is that people are not thinking enough about the limitations. >> i think that humankind advanced by technology that has wisdom in the hands that debate that technology and have passion. it's an instrument. we have had some hearts and they a shipwreck that technology, not the other way around.

i also worry that a stanford law senior when i was out here doing work in silicon valley for a spin in the courtyard at stanford law school in the zone line and this man came up to two in a very partial to stanford because i watched a lot of tuition there for my daughter when she went there for four years. he said a very pertinent question. did you read a lot about generations. what about my generation in the definition in the meeting a friend? do we know what that means you are going to lose it because we've made it a verb or friending people now. that's a very relevant question. how do you measure friendship? it ought not to be because you share a facebook page where they know how to tweet you. >> and also, one of things that sherbrooke speaks about is the notion that knowledge in some

ways also interest our course of thinking. and i think this will lead us quite nicely. >> you really have some discipline. it's just me to receive to go on google and just start surfing for something whether it has any meaning or not, someone i said to me and is certainly true in my case. i have a is not technologically advanced and is quite disabled so these combine to his library and return to encourage him to get an ipod. and they said nothing to be humorous, the fact that the middleman is when they wake up in the overnights that they can read "the new york times" before the morning? i said yes, that's it. i know it well. >> we have another dialogue in this country that doesn't mean we have to assemble somewhere to have that dialogue.

but even within families there's not been much of the dialogue. best use of this technology impact of this technology and journalism or is it time a lot of you remember we just got up in the morning and got the morning paper and picked up one of the many papers available in new york and got home in the evening tom, dan or peter and maybe you caught the late evening is enough of it. your couch potato. it was delivered to you. now you have to be a proactive consumer. you have to go find the sources of this information, not just take it because it comes off the screen and you have to measure credibility and reliability of it over time. i know someone in montana comes

quite wide-eyed as remarkably what i saw on the internet. you said your right and not going to believe it. >> and yet there is a yearning. i see it in groups assembled such as this one, the yearning to come together. as i often say, we need in some form or fashion we need others. we must return to his fundamental obligation. it is time to reenlist with the defense. when you and i spoke, you repeated that term, reenlist as citizens. what do you mean? >> it's become my mantra for the time. and i just measure what we are up to account the history of the immediate legacy we inherited. let me give you an easy example of that. i say this wherever i go and a lot of you have heard me say it

at this point. good indication that two longest wars in history. iraq and afghanistan. a lot of them people physically and otherwise. they represent less than 1% of the population. they are all volunteers. they come from middle-class and working-class families primarily. very few elite institutions or upper-income families sends since one off in uniform to fight for all of us. they are bearing this terrible burden. nothing is passed to the rest of us. no additional taxes. we don't even have to think about it if we choose not to. we can go throughout lives and the war can be going out there almost as an abstract for us. that is not just unjust in my opinion. it's kind of immoral and a democratic society. so that's an example how we then

have to -- i have a title for a chapter called uncle sam needs us and we have to reenlist as citizens. this next year is going to be very important. i am an umpire calls the and strikes here. i don't know whether the republican on the sixth of canadian third-party candidate, but i do know it will be determined and defined by the people who get into the arena and pursue and encourage what they want for america to go forward. i said on "meet the press" a month ago and repeated it can reduce recently, i can only guess in a room like this patch last night at tea party played by the rules. they cut angry, cut organized. they got to washington and stay disciplined. and they are dominating the

dialogue in the public national debates because of a disappointment. if you look at the boeing, they don't represent a majority of americans. if in fact quite a distinct minority. but because they stay on message and because they used instrumentation available to them, they are really the tail wagging the dog at this point in the republican party today. so if you're not happy about that and bring much her own passion is to the arena come you've got to reenlist as a citizen. >> in that same vein, using public service is so important. we might this anaconda appeared to get worried when the country people say why can't we have mandatory public service were a lot of males will sit at a certain age we should go back to the draft. but a doorknob and again. it's too politically toxic. they like and motivated volunteers, but there's no

reason we can't elevate the idea of service so it's more than the sum of its parts. there's a lot of good programs out there. teach for america, america court. but after being embedded with troops in afghanistan and iraq, but especially afghanistan a couple of occasions special forces go into these remotely villages, where i see these guys that i was with were those goggles and kevlar, the dressed humvees and may be shaking down to pick up trucks and confiscating weapons. and then in a way would say to the village elders, where her to win your hearts and minds. it didn't work. it didn't connect. i thought there's got to be a better way. we just can't have a military force in america. by the way to admire these young warriors because they're well-trained and they know what they're doing and they're frustrated because too much is being asked of them. so i thought and what about this

in the times, like you we have a diplomatic social force of people adventures and civilians. that led me to believe that we have to a public service academies in america. six of them at land-grant schools making public-private johnson fellow agriculture and construction. it's been three years getting specialized training and they are assigned both by the combination of the government and private care coalitions to either work in this country at the end of three years of public service, then the corporation takes them for two years. they've got a chance to see whether they want to keep them and whether the young man or woman wants to stay there. it's not as well formed as it ought to be because i was just trying to kick start the conversation. originally i said i would try

this out in texas with some friends of mine and one is very conservative guy. i didn't have the printed piece at that point. he said make a private public. that the private sector involved. >> ever interested in the partnership between public and private. >> it's a big trend in the tree. mitch daniels is doing a lot of it in indiana turning it over to private corporations. on a smaller pieces across the country water districts are turned over and run more profitably and more efficiently. the state in which you live has 11 dozen state agencies. this is a system that is just behind for political patronage a hundred years ago. it's not necessary for us to have that many state agencies here. long island as you go across the county, each county has a different water district in a different set of rules and well-paid commissioners.

>> i consolidate a lot of it. i would consolidate a lot of education america. it's very tough because people of attachments and pride in these institutions in a system that's going to consolidate and change and reform than does the system being reformed as being rewarded now. so they're not inclined to do it. >> we have on this very stage, malcolm gladwell for the founder of teach for america and one of the most powerful parts of your book is precisely your worry really what the state of education in this country. you have disconnected about being in korea and seen children congregating, very young children. >> that was 15 years ago. i was there during the on fix because of the time difference very late at night and really

early in the morning. and when i would finish, it would be not yet done and i looked on from the building where i was doing it on the rooftop and there was a junior high courtyard below me reheard at about 5:45, 6:00 in the morning, flashlights were so mamma courtyard and would-be students doing homework, waiting for the doors to open at the junior high. that's how motivated they were. the doors are not quite open for another hour or so. arnie duncan and the secretary of education tied to secretary of education talk to the president, having a meeting with the president of korea in our prisons open the conversation by saying, so what are problems of education in korea? the president of korea said the parents are demanding more of me and i can satisfy them with right now. we've got to flip that coin on here. here is korea in 1950 was the stone age economy, 80% illiteracy. now it's one of the great industrial powers of the world

