were told by the proponents, those who supported it, that, no, you're wrong. they were actually arguing on the same positions in the same way. so the general consensus was there. there is a founding fathers' interpretation. and essentially, what you have again is a general government for general concerns. that's it. and i'll talk about how that worked in a few minutes and why they thought that was important when we get to, for example, the discussion of the bill of rights. but it was not going to be a national government, and can it was not going to abolish the states which some people feared. so as i dug through these declarations, public declarations and speeches and pamphlets and all these things, there was a multitude of volumes on this stuff. again, the general consensus began to appear. and i put as much of that as i can in the book because i wanted people to see that. and the other thing i've often

heard about this book over time is that i use a lot of quotations, and sometimes i can make it a little dry. but i didn't want it to be brion mcclanahan's guide to the constitution, i wanted it to be the founding fathers' guide to the constitution, so i put in as much of them as i could because they're better at saying what they meant then i am, and be it's not hard to understand. so the quotes were important to me. i wanted to put as many as i could in there. and, in fact, there's actually two appendices in the back of the book that are nothing but quotes from the founding generation, stuff i thought was great, but i couldn't put it in the book because i didn't have space. i actually think those parts of the book are the most fun. >> watch this program and others online at booktv.org. and now from the 2012 tucson festival of books, a discussion with megan smolenyak, author of

"hey, america, your roots are showing." [inaudible conversations] >> good afternoon. welcome. here we are at the remarkable fourth annual festival of books in tucson, arizona, which i understand has become the fourth largest book festival in the united states. yeah, let's give that a hand. [applause] seems to keep grow, and the weather's cooperated, it's been a glorious day. we want to thank the sponsors of this session, the flynn foundation and arizona public media, and we thank each of you for attending. my name is stu mellan, and my day job is i'm the ceo of the jewish federation of southern arizona, and i have the privilege of moderating this session. advice was given to me before i came in that my moderation should be in moderation, so that was good. [laughter] that was very good advice, i think. we're also very excited to be

welcoming our viewing audience all around the world which has a very nice ring to it through the auspices of booktv. as we are, in fact, live. so when we get to q&a, we'll put you to a mic, and we'll be in good shape. before we introduce our very special guest, i think we're going to give you a little bit of a taste of her work. this is my cue. did you see that subtle cue? [laughter] we actually have a three-minute trailer about her book which'll give you some ideas -- here we go. >> her latest book, "hey, america, your roots are showing," detailing the adventures of historical mysteries. the author of the best-selling book "roots," how did annie moore who arrived at ellis island -- and how was the true annie rediscovered? how do tombstones in ohio reveal barack obama's irish roots, and

what was the army -- [inaudible] enlist the help of a genealogist? ♪ ♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ >> wonderful. i think we have at least an hour's worth of questions here that you're ready to ask. let me tell you that, um, we are

going the hear about some of these cases, and some we'll leave some time for you to pick out the ones you want to focus on because, really, it's quite a greatest -- a list of greatest hits for megan. megan has appeared on "good morning america," the today show, cnn, the bbc, has consulted on shows ranging from who do you think you are to, believe it or not, top chef. fascinating. [laughter] she's the author of six books including her just released as you saw, "hey, america, your roots are showing." she's referred to as the indiana jones of genealogy, so it's no wonder that c-span chose o select this -- chose to select this session for broadcast today. and, please, let's welcome megan smol enyak. [applause] >> thank you. >> how did this journey begin for you? >> i got into genealogy way back into the sixth grade.

it was a homework assignment for meshe cede us go home -- made us go home and find where our surnames were from. and i remember actually feeling sorry or for my class mates because most of them were crowded around the british aisles, and i had -- isles, and i had the whole of the then-soviet union to myself. [laughter] that's when i realized, hey, there's something a little bit different about my heritage, and that's all it took to spark my curiosity. and i happened to live in the d.c. area, so i was the twisted 16-year-old. i wanted to turn 16 not to get a driver's license, but to be able to go to the national archives without an adult. i saved up my allowance to buy death certificates. [laughter] >> did this trouble your parents? >> yeah. but i was already the geek writing 100-page school papers when i was 11, so this was nothing new. >> so where is mrs. burke wit

today? >> i don't know. >> she would appreciate hearing your story. well, you must have loved puzzles as a kid. i mean, it seems like you had to be such an inquisitive person and also a very persistent person to pursue this, this kind of work. it's not something that comes easily. >> yeah. you know, it's interesting. i was speaking at a bookstore recently, and a bunch of journalism students came which i thought was interesting, and one of them asked me what had i learned through all this research about myself which is something i'd never pondered before. but i thought about it for a moment, and it's kind of what you just said, that i am endlessly curious. i just have this need to know. there's certain stories that just capture my attention, and i have to know and, yes, i am stubborn as all get out. i'm not very good at taking no for an answer which is sometimes a good thing and sometimes not, but it's really helpful when you're dealing with these stubborn history mysteries to be ridiculously persistent. >> okay.

