president should consider in 2013? for a chance to win the grand prize of $5000. and there's $50,000 in total prizes available. this is open to students grade six through 12. for complete details and rules go online the studentcam.org. >> next, a panel discussion on america's food industry. we'll hear from from tracie mcmillan, author of "the american way of eating," who spent 2000 working throughout the system from industrial farm in california and a produce section and a wal-mart near detroit to a chain restaurant kitchen in brooklyn. in her book she profiles the people who worked alongside her at each job and reports on herxñ attempt to eat well on reduced wages. this is an hour and a half. >> can you hemi? okay? suffers want to introduce the rest of the panel. starting to my left is thank

you. i practiced the. annia is the author of the 2011 memoir, "day of honey: a memoir of food, love, and war." called one of the least political and most intimate and valuable books to come out of the iraq war by "the new york times" dwight garner. it's just out in paperback. her coverage of the cultural politics of the middle east and the new york times, the "washington post," "saveur," in the nation has been recognized, and included in the best food writing series. welcome, annia. [applause] >> to the left of annia is amanda, the cofounder of food 52.com and author of the essential new times cookbook for which she won an award. a longtime staffer for the new york times, she has authored, edited and contributed to many books including the memory come and cooking for mr. latte. she left the times and 2011 to

pursue food 52. welcome, amanda. [applause] >> next we have james oseland. james is editor in chief of "saveur" and was a judge on the first two seasons of bravo's top chef master to his 2006 book on the cuisines and culture of south east asia was recognized by the chains spirit award and the international association of culinary professionals and he has lectured widely. is also an editor at the sassy magazine. i love sassy. [laughter] sassy. >> and next to james is reverend jackson. cofounded the brooklyn rescue mission in 2002 with her husband reverend robert jackson. to bring healthy food to the homeless and hungry of central brooklyn. finding fresh food rare in their

donations box, the jacksons began growing produce in an abandoned lot behind the mission. it is now a small urban farm supplying a small farmers market and pantry -- sorry, for their emergency food providers, and the reverend jackson are known across the city for the partnership with other urban farmers, and community groups. welcome, reverend. [applause] >> and then, of course, on the in is her own tracie mcmillan. tracie mcmillan is a senior fellow at the schuster institute for investigative journalism and the author of "the american way of eating: undercover at walmart, applebee's farm fields and the dinner table," which just went on sale today. although she has written on food and class in the new york times, harpers and transit, she just closer foodstamp case last month and was of all things, sorry, that was crossed out. of out. of all the things people have said of her work, she is mostly

-- borrowed from her book, that girl can work. [applause] >> so before we start with questions i thought we were just open up to tracie for a minute just to give us a quick synopsis overview of the book since it did just come out. and if you may not have read it yet and then we'll take it from their. >> thanks everyone for coming. i'm really excited to have this discussion about the anti-foodie goodies which was inspired by the reporting i did for the american way of eating. because increasingly when that's going around the country working as a farmworker in california, is a produce clerk and wal-mart in michigan and cooking in apple's -- applebee's i could working from all the people that food was imported for them and yet most of the discussion that i've seen in my professional life suggested that it was only sort of affluent people that cared about what they were

eating. so that's where the inspiration behind this panel and just so delighted that all of these in kabul counted smart dedicated people get to share with me. so i'm super site. >> okay, great. so we will start off by askingñ the panel, the question, which is why do we think that the fooó movement does get pigeonholed aó elitist?ó i know that in my show, i doño let's get real, i tried to speao to the middle and i tried tooo take away that whole foods lifestyle and take away that realm of elite so that the access be approach to real food is nonthreatening to people. i do think that it gets pigeonholed as elitist? more important, can you care about -- sounding elitist? who would like to start a? >> this is right up my alley. we envision food at a level where some of the most at risk

of hunger people would have an opportunity to beat a level of food that is of such quality that is if they were royalty. and i and my husband took to the soil and started to grow food. and the amazing thing about it is, although many people walked past us laughing, what he doing out there in the dirt, this is before it was such a popular movement, we began to grow and deliver fresh produce to people who have had real food in a very long time. in a, they grew up with his food, or they're young and they never tasted vegetables that didn't taste like plastic. so it was such a wide range of emotion, plus we had a hold of the group of people who couldn't even identify food. so that was another category. every round red thing was aní

apple, or green stuff. so i think in our work we have worked very hard to bring food down to a level where it's wholesome, it's available, affordable. and it's good for your body, spirit, mind, soul, everything. and we've taken great pride in the fact that we have worked to introduce bok choy tour committee, which we have going right now in our greenhouse. so i think that the fact that food doesn't have to be easy this, at any level at all. >> command, maybe you want to speak coming from the new york times from the realms of what we describing her question, and you lifestyle, and it kind of, you called it food lifestyle, it automatically

>> having the opportunity to effect on the seeming elitist even though if you think about the kinds of foods that people are interested in. it's actually very simple. coking sort of like peasant style cooking. and now we are interested in that was 15 years ago, and now we are interested in sort of growing our own, cheering and preserving and all of these things that were done by people who didn't have any money. >> and grandma cooking. >> i think like it has to move beyond the lifestyle for them not to seem elitist. >> i guess for me they had scratcher is, i mean looking

around this wonderful room full of people, is there not a foodie? is the person who is not a foodie here? is there such a thing as food not being a lifestyle? food is what sustains us along with oxygen. and i think, i don't know, i guess just for me personally, i've had issues with this, with the name foodies. it jars me. it's sort of rubs me wrong. i mean, i just turned 49 years old. i've probably been in something like 42 countries in my entire life. i'm the editor of a food magazine. i don't think i've ever met a person for whom food was not a lifestyle. food is what we must do every single day. i think maybe the thing, the essence of what we're talking about is the fetish of eating.

and i mean maybe that's the we mean by this word lifestyle. that's a bit, yes, it's weird. it's basically kind of like brad pitt and angelina jolie are to human life as is some extraordinary chef as to food is to eating. so i guess, i don't know. >> just to sort of go off for what james is saying, one thing i have seen, especially for you on the american way of eating was just everybody wants a good food. like it's not like people that are working at wal-mart don't think about their meals or to think that they would like to eat healthy, or don't spend time and energy on figuring that out. like i said that with the woman who i was working in the wal-mart grocery section with, and said what did you have? she said i had this to the casual and we did this and this and this would end in the porcupine balls.

