emotion of losing a child that i imagined mrs. dowler must have felt and you must put that aside and say actually the press and a free press and a press that strays into a gray area is a good thing for the country and a good thing for democracy and that's all. >> all right. thank you for your evidence, mr. mcmullan. >> and now booktv brings you three days of nonfiction authors and books. for a complete schedule visit booktv.org. >> and now from the 11th annual national book festival on the national mall here in washington, dc, biography edmond morris presents his book colonel roosevelt. ..

the city of washington was determined to cut down and and and was so determined it not be cut down they climbed the tree and wrapped his arms around it and said shoot if you must this old gray head the spare my favorite tree, he said. edmund really did not need introduction. he concluded after three decade's work one of the

monumental biographical studies of american literature. the third volume of his theodore roosevelt is "colonel roosevelt" which covers a protracted and difficult at times painful period in theodore roosevelt's life when he missed the bully pulpit of the presidency and being the center of everybody's attention, was touring the world, suffered great personal loss. it is a dramatic story. nobody tells the story better and it is my pleasure to introduce mild friend edmund mosque. . [applause] >> that is completely untrue about me climbing the tree. i tried to go skidding back to ground level. after that incident which

surprised me, a 55-year-old guy as i was then hugging this tree in a passion of protectiveness, i had never felt that way about a tree before and before that tended to agree with ronald reagan. if you have seen one redwood you have seen them all. but the sights and sounds of that buzz saw taken to this great country outside the house, just awoke something in me and next thing i know i am out there in my socks at 7:00 in the morning hugging the tree preventing destruction. of course i did not succeed. the tree actually belonged to the building next door and they had every right to cut it down so i had to retreat back into my

house and listen to the rest of the destruction of that tree feeling worse than have ever felt in my life and astonished at the intensity of what own feelings. i wrote an article about it for the new york times and some months later i happened to be talking about the incident to how and memorize the great american poet who said i once wrote a poem about the destruction of the tree, at the bottom of our driveway. of all 1000's of ferns i have written in my life that was the one that generated the most response. there is something fundamental about the destruction of a great tree that affects us all very powerfully. if you remember in germany in the 1980s the black forest

suffered a strange period of banks to where trees were dying off by the millions. some mysterious disease no one could comprehend. the thought was it had something to do with environmental pollution. what was interesting was during this period of the self destruction of the black forest, there was a quantum increase in cases of clinical depression all across germany. the forced eventually recovered and the incidences of psychological depression went down. when you consider the german people have this ancestral mythological memory of viet forced, the woods where the gods lived and when they felt their mythological history was being

destroyed, they felt they were being destroyed themselves, all of which has nothing too much to do with biography but i guess it does. because theodore roosevelt as i am sure most of you know was the first and greatest of our conservationist presidents. when he became president in 1901 the word conservation could be found in american dictionaries but it did not have the meanings that we now associate it with. it was teddy roosevelt who put conservation in the capital seen on the map. the into the dictionary and the concept of conservation into the american mind. he was the one who made the american people realize natural

resources -- being depleted at a frightening rate. that 50% of the forests that columbus sought or whoever got here first, had already gone. it was he who in 1908, and i think his single greatest stroke of statesmanship, assembled the first white house conservation conference of governors with all the chief executives of all the states together with men of science and men of interest to compile an inventory of the natural resources and a method of philosophy of protecting these resources for the children and the children's children of everybody alive in the country at that time.

when he left the white house in march of 1909 conservation had become such an important topic that the world conservation conference was planned to take place in the white house two or three years after he left office and he handed the agenda of the conference over to his successor, william howard taft, who couldn't have cared less about the subject and allowed it to die and that conference never happened. when we look back on t r 100 years later, that is the one achievement of his presidency that we should revere and remember. it is something of a homecoming to me to come to this particular stretch of turf and to be in the

proximity of this particular cassel, the smithsonian castle because i came here in the year 1983 long before any of you were born. why are you laughing? as a fellow of the wilson institute. bill wilson center for scholars which used to be headquartered in the castle, i was a fellow for a three month and that is where i began my second roosevelt biography, theodore rex. the first time i had ever been in an academic environment among fellow scholars from all over the world and i must confess i felt very strange in the company of the cerebrum guys with long strings of degrees after their names.