since i do have the mic, i'm going to ask you about the chapter that just grabbed me, and that's the connection between al sharpton and strom thurmond which as megan's book characterizes, both ran for the office of the presidency of the united states, one on a platform of racial segregation and the other on racial justice. and i'd really love to hear the story of how you got started on that and that particular journey. >> that one, um, like some of my stories, that was almost an accident. what happened, i was spokesperson for a company called ancestry.com, i'm sure a lot of you have heard of it. and it was february a few year back, and they had a new record collection coming out, a black history record collection, okay? and so they pitched to a number of journalists, hey, would you be interested in covering this new collection, and this one fella said, well, yeah, i would be if you do celebrities' roots. so they said yes, and i was

chief historian, so i did the research as well. and he had just been to james brown's funeral with al sharpton. so he was the one who picked sharpton. it started off as a challenge. hey, if this new collection is so good, what can you find out in 48 hourses? and little did we know what was waiting for us. [laughter] so, yeah, i had to just dive in, and i started to put together the pieces. and at one point tony burrows payment involved, a well known -- became involved, a well known genealogist, also happens to have heritage in the same member of the woods. and so he mentioned that this was what he called thurmond territory. and that was sort of interest being but not particularly relevant at the time. but the journalist when i went and shared my initial findings was so intrigued, he said, okay, keep digging. what else are you going to find? so i went and did a little more sleuthing, because i wanted to find the paper trail. i wanted to find the paper trail

to prove it. and one of the remarkable things that didn't get out there is, um, al sharpton's great grandfather, coleman sharpton, he was bought and sold three times by the time he was 4. and if you see the title in the book, it's called "half a negro boy," that's, again, part of the story that didn't attract much attention because of the unexpected connection. what i last discovered was his relatives had been related to strom strom think monday. he got inherited by a couple of brothers-in-law and then rather unexpectedly one of those brothers-in-law dies within a year. so i thought what happened then? so i look for the paper trail, and you see the other brother-in-law buying out half of a negro boy. and i remember talking to reverend sharpton about this, and he said, jeez, you know, it's like you could go buy my an's's to haves off a shelf. i said it's not even like that

because you can't go into a store today and buy half a box of detergent, but not that long ago you could go buy half a human being. and that, for me, was just a really, i mean, forget all the textbooks, everything you read about slavery, that was an instant education for me about the realities of slavery was that little sliver, that one document that said half a negro boy, coleman. so these are some of the remarkable things you see behind the story. i have to tell you, i was really afraid to walk al sharpton through this. i didn't know how he was going to respond. and, um, the way he responded -- i remember, you know, you have your mind captures these moments in time, and i remember we were sitting in a radio studio, and he was, he has to multitask. so he was eating hot and sour soup, and i was kind of squatting beside him and explaining this. and i told him, and, um, he went just dead silent which is not something that you associate with rev al.

he just went quiet -- >> the, the history of slavery in his family or the connection to strom thurmond or -- >> what i, i mean, i can only conjecture, but what i think it is, i think it's one thing to know on an intellectual level that there was slavery's history, whichever part your family played, but i think it's very different to know the specific details, to know it was your great grandfather, to know his name was coleman, to know he was 3 years old or 4 years old. that's a sudden, fierce reality, and it takes a while to absorb. i think he was just processing it. he actually thought, see, he didn't know much about that part of his family. he didn't even know they were from south carolina. and so i learned later he was entertaining hopes that i was going to tell him he was related to james brown who was sort of his mentor, his substitute father. [laughter] ..

al sharpton was going to receive this. this must be part of your work. you are uncovering information and it may or may not always be pleasant and may uncover memories that are unpleasant and may uncover relationships that people are not aware of. share with us a little bit about how this factors into some of your work. >> i don't believe in white watching history.

