worked up about it. and there is, these stories are extraordinary. >> you come from, i me, i think your grandmothers great uncle, pittsburgh born, in southern brazil. >> a lunatic. >> one of these people that you would see in the jungle, building a railroad. >> the railroad to nowhere affect. >> with some admiration you regard this memory? >> yeah. he was tremendously brave. he wanted to encounter of the world. but the same time he was obtuse and horrible. but you can't let go yet to see the person as a whole. these people are admirable in some way. i mean, i guess you could think of him as one would want to be judged yourself. circling my own life isn't a

perfect record of virtue. i would hope people would see me in the round as coming a little bit slack. >> in fact there are relatively few women in this book. >> unfortunately that's the way it is. >> let me just ask. >> named women. >> that's right, named women. and the ones we expect, we find. pocahontas we find. another one. she was my great, great, great great grandmother in mexico. >> really? >> she had to be. [laughter] >> this is something that i'm extremely proud of. in the book i do ever presentation of the family trees. one of cortez as many mistresses. he had this incredibly convoluted family tree, and use action also related to the sorrow and they both married into a nobility, respected places the conquered. one of things that spaniards would do as vicious a few

spaniards, they would essentially, they could really rule by force of arms so they do is marry into the native ability. and thus essentially hijacked the top and then these empires continue to their son, martine, goes back to spain and becomes a member of the court. so that he -- >> people manipulate their status. >> that's right. but what do you make of the stores though of these women in the new world like pocahontas and others, who are able linguistically to talk to two societies, and to have a flexibility and identity that one doesn't this is a associate with the males of their tried? >> i guess, this is, really what this is is about people trying to make their way in the world. it's a world for them that is cataclysmic change. there's a single constant in it.

no matter what society you go to, the women are second class citizens. you know, it varies, their degree in the way but they are not usually prominent people in a society. so the are simply making their way, you could hear about them but this sort of pop-up momentarily in the archive. but men do this too. man tried to make their way, and you do have these people like my uncle, these loonies managed to go out, but the great bulk of us are trying just to do what they can. and one of things that is exciting in spanish latin america is that they have all these social cats that you put off each other and seize upon identity. you talk about this in your own book, and you see, i try to

tell, i love that stuff the way people would sort of say oh, wait a minute, african slaves here. africans don't have to pay taxes. i'm a small businessman. i'm african. and the reclaim the status, or indians get to do certain kinds of trades. i would like to do that. so i'm indian and then some spanish family related to will not have a proper air so they will say you're no not in the. your spaniards now. these incredibly fluid social categories their talk about. that's very much the same effort as what these people like, maya. she was actually from somewhere else originally. this was, spanish was a third identity. >> that's some flexibility itself, don't you think? >> now an agreement with is an essay somewhere where she talked

about her difficulty flying from new york to california and how long a six hour flight seemed. and venture members that her ancestors tried to cross the great plains and guide or didn't, you know, by the time they reached iraqis. and and she wondered whether she has the capacity for that kind of physical bravery. but i would even argue for that kind, that flexibility of selfhood, most of us are wedded to concepts of self that are really rather static rather than as fluid as you're suggesting that these indians -- >> but we're not in those situations. who knows what would've happened, how we would be if we are in a world that was changing as rapidly as the world right after columbus. these are people, you know, especially for native people, their entire village would have vanished overnight from disease,

strange pasty faced foreigners would have come in, would have come in. and then they bring in african slaves and then there's a chinatown there, just, it might seem rational for you to suddenly say, you know, i think i'm just not going to be who i thought i was. >> the most astonishing part of this book for me, since i don't like tomatoes as much as you do, is the business of the african. i have, you know, i think in the mid 1980s i began to hear from the u.s. census bureau, a prediction that african-americans were about to be replaced. replaced by hispanics as the country's largest minority. there was only things offensive about that prediction. one is the notion that african-americans would be replaced is not quite clear. but the notion that hispanics

are separable from africans, when africans were integral to the history of the americas, that you've rescued this history is astonishing to me. did it surprise you to come upon this history? >> you sort of know there's a slave trade, right? >> we know the slave trade. but the stores you're telling is not only the flexibility itself, but also the rebellion and the ability of slaves to survive as non-slaves. >> and that was, we all know there was a slavery that was bad. i went to a terrible public school, but they eventually convey this to me. [laughter] but then again, what i learn3 [laughter] but then again, what i learned was that slaves are these passive victims. they are dragged here and they could do nothing, and then there's the abolitionist who are very noble types, and --

>> who freed them a. >> who freed them, right. if you think about women, these people had no ability for themselves. people do stuff for themselves. if you think about it, this doesn't make any sense. and, in fact, africans are involved in all parts of the slave trade in all kinds of roles but and a slavery leaks like a sea of. many people left. and it makes sense that the large number, large fraction of the slave became prisoners of war. they were soldiers. various african nations and they would sell the pows. and so entire armies were sent over. the army of slaves was a slave army. and they of course, they are military types. they escape. especially in areas where there in kind of landscape was submitted to the. if you're from a tropical part of west africa, sent to brazil, this is a landscape you

understand. the way to portuguese don't. so it's highly possible for you to get out there, possible for you to establish independent communities that exist for hundreds of years but it's much more difficult up here because, you know, and the east coast of winter which is much more potent way of keeping you in any kind of english guide. >> charles curran you're a historian and you must answer this question for me even if it's not a good answer to make any have given me license. >> how is it we can lose hold of such a vast history? is this a willful amnesia on the part of societies? how is it that we can stand it when we see these charts, the american demographic charts where whites are here and hispanics are here and blacks are here, as if these are separate items. how is it we can forget so much about the history of the americas? >> i thought a little about it. i'm glad -- a bad into. it's a strange thing or two, you