i was given the study in the tallest that you will see outside at the immense gothic windows looking out over the mall. the first evening unspent feeling very strange. i was disturbed by the most extraordinary screaming in the corridor outside. it sounded like a knife fight in a new york subway. i rushed into the hall and said to professors somebody being killed? do we call the police? said don't worry. it is a pair of renaissance scholars. don't mix with those guys. that is my introduction to the legal world of academia.

i haven't changed much. i have a feeling we're all in the wrong tend. this is a history and biography tend but i notice there is a $10 stalin called fiction and mystery. that is where we should be if we are interested in history and biography. history and biography are supposed to be nonfiction disciplines. i won't speak about history because i'm not a historian but i will speak about biography. it is categorized as nonfiction and yes, we practice it, base everything we right if we are honest people, on incontrovertible documents. on letters, on diaries,

contemporary reports. and from these presumably undeniable, incontrovertible documents we construct the true story, in quotation marks, of what happened. but the older i get and the more biographies i write and the more obsessive i get about checking every single fact even if i describe the smell of flowers on a particular day in teddy roosevelt's life or the expression on ronald reagan's face as he said something, i never write these things unless the have documentary evidence. even so, even though i have this philosophy which all my professional colleagues do, the older i get, more i begin to

understand it all is fiction. i was reading this morning in the library of congress, it couple hours until the manuscript -- some letters of thomas edison, who is my current next subject. and i found this letter hand written in 1914 by thomas edison to his big buddy henry ford. it is about smoking. and he said something like deer ford, dear friend ford, he said, in his exquisite handwriting, the damage done by cigarette smoking is largely due to the paper in which cigarettes are wrapped. the burning paper creates a chemical compound -- i have forgotten the word--which what is in the lungs and when it

lodges in the lungs of young people, it forms uncontrollable habit and a disease that is ultimately fatal. for this reason i never employed cigarette smokers in any of my factories. thomas edison. here is a document which biographers would naturally want to quote. however, i noted he liked to smoke cigars in private. why did he write this diatribe against cigarette smoking? because henry ford, the recipient of his letter, happened to be fanatically opposed to smoking. he had obviously written to edison to ask him to write a letter on a subject that he could use to promote his cause so edison wrote for his friend

apparently sincere condemnation of smoking. in other words, he inflicted his letter towards the desires and sensibilities of his correspondent. is that document a true reflection of the way edison thought about tobacco smoking? no. it is not. so the barter for has to take into account the fact that every document is going to have an agenda of some sort or other. when i was writing my biography of theodore roosevelt, it was one of the most articulate of writers. he was a gifted, perpetuating machine. constantly pouring out his soul. in 150,000 letters during his

short life, 40 books, count was magazine articles, no biographer has been able to tabulate how much. i based one of my autobiography is on this archive of self expression by an extremely honest and indefatigable literary person. finest time and time again that letters written to different people at different times gave totally different versions of different subjects because of his consciousness and stretching himself to the recipient. we biographer's will base more contemporary biographies on recordings of interviews, presumably the transcript of an interview with ron reagan or richard nixon is a text, is the

authentic words that the president spoke and they are on the page with all the deleted expletives but reading these transcripts, you can see nixon's face as he said something. you can notice the way he ended up his pant leg as he said segwayed into a dark statement. you can't see the expression on ronald reagan's face. you are deprived of the body language that accompanies these words. often a person's body language and facial expression will be not what the writing in a pen. so there's again, is a biography based on transcripts? or do we miss a large part of what the truth really is?