i supported my balls? what your actual a southern dish. it's a meatball that has rice cooked in it and then when you taken out of the oven arises all sprouted around like spines. so she's somebody think about it, she's talking about wanted to eat well with her family, but she's not a foodie the way we think of it in terms of mainstream culture coming out of new york. >> definitely speak to the whole question, people that we don't really expect to be foodies will be foodies, and also focusing on that can be seen -- can be seen as elitist but i did a couple -- i did a sort a couple years ago for james. there was a huge outpouring of refugees and i was curious about, i knew from having to travel around different countries in the middle east that a lot of them were really, really homesick and wanted -- one of the best ways people deal with homesickness is by cooking food. so i pitched against him being

the tremendous leap awesome visionary editor that he is, he accepted the story on one of the iraqi refugees eating, how are they dealing with homesickness through food and how are they dealing with this tremendously dislocating experience of being an exile in a foreign country. and i wish i was going to do the story in damascus before the syrian government didn't let me in, and so i called the u.n. agency, the u.n. high commission on refugees and to talk to the local person. and when i told him that this was a food store, they were very excited to have me do a story on refugees. but when i told them it was a food store, he was absolutely furious. these are people that are starving, how can you possibly write about what they are eating? this is ridiculous. most people, you know, we be thinking that they're having difficulty getting food. and i was like, as part of what i want to write this story. want to write about how people who have asked to be nothing and

are in this situation are coping and how food is helping and it will humanize them, blah, blah, blah. long story short, i think there's a dichotomy between sort of what we think as serious journalism and what we think of when you say the words food writing. when i tell people, i tell people i'm a food writer, they assume i'm doing restaurant reviews to this and i'm doing trend of stories. they assume i'm doing what's the latest recipe for and cupcake. but it's a food to be not a shoe store. anything for food writers after tremendous opportunity for all of us, to do stuff that is about, i don't know, war, famine, things that we don't usually think of asking topics that'll have anything to do with food. usually there is a food story in there. >> and our job is to find it. >> do we think that may be

we're talking about america, that americans are potentially going -- [inaudible] >> sorry. that americans are going overboard a little bit and the obsession with food. i guess what i found, i think the american food system has these three tiers or three categories. what i call sort of real food, which is an apple, junk food which is apple jacks. into what i call all that sort of synthetic a key apple better. we have three tiers or food system. i guess i sort of agree with you james, that everybody cares about food in a because of what they eat but i don't know if that's necessary to to either it's not true that people don't care, or people are so blindsided by what i call the foodie firewall that they sort of think they care about the food but they don't actually understand what you're eating or what they're getting. and i guess that's my big fear

is people, for me he keeps coming back to the sort of elite crowd. like we all talk about food and write about food and do things for a living so everybody else doesn't have to. so i guess, sort of speak to that? maybe i'm not being clear about this, but what i see as a sort of three-tier system in the country would also have this luxury of being in the city will get access to all this great stuff. you, tracie, spent time working in wal-mart out in the midwest. you spent time in the field. because you at the first and expense with people working in those places maybe you can speak to that. i going to wal-mart and i look at the supermarket section, and all i see is processed package. i know they are trying to bring in more real food. second someone if people really do care about the food or people just like to eat because we're human and we get hungry and we just want to be. is there a difference?

are people getting obsessed with what they're eating, but of people may be sort of not a clear about its the? most working families i've met don't accessible to the extent they're taking photographs of their meals or sending -- spending whole days when it around farmers markets. you just want to go get to meet and there's some girl on her bicycle. and i've heard friends of mine who are parents sort of make the same complaint about strollers. i don't you see that kind of obsession. i do think that there tends to be the sort of unspoken undercurrent of debate sort of assuming that low income families just going eat a lot of fast food. and that actually doesn't happen for the very low income because they can afford fast food. and i also think that when people are taking something like fast food or a convenience food, that's not an expression of i don't care and i've been

tricked. it's this sort of confluence of time and money and access and what we made easy for them. because convenience issued for everybody. all ends of the income spectrum. i think and want to have a conversation about public health and food with got to have a conversation about want people to eat well, how do we make it easy for them to do that. instead of sort of following the model, right, which makes a lot of sense for families with disposable income to say you need to prioritize this and spend more money and spend more time. why don't you stop watching tv and spend more time cooking? i mean, i don't watch a lot of tv and i just got a lot. that's fine, that's by choice. i don't think he will win over anybody by lecturing at the about turn off your television into this other thing. >> i guess i can only make, i'm not a food historian. i can only make conjecture about what american eating habits, american eating ways might have

been 100 years ago, 125 years ago, before the american corporate military machines took over and told us what you eat and how to eat it. i grew up in the 1960s, the 1970s largely in northern california, and lower middle-class kid. i did not grow up in what we would call the foodie family nowadays, kind of like you mentioned very early on in your book in every moving way for me personally because i really identify with it. when i was a kid my dream was carnation instant breakfast and chocolate malted. and also libbey's fruit cocktail was the bomb. spent but only if you got the cherry. >> i always got it.

my mom did not enjoy cooking. my mom shopped once a week for processed food, and that's what i ate. my dad was an office products salesman and used to travel the country, and he would, when he came home, duplicate meals they eat at these kind of great continental restaurants of the 1960s, and thus i think i went, you know, it began me on a journey of appreciating food. i don't think, again to go back what i was saying earlier, that i appreciate food any more than any, of any of you in the room right now. one thing that i have experienced maybe in my travels, i've lived a lot in southeast asia and south india. i live for about a year now in the south indian village where there were no supermarkets, and there was no carnation instant breakfast. and instead there was only what

was grown behind the house in the village behind the house. and eating that food for year and a half, i felt a lot better than my carnation instant breakfast diet of being a kid. >> i also am not a food historian but i did spend a lot of time in the near times recipe archives, and the thing that was really interesting when i was working on the project was that, without president, like how food was and every day life because you had to make everything. like what you are buying, how you're making it actually was like a very, you know, big part of everyone's day. and probably more so than peoples days now. and so, i don't think that that, like that's new. but i also come if you look at

like to get away from food and you look at fashion and through our obsession with fashion, i mean, the result of this obsession, and i think it's just americans go overboard complex culturally we are just hardwired to go overboard on everything. and then we kind of pullback until things can even out. there's a lot to our fashion able to the masses at lower prices and it was 20 years ago. state and everything is made in china. >> there's a lot of negative reasons for that, but the fact is that it took that obsession with fashion, you had to get people interested in and to get people figure out ways to bring to the masses and i think that's exactly happening to do. i think it's good. i mean, it's annoying. i understand that, you know, we've all been out to dinner probably are, all the talk about

the entire meal is how the carrots were cut or how they found this weird cheese. like that can get a little much, right? but the end result i think, like i really believe this, if you want to look at a big company that has made some progress is like chipotle. whether you like chipotle or not, like they've actually made a great effort to have changed the way fast food is done. and so it takes this kind of over the top foodie or whatever you want to call it, to this real interest in this kind of factions the food to i think make progress that will can join the very disparate groups right now, which is like the elite foodies, and those who feel kind of left out, left out of the

conversation. >> i think chipotle is a great example. a company that is really sort of raising the bar on fast food and their setting and it excellent example. for people, sort of bridging that gap i think between mcdonald's and everything else. everything about that. spent can i jump in your? i think there's something else we are not talking about, which is this kind tremendous explosion of food blogs. i mean, a lot of food writing that we have sort of grown up with is like is this fancy restaurant and it costs only $200 to have dinner, and stuff like that. and suddenly we've gone from having most food writing that we read the about the consumption of food and food as a consumer product, to suddenly this wealth of stories about the food you make an food is something we make and we produce. for me, i don't know, i never saw like any sort of dichotomy between fancy food and cheap food, because my mom was just