sort of know there are lot of slaves it came over to the americas, but it's a shocking giunta realized that they outnumbered europeans in the terms of number of people who came over, three or four to one until 1840. and so that all the stuff that we see from the colonial period, it was a africans, these wonderful buildings, african hands built. the colonial road, african hands buildings. these canals that were dug, africans don't think of anything think whitman, the two majority populations here were africans and indians with the europeans as an important, you know, minor role. you think how could that have been forgotten? i think, you know, that a big part of that, this is just a guess, is that there was a great wave of european immigration started by the irish in 1840s, and big waves in later in 1880s and 1890s, this big

bowls of europeans come over and for the first time they become a really significant demographic presents. and they look around and who do they see? people like themselves. and the land and they go into communities. they are people like themselves. and you get this idea that this must be what is their. >> our grammar drops after one. these words are not helpful. they separate us from our own reality. but the reality is this place was a big jungle and has been for every longtime. >> it is true in latin america if i say india, that's unacceptable. the whole language of blackness and indian this becomes inadmissible in a kind of polite way. >> even though at the same time they know, they have this proud recognition in the textbooks, and places like mexico where the fusion culture, this hybrid

culture, but somehow this scene is so painful painful in your book where i had to put it down, where you say, the widest intrapartum, mexico city, so i don't really write a book like you. i know exactly what you're talking about because people don't say that to me but i hear women over there, the most astonishing comments. >> the inner party of mexico city. and executive for -- when a group of mexicans in the class gets together, they talk about france. he was talking to me about great hotels in france that he'd been in. and i was listening to all of this and in the middle of the conversation who are you, he says? and i said i'm a writer. i'm in mexico city for a conference. he said in mexico we don't have journalists who look like you, he said. only mexico would say such a thing.

to one of her children. but it's true that there is a there's been so cabinet that is just not sufficient to the reality you're describing here. speaking of, i think the african sections of this book are dazzling, and that's what i will remember most from the book. but the indian, and there are these legends come you don't repeat it, and i'm not even sure it's true now, indian in 1492 seem columbus on the horizon. these ships, they come to the edge of the water to wait for columbus. i always thought in the indian there is this absorbency of the presence of the forum, almost asian in that way. and that it meets the aggression of european activists with this capacity to take the european in. the most interesting character

in the taliban who once to swallow this book. and wants to devour charles mann. and he will eat it. there's that sense of i come to los angeles and i look around, and everyone says this is the greatest city in america. and i think to myself, is that true, or are we in the great indian city? and would not have a word for that yet? how do you see in light of what you have written, how do you see a city like los angeles? >> lenny go back -- let me go back. there's so much absorption in, they see the strange object, these ships, and then these tired, dirty people, i'm sure. >> unprecedented. >> unprecedented people who smell bad. and everybody is ethnocentric, right? the first thing you are

thinking, ugh, right? they have been there a lot times for each other, they look around and they think ugh, right? this is the human part. so the indians look and they say hey, these guys have interesting stuff. i will hold my nose and see if i can acquire some of the stuff. steel ax is a big deal. there's only a few of them. so give them some bad land, let him stay over there. we'll get their axes and they went will drive them out until them. so, in what they consistently make the mistake is how can they know, is how many of those smelly people are over there and how willing they are to keep coming over. thi..

their indian self at the actor or recorded in this impossible history? >> it is if you look at the historical record and read what is there, to my at example. i don't know how many millions of maia there are that were never conquered. when you go -- i will give you

an example. the research in this book, i went to see an incredibly beautiful place and by sun and all are driving back on a terrible road, speed bumps everywhere, completely not announced, you go 20 miles an hour because you are afraid to hit something. he looks and says who are you? look at us. he gets a look of terrible discussed on his face. >> host: that explains it. >> guest: he says no, no, we want mexicans. in mexico. they don't see it that way. [talking over each other] >> host: i have to ask about

china. there is china in this book and there is a vanilla. the chinese issue. i was reading the wall street journal, it concluded by saying there are two things americans are afraid of. china and their children. the china that you portray seems more like today's china than not. these are not people who are held by their own law. these are people who are trespassing into the world. engaged in commerce of the world in the most astonishing way. do you see china as a continuous intervention with this colombian experiment? >> it is important to realize the big event, the other event that should be taught in schools is the most important event from

the european point of view which is 1545, the spaniards discovered a huge mountain of silver in bolivia that they create around it for while the biggest town in the americas. >> host: biggest town in the world. >> guest: agrees the boom town which i have a lot of fun reading about. it is like dodge city with all these different crazy people on a much larger scale. it lasts a couple hundred years. this incredible amount of silver comes out of the mines by countless indian and african slaves and, rivers, goes across the world. extremely large fraction of it by how much is in china. there is this connection round the world where american silver mined by africans and taken by

european to edge on that in return for porcelain that is shipped across mexico to spain and the money from that -- there is this polls that is created by this wash of silver. >> just on that, the hardest question and last question, this reunion of the world, the world meeting itself after the fracture of twelve million years ago, this encounter when i see friends paying $500 for their dna, what we really want to find out is what we don't know about what our grandmothers didn't tell us. >> there are a lot of us. >> host: do you feel -- this story comes -- you are such a wonderful storyteller and the joy in this book is unending but

there's a great deal of calamity. there are deaths and disease. >> guest: that is the human -- >> host: the question is not what we better not to have met each other if that is possible but are you optimistic about this thing that is going to continue? 1493 is not over. it continues. i meant that jokingly but in some way we are playing out the drama of 1493 in the city and their concerns with illegal immigration. are you optimistic? >> guest: the way i hear the question, is the pain of this kind of calamitous explosive mixing outweighed by the gains? >> host: or do we as human