what is the truth? oliver wendell holmes, our greatest jurists, once the find the truth as a supreme court justice, the truth as what i can't help but believe. what we believe is true to us. as any interviewer will discover, when they ask questions of a person that contradict that person's fantasies, you can get no more violent reaction then when you question a long-held fantastic believe. ronald reagan, one of his favorite stories, which never failed to make him tear up, a story of world war ii bomber flying over germany being struck by anti-aircraft fire and beginning to plummet toward the

ground. reagan would tell this story time and again, always in exactly the same inflection and pacing about how all the crew bailed out of this destroyed bomber with the exception of the rear gunner. little young boy who had been so damaged by the anti-aircraft fire that he was dying strapped in his seat. he couldn't move. incapable of parachuting out. and he called to the captain leading capt. capt. stay with me. don't desert this plane. don't jump. and the captain went back and cradled him in his arms and said don't worry, son, we will ride this one down together. at which the president of the united states always says in

tears, i will try to hurt the story about 18 times. i had the courage to say mr. president, that story, we can't really be sure it is true. he said why not? if they went down together with the plane smoking -- he said it is true! and the expression in his eyes was rarely angry. so we biographer's if we are honest have to deal with a compulsive need of the beavers to believe what they believe and to believe in belief. since i am here to sign a few copies or with look quite a lot

of copies, of "colonel roosevelt," i will give you a brief indication of what the book is about. is the third book in a trilogy that i have written of his life and it tells the story of his last ten years. the years following his departure from the white house in march of 1909 culminating in his death on a piece of the e tiffany, january 6, 1919, ten years of extraordinary adventure life. a story so astonishing in its turns of fate and combination of tragedy and comedy and poignancy for the end, long moments, long episodes of adventure, notably the exploration of the river of

brazil in 1913-14, to read -- certainly felt like it -- to read like a novel, i can deron of all. in so far as i can -- our hope is true. he really did do all these things. of all three books i have written, the ones i most enjoyed writing. because here we have the only bonafide literary intellectual, thomas jefferson. i told you about 40 books he wrote and all the letters. many of the periodical articles he wrote after he left the presidency in serious magazines were astonishingly story broke. the infusion of a man you can't believe was also a politician. in 1911 i discovered this piece

and completely forgot about it. an enormously long as a by theodore roosevelt, former president, about the ideological concept between evolutionary science and conservative orthodox religion. exactly the kind of theological scientific debate which is going right down 100 years later. in writing this enormously long study of the conflict between faith and reason, he revealed not only his own scientific erudition, this was after all unqualified ornithologist and natural historian, paleontologist, smithsonian when t.r. was president would sometimes sends fossilized -- fossilized specimens to the white house and ask the president to identify what they were. a genuine scientist.

in addition, commander who had a skeptical but respectful attitude toward organized religion. i give quite a lot of space in my book because of the modernity, contemporaneously as of the subject that he addresses so eloquently in 1911. in the course of which he read books in three languages, german, french and italian. truly impressive achievement for man who just a few short years before had been president of the united states. apart from his and delectable side, apart from his political side, which impelled him in 1912 to run the most formidable third-party campaign in our history, the famous vermouth campaign, progressive party campaign, campaign which he knew

was doomed but which for ideological and idealistic reasons he felt compelled to wage. by doing so splitting the republican vote and making it inevitable that the election of woodrow wilson. that was his political side in action. as opposed to the intellectual. also, this campaign brought out his supremely dramatic theatrical side. one of the reasons it was a delight to write about him all these years is such good theater. he was a natural hand. he discharged electricity. he had the gift of theater. the gift of presenting himself. the gift of drama. the gift of articulating things, doing things in a dramatic way. for example, at the height of

the campaign in october of 1914, at an end of a long day of campaigning, milwaukee, wisconsin, colonel roosevelt as he liked to be called, was emerging from his hotel about 10 minutes to 8:00 in the evening to give his last speech of the day in a milwaukee auditorium. he was exhausted after a long day of speaking but he wanted to go through with his speech. he comes out and in an uncanny foreshadowing of the assassination attempt on ronald reagan in march of 1981, he stepped out of the hotel. his limousine was waiting for him. the door opened to receive him. secret service guys surrounding him. the crowd in the street cheering as he appeared and as he climbed into his limo he waved at the crowd and as he waved his arm