one of those people, i mean, we went to the farmer's market when i was a kid. we had absolute a no money. i mean, really, really poor but she just believe in this part of thing that came from my grandmother he was a child of greek immigrants. you always just made kind of really basic simple food that was cheap as dirt because you're making like lentils, vegetables and stuff like this. this was the 1970. 1935 was the height of garden growing in america after world war ii. victory gardens. it was great for. people were doing all the stuff that we're doing now, canning pickles, making yogurt and he was actually quite cheap and quite affable and quite accessible to each really, really well. my mom, going about how great cook my mom is, but this stuff is not expensive stuff. this is stuff that anyone can make. so it's the whole kind of dichotomy never made sense to me. and now have this great university of you can going into at the okay, which are my

favorite five food blogs? at giant box of children what am i going to do with the? in seconds you'll have 40 great recipes. i think it has this great impasse i'm not just accessible information about food which is making people feel like they can do it. she was a pioneer woman to just five simple pictures. she isn't demystifying this thing that no one should have to do. i think it's tremendous. >> i also think about family, which is a good example of what you're saying, and also american culture. and i don't think that you can take that out of the system because when i was young, my mother made instant mashed potatoes. we all liked them. so when i became into this food movement, i said okay, let me try making fresh potatoes, idaho, the regular what you got out of the supermarket. i didn't like the. i preferred instant mashed potatoes. because i grew up on them. they tasted wonderful.

i didn't care if they were artificial, dehydrator or whatever. as i progressed into food movement i begin to understand that maybe i didn't like idaho, but i liked yukon gold, you know? because now -- and i think family helped, it was -- it was good but it was what we ate as americans anybody i knew eight of them. but now, you know, young people are being raised with the knowledge again now, different types of potatoes. i've met little kids that can identify their vegetables because they're being -- for young now. maybe there's something different types of potatoes, so may different types of lettuce. i think culture is changing and maybe because of the problems.0l we're working on it and0n it wil go0n forward.0l0n0l0l0n0n0n >> the pendulum certainly is swinging. >> for me, one of the most

revolutionary things that we can do as americans now is not by the right foods for the right co-op, not coming in a, by the right books and support the right causes. but instead actually just cook dinner at home tonight for your family. and it seems, it seems so kind of like, i don't know. it's just so obvious that, for me, from my vantage point, a profoundly revolutionary thing. if we all did that, even just one, to come three times a week, think about what a difference it would make. think of what that would do to all the fast food that we've just been decrying slightly for the last few minutes time and think what it would do about that corporate, that corporate military machine that really controls what we eat and how we eat it in this country.

>> we also fall into these old dichotomies. tracie, i know you and i have talked about this. is there nothing wrong with having processed food every once in a while? i hate to say it, but getting back to my mom again. every once in while you're working hard, you buy a frozen pizza, you chop some real actual fictional and put on top of a frozen pizza. come on. >> one thing that i've been thinking about a lot recently, just because i think any a lot about where i'm from and the culture there, because i'm from rural michigan which is this very, tends to be fairly surfeited and by your bootstraps mentality which i find really powerful and a lot of ways because particularly when you don't have lots of structural opportunity, right? like if you don't think that you can beaches up out of that situation you are just going to be hopeless, if you're not happy. one thing i really engage with a lot is being able to cook is a form of self-sufficiency.

it's really empowering because you can just decide well, this is what i feel like eating of what i want to do, and once you learn to do it, it's not that hard. but there's this really big learning curve, and i always sort of feel very grateful that my family struggled a lot when i was really young. and so i started cooking when i was like seven. so all the big mistakes you make, like you forget to put the leveling indicator assault for the sugar and all those problems. by the time i was 10, so by the time i'm 12 or 13, i could actually cook food groups want to get to the point where i have to actually cook for myself, it's like i've mostly got it dead. like i script on the vegan stuff once in a while. but i can do that and it's hugely empowering thing for me to be like, i'm not going to go pay money at a restaurant if i can make what is there and i can make most of the stuff. i'm not going to buy this process stuff if i can make some

it just as good and just as much time. like i did this thing in the book where no, i want to see what hamburger takes in terms of time and money. i sort of expected it would be faster and cheaper to do hamburger helper, which is basically ground beef, noodles and greedy. it was like one minute faster to do it with hamburger helper and there's like 50% more expensive. so for me like what you know that you can sort of sit there and make it at home, the hamburger helper was more expensive than doing somethinguñ than doing something from scratch. i need to work on my gravy. >> 80% more salty. >> and way more salted and we knew how to cook you can say i do want to solve up that much or i don't want to salted that much. i think that's really powerful about cooking. >> that's sort of what i was this foodie firewall thing that i because, i think because they're being so mr. cross like hamburger helper and things

designed to help you to be convenient, that people have lost a, not on the ability to cook but it also lost the ability to trust their instincts and their senses. so the theory being able to cook the roofing because you relied on this crush a process for so long. and i think also the thing i grew up in the suburbs in the '70s were made our own shame and pickles. i like to call to house on the prairie, on long island, suburban life. part of it was economics because was the '70s and times were tough. my dad was a teacher and we had no money. my parents would simply. then my mom went back to work like everybody's mom. she went back to work anything it was a huge drop off are people sort of glad to i'm about to the work in the '70s. suddenly there was no cooking been done, then as i think as women went back to the workforce in the '80s and '90s, those kids grew up with no connection

with cooking because the mom wasn't home cooking in the afternoon and everybody sort of embrace convenience and processed food, and it was so much of the flooding into the market in those decades because of that, coincided very neatly.; >> if you7 look at real wages,7 real wages have been pretty= although, to echo what tracie just said in her hamburger helper analogy, just really doesn't hold water. >> it doesn't. i agree with james. i feel like this is what we have been pocketing is that it's a >> brainwashed. >> and it's not like the past six years. so it's really kind of in our dna to think that passionate. >> like you called it the foodie

the raw ingredients. part. >> once you just do it. we don't even think about it. we shot every saturday morning at the trader joe's just around the corner from us. we have pretty much the same more or less rigid set of things that we buy, and then we kind of riff on it and it does but it's not all that -- [talking over each other] >> you know, we had this mystique of scalloped potatoes abroad and potatoes, intel's debacle and then you go online and look at it and you get 1000 recipes and it's like potatoes and peas add your like i was i spending all this money on this other stuff?