beings somehow manage to find some benefit in this calamity? >> guest: for me when i wrestle with this, the problem is the pain and a gain and the good and bad, give you an example, potato in europe, sweet potato comes to china. millions and millions of people are kept from premature death because it is an extraordinary boon to humankind in china, no blogger -- york is no longer wracked by famine. this is a good thing. children are no longer dying. that same wave of globalization is sweeping away languages and cultures at an extraordinary rate. you always hear in your part of the world, in silicon valley about the information explosion. wait a minute. are we using a language every

ten days or whatever the guess is? there is a huge human costs. >> host: do you fight it? [talking over each other] >> host: a human response. does one try to fight this global energy or -- [talking over each other] >> guest: i don't think the door can close but on a human level you can mitigate this. i think people are torn. they want to embrace the world. tremendous fans of japanese anime, they have a little mock up -- in massachusetts which is -- that is an important thing. at the same time there are all sorts of reasons why they are

coming in -- my wife laid claim to her new englandy -- we are torn in this way and that is an essentials -- >> host: modern conditions. >> guest: i think. >> host: i will ask you to read something from your book because the audience should have a sense of the texture of your pros. it is one of the most delightful things about this prose, he can write but he can tell wonderful stories. the discovery of the book that is the story about discovery and exploration becomes your story too and many times in the course of these chapters you are in china or bolivia. you are discovering fangs and asking questions and it is quite a wonderful -- i don't want to say parity but an imitation of the best of the traveler's tale

to do the same thing. could i ask you -- maybe your grandmother -- >> guest: of day. the true discovery. reading about the amazon and the nineteenth century there is this huge rubber boom where all kinds of people went into the amazon often with huge numbers of inflated indians and took rubber from these rubber trees and robert is an essential part of the industrial revolution. can't have engines without belts and gaskets and o-rings and all this stuff and the best supply came from the amazon. so reading these accounts people keep referring to this book by this guy, and appleby craig. in my living room there's a picture of an ancestor of mine,

neville be craig and whether the odds? and it is! this guy in the living room played his part in this story. are have this sort of genealogical kick to the -- research in about -- i always thought we came from a family of lin it 6 and here is a prime example. in my living room hangs a portrait by my grandmother's uncle or great uncle. both were named neville craven. my grandfather found a painting in that trip shot. the founding editor of the french daily newspaper in pittsburgh but late nineteenth century style suggested it was the under craig the digital an engineer who took the ship after his birthday making a fortune in rubber. corrected not plan to work directly with rubber. he intended to build a railroad to transport it. the primary source of natural rubber was latex from the tree.

native to the amazon basin the tree is on the borderland between brazil and bolivia. porche nearest this area on the pacific coast across the andes. sending rubber would mean carrying across the mountains. after doing that shipping the latex to england would involve ships from stormy southern tip of south america. long and dangerous trip of 12,000 miles. the entire route was so difficult secretary of the road -- calculate in 1871 four times faster to ship rubber from london to the amazon by transporting it down the river to the amazon to the atlantic. the problem was waterfalls and violent rapids blocked 229 mile section west of the stretch for 300,000 miles of navigable river in bolivia with supplies of rubber. east was the amazon and the atlantic. downstream the impassible stretch of the brazilian have much. my ancestor went there to build a railroad around rapids. born in pittsburgh he took his undergraduate engineering degree

at yale. the finest student who won two mathematics prizes and hired by the geodetic survey before graduation. five years later seeking excitement he joined p n t college, philadelphia railway construction firm which was a team of contract to build the railroad. two collins brothers believe the considerable experience with railroads from lack of experience with the amazon. in january of 1878 basin two shiploads of volunteers and engineers and laborers from philadelphia. craig went in the first vessel. he later recalled in a memoir, winter gales plagues the journey. storms wrecked the second and last seaworthy ship. 100 miles south of jamestown, virginia. 80 people drowned. company officials had trouble replacing lost men. philadelphia was shocked by the disaster and lost their enthusiasm for the venture. eventually collins hired a new work force from the, quote, slums of several of our large eastern cities.

people, quote, exhibiting countenance and gesture striking evidence of the soundness of darwin's theory. most were immigrants from southern italy. many pushed out of their homes for their energetic beliefs. ancestors--and, italian prejudice was widespread. newly arrived americans were desperate for work. the collins brothers took advantage to sign them up for lower wage on the first ship. apparently it did not occur to the brothers that the anarchists who discovered this arrangement or would find it unacceptable. craig steen of the amazon to the proposed railway terminus to survey the road. he learned that men and the second ship will when italians arrived. at the same time the italians thought they were being paid less than everyone else. within days the engineers constructed a cage from the steel rail ray to force the strikers in at gun.. he waited in vain for any recognition from craig that

imprisoning the work force would have negative impact on the construction schedule. of illegal strikers went to work solely hacking at the forest. a few weeks later, quote, 75 or more took off for bolivia. none made it. perhaps greg speculators because they did quebec serve as food to gratify the none too dainty appetites -- cannibalistic nearby native group kept potential columnists that they by cultivating a reputation -- in one way the workers -- the expedition was running out of food. like the jamestown colony switch talked about earlier, ancestors started in the midst of plenty. agricultural geneticists argue those around the railroad, was peanuts and beans and chili pepper. in recent years evidence has accumulated the area was domestication site of tobacco, peach, and most important