up, a short, pale, blond young man emerged from the crowd, shot him point blank in the chest. the. went through his thick overcoats, through his jacket, through his waistcoat pocket, through the steel rimmed spectacles case in that pocket, through the 50 page speech he was about to deliver double folded so that makes 100 pages of very thick paper, through his shirt, smacked into a red on a trajectory which if it had continued a fraction of an inch more, would have killed him before he sat down. he did in fact sit-down. the cops wrestled this young man away and took him off. a paranoid psychotic like all

the others. t.r. said it is all right, he pinched me. the fact that blood was beginning to spread in his shirt front, and he said take me to the milwaukee auditorium, i have to deliver my speech! they said we got to get you to the hospital. you have been shot. i will go to the auditorium! showing all his 78 teeth. so they had to take him. one of these aides felt he had to step out on stage to warned the capacity audience, ladies and gentlemen, colonel roosevelt has been shot but he does wish to address you tonight. and here he is and t.r. -- comes

out gray in the face and teetering slightly and he spoke for 90 minutes. when he took the speech out of his pocket and saw the perforations -- the photograph in my book--it still this -- that is when he realized the seriousness of what happened to him. whereupon being a naturally theatrical hand, he unbuttoned his coat, exposed the spreading blood stain and said it takes more than that to kill a bull moose! what writer can resist this kind of theatrical but genuine behavior? this kind of extraordinary drama? and the symbolism that it implies? this is my blood which was shed

for you. this is my body. it is not fanciful to applied religious interpretation to this occurrence because progressive party campaign in 1912 was extraordinarily evangelical. t.r. was nominated by the convention, the sound of perpetual him miss singing. organ music, evangelical oratory, new york delegation storming the aisles, led by oscar ottoman strauss, the first history singing onward christian soldiers. and therefore, t.r.'s behavior which i'm sure was subconscious is an example of histrionics

that its most compelling. you can understand why as a writer are love to write about this guy. his confrontation with woodrow wilson in world war i begins to approximate tragedy because although wilson was president, when that great -- theodore roosevelt as you will see if you read the initial chapters of my book was a man who knew intimately from personal experience every crowned head in europe and every president and prime minister. is great cross-country tour of april of 1910, he stayed in the palace. refused the army's. electorate and the university. he spoke their languages. he understood the outside world.

he had a nobel peace prize in his pocket for his diplomacy during his presidency ending the russell japanese war. this was a very accomplished diplomat. the only president in history was ever asked to mediate a foreign war. if he had been president in 1914, i don't like to be spent elusive but it is pretty certain that the heads of the european powers, at least in early 1915, we know they were looking for a way out if they could find one. i think they would have turned to president roosevelt to mediate their differences. but instead they had to do with a president who was parochial in the extreme. original son of a virginia preacher, whose only for an experience before he became president a couple of bicycling trips to england. he spoke no languages that i am

aware of. theodore roosevelt during those years in world war i became more and more pathologically frustrated that wilson was in charge and he not. i tell the story of this gigantic confrontation as honestly as i can wear the have those behind it -- and also the idealistic nature of t.r.'s desire to have the united states stalin that war and fight on the side of the allies. he was a profoundly civilized man. we all know what a warmonger he was and how he loved to talk about battle and charge up san juan hill but at this stage he had begun to understand the nature of war and the nature of the fascistic military stick

threats of the german aggression in europe. three anti civilization incidents changed his attitude toward that war. efforts to supported neutrality in september of 1914. but when he heard that the germans had turned down the university of -- in belgium, thereby destroying the greatest medieval library in europe, delivered cultural terrorism, they had gone on to destroyed the cathedral about which t.r. said when he heard the news it was as though he heard about the extinction of all species and then the lusitania incidents of may 1915 when a passenger ship carrying american citizens was shot -- sunk by a german submarine with the loss of many