with my own family, i learned one of my immigrant great grandfathers murdered his wife. my great-grandmother. that is just what happened. i will tell that story. i don't believe in white watching history. even though i am an avid genealogist i believe when it comes to ancestors you don't get the glory and you don't get the blame. no one has to apologize for what their ancestors did but you don't get to take the credit for the wonderful thing they did. it is nice to have their blood flowing in your veins and nice to have a story. you can take inspiration and strength from what they endured because of our ancestors make us look like wimps if you ask me. what they all had to live for. we are lucky we can take that. i am sorry. >> you are sort of at peace with whatever gets revealed but i would have to imagine that the

people you are introducing information to may respond to a whole range of responses. is everybody sang when and happy to learn or not so welcoming? >> i don't have the opportunity to share my finding because my work is for tv shows. i don't make the decisions what gets shared. that is the frustrating aspect to me. i know what gets selected for the tv show depends on the stories across the season but there have been one or two instances where the discoveries have not been shared with the individual and that is unfortunate. they can do what they choose i don't want to be the genealogical version of a shock jock. even though i believe in telling the truth, what i do is tell, don't dwell. tell the truth but don't make a movie of the week out of it.

for everyone to have the opportunity, genealogists that their core truth seekers. >> the sharpton story reveals a piece of sociological and historical makeup of our country and of course we are a country of immigrants. so tell us about which of the obamas should we start with 4 then senator barack obama. both are remarkable stories. >> since st. patty's day is approaching. this was back during the last election cycle. i was asked to look into the roots of several of the candidate. what i was curious about when it came to barack obama is how far back do you have to go to find

an immigrant. putting aside his father who wasn't an immigrant in the classic sense in that he didn't stay here, he went back home. the reason i was curious is we have a bit of a pattern in america. anybody who runs president we tend to elect people with deep colonial roots. how did his roots matchup with this approach. to see what is the most recent arrival to america and it turned out to be this irish fellow who is the third grade grandfather who arrived in 1850. this was back with ancestry and went out with the press release going what the you know? he is irish, barack o'bama. now we see t-shirts with that. i have an unusual name so i am easy to find. members of the irish media who started contacting me going that

is well and good but where in ireland? i don't know how many of you have irish roots but irish is a challenging research so i didn't know if i could deliver the goods. this was the era of immigration. the paper trail back then was kind of skin be. it took me four months. the only reason i was able to find where the family came from was thanks to a pair of tombstones in ohio. which told me that his father and brother were born in model. that is how i knew to go looking in ireland. that also got out there but i never expected last year, a classic thing for an american president to do, expected to do the pump kind of moment. and nixon did it. all our presidents do it. i had the opportunity to go over there and meet the obamas and

the kennedys. that was pretty amazing because as a genealogist you don't expect to see world leaders doing something that was triggered by something you did. that is always was. i was curious about the colonial roots. people we tend to elect or is there a different story here? >> mrs. berkowitz would have had no idea you would be leaving the president, classroom assignment. how does the society at large respond to this uncovering of ancestral roots? does it provoke just interest or does it provoke bias? what gets uncovered when you uncover information? >> i am not good at measuring what the response would be.

this will capture the public imagination and other times -- i was very surprised the first time -- the research i did on the first emigrant to ellis island. that wound up on the first page of the new york times. my husband called me and was traveling in chicago. how was filming in scranton, pennsylvania and said this is on the front page of the new york times. what section? it is on the front page of the new york times. he owns me to a certain extent. i have been researching her for a decade. sort of obsessed with her but i didn't know there would be that public fascination. same thing with michele obama. i knew there would be interest. that was the lead article in the new york times. that level of interest, whenever stories hit, you are just going

from interview to interview and 48 hours later it is over. i didn't anticipate the firestorm in either of those cases so i am not the best judge of how the public will respond or not surprise. >> was the nature of the firestorm? >> let me give you a little back story. and working on a pbs documentary, came to america about immigration and being part irish-american i knew and i said let's have her in and track down her descendants. historical documentaries have to have a paper trail who. the ken burns slow-motion. no problem. i will get some documents. easy to find the family. they had gone to ireland.

daymac presidents and prime minister's. easy to find them. then i discovered the one whose story was always being called i found a document saying she was born in illinois. that didn't concern me initially because there are lots of errors and another one said a little and another one i am no genius but even though you don't have to immigrate in 1892. i got the wrong and the. it became a needle in a haystack situation that took four years to find a real and the --annie. i was just arrange in a family reunion. once it wound up on the front page of the new york times it turned into an international press conference and took on a life of its own and i didn't see that coming. >> one of the things you brought up his stories that we here in the public eye but also in our own family, particularly in our own family may not be reliable. one of your chapters was no your

family name was unchanged at ellis island was i was drawn to because my family came through ellis island. tell us what that message is because we have got a lot of messages about our own family history and you are drawing some suspicion to validity of them. >> if you are a genealogist you know about this. that chapter is me venting. that is one of the big three. a lot of people think names were changed at ellis island and they were not. they had people who spoke 70 languages. many were native speakers themselves so they made every effort to get the names as accurate as they could. it was not evil immigration officials to block off a few syllables of your name. was probably your ancestors him or herself. one example i given the book is a pinkowwith, kind of a los