worldwide staple antioch. my ancestor nearly died from lack of food in one of the agricultural heartland. [applause] >> host: i remember talking to bill clinton and he told me he was 1/20th american indian. wouldn't it be wonderful if bill clinton could come upon that indian somewhere in the jungle who sounds like him and carries on the way he does? to come up on your great great uncle in the brazilian jungle is part of this american story. it seems to me we are wedded to this history. and the shock is we have forgotten so much of it and so much of it has been withheld in our family. >> guest: it is interesting. when i think about what we are told no wonder history seems boring. >> host: let me open this up to

questions from the audience because i have had too much of you for too long. >> guest: you can take that several ways. >> my name is mario. why is history taught in our schools? >> guest: do you know how textbooks are produced in this country? the way it is explained to me. i'm not a textbook writer but the way it is explained to me is textbook companies want to produce a textbook that we sold and read through the united states because they are expensive to produce and to recoup costs in need lot of students to read them. a number of states have special agencies that approve the text books. and the way one publisher put it to me from random house, the

three most important states are new york, texas and california. the way he explained it to me is you can't sell your text will in new york, texas and california, you can't -- basically it is worthless but the problem is it is superliberal in new york and texas is superconservative and california are supercrazy. i don't have any personal experience of that. i'm just telling you. once it thread the needle through this, they are reluctant to change it because if they change the text books too much to accommodate recent knowledge they have to go back through this and almost all of this will offend somebody. >> something else too. you are being too generous. we are right now in hispanic history month. you would think some of this african story would be part of

our history. i have always said if -- you should have the irish come through here because the irish -- a story that is almost unknown in america even to the american irish, the american and irish immigrants to the mexican side. an extraordinary story. not well known in mexico. nowhere told in this. we almost can't bear a history that starts overlapping. what is an irishman doing in this story about mexico? >> we have hispanic history month. everything about all of this, 30 days -- nothing to do with the other 11 months. black history month. the other ten months are for europeans. >> i wish -- the fact is the other ten months are vacuous.

>> has writing this book ruined gardening for you? do you see the world differently now? >> i liked to garden. is helpful but i'm not a very good gardener. have these friends who are really good gardeners and a sneer at things. i am a writer so i am not expected to be very good at very much. the answer is no. because the more you know about something for me, often the more you appreciate it and when i look at these tomatoes that have got because i failed to water them i marvel at the journey they have made. when i do my incompetence seed saving and hoping they will grow

for the next year, you realize your part of this crazy tradition and by want to take and to my friends in seattle for their gardens. you realize what part of a future tradition you are. also in a certain way it is easier to feel a little bit relaxed about what is going on in the world when you say this is going on for a long time and doesn't mean it is not superimportant. doesn't mean it is not superserious but not a sudden onslaught that is happening to us right now. is part of a long process that we can intervene in and change for our common good. i might be totally delusional. >> do you know what columbus actually did to the french

monarchy? very few -- [inaudible] -- in his honor in the rest of the world. >> he is an equivocal figure. he didn't set out to discover -- to do what he did. he never really copped to the fact that he hadn't landed in asia. and the spanish monarchy foolishly gave him all these privileges that they then took away from him so he died a very bitter guy who was slightly reviled in that area. it is not surprising to me that there's this ambivalent reaction to him. that feeling is also more general than not. if you go to santo domingo there is this enormous monument, i

huge monument to him. 600 feet long or something, has all these lights that are so intense, supposedly blacks out the areas around it. there are huge protests when they put it up. he is so honored elsewhere in the world. a profoundly important guy. people feel a little unease about him. >> there is a lot of movement these days with some purists to get back and protect what they call the natural species in an area, native plants for example. and native animals. do you think that is an exercise in futility? whether it is good or not good? >> sometimes there is invasive exotic species that come in and

are clearly bad. in my area in new england for example, dutch elm disease wiped out the els or chesnutt. these are exotics that come in and clearly caught tremendous damage so any rational person would be -- once to protect the system against this kind of innovator. the tomato is exotic. the ones -- in my area we are very proud of our asparagus. asparagus' fouling. believe it or not there are little signs. it is an exotic -- not invasive but exotic species. on some level it seems foolish to celebrate and consumed and depend on these exotics and frown on them. at the same time we are building a house. we are trying to decorate our garden -- the ones that we are

not growing to eat, and having a lot of fun with it going out and picking these plants we don't know very much about and ordering them and so forth. i see no harm in it as long as we don't take too seriously. >> when i found at the 11 in an airport bookstore it opened up my eyes to something i haven't read before which you made the comment about why textbooks don't teach us that and as you are talking tonight i am drawn to the riding of other authors, jerrod diamond for example, eduardo for example, is there a community of writers that you feel a part of or people you can mention who are writing about these things in ways that perhaps were not revealed to us

in the past? >> there's a book called the columbian exchange that hope -- it is a wonderful book. still in print and worth reading. i say in the acknowledgements scribbled in the margins of his book. he wrote the book ecological imperialism. two tremendous books. if you are interested in the spanish conquest there's a whole series of books by john hammond about the portuguese conquests that are absolutely fabulous. there is a long list of people who have written great stuff about -- if your interested in ideas about how to think about these things, this guy rodriguez has written some excellent stuff. i tried in the book to tip my hat to the stuff that i think is

really good. there's a big deal graphical essay in the back where i waive my self. >> it does seem to me also, history often has examples of this exchange -- where you end up tending your tomatoes. some indian tribe in upstate new york is opening a casino. that there is this wonderful wisdom that passes -- it is my turn to ransack the environment for a time. you can plant tomatoes. don't you think sometimes, i think of the conversion of latin america to christianity by the spaniards. it depleted europe in some way. go to the churches of europe and their empty and go to latin america and they are full. the evangelical protestantism is