i think also simple recipes. the cookbook i have my been way over the top, and on the internet it is so fast. >> or tv. u-turn on the food network and watch what for hours a day of people cooking. although people who watch the food network or not cooking. >> but they are absorbing them to have a greater sense of how food is made. [talking over each other] >> if they never thought i don't think it will matter. they will know more about food than it otherwise. >> i agree. >> i actually feel like, like it's a shame that michelle obama like focused so much on ingredients and not an cooking. i feel like she missed a great opportunity. >> why? >> because i think would've been much more powerful for her to get people back in the kitchen. than to just be interested in the egregious because like we're

saying, it doesn't really matter except what you're cooking. it matters that your cooking. your understand what it takes to feed yourself and that's self-sufficiency and empowerment is so valuable to our culture, you know, and in your family. me, so it has so many ramifications i feel like, that that was kind of -- >> even if you're using like some kind of terrible cheating factory food, like roast chicken come you're still cooking. >> you are still in the kitchen putting her hands into which i think is the first step. >> i think learning to cook is the gateway to having appreciation for fine or ingredients. because if you start cooking you start to realize that food is comprised of multiple ingredients that you can play with them. so if you taste something that you made with like one kind of

ingredient like this can of chicken, and then later you tried again and you at the money to buy a fancy chicken, then you know how much better you think one or the other is, you can make an informed decision about how you want to spend your money under time. and i think that's really important. that's what got into writing about food. my background is an investigative welfare reporter so there's not that many of those. and i was following a sustainable food cooking class, very skeptical about, whatever, and it was really powerful for the kids because they were learning to cook it so they really started engaging was talking about their ingredients and being able to feed themselves. and i think that's the sort of thing that everybody should learn, right? i think that's really powerful. >> i learned basic cooking skills from among the she cooked, i was in the kitchen with her. i also took home at in school. schools don't teach whole-mac anymore. those are basic survival skills. notches whole-mac where we made

chocolate chip cookies and so teddy bears. but teaching people life skills i think is something that is missing from american education, all that teaching to the test and not about teaching real skills. people learn basic stuff like this as i go to the supermarket to pick out a bunch of carrots and this i take them home and wash them and kill them and this is what you do. i think we're sort of missing that. everybody is watching the food network and we blocks, but some of the maybe so unattainable if you don't watch that basic -- if you don't have the basic the tabular. i teach in a culinary school. you think everyone coming in is coming in with a basic vocabulary already there. and a basic knowledge, and asking things like, dude, where's the lemon juice? and i say it's in the lemon. you have to get it out of the lemon, you know what they are coming in because they are attracted be to the glamour.

the way i look at it is okay, i'm graduating lots and lots of people who at least now know basic cooking skills. but it's hard to not get caught up in a flash and glamour advocate that people are not learning the vocabulary and all. >> i think a lot of people who watch the food network, either so many experience of people saying, annia, you are this fancy food person and you are a foodie. i don't have time, i don't know blah, blah, blah. a lot of them are devoted. i think there's this disconnect, people, a lot of people who sit and watch really, you know, hours and hours of food shows, i think some ways and makes them think that they can't cook because they're watching really, really complicated so. those are the people as i don't have time for that, and i'm not that great echo. and often they actually can put really simple stuff. but i think we don't have enough of just really simple basic

stuff that you were describing. i get questions like that all the time. i have recipes in the back of my book. i tell people what they involved, and they said i could never do that. and unlike wow, i chose like the simplest recipes i know, you know? most people are intimidated by the culture. and i do think that has gone some way towards convincing people that they can really cook over don't have time because they think food has to be something really, really glamorous and exciting and kind of rock star chefs making stuff that looks like a building, you know? and i think that's kind of a problem in some ways. >> i think food tv, my experience, they always have stuff in little bowls. we never see where the lemon juice comes from. that's why, i have to say, farmers markets we have food demos so the people are so can watch the people peel those

carrots and then give them the little free pillar ii take home with them because learning how to cut is a big deal, to the average farmer's market customer. we have many organizations that help those, those pics is skills get the community. if i had all those bowls i could cook that dish, too. [laughter] >> i have stacks and stacks a little bowls. i will give you some. wouldn't it be great if you went to school, let's a second, third, fourth grade, like mandatory part of the curriculum, a national curriculum, like that's ever going to happen, you had to take this as i write a check, this is how you deal a carrot.

you cut -- things like that. vocabulary that's also missing, people don't have those basic life skills. i'm supposed to ask them which is so much of our discussion we have been taught about consumption and little of our food discussion is about production, or sociopolitical context. anybody? >> well, i mean common it's all about eating. we're talking a cooking, eating, shopping. but what about production? i have a garden and that's enough. >> for me, in the book is your sisters is which i can't recall the exact statistic, but the tiny percentage of what the actual labor adds to the final

cost of the produce, and people say if we paid our farmer before but couldn't afford a food. although we have the cheapest food in proportion to our income in the world. >> right. yeah, so farm labor in the thing on average something like 5% or i mean, if people are really into this, like you can look it up in index. i have footnotes and stuff in the book. farmworkers more money. it would make our food so expensive. i mean, particularly in its many i was working in we were not even getting paid minimum wage. so you could've brought us up to minimum wage and what it meant like a ton of garlic you bought at the store was like about 10 cents more about our something. like it wasn't that big of a deal which i thought was real interesting. >> so what is a lion's share of the market happening in the head of garlic? >> so most of the cost of food

come in is what's called marketing. the price at the front gate and i think it's around 16 or 18%. then like the other 80%, that's all transportation, this should be in marketing, labor, further on. there was a usda study looking at what would happen to the cost of food if the minimum wage went up across the board. it was many school, something like 1%. >> and the reason you were even making minimum wage, you and your fellows out there in the field, is because i imagine largely your coworkers were out of status. they were undocumented, what we call a legal age and. >> right. so everybody go so far as anyone i could do wasn't documented. i did not do a somatic goal of all of my coworkers and broke into spanish about their legal status to everyone that i was close to did not have papers. you know, that seemed to be the case with everybody else. i really think, that's the only reason people are going to work for two or $3 is because they

have come up from a community and they are terrified of saying anything because they might not get work again. and it's really, you know, just such a deep entrenched fear in those communities, getting deported, or having any of those kinds of problems because they're much living hand to mouth. so people just don't, well, it's better for us to stable and, that it is for us to have no income. so we will just keep doing this. >> what were your shifts like working for two or $3 our? >> so, i was being phased -- being paid peacefully. i got $1.60 for every five gallons a can of garlic i could pick. what would happen is we're working for a farm labor contractor, and the contractor, like my foreman was really nice. this very amiable guy in ice i'm tied to how the woman who cut herself and things like that. so i really like him.