hundreds of lives. those three incidents persuaded him that the united states had to get into that war and he must defeat the pacifism of woodrow wilson. i won't go into the long story of their confrontation because it takes up the second half of my book. i will only say that in the end in 1918, the tragedy began to be manifest. t.r. who had been denied the mission by president wilson to form a regiment of fallen to years and take it to europe in advance of our regular army this is when the united states money didn't sign -- denied the mission quite justly by wilson. he was by then an aging man whose notions of battle were no longer valid. he went home and put all his hopes, military glories and

honor in the service of his son, theodore jr. the understand brightest, the one most like himself, quintin who became a fighter pilot. all these boys went to the war, distinguished themselves as soldiers but of course in july of 18 it had to be clinton who was shot down in his first serious dog fight. and hit the ground a dead man. the impact of this tragedy on t.r. which you can perhaps gauge -- clinton's dead body lying beside the broken by plane, lying there like something falling off of an abattoir, the brute reality of clinton's best destroyed the last vestiges of

romanticism in theodore roosevelt's breast and made it inevitable that he himself would die a few months later of what was then called a pulmonary embolism but which i think we can now justifiably call a broken heart. he died in january of 1919. the and questionable future nominee of the republican party in 1920 if he had survived and if he had survived to be nominated he would unquestionably have been elected president again in the republican landslide that gave us warren harding. but he died when he did. i am glad for mixed reasons that he died when he did. because after 32 years of writing about him -- [laughter] -- i didn't particularly want to write a fourth folio.

people say to me you must feel terrible about that dreadful death. i said actually, it was great fun killing him off. all offers love to write death scenes. he is dead and buried. his posthumous reputation--and now i buried him too and i am moving on to the life of thomas edison with anticipation and excitement and no particular nostalgia for t.r. but a lingering affection which will thanks for coming, ladies and gentlemen. [applause] thank you. i believe we have five minutes

for questions. is that a line to a mike there? >> theodore roosevelt's ability to multitask. did that change much during his in addition to what you mentioned, how well did he cope processor. >> what did you start by saying? >> his ability to multitask. i know he could do many things at the same time that an ordinary human didn't seem possible to do. >> his ability to multitask. >> did that change during his lifetime? >> it did not change. during his lifetime he was a phenomenon of activity. as henry adams said the president is pure effort. he literally did multitask. the could dictate three letters simultaneously to three

secretaries. if you enter the executive officer and a cure time walking across the space between the door and his desk he would read a couple paragraphs as you were approaching. he was phenomenally fast-moving and phenomenally receptive to in discriminant information. i mentioned earlier on he tended to memorize what he read. he read an average of four pages a minute turning them over with extreme regularity. as he read, he had a photographic mind. ronald reagan did too. photograph and the contents of each page. so much so that years later, in one -- 20 years later, he could at a whim start reciting stuff that he had read 20 years before

and never recited since. he was a phenomenon in that sense. that is how he managed to get such an extraordinary amount of work done, physical work, intellectual work and political >> thank you for dedicating so are saddled with particularly what would you say is the roots behind the production in one family, such a great son and such a troubled one? >> the gentleman is asking about the disparity between the incongruity between one sibling

and another. in his brother's footsteps ended up a i am looking at him when i interviewed him, the spring the mess of his hair and the color of his eyes, ron reagan's genes, there was a dullness, and emptiness, mediocrity that made him light years different from his brother. i am sure the same is true of t.r. and his brother. there is a pop novelist -- you see a picture of these two guys together, the eyes of the one man our electric and snapping with genius. the eyes of the other men are

not. it is inexplicable to me. i assume scientists could explain it but there are strange, unique personalities who create unique things, do unique things. where they come from my have no clue about the fact that they exist is why professional biographies are a warning. one more question. two more minutes. >> were you in communication between roosevelt regarding the river -- >> what about him? >> recreated the river for documentary on television. >> can't hear the question. try to talk a louder. >> if you were in communication with tweed roosevelt regarding his version of the roosevelt's trip up the river. >> yes. tweed roosevelt is the great