spreading through brazil and central america. catholicism is still in mexico and the villages of south america. mormon church and its moral majority and it is spanish speaking. it may be that somehow i have swallowed something of you and i have become the brittle list in nature while you have become me. do you think that is possible? >> sure. it is important to remember that native societies are not -- [talking over each other] >> they certainly -- the kind of agriculture they practice are things we can learn from. they're sending them to this. but me talk about the casinos and so forth. important to remember this is federal policy. the indian gaming act with the idea that these guys -- [talking over each other] >> always amazing to me. i am in a state that doesn't

have this. we have this sort of lofty perspective. the whole purpose of this was to give indians money and in california it becomes -- all the indians have money. which is not taken as a successor. >> i am curious what you think about 1421, the chinese over seven years before columbus. >> this is about, should explain little bit. there is an amazing not spanish but chinese explorer, a muslim you neck with seven huge armadas. one may be the largest ever. 300 some ships from southeast china and across the indian ocean and to throw china's weight around and scare the

pants off of everybody he visited with an enormous flotilla and they went all the way to the southern part of africa and this book which is buys is retired submarine captain says that the fleet put up and went to the united states and to the caribbean and europe and basically around the world and as a a big part they landed in the american -- before columbus. the great bulk -- never encountered a historian who believes this. it is a distinctly minority viewpoint. i read very much -- very much enjoyed the book but i have a weakness for nautical stuff. it is like poop deck and it. i am a total sucker for this

kind of stuff so i read it with great pleasure. at one point he says the proof they discharge a whole bunch of chinese leaders aware of -- between rhode island and massachusetts and imports near their. and the first european to go by in the 1520s landed in buzzards bay and noted that the women there were much better looking than all the other women. so he says see? chinese. my wife, who is japanese, finds this completely convincing and of course i had better as well. all i can say is i wish it were true because i think the world would be much more interesting if it were bought i don't think he has built up a case that really grabs me. i would encourage you to read

it. it is fun to read. >> i am interested in this idea of encountering difference. so many instances of these encounters fraught with violence and i am wondering how we can -- how we can encountered difference when things like our language and our world views and frameworks don't allow us to understand or approach this difference from a place of humility and i wonder if you could speak to that. >> people are overall getting better at this. the encounters between the spaniards and native people or between the chinese and native people in the philippines or the west are sort of comically

awful. you just don't read about that kind of absurd catastrophe which you see again and again for route the world when a person encountered each other and a 154/6 century. we have a long ways to go. one of the weird comforts of researching this book is the influence of balboa comes from a group of people never encountered before. apparently there are a bunch of guys who are wearing a skirt like clothes. there seems to be some sort of power struggle going on between -- in this group of people and they seize spanish and they say they are all homosexuals. apparently -- so the spaniards set dogs on them and killed them

all. i don't think that would happen now. people just wouldn't be so naive and immediately think i will go kill these people. i guess i come from a different point of view that is so bad that we look a little bit better now. i felt this cold comfort. >> there is some duality of energy going on right now but at the same time i don't want to be a mexican nativist because it is -- at the same time the liberal americans are repulsed by mexico. wanting walls and so forth. this epiphyte for mexican food happening at the same time. marco polo would tell you before people speak to each other they eat each other. there's an energy right now. even in the miscegenation we are

arranging on our plates. tie finish food that suggests we have an appetite, the girl appetite to devour the world. at the same time over dinner we carry on with these announcements of armageddon. >> don't you see? to meet the sense -- there is a real problem of illegal immigration. much of it has to do with idiotic policies by the mexican government to effectively dispossessed people in the southern part of mexico and the u.s. has functioned for decades as a safety belt for them. clearly there is an issue there. at the same time when you look at these efforts that have taken place in latin america for centuries, one group of people trying to shut the door on another group of people almost always a sign of battles. >> it is my job to end the

evening but to remind you, some of like something on pbs, that we are living in this temple of the book. we forget that there's a special power that kendall doesn't quite capture. [applause] having spent some time in the middle east and watching jews and muslims and christians hold their holy book and kiss it, i have never seen anyone walking with a candle -- remember that and respect this -- for these books and this man for having produced this magnificent book. thank you very much. [applause] >> i would like to had a special thanks to the library both for bringing us here and existing.

this is a great place and you should use it. [applause] >> coming up on c-span2, roya hakakian talks about the killing of four kurdish and the iranian dissidents in her book "assassins of the turquoise palace". on afterwards energy analyst and author daniel jurgen and later henry kissinger participate in a discussion about how the white house makes national security decisions. >> already made up his mind. this site already made up its mind. and it comes -- >> dr. brinkley writes at the university -- [talking over each other] >> anything i wanted -- [talking over each other] >> be quiet. you be quiet. you don't know me.