angeles institution owned by the same family since 1939. you can get yourself a betty white hot dog. their name after celebrities but there was an article in the l.a. times a few years ago with the classic ellis island chestnut about how their names were changed mine immigration official and took 20 minutes to find them arriving as pinko wits --pinkowi --pinkowicz. i blame the godfather. idiom freshen. distracted, upset, his whole life is changing but can't communicate and has a tag with the name of his town corleone so that is what the official rights. they didn't care. they wrote whenever they felt like. wasn't like that. it is amazing how many really prestigious publications every year you see that time and time again.

that this gets perpetuated and it isn't true. the problem with accepting it is it makes it impossible to find your ancestors because if you are convinced the name got change their that is the version of your name you go looking for. the new one. then your ancestry remains a wall forever. >> function of that telephone where you pass a message down the line and gets changed a long way or its function of people actually not wanting to reveal the full truth of that name change or change in their life? >> there's always a seed of truth. it is embellishments, each generation tweaks a bit. fortunately i interviewed by nana who live to 90 if you week before she passed away. i asked her to tell me stories. i would roll my eyes.

we didn't expect her to pass away even though she was 90 and then i couldn't listen to it for a while. you know how it is after you lose loved ones. five years before i had the courage to listen to it again. i was stunned how much i have wronged already. how much i scrambled in my brain. i am a professional genealogist. habib even so -- it is usually innocent but there really is almost always some truth to it and that is the hard part is ferreting at -- >> someone was sharing a story about a family recipe pass on from a grandmother to her mother and the recipe called for this piece of meat to be cut in half as the first step of the recipe and it was years later that she figured out it was because the pot was too small. it reminded me of that reality.

let's hear a little more about michele obama. that certainly grabs some headlines. >> that was triggered by the new york times. a couple weeks before the inauguration i got a call saying would you looking to michele obama's roots. i went ahead and did it but there was limited time. so i shared the research i found. there is an inaugural issue of the new york times that mentions that. i kept on going. for in number of reasons. warehouses more historic and her husband. and my own mother's made name was shields. it is not that i expected any connection because my shield for johnny come latelys who came to america recently but i haven't put trinity for anyone with shields in their family tree. brooke shields and things like

this. that is what sparked me going. the other thing, there had been some stuff done on genealogy. you see older videos that all focused on robinson in south carolina which you understand that is the maiden name she was born with and we tend to start with but that is all that they told. i did a little homemade video power point where i have her family tree scrolling by and i have that little tidbit highlighted and represents oh maybe a fifteenth of her family tree. what happened is i kept on going. i was really interested in. a story just grabs me. i usually don't shoot them. they choose me and this was one of those cases. our research eight month and i did this little homemade video.

and an e-mail to journalist who said you might be interested in the sand came back saying please take it -- that is how that wound up. i tried to get it to the white house but had no means. i didn't have any connections or anything. i would have liked to get it addressed to the family but didn't have that opportunity so cannot different. >> what was revealed? >> the story they lead which was a particular branch of the family tree there are certain ancestors when your research anybody's family tree certain ancestors call more loudly than others and in her case it was a pair of ancestors, a mother and her son would router, they just got my attention. not just because of the shields connection but you could see there was a paper trail. one of the first things i discovered about him is he lived

a very long life. was born into slavery but he lived all the way up until 1950 so his obituary is on the front page of the paper day he died along with a headline about the baby steps of desegregation. i thought what this man lived through. what is remarkable to me too is when he passed away michele obama's mother was already 14 years old. i don't think they actually met. we have a member of the first family living in the white house who may have been an ancestor of hers who was once enslaved. that very collapsed cycle speaks volumes both about the family and the country. lot of places where that would not have been possible but that alone captivated me before getting curious about where she came from and tracking back her origins and who was the father of her children and all that.

it became another mystery. >> you haven't gotten any calls from sheriff joe or -- >> no. >> i had to ask. >> i get lots of requests from different journalists. one of my all-time favorites of somebody wanted to know if i could research john boehner to find out why he was orange. >> didn't take that as -- >> i didn't get all that far but i am still perplexed because he is almost all pure german. >> the shield name is part of your family but you go by "bulls and bears" aflac or aflac 2. i need to know.