but what the company did is they would just take our cars from the field, take whatever we have earned by piece rate and then before the issued our payroll checks, they would divide it by minimum wage. so the card from if you would say i was there for eight or nine hours, and then the paycheck i got would've changed it to two or three because they would take the some of my wages defined by minimum wage, and that would be, you know, what i earned. it was really compelling and interesting for me to sort of realize, i had this idea in my head that farmworkers was hard, yeah, yeah, yeah. i know people suffer but in my head, secretly i still thought they earned a minimum wage. that just doesn't tend to happen. part of the reason, right, we have this idea that the farmer, for one thing, gets a lot of the money for food at the store and that's very rare. a lot of the way that food has gotten cheaper has been that there's been all this consolidation within the supermarket industry to develop these consolidated networks of

distribution and supply chains. wal-mart is the king of this. wal-mart now controls 25% of our food, pretty much between farm and plate. which was really interesting to learn, right? because i was thinking this pressure on supplies, pressure on farmers to hold down the cost, but mostly it's been all of that sort of efficiency and distribution. >> do you have any idea where the garlic that you are picking ended up? >> so, i picked for this farm labor contractor and was able to identify the garlic was going to do companies. one was the garlic company, and one was christopher metrics of garlic and a sort of a mass-market garlic that gets sold at wal-mart and i stopped garlic from the garlic company when us working at wal-mart. it was not california garlic it was out of season so would not, not possible it was actually my garlic. and then i did see braided heads -- i can lose garlic and also brady heads of garlic from christopher ranch at whole

foods. both compass, i called him up if interested hey, guess what? i was working in your fields and i had this paycheck and i had these cards and they don't match. and, christopher ranch and we are sorry, all of our paperwork said everyone was paid minimum wage. which would happen if you look at the payroll check. the garlic company stored of engage with them up if they were just like we cannot find your employee number. we have no record of the. you must've been in a different field. there's a lot of fields out there. you must be confused. which, you know, it's possible that the garlic that was in the crate that said the garlic company on it went somewhere else. i didn't track it from the field to the distribution center. i have no way to know, but, you know, the way it works is basically, you know, and workers have no idea where it's going, right? because the only reason i need it because i was paying a lot of attention to details like what's the name on that piece of paper

in things like that. and so, like there's this will disconnect, but people are working the fields don't know what is going. they don't want to know what brand is being sold under. and the people buying have no idea. we know it's grown in california or california. but there's really -- like it just felt, i felt like i was in this place where they were not actually any loss for workers, which was kind of creepy in the u.s. >> and kind of true. >> and also we don't have mandatory labeling like origins of produce. so really you don't know where it's coming from. you don't know what you are buying. you go to the supermarket, they don't have to see where produce comes from, and i find that really scary and really deceptive. in europe and in britain that had that for years, oddly 20, 30 years effectively where the food is coming from. it makes me very suspicious and very skeptical when buying supermarket produce. you were talking at wal-mart,

one of the things in my notes he is wal-mart just announced that they will be putting their own label now on foods tell you whether it is a healthy choice or not, a healthy food according to the gospel of wal-mart. healthy, you know, in a wal-mart world. so that people can look at the food that wal-mart sells, the wal-mart grows and controls and owns, and they can get a sense of whether it's healthy. so they don't actually have to read nutrition labels anymore. >> is this marketing copy on the packaging, or what -- >> right now it's agreeing sticker that says great for you. it's got a little icon like a unisex figure. >> that's what my mom said about libby's for cocktails, too. [laughter] >> canned peaches. >> and through, i like a canned fruit. i'm fine with that.

if you go and look at what the actual criteria are to get the great for your label, it's not very, like i wouldn't argue with most of it. it's low sugar, any fruit or vegetable will get a. there's no added sugar, and there's some sodium criteria and things like that. personally i probably wouldn't let you think that that's been in artificial sweetener and and they're putting that in. so the thing for me that is crazy about that is if it's basically just hung is a food, a vegetable or slow soda or low sugar, like do we really need, i mean, are we really that stupid that we don't know that that is good for us? >> yes, we are. >> do we want to encourage that? spent if you want to shop at wal-mart maybe. >> yet, i mean, i do know. a lot of people at wal-mart probably know fruits and vegetables are okay, right, don't eat a lot of sugar, don't

eat a lot of salt. so for me it was sort of like this weird thing, it's what feels like satire that there's this corporation is going to tell us that we should eat our vegetables, and we're extra excited to be told by the corporation that they will tell us to eat our vegetables. you know, i think maybe we should just put energy into literacy around food and cooking. >> people are okay with wal-mart on the poetry but they're not okay with the government telling them which we. which means people trust wal-mart to make decisions more than they trust the government. >> i don't want a corporate name either. >> i find it disturbing that it's sort of the gospel according to wal-mart, that they're making these decisions as to what they consider better for you. although i guess that shows edgerton thinks it's okay, but i'm always a suspicious of that sort of thing. if they're controlling the supply chain and they own all of corporate america, this is where you're going to get things like

organic coke, it's better for you because it's organic corn syrup. >> it's sort of like hey, if it encourages someone, anybody to cook rather than just snipping open a plastic bag and thrown into the microwave, more power to wal-mart, even for these stupid sounding green labels. >> i don't know if people shop at wal-mart are necessarily dumb. i think the shop at wal-mart because -- i know you didn't mean that. it's close to the house, or -- [inaudible] >> it's cheaper, and i think we are sort talking about without naming it is just control and power. wal-mart puts other places out of business because they are so big and they control so much of the supply chain. they can make sure that they are the only grocery store in your neighborhoods.

and the same with whole foods by the way. and that's kind of, i find it shocking. but i find the most shocking is that tracie's book wasn't written before and that nobody went before. you know, did what you did, and to me that's a challenge for us as writers. we ask these questions, why is there sort of dichotomy or trichotomy, three levels of food and green is it a part of it is because of us. part about it because we do and cautiously promote this idea that there's this-and there is little food. the bad people be delivered and the good people eat high food. there's nothing in between, there is no gray areas. i think to do anything that sort of our job. >> i remember when, maybe i'm wrong, diet soda was good for you. then all of the sudden -- >> margarine.

>> yet, until they find out it causes cancer. and then it's a longer good for you, or it was growing in a way that had some sort of problem. it's great for you but it has nasty pesticides. when you listen to a medical show and they're like, this specific stronger a something hassle of pesticides. and your like okay, healthy -- cannot really get this stuff off my food? and these are the kind of things that concern me, especially peaches because of the fuzz. >> when you take those things have been good for for thousands of years and then you industrialized them, that's what an industrialized product, and it's going to be treated in a way where, you know, the chemicals, it may not be so good

for you. you sort of have to look at how people take them 300 years ago. spent i have a question for tracie i put on that note. [inaudible] >> i don't know. i would suspect they do because that's not further regulate. >> so who monitors whether or not something is good for you when you know you can't clean it off? then you feed it to your children. >> and who is accountable for that, right? that's where the question is like, do we trust that, who do we trust to sort of helpless figure that out because we as individual consumers are not going to be able to fix the problem of the pesticides being put on the fruits. >> do the best we time, new we are in the meantime sitting here, drinking -- this could've easily been served in a glass out of the tab. is this bad for me?

actually it probably is and i know it's crappy for environment and which is going to crush this thing up and it may be go through some come you know where i'm going. we just do the best that we can do. >> but we can educate people to understand illinois look for the perfect fruit. people start to -- because we are trained that way. you know, the fruit that is now blemished and watched. how much the common person that goes into wal-mart knows that's not the best product to buy. that's process, as part of this food movement to get that, those messages out. that's, you know, it's more than just whether or not it has sugar or salt or fat, or you know, whether it's been shipped from fareway. there's a whole lot of things you take into account on whether food is good for you or not.