[talking over each other] >> i will remind members -- [talking over each other] >> you worked a day >> the confrontation at a congressional hearing between representative don young of alaska and historian douglas brinkley ranked as the fourth most watched video in the c-span video library. watch it for yourself on our home page c-span.org/videolibrary and click on the most watched have to few other videos from the past year. what you want when you want. >> in 1992 four kurdish and iranian dissidents were killed at a berlin restaurant when two gunman shot at them with machine guns. roya hakakian discussed the attack and the criminal trial in her book "assassins of the turquoise palace". she recently spoke in coral gables, for a, for 45 minutes. >> good evening. what a lovely place.

i think this was gertrude stein's concept that they brought to life here at this book store in miami. cafe and restaurant and courtyard. thank you so much for having me. this is an absolute pleasure to be here in this wonderful place. so this will not shock you because you don't know me but i started out as a poet and the idea of writing about crime is the farthest thing that has ever been from my mind. i never pictured myself in any way, shape or form interested in guns, blood, i try to stay away from them for as long as i can and as far as i can. and usually even when we are watching tv at home and someone draws out a gun i am the first to reach for the remote-control

and change the channel. the fact that ended up writing about an assassination was a complete shock her to me. the way this fell into my lap so to speak was as was mentioned earlier in the introduction, this political assassination that i wrote about took place in september of 1992 in berlin at a restaurant. two gunman, one with a machine gun and the other a hand gun walking into the restaurant and started shooting at the eight guests who had gathered over a dinner party that night and shot them all four died instantly and the other four survived. of the four survivors, one ended up being my house guest for

several weeks and i knew very little about him. he was a friend of a friend who was coming to town in newhaven, connecticut where i lived and as i was trying to cook dinner in the evening keeping him company, trying to be a good host i would be chopping onions and he would be sitting across from me trying to help and making conversation and i made the mistake of asking so what happened in september of 1992? and the rest was history. so he would tell me a new in stalin of what had happened. not simply the night of the murder of which to many minds might seem as the most interesting or the most intriguing part of the story. but actually what i found most

fabulous and most engrossing was the way in which the investigation and everything else unraveled. so i would be making my dinner and going about my own thing in the kitchen and he would be giving me the next day with the investigation and the next day until he came to the trial. by the time he reached the trial which is about a year into his storytelling are thought that i should take a trip to berlin and visit other people. i set all of this up to say that when you have a writer who started out as a poet and is generally very squeamish around anything having to do with blood, you get a crime story told in a way that two crime stories are told which is that

against everybody's advice rather than talking -- delaying the crime so the readers would be interested in reading the story that they get to the gruesome crime, half way through the ball or two thirds down in the book, i believe the bill being as squeamish as i can i get rid of it in the first five minutes of the book and say let's move on. and i hope if and when you decide to read the book you agree that in a way this was not only a poet's look into a crime but also a woman's look. very male-dominated macho story and the reason i call it a male-dominated machos story is the killers were men, the people who died were men, people who subsequently get involved were men. cell i guess it was for me to try to look at this very

intriguing story and say how what i look at this? what would i find interesting? what is it that would make such a gruesome story really intriguing for all readers from a perfectly new perspective or completely revolutionary perspective. and you will tell me if i have achieved that creating that sort of perspective. that is how it goes. i get rid of the crime and what i follow through with pretty diligently because after i took my trip to berlin the subsequent characters that i match, one seemed to be more intriguing than the other. that wasn't because any one of these heroes, any one of these

survivors, investigators were perfect people, but rather that in there imperfection, in their fallibility, they all together contributed to bringing about a very historic trial and verdict which by the accounts i have received from several legal historians happens to be one of the most important trials in the history of europe in the 20th century. you are probably just as surprised as i am why none of us heard about it. that is precisely why i decided to write about it. because it seemed like a very important story that had gone untold. you know that there are eight people sitting, two people walk in beleaguered the one person

stands guard the before -- four people get shot and died immediately. four others survive. the first person who was in my kitchen talking to me was one of the four survivors. triv trivid. the very first question i asked him was this. so what did you do when you first got home? it may not seem a very smart question to many of you but it was really curious to me. what if one of us in this room survived such an atrocious crime and the police come, we go to the headquarters of the police, interrogated, whatever they do,

fingerprint, and it is all over and several hours later, in his case 4:00 or 5:00 a.m. and then you are all alone and you have to go back to your life as usual. you have to go back to your own apartment. what is that like? that was one of the first questions i asked. what happened to you the next morning? what happened to you when you were done? and they said you can now go home. i will read a very short passage from the moment he arrived home and what are his thoughts and then follow through with some of the other characters there after. these microphones are wilting. it is ok?

sorry about that. i broke the microphone. thank you. all he wanted to was to make calls. he paced the perimeter of the apartment from his living room couch and said where the news was on to the balcony for air to the telephone on his bed room desk is a stove in the kitchen where he was boiling water for t over and over again. is morning routine had vanished. the thought of eating or going to bed had not crossed his mind. the dial his secretary. i won't be in today. police told her. when asked why he broke into an endless saab. 3 rob? is your mother dead? is your daughter missing? came to secretary's frantic questions.

all he would say to her once turn on the news. he took a shower under the rushing water, stood with his eyes wide open. if he closed them the image of an extended arm in a black leather sleeves would plague his mind. it was not under the streaming water struck his body that he felt the eighteenth in his right cheek and template remembered the blows to his right side when he fell off his chair. the age of real-time news had not gone to and the reporters were not yet looking for him. on an ordinary morning he would have reveled in the peace against the uproar within him disquiet was the antithesis to peace. he returned to his desk and made another call. was too a friend on the editorial board. hello there. this is trivid. hey there, tarvid soft modifying

the last syllable of the name as trivid told him to. think of paris leaguers the deceitful germans who had trouble remembering his name. and add the and and are and you have got it. a slight mispronunciation, he figured, was a small sacrifice for the sake of good demonic. he crafted a single -- for the been the journalist. i was there at the restaurant where the four men died last night. i heard. let's have coffee one of these days to talk it over. today is insane. travid, taken aback by the reply, was forming his next sentence when the reporter excused himself and rushed off. and quick dismissal caused a wave of panic in him.