what is the name? >> my name is "bulls and bears" aflac -- megan smolenyak smolenyak. the biggest thing in terms of dna had the biggest case study around my smolenyak. there are only four smolenyak families in the world. we are from the same village in slovakia. i trace all four families to the 1700s but couldn't find a common ancestor and couldn't -- we were searched. the paper trail had run out. this is the perfect application so i tested a mail from each of those families expecting to prove we are all related and it turns out a total fluke. none of us are related to each other. i don't know a daughter but found another smolenyak and another that is not related to

me. >> talk to us about dna. the internet as well. you have been doing this -- all the science and technology has been accelerated. how is this playing out in the world of genealogy? >> we have more playmates. i am glad i started. and wouldn't want to turn back the clock. it is easier to find their distant cousins who tend to become genealogical playmates. and is so smart to wait. somebody brand new to genealogy can find in an hour or two what would have taken me a couple months when i first started because i had to do everything by writing a way for or physically visiting locations. i'm a big fan of visiting

locations, cemeteries and courthouses. that is where the two stories are and you get past just the facts, names and dates and places. there is a massive role for that but it is nice for folks who are new that can jump in and look at the census millet -- military record on line. gives you such a fast running start. >> what is being built is being launched into cyberspace to be collected and other people can visit that information. someone in the folder. >> and talk to us about dna. >> don't have a scientific background but i have been working with the army for a dozen years. i work with their repatriation efforts. no man left behind in action. i tracked down families of

soldiers who are unaccounted for from past conflict. mostly koreans but i do world war 2 cases. i have been to a funeral of the world war 1 soldier and a worked on the sailors in the uss monitor you have been hearing about what the 150th anniversary of the civil war. i tracked down a soldier's next of kin and three relative sir with the same mitochondrial and maternal dna and one relative with the same dna or paternal dna. i started this in 1999 or so and the first dna testing company for average joes open the tail end where it became available on a retail basis. this is because of my work with the army, understood how we could play with it. it is a really remarkable tool. there was a lot of push back.

it took two years to get anybody to accept an article or a presentation on dna. it is because people who didn't grasp at thought we were saying this is a substitute for -- no need for the old fashioned research. great new weapon in the arsenal. it supplements the two play well together genetic and traditional genealogy. and the paper trail never will--sometimes very good process of elimination. if you have lots of smiths in your family tree you can test a bunch. these other two i need to pay attention to. you can set these aside and not waste time anymore. something like my smolenyak example it seemed logical to assume we were related. we live within 30 houses of each other so it seemed a fair assumption and i was completely wrong.

how much time and money i achieved with a few dna tests. it is really terrific addition to the tools we have. >> can you share a success story in the family aspect of your work? >> with the army i am not ready to get real specifics that the successes many cases i worked on. i tracked down thousands of family members. many soldiers have been buried and everyone's awhile i have an opportunity to attend. i don't tend to go to funerals and private cemeteries but at arlington national cemetery i try to attend. >> must be a very compelling aspect of your work. >> i should mention i am an army brat so this means the world to me. this is, quote, work that i love to do. >> you had some interaction with and cis. >> you mentioned that quote

earlier about what was -- indiana jones. i regard myself more as forest gump of genealogy. the same way he found himself in an expected quirky situations. that keeps happening to me. one of those moments would be i got home from these weekend events and the phone rings. it was the fbi wanting to meet me and -- meet me in a local restaurant. i had no idea what it was about. these are the circumstances i love. these circumstances i find myself in very unexpected moments. doing the genealogy makes for a very interesting life. >> what did they want?

>> they wanted to thank me. both fbi -- i help with cold cases but civil-rights cold cases, this is sort of in the last chance phase where we can track down people. many people were reluctant to speak. with the passage of several decades if you could track down witnesses or family members people are more willing. many have a hundred to tell what they saw and that sort of thing. when you track down family members and people in the community and they go to investigate and decide whether to reopen the case or not. i do cold cases. there it touch more contemporary. a lot have to do with the 60s or 70s. murders that involve somebody

who was in the navy. it is mostly word of mouth. >> what a fascinating career. before we open up for questions, any advice for the amateur beginning genealogist? >> one thing i always tell folks, i started home. go on a scavenger hunt in your own home, closets, so many of us are sitting on so much family history. scribbled on old letters people wrote to each other during the war or that kind of thing. if you have any relatives 20 minutes older than you. and called them. living libraries and you want to know all the stories. it would take decades to ferret out. they could tell you but you have to be real specific because they take for granted everybody knows the same stories.