and they did that in the most possible decisions out there and anyone who knows that the korean-american souk near an open businesses and go to school and how driven they are. i deliberately didn't choose china to make it the centerpiece because we don't know about that. but it's going on everywhere else as well. >> i very much in true dreaminess encounter you had with president obama, where he said the biggest lesson we learned from world war ii is america can do anything when it puts its mind to it, but we've got to exercise those muscles. i think they are petrified of it. we are soft in ways that are profoundly dangerous to our long-term prosperity and security. the notion of atrophied muscles

muscles -- executrix and i'm not in some that in some way it does connect to your story. >> i don't think it's wrong. we went to war after 9/11 and did not ask. we didn't ask anything of the rest of us. no sacrifices whatsoever. we were kind of encouraged to go back and go shopping again. we have this enormous boom in housing, which was irrational so much from the beginning. i remember our totter colony from san francisco should send my god, dad, they're offering me 20 or deals with interest only for the first 15 years, but you can see what was going to come at the end of the first 15 years. she said we are going to be more cautious. i worry about my friends. i went to a couple of major construction people mess up with in the world is going on? and they said they're so much instrumentation out there now

that people will own anything. fannie mae and freddie mac were driving a lot of that and those were two political institutions, quasipublic and they made a very clever. jim johnson and others about getting the idea of homeownership for everyone when plainly not everyone was qualified and was going to be equipped. whipping up price. we've got 20 million homes in this country at the moment they're either in foreclosure or stress or in danger of going into foreclosure. having of your 20 million homes that are applying new appliances, curbing, can move to a new job. mayor stuck and they are stuck with the biggest investment to make in their life for many of them. this represents a lot of they're not worse. so we get the housing thing figured out. it's going to be a harder job to get the economy really rolling back on track in a way that we need to. neither party is talking about that, which is kind of striking to me. >> your book is made of some very poignant questions and one

of them is a question when john f. kennedy asked many years ago. if john f. kennedy were around today announced you what you could do to your country, which you done for your country recently, how would you answer? how would you answer? >> i would say appeared at the new york public library. [laughter] [applause] >> that's one of the things. >> i honestly think i'm in a speech in my life if there's an oxymoron in american life it is a humble anchorman and we don't exist. so this is a modest of me. but i seem to have turned a certain place where people will listen to me and i've always cared about the country. the greatest generation reading a book gave me a kind of platform that was completely unanticipated. so i thought i ought not squander the. so i have to step up as not just

a citizen and as a journalist, but a father and husband and grandfather. and if i see these things, i had to write about them and try to start this dialogue, which is i'm trying to do with this book about where we need to get to next. now when our family, we ought to a lot of different things. meredith is here tonight. she's got a micro-finance and mullally. i've got a totter on the board of habitat year. another daughter who spent a lot of time in haiti this year living in a temple with rodents crawling all over her. she was down there doing grief counseling. another daughter worked for the international rescue committee because we were raised by parents and grandparents who just saw that as part of the national calling of life, that she gave back in some fashion. so i've done that, but i like to think my larger contribution is

to turkey to engage people in the events that defined their time. the inyo passages in the book precisely about the legacy of parents left to you and how careful and cautious they were at and cautious they were at and cautious they were at and cautious they were at vent more than a hot. you say like almost everyone also their age they were thrifty by nature and necessity. they didn't spend what they didn't have an escape something every week. >> sometimes to a fault. >> they were to thrifty. and now, i would say lighten up a little bit. you can afford this. but it is hard for them to do it. it was hard for them to spend the extra bucks sometimes. disney may deny the great life. they did everything they wanted to do and i had the good fortune of having real resource has been

selected i could help them in ways that on trips are helping them by retirement place. but it never defined a relationship. my dad died in fortunate that we before it began nightly news with a massive coronary. the three weeks before you begin nightly news it had been announced and this was a great thing for her family for me to suddenly have this wonderful job in all this responsibility. and it came with a very substantial salary. and i caught the wave of people getting paid a lot of money to invest in a a lot of publicity. my father who never earned anything cash income more than $9000 a year in his life, maybe at the end he did better than not. he worked for the corps of engineers is a construction foreman. anyhow he called me and said i'm reading these reports about your salary. is that true?

is a tad, would never talk talked about my salary before. i had made good money before that, but this did take me to a different level. i said what you want to know? he said i'm just reading about it. a week later "time" magazine did a very detailed reporting what dan was making, pete was making, barbara walters is making, so my father called me and i call them and they called me back and he said i'm reading "time" magazine. [laughter] i said come on, dad, why are we talking about this? is about the way. for as long as your mother and i've known you come u.s. ran a little short at the end of the year. we need to know how much to set aside this year. [laughter] it was the perfect way of dealing with it. i took him shopping in california attending a keen eye to visit us in a very high-end place called since. had the cart going to the

supermarket and i thought it would show off my thrifty gene so that fresh squeezed orange juice and i said to dad, that stuff is really expensive. let's get the boxed up. he reached on a shopping cart and picked up through expensive bottles of california wine and said, i guess the money-saving orange juice will help pay for these. i kind of put it into perspective for me. >> but it's always been very proud. >> he was proud, but you cannot ask my mother about me without her scene and my son really lives in denver is owning a restaurant in my son the very fear he lives around the corner. they just didn't play favorites. and my father when i first had to have some kind of public celebrity, someone once asked him when he was at a gathering at the elks club in our home and somerset are you related to tom broke a my dad said i think you

because then. i'm not sure. [laughter] he might another aspect of your book that i like us to talk about, which i didn't really know it is the incredible importance you attach to what one might call it enlightened form of philanthropy. philanthropy plays an important role. and by that i mean foundations such as one of the one-time particularly attached attached to in this city is the robin hood foundation. and you talk about it in a way a model, the robin hood foundation would do well to expand in many different cities. >> yeah, were very fortunate to have the robin hood nation. i was a big skeptic when the spurs have been.

these are rich guys trying to buy reputation. i had a lot of friends involved in the invited me to their breakfasts which they have every year. they have another coming before too long and john kennedy junior was there at the time and he introduced to young men he'd come to prep school with who were running a school in east harlem and it is very moving about what they were doing in the school and how john was attached to time. so when tom was lost, i thought what can i do? i went to the school on saturday to help out for a while here and i did. on the robin hood people came and said we could really use you on the board because we are a hedge fund guys really make a lot of money, but we don't have much of a political air. we don't understand how the rest of the world works as matches were matches were used to having her way. we need someone to give us a reality check. as i went on the board and i must tell you i was astonished at the commitment of these very busy people and the discipline they brought to they gave away

their money. they pay all the overhead for robin hood. the metrics in which they caught to agencies with very professional staff, take the measure of an agency for unwed mothers or for abuse family members and i'll say that one's not going to work. or it's doing something really important, but we need to go in and how staff than they pay for everything. now this is the most generous country in the world. there is no country in the world make is funny as freely as the united states does for a variety of causes in the city will ever compare with new york when it comes to raising money. to a lot of events at the waldorf and for some reason for causes that almost no one knows about. it's now routine to raise 1.5, $2 million on a night at the waldorf. one of the things when we first began to have some money in her