for years he carefully collected analysts the way others collect stamps. he found a captive audience, spinning tales was a skill he had been perfecting since childhood when he and his friends who could not afford to go to the movies pooled their allowance together to buy a single ticket for an emissary. and 90 minutes over a span of ours. so elaborately that if they ever did get to see it, invariably a description. journalists have always been travid's most formidable allies. years ago after his visa had expired the same editorial writer saved him from deportation by writing a scathing piece on germany's repressive emigration policy but now to whom could he turn now? as he boarded the telephone rang. the same voice was in the

receiver once more. hi am sorry, travid. it took me a bit to register what you said. did you say you yourself were at the restaurant last night? that is what i said. then we must talk instantly. so they got together and he interviewed travid and writes up an editorial that runs the very same day in the paper. what becomes really the thrust of the murder in the beginning in september, october, november of 1992 when it happened was whodunit? on the one hand there were the exiled iranians who had their opinions, there were politicians, journalists who were circulating other

possibilities, and so there were a slew of ideas that were circulating around and that was sort of the dominant theme of the first three month. however very quickly thereafter, a very wonderful and one of the most important characters in this book, to the case, a prosecutor discovered that the truth -- i don't want to kill the plot line for you but he sides with one possibility within the slew of theories that were swirling around that this is a government sponsored series of terrorist acts and assassinations. so after his assignment to the case the story shifts from being kind of a whodunit to will they

do the right thing? will the people who have power, will people who can and have the ability to bring justice to these victims do what is expected of them and act nobly? and do what really the law clearly mandated them to do. and so that leads to a trial which opens within a year after the assassination and nearly four years preceding, very dramatic courtroom proceedings liberal finally leads to a historic verdict in april of 1997. it was mentioned during the

introduction that there are a confluence of characters in this book and that was part of the challenge of putting this book together. if i had fictionalized it i would have eliminated at least 20 of them and easily stuck two -- stock to my leading man who would have been the prosecutor and the investigator and then done away with everyone else and endow him with all the great qualities and abilities to save the day which he eventually he does but not by himself. however, it was a piece of nonfiction and i believe again despite all the advice i was receiving, that rather than simplifying of the story or fictionalizing the story, readers are very sophisticated nowadays. they have read so much that they can actually manage a multi

character story and they can keep track of numerous characters going in and out and don't need a singular hero. not in the twenty-first century. we have given up a lot of errol smith and whatever dreams we had about singular heroes saving the day. and we understand that a confluence of characters, personalities, events need to come together in order for a great triumph to take place. so the great character of this book in a way becomes its own plot line and the narrative itself. and what i hope you will find is the unraveling of events take a lot -- a life of their own and that becomes what we follow.

when i took my first trip to berlin to see whether the other angle of this were as appealing as the one ahead discovered in my own kitchen i ran into the widow of one of the foreman who had died -- four men had died in the restaurant that night and immediately after she opened her door to me and i entered the apartment she asked me where in the united states i lived and i said at the time i lived in new york. i said i was coming from new york and she said this was practically the third sentence of her mouth. she wished she had been here on 9/11. and i said why? she said because she too have lost a loved one, her husband in

september, on september 17th, about ten years earlier and she knew exactly what the widows who have lost their husbands and she also had a daughter and the children who have lost their fathers were going through. and she wished she had been here after 9/11. she had been in new york after 9/11. she thought that all the widows, all the people like her, women, should come together and create a network of widows who had suffered through an act of terrorism because it knew no national boundaries, that this was a global problem, that had afflicted her as any american woman in the states. and it was, in listening to her,

that i really decided the value of the story was beyond the parameters in which i was thinking about it initially. that there was something to what she was saying. something about these acts of crime, these particular acts of crime which had been sponsored by radical ideologies. in this case the government of iran, bond and all of the victims regardless where they came from and i found that extremely moving and it was the moment that really gave me the incentive, made be resolute about wanting to write this book. last but not least, i want to introduce her to you and have you listened to her frustration

and experience because we are just coming out of the tenth anniversary of 9/11. much of what she told me in her grieving process reminded me of the stuff that i was hearing being played on radio and television in the past few weeks. her name shohrih is. she and her husband had a daughter together and her name is sarah and i refer to sarah and the daughter of travid who appeared in the previous section and her name is stalin may -- l --salo

--salome. you'll hear about two girls who are almost the same age and travid you already met. something very interesting that happens is while travid, a survivor is trying to gather documents and get the court to see the truth of the case, try to see the proper information to all the journalists from here and fair. in the midst of all this, and god knows recovering from the trauma he experienced, his 10-year-old daughter is having fainting spells. nobody seems for the first few weeks to be able to diagnose why she is having these. so he takes her to the doctor

and we open up in the doctor's waiting room. under the glare of the fluorescent lights in the exam room pravid waited, sometimes kissing the bigger still sometimes stroking the hand of his daughter salome. she looked even more frail in the hospital down. he felt restless on behalf of his aspiring 12-year-old dancer who had been told to remain still until the doctor returned. two fainting spells, pounding several pediatricians -- forced the father and daughter to see a cardiologist. two fainting spells on her part and built on the father's part. ever since the morning after of the murders, pravid had tried to keep her away from the fallout. his first phone call had been to his ex-wife to try to shield salome from the news.