>> teaching kids basic stuff like if it has a bug on it, ticides. in from our farmers. once in a while you put us out of i played send it out and a little spider would come crawling out. we are to waiters to put a spin on that and say that's really good because it means a bus is with pesticides. so of course we're to ask the question of where do you all see us 20 years from now, 30 years, 50 years into the future? are we like those fat people in wally riding around in those little cars on the screens in front of our faces? or is it is to worry of -- is that where we are going? are we going to be eating pellets made out of people, or it was people, remember?

>> there was a simpsons parody of it, too. simpsons reference instead. so where do you come where do we see ourselves in the future? annia, you want to field that one? >> when i was a kid there's this sort of obscure science-fiction writer named frank bottom who wrote lots of cool young adult novels, and he had this book called the missing persons at about how this world of the future where only the elite the can get actual food and there's this guerrilla revolutionary movement of people who grow like corn and tomatoes under fluorescent lights, like pro lites. and it had a profound effect on the because the guy was such a good writer. there's this scene with this little kid takes his old girlfriend got into his database that and it's like it's as

though it is pot but it's like corn and tomato's. they have committed to and she said oh, my gosh, this is amazing. tastes like nothing i've ever expressed before because they all get these little pellets and sucked out of it in the machine. so that's the sort of utopian possible future. then there's this other world, you know, that is possible, right? we all make her own yogurt, or maybe we don't but we get good yogurt bowl of sugar and gross stuff. and i think that world is really, really possible, but there's a lot of stuff going on right now that is kind of disturbing. ..

there's a lot of stuff going on right now that we should be paying attention to. as i said before, i even cupcakes but those of us that love of food, we should be maybe even a little more active in making sure that doesn't happen, and they do in other countries. maybe we should be looking to that example. >> emineth, where do you suggest in the future? >> i'm an optimist, and i feel like it's a great thing that we are all here and if there is a reason for it which is that there is the spotlight is on food and how we eat and how our food is grown, the fact we are

here is a good sign. maybe we will look back and feel like our conversation was 90's that i still think the fact that, like, people are talking about it that for the eight of the first lady is focusing on it as her life mission. people are running like michael pollen has created the food politics. it's not something that existed before he started writing pieces on the "time" magazine. that's all good. >> i think i side with you, amanda. just thinking about the childhood favorites of mine that i was just remembering and remembering at least from my perspective, my relatively small

perspective about what americans 820 years ago, i mean, god, it was like an apocalypse. it is bad. it is canned food, frozen food, it was all factory food. there wasn't a fresh peeled carrot what i grew up eating and many allowed me as well. i think what i'm starting to see now, i am a sort of body default sue dear interpol what just just because of my work, and if i'm in a supermarket in denver or somewhere in northern california or long island, generally i think what all iacp will filling up their carts with is probably all little bit less terrible than it was 20 years ago, and i can't imagine that's going to -- i don't think we are going to go

back in time. i don't know. but it feels like maybe some okay things are starting to happen, and it feels like yeah, maybe people not in some sort of mass way. but every so often are kind of respecting the very, very essentials act of cooking, and that's amazing. >> the economy has a lot to do with it, too, people the feeling like they have to fend for themselves now. >> so be it. >> i would add a little different spin. you know, this movement has gone after the children, and so, you know, they are going to grow up to create children that eat better, the thing is a day and remember eating well.

it's the middle group that's been ignored, the ones that have been raised in the 70's eating processed foods. we can't cast them aside because i personally feel if you do you are going to break the medical cyc. we are going to have so much sickness and disease and not be able to pay for it all. i think in the future starting from now and moving forward we really need to work on capturing the ones that are going to grow old and need the most support. i think they've been ignored. 20 years from now i think it's going to be okay because in the community i'm looking at people that are getting a lot. i've seen people going past the farmers' market crying because their parents are trying to push

them past because those kids one to stop and get those apples or fresh produce and the parents don't want to pay. they want to get the supermarket stuff. the kids really are doing a good job. they are reaching out and changing the culture, and it's the carnation breakfast generation and that we can keep reaching out to them with books and shows and teach them that it's not so hard to make potatoes or whatever. help to change. maybe they won't buy organic but maybe they will cook, because that is where i think a lot of the breakdown is. >> i'm sort of torn between being dystopian and optimistic but i do think one of the things that made me want to write about food is the work the reverend here, because the work she's

doing really shows that people in a working-class communities care about their food, and that's actually the largest and fastest-growing portion of the population. people breakdown in certain income more or less. and the marketers are telling the retailers you need to focus on households that earn less than $35,000 a year comes of the whole families are learning that kind of income. you are seeking change in those communities coming and i think that's really exciting and optimistic. at the same time there are structural reasons that's hard, and so i think annia's call to be like look we have to take this stuff really seriously, we can't just be doing, like, the lifestyle stuff. everyone on the panel thinks it is more than lifestyles stuff. it's beautiful informed writing and phenomenal and all that. but, you know, we've got to start just sort of generally in this society taking food

seriously and stop teasing people for it. you take your food seriously? yes, i do, and i take a shower every day and i've lost my teeth -- i floss my teeth. somebody that doesn't like junk food is somebody that is poor and it's important to remember that and build a community around that. >> i sort of with you. i feel this point. are way to becoming even more divided. michael pollen versus sarah palin raising her fist and outrage because she can't bring packaged cookies to her kids and soccer games and fighting for

the rights of the corporations like coke but i a thing together side of it will be people who care and people like us. i can't be quite as optimistic about you guys but it's part of my job is to be somewhat cynical. anyway i think we are just about out of time for this but i think we can to q&a now. we can take questions if anybody has questions. >> there are microphones going around. because this is being filmed, we need everybody to talking to the mic. spry i would like to thank you all for in all some discussion and the questions put together here. primarily to topics that you touched on, the issue of shame, both shaming people that can't support in certain ways and lecturing people how to eat. it seems like we are trying to escape the issue of shame and i

think that she's written about a certain degree on shame and the way that people that access food stamps are shamed into using them. how do we get a row this as an issue and what is the panel think about this? essentially people that are preaching the food community. you go back to come from this issue digging it out of the equation really. >> i think i like the question, i guess i'm just not completely sure -- i'm not really sure what you're getting at. >> i think i understand. it goes back to sood access and that whole notion of people that are poor don't want to eat healthy when it may the supermarkets have poor produce,