family and my growth sometimes read more generous than i wanted them to be on what we could give away and when, but i agree with no money when i found part of the attractiveness is it does give you freedom and you can help out where the cause is. the robin hood is a model. i'll just share one other one with you that i'm particularly taken with no. and this has to do with education, which i think a lot of how we reform education in america will depend on the public-private partnerships. there is a man in atlanta by the name of tom cousins was a very, very successful commercial developer who built a cnn center and rebuild downtown. he is probably a third or fourth generation georgian, well-educated man of faith. he is a presbyterian married to

a wonderful woman and he was making a lot of money and doing small things. he wanted to do something bigger in his apartment was in the eastlake area and not a golf course area called the east lake golf course, where bobby jones paid his first hamas, called but had completely deteriorated and was surrounded by the most crime-ridden neighborhood in atlanta. tom decided he could change the neighborhood in the repeatable demos for dumbest idea they'd ever heard in his response was that cost a lot of money in your ideas. i'm going to lose, and my idea now. and he went to refund the money sold memberships and made a fair amount of money it took all that money. he went to the community and was not an easy sell because they were suspicious of the way guy coming in to take advantage. he said you needed rest and come county. we can bring working-class and

middle-class families and we need to change the school system. he did all of that. it is an amazing model environment. cnbc did a documentary and warren buffett saw been so digital and robertson, was a lot of you know is one of the fathers of veteran industry. they called us and said put us in. we are partners i have something called purposeful communities. they are in indiana, new orleans, charlotte. they're going to go to omaha into these downtrodden areas and what they are doing is careening communities and making the school the centerpiece. i don't know how much of his fortune giveaway, that he couldn't be happier and he couldn't be more modest about it. so i thought he deserved attention. there other examples like that. that goes on in this country and we need to do is to elevate that kind of an example it seems to me and make sure the thought becomes our goal. >> so that is what the interest

in philanthropy resides. >> it does. and one of the things that's happened in philanthropy is this new generation, the bill gates of the world have never been anything for the amount of money they spend and where they spend it in the world, how actively tear involved, this generation of philanthropists want to run their money. you know, we are surrounded by this library, and the vanderbilt mother for x in for x in the jp morgan's and the ford foundation. but they turn the money over for a formation and walk away. this new generation wants control and they're doing it and how they need big, big impact in a lot of areas. education i think will be helped in part by eli rhodes and homebuilder from los angeles, jim simon to me so much money is a hedge fund guy.

they've got math courses going because they now what it is for them. >> that story you tell about gates and buffett. tell that story. it's a wonderful story. >> i got to know bill early because i thought he was going to want to get in our business because we are going to have to do content at some point. i made a point of going to seattle and getting to know him. and in fact msnbc stands for microsoft nbc. we formed a partnership it didn't work out perfectly, but we still have many pieces of it in place. the would come back to new york and have meetings can use me which have quashed the man chuckled because that helped bring bill into the building i said, appear. we've got stuff we have to discuss and they took her picture. this was before melinda got control of his wardrobe in personal grooming.

[laughter] he didn't care about that stuff. looks like his hair had been cut by shrubbery shears of some kind and he had a plaid jacket. i remember striped pants and jackets in his power ceo suit and i'm in my anchorman outfit and we have her picture taken. they get the picture immediately make up for lunch with a close friend of mine who was on warren's board and also his lawyer and the pensée warren is going to eat there as well. we've all known each other for a while. and we go to lunch and i showed the picture to warren and to my friend ron and i say your mother. you have three sons. which one are you worried about? [laughter] and war and without missing a beat said yeah, i often tell people the bill and i are so rich because we share a calm. [laughter] that was a killer line. >> and your 50 years has been --

>> half a century, yeah. >> but that also -- there is that, but it's also the strengths of longevity and dedication and doing something fully. who serve you early on and laid on the models? >> who did i model? >> i had in my profession -- i had a real privilege of being raised by newspaper guys. i cut the waverley. i got some very important jobs at an early stage in my life and newspapers were still the dominant culture when it came to covering politics and covering everything in those days. when i was in los angeles, for

example, marriage in 1966 of the 26-year-old running against viacom for governor in "the l.a. times" had a really first rate political reporting team. older guys. i've often thought that caetano prompted them, but they kind of put -- metaphorically put their arm around me and help me through it and kept their eye on me. we became friends. one of them turned out it was paul conrad who was a brilliant pulitzer prize-winning cartoonist. and then i began to write for the times might have sealed the deal that they felt like i was one of them. remember to washington as a white house correspondent i was coming from knowledge where i was done at the local political reporter there some skepticism about whether i could do the job. after three weeks on the job at the white house there was a legendary washington newspaperman by the name of peter with indoor chicago and he did the same thing. it kind of became my friend

emily stayed very close touch and talk to each other. my closest friend was a "wall street journal" reporter. i thought that helped me a lot because it gave me the discipline framework in which to operate as a broadcast journalist, but also that there's a print journal of the more different than what we did in broadcast. most of all what he did was keep my ego in check. you couldn't be a diva around the skies. i mean, they would let the air out of me in a nanosecond if i kind of caught punts. peter was inglorious amount to anything across the way. i'd be up in a booth at a convention, for example, presiding and feeling pretty good about this. i looked down out of the booth and 4000 people i'd absolutely find peter and he would mount this insanity to me silently and it would break me up and kind of

bring me back. i was very helpful to me. i [laughter] older guys even across -- walter cronkite and i became friends and i treasured that. andy rooney is not doing well right now. it's on a hard time and i just will cherish that friendship forever. he's just a great man. when i made of a member of the greatest generation about about them, he said i don't think i'm a member of the greatest generation, brokaw. i don't even like the phrase veteran. fsn andy, i'm going to put an asterisk by your name on the book and say everybody is a member of the greatest generation extent for any year. >> but you still hold onto that phrase? >> i will not do the phrase in my defense is very short. i said that's my story and i'm sticking to it. i used it before the book was written on the air and a lot of

people responded to it and i've had a lot of challenges to it and i prepared. it was not perfect generation. i don't say that. but in fact the generation came out of the war, kate over the depression. it is about deprivation and sacrifice and not a lot of hope you're never whining or complaining and often have the greatest war the history of mankind. in 1939 this country was the 16th military power the world. by 1941 were in the greatest war of all time and it's in the pacific and in europe and north africa. it's on six of the seven continents and passages one day after pearl harbor have listed and become warriors. and a home we stopped all civilian production of automobiles and turnout to tanks and weapons at their building to be 29 in wichita. i talked to one of the machinists and he said the engineers would leave on yellow legal pad dry and sunny before

and we would machine him all night long by just looking at the driver could figure out that these were farmers who knew how to do these things. they did nothing less than save the world and it's not just the americans obviously. the brittle in the line originally among the russians pushing germans back, which was hugely critical. and then i came home and they didn't whimper again. they went to college in record numbers and built new industries and give us know our company science, both states like florida, texas and california. got married in record numbers, went to college and set about the 1950s to achieve the press. none of them ever believed they could have and they resisted some of the changes. in effect is to remind people, that he heard him as a member of the greatest generation. she began to change the attitude about women in america and the african-americans who served came back not became the

foundation for the civil rights movement because they were not going to be discriminated against in the same line in the next generation led by dr. king and others really did change that. the greatest generation numbers to launch the war in vietnam, the members of the generation were the most articulate critics as well and george mcgovern and gaylord nelson and the others who gave another kind of waste to it. so i'm satisfied is the generation worth celebrating. that's how i put it. >> take us back a little bit when you began and you are an anchor so many years back then. was it easier back then than it is now quite >> in my business? much easier. when i started in television news i didn't see television before i was 15. and then it was -- >> for the first time in your 15. >> i thought the beginning in