before picking her up on tuesday, their weekday together, he combed through the apartment to hide all signs of the case from view. those, wetter is legal newspaper clippings but the more he hid the more she wanted to know. how did it happen, dad? how many were there? did anyone hit you? take came, they shot, they left, nothing happened to me, nothing at all, he would say, wishing to move on but her questions continued. did you have blood on you? did you scream? did you cry? did you cry afterward? did you scared? were you scared? the depth of her curiosity astounded him. once he yelled enough! and she stopped asking. but he knew she had not stopped thinking the same thoughts. the dream of becoming a dancer

had turned her into a reluctant leader so he designed intricate plans for her meals. instead of an elaborate dinner he lined up an epicure a ray of tiny appetizers which he paraded before his ballerina at intervals. in the small tidy apartment streaming with musical father, surrendering to the daughter's wins had agreed to be a dance student in tutelage of his diminutive coach. those tone deaf and hopelessly and coordinated. his performances were memorable. what he lacked in talent he compensated for in which. when he didn't remember his steps he limped across on across the floor. as he dragged a foot he greeted an imaginary audience not with good day, but with his own person german concoction, fared on your day.

nothing like a bit of vulgarity to bond a hard time father with his adolescent child. what he could not fathom with july no longer abundant was no substitute for safety which he no longer felt. nor could he imagine her days in school among classmates who treated her like a sensation. only some of the questions she asked where her own. arrest were ones that the children, mocking her father as the super hero on the nightly news, incessantly badgered her with while she steered into their faces and fought back tears. when the first fainting spell came over salome he thought she had starved herself. but when she fainted on a full stomach he blamed himself and his complicated life for his daughter's malady. the cardiologists returned to the exam room without a

definitive diagnosis and advised that he observed her closely for a few days. he tried hard to keep her out of his own gloomy world. list of the killers or the idea of them robbed her of happy childhood but now it seemed the vacuum he had surrounded her with was robbing her of that. unlike salome, sarah wanted to know nothing. the difference is salome's father survived and sarah's father died. in november she had asked shohrih where her father was exactly now and if he was in pain. in december she asked if he could buy christmas gifts and leave them under the tree until he returned. in february she asked if her mother intended to marry another man and if so if he was going to move in with them. by march, she no longer asked. if she heard the name at a

restaurant or on the radio she rushed to turn it off. it should recognize the faces of family or friends on television she walked out of the living room. to help sarah and her mother cope with the husband's loss shohrih's parents moved in with the two of them for a few weeks. their presence strengthened the two of them so shohrih could not tell them -- sentences failed her. what she had in abundance was fears. her parents stared at her over breakfast and waited in vain for her to form a sentence as simple as how did you sleep? her sentence failed her. she rarely felt under. she barely tasted the perfunctory bites she took in front of them to assure them of her appetite bleed to to reassure them of her appetite. her parents. government clerk and housewife,

led serene and predictable lives. it was the security of their lives that had given shohrih the courage to rebel against them, go off to europe. and to marry a rebellious man just like herself. but she wondered what sarah not have been better off with a pair of ordinary parents for life? is and a pair of extraordinary ones for only a time? all day she turned these thoughts over in her mind, blazing with anger. to hell with his extraordinary this and every bit of his brilliance she would mumble to herself. her husband and rage turned out. stick with me and you will be famous like you deserve to be, he had promised her on the first night that they had met. at death been his power to fame she shouted in her head? once again he had abandoned them. all for her pregnancy and

delivery she had been alone. remembering his absence she would grow more and knew more furious each day. wondered if it had been a warning to prepare her to raise their child alone. reason had abandoned her. she no longer thought of him or his absence as in voluntary. he had left them yet again. the fox came to her when she played their old family movies. she spent one night watching reels of film to find him only once and only for a few seconds walking with her along the race track where sarah ran her first competition. the footage so resembled their life now. as if through them her husband had matched their future. everyone move the proposed, smiled, following his instructions but he, there director, was invisible. his vision filled the screen yet he would not be seen. just like an hour.

thank you for listening. [applause] i have been told by the wonderful people who are running this establishment that you ought to wait for the microphone to reach you before you ask a question. >> what is the significance of the turquoise palace? a haven't read the book yet. i am not familiar with it. >> what is the significance of turquoise palace? there is a moment, i would like to think it is an exciting moment with in the trial where a key witness the personal somebody no one knew even existed, shows up and he becomes sort of the smoking gun for the attorneys in the trial. and it is during a dialogue,

during the q&a that is being conducted on the stand that you will know the answer to your mystery. [laughter] yes please. >> given your background as a poet, i wonder if you have ever written non-fiction prior to this, and if not, did you have any thought about fictionalizing it and telling a slightly different story in that manner? >> this is a work of nonfiction. my previous work in english was a memoir. and actually, after i pasted together, i decided this was

what i want to do at least for the foreseeable future. what i love doing is going out and finding these stories that are immensely significant, but have either fallen by the wayside, never made it to the headlines, or word dismissed or shoved under the rug. i might signed -- sound paranoid here but for conspiratorial reasons, who knows? but i found that i love the notion of finding these stories and some of them at least in this case are so fabulous that you could hardly come up with fiction that cannot do this. we will find out if i did it justice but if i have done it justice than you agree with me is that it is so beautiful, so

astounding, just in the way that it unfolded that to have fictionalized it would have been to diminish it. i also found that in some great ways there were several dozen of these political assassinations that had taken place and i only write about one. that is because this one happened quite in a magical way in a way. at the end of the five years. >> did you receive significant cooperation from the survivors's families and from families of those that did not survive? >> a friend of mine who is also a writer and a journalist herself read the earlier version of the manuscript and said that she was really touched and deeply moved by the quality of

the interviews and information that i gathered and of course i could have told her that is a fantastic interviewer and they would only open up to me. but in truth, precisely because the story had not been covered -- the story had been covered from 7 angle. from a deeply political angle, that -- and in pieces because it was a five year span. one day there was a very exciting day at the trial and there would be a big article in the newspaper and two weeks later there would be something else but never in one big kind of tapestry of the whole story in all of its glory. and because it has not happened, all these people, the survivors, the widows and