do all add and jump online and do that fun stuff and connect the dots. >> wonderful. thank you so much. i will ask you to wait for the microphone so we catch you for our viewing audience. >> my question is back to the al sharpton, what was strom thurmond's reaction? >> he had passed away. he had passed away at the time. but his recently discovered daughter at that time commented on and she was pretty neutral about it. not like she was pleased but she was not particularly displeased either. it is not that startling. we will come from these places where populations weren't that

large. once you track two families to the same county a couple hundred years ago, the chance there is an overlap is going to exist. she took it rather graciously which is always a relief. >> how to win over family members who may not want to participate in the surge -- >> in the search in general? >> some say i am not interested or i don't know anything but they might, that kind of thing. it is a fine line. >> the version of the question i get most often is how to talk somebody into dna testing. it is a fine line and everybody has to decide their own comfort

level. i do a lot of collateral research and find out a possibility but depends what i'm trying to accomplish. i give before i get and i will send copies of old photos or information before i ask for something in return. it takes people while to get comfortable with you. i had that happened with the branch of my family that went to canada. i was going up there to speak in toronto and wanted to meet them. i mailed them a bunch of stuff and they couldn't wait for me to come back to toronto. that helps as an icebreaker. if dna is involve i go to younger generations. as long as everybody is over 18. don't do anything that will upset anybody but younger folks have grown up these days with dna. they stated their whole lives. these days that part has gotten easier and what will help too is

television programs. to deal think you are? finding your roots. celebrities having their roots done and learning all these often secret, sometimes pleasant and sometimes not so pleasant and being open to that experience opens a lot more people and helps them understand there's not something strange about you asking questions. that will help us. in england who deal think you are? not to go into taxis. it does what routes did here. it has become a national obsession and that is good for all of us who are into it. if anyone is saying no because they might be more open to it. if they're just being polite with you suggest they watch an episode or two of one of these shows to understand why so many of us are passionate about this. >> other questions? >> it does seem like a movement

away -- what is that about? >> it is a perfect storm of circumstances. you have things like the internet and fools like dna and getting on tv and celebrities getting involved. all of that help to. it is a bit of a myth that genealogy is an older person's support. it is younger and older people's sir board. people in the middle too busy making family history to record it. those on the other end those are recording it. now too with social networking. it used to be in the day, someone going to that village in slovakia to take pictures for me. now my slovak cousins have facebook site and i can e-mail them at will. any time i want to. one of us that gets into are pulling in second or third or

fourth cousins. we keep on pulling -- almost viral. >> my father was the youngest of seven and when his next goal assembling -- he shared stories he didn't know, told stories that she never told her son. i realize there is so much we don't know and so much we will miss out on. it can actually and cover stories we dig deep enough. >> there are traces if you are persistent about it. >> another question.

>> newspaper's online, how to use them and any tips on getting information on newspapers? >> i love online newspapers. i do reverse genealogy and used to do an experiment to see which resources are used and newspapers weren't anywhere on the list because even five or ten years ago there wasn't much on line and it has bubbled up to number four. it would be hard to bump census records and social security. it has really skyrocketed and it is terrific. going back to get the real stories, courthouses and all that. they have great stories but so do old newspapers and is amazing what is up there now. it is very patchwork. the communities you are interested in. sometimes you have a great time running back on grandma's family tree and there is nothing.

there was a time when newspapers were quite gossipy so you learn the tiniest details. visiting from the neighboring town and something happened with their horse. it really helps breathe some life into your ancestors and gets you past the names, dates and places to get a sense of what great great grandpa was really like. i am all for resources like genealogy or chronicling america which is the library of commerce site but there is a random fellow in new york who by himself has history. putting an online for free for anybody. the more the merrier. just bring it. i want more. >> you just mentioned --

>> genealogybank.com. a terrific collection of older records. it may go back to colonial times and they have contemporary ones as well. all states are represented. i mentioned chronicling america which is library of commerce's web site and they are concentrating on 1830s to 1932. some specific reasons for that but that is the time frame they're concentrating on. one trick is each state gets to decide what they're covering. one state might say take a capital's newspaper congressional another one might say we're going to do all the state newspapers from 1905-1910 so what you get for your state is going to vary but it is free so we like that. they have a newspaper collection. archives.com has a collection as part of their subscriptions the there are a lot of resources.