and the farmers' market is out of their price range, and it's about creating a way for people who may not have enough money to really show the way they would like the farmers market by putting in things like when they spend a fair amount of money they get it to the hour coupon that comes back the next time and cooking that coupon in the shop and just trying to level the playing field as much as we can and that is one of the reasons why we've participated in a program with the united way emergency food program we contracted with the local farmers, our particular farmers to bring down fresh produce it's

very much the same and that is distributed free of charge. so, you know, there are people out there trying to level the playing field so that, you know, it just becomes food. equal access is not special food, it's not -- it's just food. we have access to and that's donated food past expiration put that in compost. let's start feeding our people food and say there are ways we can level the playing field and pay for it. i don't know if that all the answers your question. to add, because i think what i would love to see institutes culture move to where we don't have to come to light, talk about where

the food is from or its pedigree because it's all good stuff and it's produced well and we can focus on other things like art and music and culture. i would love to see that. and i think that the idea that we want to get to the point where it can just be food coming and we know it's good, it's like that's really -- i love that. >> you know, i -- this is going to sound like that but i'm going to say it. those are a lot of things i would imagine most of us here in this room with a new york city, and you know, our king the farmers' market is the union square farmers' market, and like many new yorkers, i respect a lot of what i see and what i buy at the union square farmers' market. there is frankly another sight of me that is really appalled by it, and the fact that in season

plums and peaches are $4.50 a pound. it's not right. it's not okay. i've been to a farmers' market. i've been to a couple in california but i have one in mind in particular that in sacramento, and for me it's like a dream a farmers market. it's where everybody shocked or of a couple of visits that i was there, like just from my perspective it seems like all of the cultures, all economic levels, all races and skin colors, it was just a this really amazing, really true wealth of the culture of sacramento. the entire metropolitan area. and there were plums for sale for 50 cents. of course you're in the heart of the central california valley in the summertime where most of the plums we eat in america come from, but there was also $25 a

bottle of artisan olive oil. it was like a place where sacramento shocked, and it actually bugs me that, like, i don't get that there are exceptions and dollar bags in the union square farmers' market but it does kind of bug me that the overriding things is about for me any way $4.50. it disturbs me coming and may be that hooks into what you are talking about. it makes me feel shameful. >> if i could one quick thing. detroit farmer's market is the same way. it's all kinds of people from all walks of life and it's great because you can get tons of great food, and it's totally affordable. that's the way it is. it's not done of fancy. you just go there, everyone shops they're coming and you're done.

>> [inaudible] and stuff like that and then the great markets where it will be like half mexican and it's a very pivotal chicago thing and it's all dirt cheap. but he was asking about the same thing which i think is interesting because food has this really visceral profound effect on people. i tell people where it affects. i had some food once, let me tell you about it. [laughter] like everybody's got a story, maybe one in 100 you can tell they are not really interested in food but most people, you know, most people have their own food culture. some people react with this feeling you must know all this amazing magic stuff about food and you must only donley and on cheese and caviar and i just stuck by comparison to read part of what we can do to not make

people feel ashamed is just not to judge people who eat frozen pizza. when people react like this, like i grew up eating frozen pizza but my mom put vegetables on it or my mother made a duncan hines mixed stuff because she would get it for 50 cents but then she would add ground pairs to it that she ground by hand. what we think this economy is kind false. >> one thing you have to keep in mind is that our farmers market system in new york as a geographical limit to where the food can come from, so i think it's a 100-mile limit. because like you were saying, those are just sort of general stuff from all over the place. i'm with you. it drives me crazy to go to the farmers' market and put one tomato on the scale and its $5. >> i agree but talking about eating square. i lived in brooklyn and people

are paying with food stamps. people who live around union square in the highest real-estate. >> was like 20 years ago. >> one thing we are not talking about is food clubs by the way, organic food at half the price you wouldn't be at union square and often cheaper than the model organic food at the supermarket. it's a bunch of people that get together. there are different kind of food clubs just like there's different kind of bars. you can google it and go home and start your own. in the 70's - like this is my night to talk about how great the 70's was. everyone had their food club in boston it wouldn't be a physical space would just be a bunch of people would get together and they would call the distribution

company. the truck with, and everyone with of unload it. it was stuff regular people did. it might be a little harder but we can still do it. >> it's not just for produce, everything you can eat from eikenberry, the same kind of idea. >> my questions about teachers. than mothers, which tend to be vegetables. work? >> does your husband like to overcook fungibles? [laughter]

skin and can send him to me. >> some people really like overcooked its troubles because that is what they grew up with and it's a comforting for them. i like over cooked carrots. i will admit it. i can say it. i like them soft. >> do you want to take a question? >> i have something to say. food clubs, i do love them but sometimes there are certain things like most things really can only be taught in person. remember ten years ago distance learning was the new thing. there were not even going to be classrooms anymore because they were all going to learn on the computer. come to find out it wouldn't work so well necessarily. we learned by doing stuff and often by having somebody show us how to do stuff.

sometimes it is just someone you know that is the best teacher. estimate there are some pretty -- traveling back in time 25 years ago, there wasn't -- there were not so many sources to turn to for information about where to learn to cook. plain and simple, as there are now. it is pretty incredible. however, i do think it's important to remember that by and large what we see on tv and the food network, top chef for that matter affects, it's entertainment. you get to that td narcoleptic thing in the zone out and fall in love with personalities even on st. cooking shows. but there are some amazing books that are out there. these sood blogs -- food blogs

that annia is talking about, it is phenomenal, explosion of information out there. it's incredible. it's absolutely incredible. it's everybody's finger tips. >> i would just say that i mostly at learn to cook from cookbooks because my mom was really six why was this dorky little kid that was at home. there's a parent teacher conference i'm going to make croissant's with margarine. i went and i did that and i think if you can find cookbooks and sort of look for them having good little bits that explain something just like a couple basic recipes and uzi -- they will tell you the tension is supposed to be when you pierce the carriage with four or something like that, which is often why reporters often make good recipe writers because you need these concrete details -- you find a few folks that do that and it makes sense for your husband, right? because everybody learns

differently. of ravee drives different languages by different people like different coke books. i find that powerful because i have a cookbook my turn to for anything like that. there is joy of cooking, really good basic things. but the key is also the person learning has to be okay, i'm going to learn this and decided to really focus and figure it out. but i found you can learn from books like that pretty well. >> there's a whole bunch of cooking and teaching applications coming out like market is doing one. books illustrated, they just came out with a whole program. top chef has i think it's called top chefs university. there's going to be more and more. and actually there is a new company that's going to be giving a daily video e-mail that teaches you something like how to cook something every day

coming out soon. i think yeah, there is that information available. >> when we got closer, so you are getting them as fresh as possible from the garden or i think he wants to capture as much as the flavor and nutrients as you can come in and even being something like salad being buried in sell the dressing and those kind of things, it comes from pretty much to me having tasteless food. tasting food, even if you grow it better i think that it's it just an easier have it. >> what she ate before she came here was rolvaag -- raw bok coy. [laughter] >> we don't even need to cook

it. but we become attached to what we grow. i think that will help. him, [laughter] >> people need to do it 12 times soft vegetables. love them. >> i wonder if we can go back to the class topic.3'3'3';'3' to go back to your question]s about shame or judgment of lower glacis and surprised that nobody has explored the exploitation of those class's if you will buy sort of demilitarized quote, machine as you called it coming and while tracie mentioned the

exploitation of the workers and suppressed nobody explored the topic of the exploitation of people who because of circumstances or a essentiallysp afraid for her every corporation >> i think it's maybe important to remember i don't think that falling prey to this machine that we both now with reference i don't think that it's class specific political of us as americans in one way or another -- i don't know, maybe who victimized is a strong term to describe this but in a way maybe it's really not. i think we all fall prey to it.