1965 and i was just mesmerized by it. >> in your member exactly quite >> i do remember them talking about it. >> was your first impression? >> cardmember the idea were saying things that i never expected to see in my living room. i read the papers, sullivan has been meant to have on the black-and-white zenith television at 530 cockney coming to christ on a 15 minute broadcast in scheme what was going on in washington that day and stuff that was going on in europe. it was amazing. before that to go see the world series in a small town in which a mother would put all of us in the car and drive to sioux city iowa and would stand outside the department store on television tuesday the world series or go to sioux falls because they can signals. we couldn't get them in a remote

area. we had a television signal that had three channels to choose from. on sundays i remember watching walter cronkite during a sunday afternoon kinds of shows. ed morrow was a huge share of mind watching all of that. and i suppose then the thought began to form that you like to do that. the thing about network television in those days was a real meritocracy. he reached about across the country and "time" magazine and "the new york times" and the other great institutions -- print institutions you had to come from harvard or io or have a different pedigree. in television it was an open field. they often describe it as the oklahoma land rush or i was rushing across the landscape. so i started in omaha and when i was there, the station had a very good reputation and we would often see the stories to

howard brinkley and one of the officers of nbc came out and they were going to go for 15 minutes to half an hour. they were worried they were going to be able to fill the half hour. say they were asking the affiliates to keep their eyes on stories. ..

i thought maybe i could get the network to pay for me to see the world. i now realize a over wished on that. i've seen more than i needed to, but it was exciting in the idea that you could, you know, get on a plane and fly somewhere. i went from omaha to the atlanta in the height of the civil rights movement and that is when nbc picked me and sent me to california. >> by the time news comes to anchors it is old news now. it's already been on the huffingtonpost.com it's already been so many different places. >> yeah, technology changes. uigur levesque correspondence. we wanted to be reporters. now we find ourselves in anchors chairs but fortuitously for all of us, technology change comes

of the satellite made it possible for us to anchor from anywhere in the world. we got on airplanes and what to the philippines when they were taking on marcos for but simple. so it is a long way to go but it is a very exciting story coming and in china 1989 -- >> you found yourself by chance. >> i was in berlin not entirely by chance i didn't think low wall was going to come down but i thought was a very good story. i won the lottery. i is the only one who was there that night and i was laughing about the other day because i like the outdoors and i don't have a formal board row, so i tend to wear my patagonian l. l. bean jacket when i go on the road coming and i had this kind of worn out jacket going on the air the night the wall was coming down and i thought this is going to be around for a long time. one of our correspondents had a really good looking top coat and

i treated jackets with him so i shall up in this hand some top coat. >> bring me -- because i watched that moment a few of the berlin more -- bring us back to what it was like a few miles stones at least three that are tremendous watergate, the berlin wall and reporting 9/11 and the last difficult moment to report if you can bring us back to what it felt like in those stories. >> to put it quickly people say to me is that the biggest story you report the most difficult days that came after that. it is the biggest story of our lifetime is the fall of the soviet union and the definition of the communism with the rise in china and fall of the soviet union and the liberation of eastern europe and that is playing out and that was a seismic event of history, and

lowered the threshold of the chances of the nuclear change between the two superpowers we now have the other area. so when i got to berlin the day before the wall came down and because there was not much going on here and they were trying to get out of berlin and to czechoslovakia and other places we have more access than we ever had before to go to the checkpoint and report on the other side. and then late in the afternoon on that thursday, the propaganda chief for the east was at a news conference, and it is a typical. i was exhausted because i had been up most of the time since i left on tuesday afternoon, and then all of a sudden someone handed a piece of paper, and he said -- his name was schakowsky and he said the bureau has

decided the residence with a ger can exit and return to any and all or words to that effect and was like hearing this come from mars and the people in the room couldn't believe what they were hearing. thank you very much and he left the state. i had an appointment with him as it turns out. so, i went upstairs and i got the camera in place and i said pull that piece of paper out again and read it to me again and let's talk about what it means. he pulled it out and he read it again and said that means residents of your country come citizens of the ge ark can leave anywhere, anytime they want to through the wall. he said yes that's what it means some of my colleagues were standing there when they got up from the long island newspapers and the thought can this mean that? the wall is out. it's going to happen.

so we went back through the wall through the gate at checkpoint charlie. the guide had given a terrible time the last two days standing there and he kind of let us breezed through and i stopped and i said the you know what happened? he had been watching television. i said what you think? and he said through the interpreter i'm not paid to think. [laughter] and he went on his way that might by the time i got to the gate the people had come from the west and they were cheering on the young people on the other side of the wall were very uncertain about whether they should get up and come over the wall or not. one of my camera man had been down at another gate and he had the first footage of people coming to the wall and then they pored over the top of the gate. it was the most exciting single event to know that i was the only one. every the deals was back in the studio in new york covering it and i kept thinking to myself don't screw this up.

this is a big deal. [laughter] >> if you could say something about watergate, the reporting at that moment. >> what would be like? >> no, watergate. >> watergate would be much different today unfortunately. people would be making judgments 24/7, and the white house press corps i look back on that and as a model of tempered reporting we reported we knew. we have suspicions and things get unraveling as we went along but no one went on the air and said he's guilty and there is no way around or we didn't have a lot of people dvd each other on the air. moreover, there is a practical matter as a reporter when i finished with the evening news at 7:00 at night i could go work the phones to get ready for the

today show the next morning. i didn't have to go on msnbc and talk to chris riley or reach for somebody there and speculate. i was going to do the work of a reporter so when i got on the today show the next morning i had forces and information and new ideas. it was a real constitutional crisis. the presidency was at stake, the country was deeply divided, but what i always remember about it, i was with one of the supreme court decisions that they would have to give up the tapes and everybody knew it was over at that point. what i remember is once the tapes came out this country even in the last set he broke the law. he's got to go. they said it to themselves or it was an unspoken but everybody knew. i get in courting some republican senators for most of the year who were defenders of the president and conservative republicans, and one of them