if you know how to dig into google archives they have hidden them but they have a fair number of newspapers from the 40s, 50s and 60s. i have a newspaper resources, a some quick highlight for you. >> you mentioned routes. for many of us that was the transformative moment in our consciousness around the quest -- are successful heritage. you intersected with the haley family. i wonder if you would share a little bit about that? >> chris haley, alex haley and nephew is a friend of mine. i was at genealogy conference a few years ago. it happened to be when ancestry entered the dna market and they entered for the first time ever with the dna kits so you know i will ask you to swap. and he was kind enough to do it and so -- somebody match right

off the bat but they were anonymous but usually it reason you do this is to find your relatives but this person wouldn't communicate through the blind e-mail system. 18 months go by and he matches somebody. this was quite exciting because both routes and queen are not about this particular branch of the family tree but they recount the family story that the progenitor of that line with a white overseer named bath. don't you know it was somebody named bath? >> the largest genealogical event in the world talking about 15,000 people held in london each year. so he wound out meeting his scottish cousin. they wound up being on bbc breakfast together but they were

very happy because sometimes people will criticize routes and say the research wasn't that good. it could have been better but they are happy part of the family lore was substantiated by science. that is an example where the family history got passed intact through a few generations and they were exactly right. >> we will get you the mike. >> is there a man -- a manner in which you could put family information online that all of your family could see perhaps with a password and not have living people's information open to the public? >> yes. ancestry.com is an obvious answer but there are others like gene e..com and other services that allow you to do that. you can set the privacy

settings. you can make it completely open or open only to the people you invite or you can keep it mostly private but still make its searchable which is something you might want to do if you want people to find you but then they would have to contact you to permission access to the tree. there are different levels you can set. the default more and more for than is to hide living people. i don't know what the cutoff is. it used to be 1921. it probably shifts each year but most of the services if you put in somebody that doesn't show up with the date of death that was born after a certain year they will hide that individual except to the people who were given express access to the tree. you and your relatives. most of the services you can do a tree for free where the pay situation kicks in if you want

to use their records but you want to do a tree and invite your relatives and upload family photos, if you want to go searching in the census records and the catch those your family tree that is where you have to go to subscribe. >> if you wanted to find someone like yourself to help in a search is it through those sites? >> always good to find your cousins because they all have a piece of the puzzle but if you are looking for professional help sometimes we run into that. i tend to go to appsjen. association for professional genealogists. you can search by location or particular expertise. i need to get people to go to court houses to put in these the code people who live within ten

or 20 miles of the courthouse but if you want someone who specializes in cuban research in the 1700s 4 colonial research you can find somebody who does house histories for instance. >> final question? if not, i urge you to take a look at this book. it is fresco signing area outside this building and megan will be there along with the book. it is a fascinating read that works you through these remarkable chapters of megan's -- we thank you for being with us. thank you. >> appreciate it. >> thanks for joining us. >> this event took place at the

2012 to sun festival of books. visit to sunfestivalofbooks.org. >> i think we could sum up a timely book. hope you enjoy it. it could be summed up in one sentence. seldom in our history have we seen such a concerted series of vicious personal attacks directed against any president of the united states. completely funded in this case by a pair of brothers. big oil barons named the cote brothers with the assistance for all too compliant american media. you add those elements together and you get the obama heat machine. i just want to say a little about each of those and open it

up for questions. the cameras have turned off. let's start with a hate directed against obama. i have to say i think criticism of any american president is fair game. i am part of the white house press corps. i go to the white house every day. everyday in front of the white house there's a crowd of people. i love that. i always make a point of checking out what they are there for and what the issue of the day is. it is a healthy part of our democracy. criticism, and the presidential campaign, to 1800. john adams and thomas jefferson, things said by their followers and their followers against each

other. fbn with president obama it has been a tax not on his policies so much as on him as a person. to a lot of research into presidential campaign for presidential history. we haven't seen that severe and ugly threats against any president since abraham lincoln. he thought of that way during his lifetime. he was fascinated. when he came to washington, he was introduced to the nation by the kentucky statesman. abraham lincoln is the man of medium height. he passes the six foot mark by an inch or two. he is a belated and not need and pigeon toes and lopsided. a shapeless skeleton in a tough

and 30 unwholesome skin. his lips protrude beyond the natural level of the face that are pale and smeared, his teeth are filthy. me your new president of the united states. at the same time, and published this profile of mr. lincoln. mr. lincoln stands six feet tall in his socks which he changes once every ten days. is anatomy is composed mostly of bones and when walking he resembles the offspring of a happy marriage between a derek and a windmill. is head -- he can hardly be called handsome though he is certainly much better looking since he had smallpox.