great grandson of t.r. and he led a duplicates of the river expedition a few years ago, documented and filled it and experienced it first hand, the nightmare that his great great grandfather experienced. doing this has been able to make a understand that that trip really was as hellish as it seems to be in t.r.'s own personal account. that river is longer than the rhine and t.r. took great pride having put it on the map. [applause] >> that event part of the 2011 national book festival in washington d.c.. to find out more visit

pelosi.gov/bookfast. recently the new york times release their top ten best books of 2011. here are the five nonfiction titles. christopher hichens's essay collection arguably rank topics from afghanistan to the ten commandments and even harry potter. will boy in the moon by ian brown recounts the story of his son who was born with a genetic mutation that made the most routine test difficult. up next malcolm x is an in-depth portrait of the civil-rights activist. the late dr. miracle's book is discussed on booktv and you can watch those programs online at booktv.org. psychologist daniel takes an in-depth look at the irrationality of everyday human thought in thinking fast and slow. in a world on fire amanda foreman writes about what side great britain would have supported during the civil war. for the complete list of the new

york times best books of 2011 go to new yorktimes.com. >> it is my policy not to discuss the film's i am making while i am making them for all the obvious reasons. >> area currently working on one? >> maybe. i don't talk about it. they just appear when they appear. is not in the best interests of the film to give a heads up. i was sick go before i made psycho. i said i was making a film on the health-care industry and health-care industry went on high alert. they went on real high alert. even though the film was not really about them, the

health-insurance industry, pharmaceutical companies spend hundreds of thousands of dollars preparing for me. i would get all these internal memos sent to me from people at different pharmaceutical companies and we had and in service today where they hired a michael more actor to do role-playing with us if michael moore should show up in the building this is how you are supposed to handle him. father had a michael more hot line. if i show up in offices around the country, and they went -- wendell potter wrote his great book last year. when he was vice president he talked about hundreds of thousands of millions of dollars they spend hoping to discredit me and attack me, if necessary, figuratively, not literally push me off a cliff. i learned my lesson.

it is not a good idea to give them advance notice what i am working on. >> booktv interview wendell potter on his book. if you like to see that go to booktv.org and use the search function in the upper left-hand corner. e-mail mr more. as an iranian american i am concerned about rumors that you may be planning a trip to iran. the pro-government press has written more than once that you have been invited to come to iran and you have accepted. they would consider that a coup if it happened. >> i have been invited for many years. one of my films, might have been bowling for columbine won the top prize to the teheran film festival and the prize was a beautiful persian rug. i am not going to iran. i don't know if it is really --

the thing with iran, i have been very active -- they have a couple filmmaker's essentially under house arrest and i have been active with other film makers in trying to convince the iranian government to leave them alone--the iranian films -- they have the greatest filmmakers in iran. if you have a chance to see an iranian film they are really good. there is definitely a country that loves the movies and we saw through the green movement year or two ago that there is a huge sentiment in the country to be free of the dictates of those who would want to run the country. iran is a democracy on a certain level. they actually do have free

elections. there have been a couple documentary's. i try to avoid any sort of access of evil discussion because i know that there are people in our government now that we had our way with iraq want to move on to the next bogyman and iran seems to be it and there are certain forces that want us to go to war or bomb iran or things like that. so i try to avoid -- i don't want to be associated with anything to do with my government attacking anybody else again on this planet. i think we leave it to the iranian people. i think the iranian people are going to stand up and get the country they want. i am hopeful for that. >> host: michael more's most recent book here comes trouble. john in portland, you are on the air. >> caller: i have seen a few of

your propaganda films over the years and i noticed that you try to editors things so people think something happened when it didn't and i specifically want to ask about fahrenheit 911. have a section where you are asking congressman to send their kids to iraq and one republican congressman said he had two nephews in afghanistan and you edited it so he doesn't respond and it looks like he has no response and walks off and that is not what happened. i want to know why you didn't include his sexual response if you are supposed to be a documentarian. >> guest: thank you for that question. first of all, in that scene a asked a specific question and i ask it of every congressman i ran into republican and democrat. would you send your son or daughter to iraq? wouldn't answer the question.