called me at about 6:00 at night the tapes came out, and he said the tom, you've been very patient with me. he said it's over and we are coming to tell them that. we are going to make a call first and the white house told them not to come, the president made a decision he's going to resign and was a very dramatic time. the streets there was no military coup of any time to be kind. people hanging on at the white house. i remember about two days later after president ford had been sworn in and the white house staff had been very loyal to nixon can down the hallway to get something and then burst into tears and i said what's wrong? she said they told me to go get the president's papers and i don't know which president they were talking a lot. president ford or president nixon. what we got through the transition. >> in closing i'm wondering to things. first of all, when you looked back, any regret, in the stories

you feel you could have told better come any stories you feel you withheld and wished that he had told? >> i didn't go to vietnam and i regret that. i was a young reporter for msnbc coming and they didn't send very many reporters they sent mostly single people. i cover the war home as i often describe it, and there was a big piece of what was going on. but i wasn't there, so i regret that. most people say there is nothing to regret. given all the other things i've done in my life. a story that we could have told better -- >> differently told better that you feel you didn't have? >> i think the signs were there for this economic downturn i don't think we did a very good job. i was out of the chair about that but i went back and i looked at -- i write about this in the book the night of the

millennials change from 1999 none of us was saying this was likely to happen. he read a very pressing piece about how overheated the market was and what could happen. but the rest of the world we were worried about yankee's. we didn't see 9/11 coming. the spring before the 9/11 i had seen the director of the fbi louis freed because i was working on the computer heat, a story about these racists and bigots who were using and was a very well-organized computers to spread hate. some people had been murdered as a result of their actions coming and i wanted the fbi to cooperate with us, and on the documentary about how they solved heat crimes on the computer. he said that is in dhaka on our list of priorities. that will work its way out.

you ought to be looking at terrorism. that was like march before the 9/11 attack. i walked out with my colleague and friend who is the president of nbc news, and we kind of talk about that and he said maybe we should look into that but it kind of faded away and then 9/11 happened. >> how do these things fade away? >> it faded away because -- and i think this is part of what is going on now. it wasn't tangible in a way. even though we had the attacks on the tower in tanzania and kenya we all were into thinking they won't come here part of the moment that time in the country is you can't touch and feel and smell or feel the hot winds of the debt that we are in this country so people can put it out of their mind. it isn't leaning over them in a way. you can talk all you want about what it's going to cost your children and grandchildren but

because it is not tangible it is more of an abstract i don't think it has the same impact. >> in closing you write about the state of journalism today, and you say this about investigative journalism. you say without investigative journalism what we'd we'd about people's revolt of egypt or long before that of watergate, the silent spring, iran contra, trademark and square, war come islamic rage, nuclear proliferation, peace, calamity come here was on? tomorrow i will come on the very stage in the speech he gave at berkeley a commencement speech since he likes commencement speeches he says of this. i have often wondered why we need the phrase investigative journalism. isn't all journalism's opposed to the investigative?

is in the journalism without the investigative element little more than gossip? and isn't there an of gossip around already? >> i don't disagree. i've often said the same thing about it. it's redundant in my judgment, but there are other forms. there is entertainment journalism and if i tell my friends in the business when they complain about what they see on television i say okay i want you to go to the press tomorrow and on the streets only the front page both sports news, no crossword puzzles, no cartoons, no entertainment guides, just the front page, just eat your spinach folks and we will see how successful you are, so journalism as a broad spectrum. i do believe that the cultural was some will survive all these changes to backend what is delivered. absolutely. people will have an appetite for information about what is going on in their lives. isaacson has written a wonderful book about steve jobs and we were talking yesterday about

publishing business, and he said something i haven't thought about. he said i am lighting print copies of books because i know they will survive and i want my children and my grandchildren to see them and in print form. i don't know what happens to the electronics that i buy. will i be able to retrieve those and will i pay attention in the archival way of those books? so i think that is by the way in the context of robert mcnamara a documentary and i love the war is a national treasure quite honest. >> thank you very much. [applause] [applause]

>> after 90 minutes they are going to be in a patient. >> a couple of the questions. can we bring up the microphone -- >> if we have answers. >> no questions? we are going to ask this for 90 minutes so you've probably heard everything you need to hear from me. go ahead. >> hello. thank you so much for being here and sharing your words. i was very inspiring. i was particularly interested in your description of the collaborative environment in which you were raised professionally. the mentor and as someone here who is not experiencing the same kind of position in the workplace, more of the competition both among

entry-level workers and the more senior workers and entry-level workers. i am wondering if he could speak a bit to your opinion on that and how do we move away from a cooperative workplace to a competitive workplace and what effect does that have on the workplace and the productivity of all of us? >> you want to repeat that? [laughter] >> can you make it short? of the cooperative -- >> cooperative workplace -- >> cooperative workplace and competitive workplace. >> right, and specifically you're in inspiring mentor and where do they go in the workplace today? are they still there? and i just not finding them? are they here? >> i'm not sure that i can answer that. i think they are still here. i think that it still exists, but what i think is no the information overload and what we

see on the screen all day every day has so many parts to it that it's hard to pull stuff out. so, i don't think that we make the same kind of assessment or inventory we once did. life is a lot easier at one point in terms of the trees is we have to make and we knew what they were going to be. that is not so true anymore. >> speaker. if you could meet your questions very tight. [laughter] >> it's good to see you. >> i am a print journalist and i spent some years both attending and covering conclaves of print journalists, the american society of newspaper editors, the newspaper association of america, and descent themselves into pretzels every year talking about how they have to find new ways to reach young people, and at a certain point there is a limit. can you recommend a way for the news industry to get together

with the educational system to somehow revived the gene for public affairs that seems to have some house let out of the bloodstream? >> a was an internal debate in journalism about whether or not we should be trying to proactively encourage people to get -- the newspaper industry and the news industry can only do so much stomach that wasn't the mission of the newspaper, it was to try to be proactive agent for getting people interested in public affairs. i think our job is cover the news and raise hell. that is what i really think and this other institutions after them get involved in getting people more involved in public affairs. what i do think is that if you are reasonably nimble on the internet now you can find almost any kind of organization that you not including those that will pour u.n. to job policy and make a part of a kind of cyber group.

part of the dilemma at the moment it's like drinking from a fire hydrant. there are so many choices and to the coaches is out there that we need to have a place reliable information the society's atomized by all of this information that's going on we have to continue doing what we are doing and make sure the public discourse is engaging and people understand it has relevance in their lives. >> thank you so much for coming. what is your advice for a young journalist working for an inspiring story? >> my advice for young journalist is to study medicine. [laughter] >> my honest advice is honestly you have to get used to the new

instrumentation and you have to because a lot of it is moving in that direction. there will always be a place for someone who can write, someone who can express themselves apparently can't explain complex issues in ways people can take away something that is meaningful and useful to them whether it comes off the internet or the printed page or even on television. we have far too much now what there's what i call the school of journalism we have ever been talking with our hands all the time and it's kind of improvisational. the will construct sentences important over the air as on the page on the internet. >> thank you very much. [applause] ♪ ♪