flash forward. president obama called a racist, marxist, fascist, dictator, muslim. that is not meant as a positive term. man of faith, muslim and a terrorist leader and nazi, foreigner, jackass. rush limbaugh called him that. a liar on the floor of the house. and a socialist. this is obsession with obama as a person what others call -- the othering of president obama. they have to prove he is not like us. some of that, not all of it but some is the color of his skin. he is black and we are white. the first african-american president. he is not a true american, the birth certificate nonsense. all to show that he is something

different. something else. something foreign. is this obsession to try to destroy barack obama personally. david horowitz of the additional one of the most conservative commentators out there calls this the obama derangement syndrome. they can't help themselves. i don't know how many of you heard about this. last week the leading federal judge in montana sends out an e-mail on his official judicial e-mail. to his friends. this joke about barack obama asking is mommy why am i black and you are white? i am surprised he didn't bark when we had sex. he did this on his officials federal e-mail and said i don't usually send jokes to friends like this but this was

particularly funny. that is how sick these people are and what we have seen over and over again directed not so much -- you can disagree with president obama's health plan, and the government takeover of health care. you can disagree with him on taxes. this is against him personally trying to destroy or discredit him personally. it is not just fox news. it is out there because of a couple of people that most americans never heard of. the famous polk brothers. now famous. charles and david coke. we have seen corporate sponsored attacks against presidents -- and with that it was the dupont brothers. there were three of them. they put their money together

over something called the liberty league to deny fdr a second term. with bill clinton, richard mellon escape who funded the investigation that led to paula jones. and articles in the american spectator. nothing compared to the money and organization fiend on the part of charles david coke, heads of coke industries. the third and fourth richest men in america. we know about bill gates and warren buffet. these and number three and number four. combined wealth of $50 billion. they have put more money -- i have to say this. they do some good things. particularly david cote who is the wealthiest man in new york city. you thought michael blumberg

was. he funded the metropolitan opera. metropolitan museum of art. cancer research center is around the country but most of their money goes in to political activities and they are everywhere. the heritage foundation washington d.c.. the kenna institute when it started. and a coke brothers are suing the cato institute to get it back to be a totally controlled operation. who people -- americans for prosperity -- and dick armey's organization, john k. sick in ohio, co carothers candidate,

same with scott walker. and a measure, prop 23 on the ballot to repeal the new clean car standards put in by arnold schwarzenegger that measured to repeal those standards which lost prop 23. totally funded by the cote brothers. legislation in west virginia to overturn the new mining safety rules put in place after the last mine disaster. the effort to overturn mining safety regulations funded by the cote brothers. with 53 different organizations. a lot of them research centers on college campuseses all for the purpose of disputing the existence of global warming and fighting to do away with any government regulations that had anything to do with climate control. i was able to find either partially or totally funded by the coke brothers.

their reach is so great that someone called them the coketo u coketop coketopus. they get together twice a year, and raise money for right wing political causes. two days before the book came out i was so happy this happened so i could tell people i am not exaggerating. two days before the book came out they had their latest in palm springs. sheldon adelson was there. for republican governors, walker, chris christie, bob macdonald from virginia and rick scott. they have all been there. supreme court justices, they

have all been there. and they raise $100 million in one weekend to defeat barack obama. think about that. if you look at the super pacs for ronny and santorum and ron paul and newt gingrich, up until supertuesday they spend $53 million. they are huge and they will say or do anything but it is a lot easier for them now since citizens united because you not only raise unlimited corporate money but don't have to report which corporations are paying which bills but they also couldn't do it without the assistance of the nation's media. that drives me crazy. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org.

>> 16. sweeping views of america. just sign or two? >> just sign please. >> thank you. nice to meet you. young lady. hello. >> i am -- [inaudible] >> so nice to meet [talking over each other] >> absolutely. >> have your e-mail on this? >> absolutely. >> in person? >> that would be great. [talking over each other] >> that would be a total -- >> europe and france -- >> i know. have you read this book? he is going to take your e-mail and we will do an interview with

her today. [talking over each other] >> can you call me? i am just getting off tv at that point. super. >> thank you. >> in the newspaper -- >> i sure you like it. [talking over each other] [inaudible] >> you are not in hiding. >> i am just doing a budget offering. >> and the witness protection program. >> it was pretty bad. >> could i be in the same -- >> thank you very much. >> nice to meet you. >> university of michigan. beautiful up there. if you do well i am assigning

and you have to wait. quickly at the end. we are going to have to get through. i know. i am going to walk through that. that is the only way to do it now. is that ok? asked them to hold their out. [talking over each other] >> would you hold these? i am going to walk through the line. hold your book open to the page. take the picture but no posing. okay. >> your books open. >> thank you. it is upside down.

>> thank you. >> you are going to have to explain why my handwriting is messy. [inaudible] >> the jesse helms' home. [inaudible conversations] >> outside? >> title page. >> thank you so much. [talking over each other] >> where are you >> michigan. [talking over each other] >> great to meet you. >> sorry we are rushed. >> thank you so much. >> we will try to come back

later today. thank you. made a lot -- >> you are a great american. >> thank you. >> how is it going? >> all right wing girls are pretty. title page. [inaudible] >> that is a great picture. ..