a number of others did is too. i have a nephew or an uncle or cousin or somebody down the block that is in iraq right now. no. i don't think you understand my question. would you send your son or your daughter, not your sister's son or daughter. your son or your daughter. he wouldn't answer the question. they don't want to answer the question because when i made this film there was only i think one member of congress who actually had a son or daughter in iraq. and i just thought that is interesting. there are 535 members of congress. the majority voted for this war but they don't seem willing to sacrifice someone from their own family. sending kids from other family, from those who live on the other side of the track. that was the point of that.

he was giving me a politician dodge answer saying he had some relative over a fair. that wasn't my question. i think it is a very relevant question. if you are going to vote for work would you be willing to send your son or daughter there? i had not seen a world war ii memorial into yesterday. when you walk in, on the very first stone you walk into the memorial it says world war ii memorial in big letters and hundred it says george w. bush. it kind of shocked me for a second. it is because he was president. but i am thinking i don't see that on the washington monument who was president. some plaque of the jefferson memorial who was president when that opened. what is his name doing on the world war ii -- here is a guy

who supported the vietnam war but wouldn't go. at least with clinton, he got it too but he was opposed to the war. that with a consistent position. he didn't like the war so didn't want to go. i get that. but bush was for the war back then and he thought other people should go, not him. so he is in the national guard. then his name is on the very first stone as you enter the world war ii memorial? 400,000 americans died in an your name is on this, it took me back to the question about they are really good at supporting war, getting us into wars but if they have to die or their kid had to die, don't know about that. let somebody else's kid die.

>> host: there's a story about your father and his world war ii appearance and a story about you taking a trial run to canada. >> my dad was in the first marine division in world war ii and was in many of those on the beaches, horrific. i tell this one story about christmas day of 1943 when he was in the battle of new britain in part of the beginning. and it was a friendly fire incident where he and his unit had taken the hill and the american planes coming and thought they were japanese on the hill and they strafed the hill and i think every guy was shot and almost killed, 13 were wounded. everyone's child but my dad bleeder still didn't get shot by

the low-flying american planes coming in thinking they were japanese. he told me growing up that every christmas day he is grateful for being alive. some how he survived that incident. i tell the longer story in the book. my incident, i was opposed to the vietnam war. if i became your draft age i am thinking one of my going to do? are am not going to kill the enemies. and exo -- so i and some buddies at 16 years old, we were not going to go to jail. we were not going to go do service in some other service. you could do that. we decided we were going to move to canada if we had to. we knew nothing about canada. one day we took a car over to

port in michigan to do a dry run to see how we would escape to canada if we had to and we got over there and forgot the motor of a boat. we decided to take the car across the bridge. we thought there would be military and everything at these checkpoints. we were all scared and the other guys were smoking a joint and i didn't do any drugs so i was the designated driver. so i tell the story about getting across the blue water bridge into canada and the great escape. the next year there was a draft lottery and my number came up 273 or something like that. >> host: richard in richmond, you are on with author michael more. >> it is a pleasure to be speaking with you this afternoon. >> guest: thank you. doing well. >> caller: have a question to ask. i contacted my local american

cancer society concerning an event they're going to be holding. i suffer from a brain injury and some other analystses. your piece on sicko was absolutely beautiful. i loved it beautifully. my question is how do i approach or how would i go about approaching the american cancer society concerning a study that they did in 1974 with ph.d. shrinking tumors in mice and not wanting to go that direction? >> guest: i have some memory of something about that. i can't speak to at. i will say is this.

the t h c is an active ingredient in marijuana. our drug laws in this country are another whole show. things like that where medical marijuana, people use it to help people, years from now historians will look back and wonder why we did so many things we do, i would save for you, i get questions like this all the time from people who have seen my movie and need help because of a medical problem or they -- their hmo won't pay them to see a specialist. remember these insurance company wants to provide as little care as possible and make a profit. i would