>> wasden it up next booktv interviews dawn while touring a birmingham alabama as part of our cities tour. he recounts the military career of dudley mush morton to command the american submarine uss wahoo in the pacific. >> mush morton was probably the most influential submarine skipper of world war ii. he was really the first true submarine base and i compare him quite a bit with the pilot aces that did so much in world war ii and the air war especially in

europe. mush is such an interesting character that i am surprised almost promised that nobody had done a biography on him yet. i had on so many books on the history i always joke and say i don't write about submarines or i don't write about world war ii history. i prefer to write about people, people in extraordinary situations and extraordinary people in extraordinary situations, and that is exactly described to the t. dudley mush morton, the fellow with a funny sound nickname. he i won't say single-handedly because he had fear of the time that we were doing some very unusual things with those remarkable vessels when world war ii broke out, but he was definitely the one that stood above all the rest in the way that he innovated the views of the submarine and the warfare. prior to the world war ii, the submarine was in most cases the defensive weapon and was designed to protect harbors and shorelines the submarines were

called fleet puts because there were also designed to accompany a fleet of other vessels and to be able to protect them from attack with the devotee to submerge the attackers but in most cases they were not fast enough to stay up in the fleet they could do a real good job of that. at the same time, only was the equipment limited, but the method of finding the submarine warfare was completely different. the theory was that used a hidden if you have a perfect shot a ticket because the limited number of torpedoes that you could carry. once you file your the shot you ran as fast as you could which wasn't very fast about eight or nine was the most. only about 20 on the surface. so, the stealth was the main thing. the submarine skippers were top more fair. the afternoon after pearl harbor when president roosevelt had the famous stevan felmy speech he immediately issued for the first time in american history the

declaration of the restricted warfare with the empire of japan. instantly that changed the thought process of how we follow the war. luckily we had two things going for us. even though we were not convinced there would be the war and the pacific we still had the folks in need who had begun the development of the new class of submarines, one that could go further, by a deeper, there were more torpedoes and oddly enough more true comfort and you think of the submarine warfare the think of the german u-boats and those were an extraordinarily effective machine but the new class of submarines that were on the drawing board in the 1930's were far superior even to the new vote. the first was the class that began to dive deeper, go further and had much more firepower than anything that had come along. the one thing we didn't have one of war broke out in the december of 1941 was submarine skippers

who could fight the kind of war that we need to fight against the japanese in the pacific it's not their fault they had a whole different way to run the submarines. once the unrestricted warfare was declared we had some officers and a step to the forefront and adapted the submarines and were able to take them and use it very effectively when the war broke out. i like to joke and say most of them had idle names. macmillan. these were great names and it sounds like a matinee sort of hero and then here comes mush morton. dudley mush morton. moly was he a character that he instinctively knew how to take the class of submarines and to use it to its best effect in world war ii. that is to dudley was. like a lot of submariners far,

far from saltwater he grew most of his years spent in kentucky his father stuck in the coal mining business, but his data sent him down to miami because he and his teenage son or his teenage brothers were very rambunctious fellows in high school, and his mother was ill and was not able to handle those teenage boys so he went to live with his pond and uncle in miami. it's fortunate the and and no more war mafia had politically connected. they were able to get dudley into the naval academy after he spent some time in a prep school. he did not have an especially distinguished career the naval academy. he was a good athlete and a low class rustler and also a football player where he would back sell but he tended to run his instructors and the commanding officers the wrong way because they talk on his own he had a very active and creative mind. he didn't necessarily take his

studies seriously. he much preferred to be out on the chesapeake bay. he loved to sail and that meant he was obviously cut out to be in the needy but not necessarily submarines. after he graduated he went to the west coast and was awarded the destroyer free period what time but eventually decided that he wanted to be a submarine captain. a lot of peoples' shows the submarine captain for a number of reasons. one, typically the kind of the vessel was the most rapid way to advance in the navy and eventually become an admiral. a lot of people enjoy the smaller crew been able to know each crew member and each crew member's capabilities without having the six or 700 men that have to know. the typically know whether the crew is from, who the parents are, how good they are when they have to die for searches or fire torpedoes so a lot of people

preferred the submarine command. of course when he went in the submarines and most people in that era went in the early 30's they did not know that they would necessarily be in the kind of the war that they eventually would be. once he got into submarines again he did not have a specially a colorful career. he was a very typical submarine skipper and very old and the old s boats which were not very effective. when the war broke out he was actually the skipper of one of the old s boats that had spent time in the caribbean and help protect the canal against any possible german activity of the war should break out. when the war did start, he was off of the east coast and had one encounter with a german u-boats and he did fire one torpedo in the u-boats. he knew it wasn't going to hit anybody because it's hard for one because you not only have this and this but you also have

this and this to think about. he did what most would have done after he fired the torpedo he died and went away. he was actually reprimanded for that by his commanding officer who recommended he would be sent to some of the branches and the needy and not remain a submarine captain because he turned and ran from their boat. i don't know if he took that to heart or it just made him mad but i think from that point on she had what it took to the submarine skipper. he didn't get run out of the services at that time. he actually in the bindle herbert as a prospective commanding officer in the submarine. they gave the command of an old boat called the dolphin. when he first walked on the boat he announced to the crew or anybody listening that this was a death trap. there is no way i'm going to take this to the war. he went back to the squadron commander and refused to go out on the submarine because it was in bad shape and so ill-equipped

the supreme commander, the squadron commander said okay you are finished with the submarines and as quickly as they could. morton went in to plead his case to the squadron commander's commander. he walks in and shakes his hand. the commander says you know, i feel like i remember you at annapolis. didn't i see you play football? i sat down and they talked about football and wrestling. the submarine division commander leader said any man with a handshake like that can command line submarine so once again he got the point and went on into stay in the submarine navy. i will mention too when he was stationed on the west coast he was actually on the destroyer in the early 1930's in the los

angeles california he spent a lot of time with hollywood folks he loved to go to the hollywood party and they loved him because he was such an individual told a great stories most of them not true but he told great stories and he was very popular in hollywood when he was stationed there that is going to come back later on. after bulging the other big which morton was assigned as prospective commanding officer on the uss wahoo. the prospective commanding officer means you take a ride on a patrol with an experienced skipper and learn the ropes from them and then you come back and get command of your own vessel. in this case there was a lot of collusion on the crew to get the current replaced, and that collusion lead to mush morton being assigned to the wahoo pc

no. he was actually a board for the second patrol. on the first patrol the skipper at that time was very typical of the ones that were commanding submarines at the beginning of the war. he had fired some shots as the it been taught and went away as quickly as he could. he didn't follow up to try to attack again. in the opinion of the executive officer, he actually avoided contact with a lot of potential targets that were right for sinking coming and he strongly suspected that the man was not cut out to be a submarine captain. that executive officer was a gentleman named dick okane whose and more ships than anybody else. he went to his commander in the

recommended mush morton for the crew. he observed the other captain and saw what was going on and she started politicking once they got to australia the end of patrol to take over wahoo and that is what happened to the i think it's important to know that the skipper on wahoo who turned around the control and rubbed the wrong way and wasn't very effective as a submarine commander he went on to serve in the surface navy and did some heroic things and helped to win the war and that helped happened a was a lot of them that were not cut out to the skippers, and i think that we owe them a deal. they showed up for a gunfight with a knife, they just were not prepared for that kind of war. morton went on to lead the wahoo for the third patrol. that became the most spectacular world war ii submarine patrol.

but the entire convoy they were due to be out for about five weeks. they were out of torpedoes for five weeks. morton used the funds most skippers didn't use. they were primarily designed in the beginning if you got called on the surface and had to fight your we out of a tight spot. morton would go right in and shoot. the actually said the entire convoy themselves during that patrol. well when they got back to pearl harbor the navy knew we needed some good news. they made sure that the whole world knew about wahoo and was on the front page of all of the newspapers and magazines. newsreels and theaters everywhere were talking about and it's skipper mush morton. he spent some time with hollywood folks and some acquaintances there that would come back a little weaker, too.

it was spectacular. they did some amazing things. they were ordered to pass a little island that had harbored called we've back. it couldn't find it on the chart. they had to use and at less one of the members had brought in australia for his son and they found it on there and they were able to project a double wall and to all the right stuff so they knew that they were in the right area. the orders were to drive by the area and see if there was any activity there. well, to mush morton it means sale right into the harbor. a harbour so shallow they can actually feel less well against the reef. they were close enough to compete the could tell the coconuts on the palm trees. they see a destroy your coming their way and she executes the first successful down the throat shot to shoot the profile to the destroyer it's almost impossible because there's always a narrow range you can actually should

otherwise the torpedo arm pulls it is a narrow target the sink the destroyer and it is quite dramatic. that gets lead to the lower. this all continued but it's important to note that we were having a lot of problems with our torpedo. they wouldn't explode, they wouldn't run true. one of the higher ranking members of the submarine command was an engineer who had designed those torpedoes so he was very reluctant. mush morton was not reluctant to admit. he even went to charles lockwood the commanders of marine specific that it's the fit in his office of the situation with the torpedo. after that he called his wife, mush morton did and did you marry a failure their lead to kick me out of the navy and he honestly felt at that point he was a big fan and the most

famous submarine skipper in the world. he was convinced they were going to run him out of the navy because complaining about the torpedoes and it turns out that is the impetus. one of the things that pushed the navy to go ahead and do something about the torpedo and they did just that. she ended up with a total of five patrols and again one of the most prolific skipper's in the navy and sinking a large number of vessels despite the problems they were having but wahoo was lost on the patrol, and until 2005 we were not even sure where wahoo was. we knew she was off the northern coast of japan, but thanks to some of mush morton's relatives and the author and to the navy and even to russia and some

russian petroleum exploration craft the eventually located and took enough pictures to convince the navy to release wahoo and the head several memorial services there. it's a great relief to the family of the men who were lost to the will to point to a particular place and say that's where the submarine went down. to that point, wahoo was still listed as missing in action for all the family members knew the recruit had been captured by in the concentration camps and prisoner of war camps. but the man who found wahoo who were able to do the research actually talked to some of the pilots that fired that day when she was stopped. the piece together the total story. martin was fighting to the index was the major. he was unable to dive deep enough to avoid bombs the claims were dropping and she sank their

it's also important to note the people who were searching for established the memorial not to wahoo only but to wahoo and all the people who lost their lives at the hand and called a peace memorial. this was to honor the people that fought on both sides and died in action, not just the american submarine. it's a beautiful memorial overlooking that stretch of water where wahoo actually went down. >> what prompted you to write a book? >> i've written several books about world war ii history, and it's kind of moving away from that for awhile and i get some other ideas of books that i wanted to do. but i was in jacksonville florida on business and had several hours before my flight was scheduled to leave so i went to st. mary's georgia. in st. mary's there is one of the most wonderful submarine museums in the whole world.

it's a tiny little place. you can build a submarine hull of the stuff. if you go upstairs they have a lot of out of print books before the internet they had taken the trouble to tighten up and reduce the report from every single world war ii submarine patrol the got the weakness of the big books and martin by the way when he wrote in the patrol's it's like poetry. he could have been an awful list because he had a way of writing. i stole a lot of that in this book. on a pulled a book about world war ii skippers and how influential a few others had been in the wake of war was conducted and how they were able to win the war. people realize that at no time in world war ii was the submarine force any more than 2% of the total naval forces in the south pacific and yet submarines sank over 50% of the any shipping in world war ii. we lost 3200 men and 52

submarines at the war. they also had the highest casualty rate in any branch of the surface. we think about the marines who are extremely brave men and about the loss of life. almost 25% of them who went to the war in the pacific died in those submarines. but reading for mush morton i have to find his biography somewhere. i have to find out more about this man because he's one of the most fascinating characters i love to read about. dick okane did a book for a week of the wahoo but it's more but the crew and the important part of it. they were almost on that last patrol and literally was taken off the boat at the docket and sailed away he wrote a very good book about the enlisted man's point of view but it wasn't just

wahoo it with other ships and not a biography. i wanted to find out more about what made the man real and what made him the way he was, just a great story and i am a sucker for a great story. here's a short author interview from c-span campaign 2012 bus as it travels the country. >> set the stage for the book. what is it based on and tell us what the readers can expect. >> books based on the time in the navy and active duty 1964 to about halfway through 1977 the reason i wrote the book was i was speaking to my cousin one day and of how i hadn't done anything in my life and he

looked at me with a funny look and said haven't done anything? you've done stuff people just get to read about. i thought maybe that's the idea. so i went home and i talked to my wife who is now deceased but she said you've done a lot of stuff. like what? just start writing. little chapters, just write a chapter and figure out timeframe the fit in and clean them up. so why did and as i wrote and i mentioned to some people my experiences they said i remember doing things like that so it turned out once it was published i got feedback over the internet this reminded me of the stuff that i did and got away with it

and so it had an appeal for most kids to join the military. i was 18 when i went in and i was 31 or something when i got off of active duty, and i still meet people who have read it and thought that's great i loved it just reminded me of some of the things that went on when i was in the service so -- >> you write in detail the circumstances that led you in the armed service and armed forces. can you explain how you ended up serving in the navy and the capacity that you served? >> i was introduced in skydiving but i had put it aside by the time i graduated from high school and i had gotten into photography and i worked on the newspaper and went on vacation i learned a lot of things that

decided my only option to the session was to join the military if i want to get out and do something interesting so one day i was at the post office and i was going to see the recruiters. the only one there was there was the navy recruiter and i spoke to him and both of them were first class told them i had mine and i'm going to quit high school and get out of town he said don't quit high school. stay in and i guarantee you go to school. okay so i stayed the extra two or three months and graduated the rest is history. by could choose to be a photographer and it is kind of the closest thing i could think of that i was doing on the

outside. >> he thought about what people thought about military service in the 1960's. can you explain how you feel the was viewed then and how you talk about it in your book? >> it was actually worse than what i talk about in the book. after i got back from vietnam i got back but i went back to the east coast with a friend of mine i used to go to washington and take pictures and demonstration who couldn't believe the stuff that was being said about vietnam veterans were, and they were portrayed as druggies and nut cases and things of that nature and a leader on i found out that this was basically a bunch of garbage and had a better chance of getting a job and less severe side, less drug

addictions and population and so on, so why didn't think too much of the way the we were treated, and i never had anybody proven by the fact i'm not still in prison we didn't pay a lot of attention we were hanging out with people outside thinking we didn't pay any attention to the most part. >> there are a lot of books written about individual experiences during vietnam. what makes your is different or set apart? >> well, based on a case said the information feedback from the book this is not just another one of those vietnam books i give credit where it is to and the ideas that came out i love to help other people succeed when possible.

there are some interesting stories and there is a fair bit of humor i try not to get too technical and in the cases i did use the technical stuff i put a foot note for the most part. so it is fairly easy to understand. i don't go into a lot of acronyms and things like most military books to and the photographs are i hate to say it but they are very good, and it's about i think it is 80 or something like that in this book. the first edition which was by random house was poor quality. it was a paperback and on acid free paper. >> is there a specific event you have written about that stands out in your mind? >> i guess the first time i got shot at and i found out you

don't have to be shot at very many times to spend the 30 seconds or however long it lasted. it didn't miss me out but one case it did have an effect is one of the vietnamese guys working in the sea i was not impressed with and i found that i didn't heed the vietcong had anything like that. i was never shot or wounded myself, but i worked with people who hated the vietnamese but i can't process the information. i felt in that situation we were trying to help them and were not very successful but that is another story. >> the cs been campaign 2012 bus this its communities across the country. to follow the truffles, visit

www.c-span.org/bus. and now more from book tv cities tour. this weekend we visit birmingham alabama. coming up next an interview with carol lynn, the author of while the world watched the birmingham bomber comes of age in the civil rights movement. >> what i remember when the bomb exploded, i remember not really thinking there was a bomb. the first thought that i have is maybe it was founder or something. the sound made me think of thunder but as quickly as i thought about that, the window came crashing in, and i heard someone inside of the church say hit the floor. when i fell on the floor, i could tell after a few seconds i could hear feet. i could tell people were running

out. so my first thought was for the younger brothers i brought with me, i knew that before i could leave for good safety i would need to figure out where they were and so i went outside and searched downstairs and upstairs and was never able to find my brothers there. we would find them leader in a different part of the community. >> it started as a very routine day. a sunday morning i was trying to coax my sister and to getting her hair combed and finally my mother said just leave her here and i will bring her here leader with me. so my younger brothers left with me. my oldest brother dropped us off at church and we arrived light about 9:30 and after putting them in their glasses i went upstairs to the church office to

get my equipment i guess i could call it, but i was responsible for taking attendance and i was responsible for recording the financial gift before the day and then created a summer report that i would give leader. so i did this, collect all these reports come passed them out and then i sit in my sunday school class for awhile and generally about 9:15i would get collect reports to create the summary. on this particular sunday, we were very excited. all of the young people were excited because it was new sunday and that meant we were in charge of everything. we sang and gave devotion, did the ushering. we did everything so we were excited about that. as i start up the stairs to complete the reports i passed the bathroom where my kids were and i spoke to them and they were coming here and everybody excited in their own ways about different things.

as i started up the steps when i reached the top the phone was ringing in the church office. in those days the church office was right behind the sanctuary, so when i reached the church office and heard the phone rang and i went in and inserted to my word under was not there and the meal called on the other end said three minutes and as quickly as he said that he hung up. so i still had my items in my arms, my materials in my arms and i just turned and walked out into the sanctuary, and only because we counted i took about 15 steps before the bomb exploded. >> what is the last thing that you had said to them before you left the bathroom? >> see you later, when i passed that bathroom, see you later. >> was a very segregated place

during that time. it was a very difficult dark and difficult place during that time. as a young person probably prior to the age of 14 we did not experience a lot of the difficult days. our parents did such a great job of sheltering us. many of our activities were provided for us at the church and in the schools so we didn't miss the places we could not go or the places we were not allowed to go. they provided picnics and parties and contests and just all kinds of ideas right here at the church. so we didn't really know to what extent we were missing a lot of things. i think that our parents did not want us to know that there were a lot of restrictions out beyond the home parameters. and so for many they didn't tell

us about it, the sheltered us. when for example the first fast food place, rather than allow us to know they did not serve black people, rather than have us go to a side window when they did serve them they kept us at home and they always told us that it was always about money, they didn't have the money to do these things. so in a real way we did not know many of the barriers that exist out there. it was a real gift in a lot of ways not knowing the barriers were there. there were no imaginary barriers in our mind saying we can't do this because of those people or this person or whatever. we've really grew up thinking we could do anything we wanted, we could be anyone we wanted to be. this was stressed a lot in my elementary school and high school. i guess they felt we would find out soon enough. what things were possible and what things weren't but they

really did a tremendous job of preparing us. so that if the opportunity should come we would be ready. >> i think our church was just heartbroken. they were young innocent girls. they hadn't been part of the movement and they had their full life ahead of them. they were all very bright and smart young girls in schools and in the two of the cases they were the only children. they were the only children their parents had. so the church was really shocked that we had people in our cities who were willing not only to kill young children in the name of segregation but to bomb a house of worship to maintain that, and we were away from our church about eight months during

the renovation but we had many members who did not come back. some did not come back because they were afraid. they thought would happen again or something new would happen. some didn't come back just because they thought of the church would continue to have these meetings. i would venture to say we probably had half of the congregation to return after the innovation. so the church reacted very strongly to what happened there it was a painful experience to that i can tell you prior to this experience i was a young girl growing up in a house with four brothers who pick on me a lot but life was good i had a very loving parents. my parents were teachers. we had a lot of fun at home. after the bombing at the church a lot of things changed. i think that we all probably became a little more quiet. we became a little more fearful.

we heard the bombs going off build all of a sudden was real because we lost four of our friends. i struggled with it tremendously because i was trying to understand as a child trying to understand what could make the situation right. if this was all about the color of your skin what could make a right? what, after all, were we supposed to do? we understand we cannot change the parents to whom we are born so what were we supposed to do differently? that's what i kept trying to figure out, and it became just a very troubling fault or of session that i carried around and i didn't understand what six months after the bomb this church the