we are all in a kind of mass hypnosis, too where we've forgotten the basic things like how to simply try and egg. that is of course an exaggeration that is in some ways contradicting some of the things i was talking about earlier, but i don't think that it's something just specific to poor people or middle class people are rich people. i think in the way we all as americans are had enticed by this kind of really screwy way of a nourishing our bodies. >> and not just as americans by the way. i read about middle east politics. there is a famous story, not to go back and but i'm sure everyone here is probably aware of saddam hussein's gassing of the kurds in northern iraq in 1988. a great horrible thing that happened at the end of the war. one of the things that made that

possible is that we were showering him and supporting the subsidized american wheat. this is one of the things that helped prop up saddam hussein during his reign. there's a famous story about one of his biggest henchman. at that time come he was sort of the breadbasket of iraq. he was making the decision to do this and he said -- somebody said what about kurdistan? we can't do this campaign against these guys. he was like we don't need your what, we have the americans wheat. we think of ourselves as being the primary intent of it and the primary actors. go to the wikileaks and dewolf and some interesting new dialogues between american

diplomats trying to tell people in other countries you have to stop these farmers from saying they won't accept food. we have to make sure these guys accept our food. so again i feel like we have our work cut out for us it is not just us as americans and we don't even think of. >> i feel like the biggest hurdle with conflict that in addition -- will try to think that food should be cheaper. it's hard to have a balanced conversation about it because when you're on this side of the issue and you say that, you look like a jackass, but it's true. food should cost something so

people can get paid minimum wage at least to read this is the ongoing conflict that is difficult to resolve. >> we're trained to believe food should be treated and that we should put our trust and corporations and corporations that produce the products can be trusted because they are the great pillars of american societies and corporations are people. look what they're purchasing. they are good for us. they've made america strong. if you put your trust and corporations than you are going to eat whatever they tell you to eat. >> hopefully the rest of the world will not follow this kind of terrible model that we have set up for the last five, 617, eight generations or so, i'm sorry, decades or so. i mean one thing just popped into mind.

as you were speaking - traveling to mexico since probably the late 1970's and the spent recently a couple of days with diana kennedy, one of the greek authorities on mexican cooking. on my recent trips and this is something that diana was echoing, mexico's way of eating is kind of becoming like ours was maybe in the 1940's or 1950's and it's kind of not good that a lot of the local farmers are kind of out of business and a lot of the way mexico meets now is because it's dependent on big huge agribusiness and it's not cool. that's just mexico as an example. that -- i've got to say that is unsettling for me personally. >> there is a word you're

describing. it's called obesity and that is the result of more factory farming. maybe some of those interesting is food should be expensive -- >> i didn't say it should be expensive. >> we should be trained to think it's cheap. >> one of the things that's happened in this period that we are talking about in this decade is that we have sort of been trained to think certain foods should be cheap that are quite expensive to produce like wide refined sugar. why is it that my grandmother made molasses cookies because molasses was cheap. why do we think that it's our birthright? if we know how sugar is produced that is what should be expensive, vegetables and food should be cheap. we've got it kind of almost exactly reversed.

>> we eat less and less. we talk about how europeans have a greater percentage and to value it more. it's likely to find a middle ground. >> i am also a little upset when i shot at a food four less which is a southern california -- it's a cheap supermarket chain and you can buy oftentimes ten flames for a dollar there is something not right for that story. >> we always have to contextualize this with our we stagnating in as much as europeans spend on food, they also spend less on housing and education and health care which

are things of the european government subsidized heavily. in france the comparative numbers for from 2007 and the average american household was spending about 13% of their income on food and the french were spending 19 or 2286% difference when i calculated this americans spend 6% more on education, health care cohousing come something like 20% of their gdp. we are making decisions at a large national level about how we want to out money and what we are expecting people to shoulder the burden of at home not to mention child care which doesn't get pulled into that as well as vacation time. if i had five weeks of vacation on would be happy to spend a week of that tending to the garden and things like that, so i think it's important to make sure people are getting decent wages and develop a way to talk about food so people would appreciate it and don't think it's worth less but we have to

contextualize the discussions in terms of what life is like for a lot of people in the u.s. right now. >> part of this thing we have to do is see it as an economic political story. it's a anthropology, sociology. we tend to look at it. >> unfortunately how we are out of time. i am getting signals from somebody over there. thank you all for coming and ton th4oe panel. [applause] stomach every that there are books for sale here by me and also amanda and jim and annia are wonderful writers and everyone should talk to the reverend because she is awesome. [applause]

because the idea of reform and opening was not unique to

deng xiaoping and now chose to be the successor who turned out not to be really a great and strong leader was in favor of a lot of this reform, and a lot of the senior officials were in favor of the reforms. to some extent you have a very long time perspective but when you thought about hong kong use it if you keep the present system, if you ask obama what do you plan to do for the next 50 years for this country there would hardly be a serious question. no american leader -- for years is long term. think from the end of your turn to the next election so he did have a long-term perspective and at the same time he was experimental and he didn't have the fixed notions and used the expression crossed the river by groping for stones.

that term was attributed that he it wasn't unique to him. he didn't invent the term. he had used the ideas and he put it all together and provided the direction that made it happen. you are watching book tv on c-span2 and we are on location in new york city at the annual book publishing industry convention held at the javits center in midtown manhattan. i want to introduce you to new author whose book is coming out in september and his name as powers and he's written a novel yellow birds. if he would give us a little of your background as a people will understand where you're coming from. >> i grew up in virginia.

estimate what year was that? >> 1997 before my senior year in high school. i was in iraq in 2004 and 2005. i've always been a huge reader and writer, too. when i got that from overseas i realized i had a story to tell about the war sali started writing the book. >> how long were you in the army in the armed forces? >> eight years, total. >> did you feel fulfilled? >> there was a lot i liked about. a lot of good people. i appreciated the discipline and i learned a lot about myself. >> so you are in iraq in 2003 and 2004. when you got back and left the

army what was your life like? >> i think one of the things that is difficult coming back is the lack of order and direction. as difficult as it can be in the military and overseas you know what is expected of you, no matter how hard the job as, it's right there in front of you. when you get home there is so much free time that the options and possibilities and stimuli especially coming back from the desert. baffler readjustment period is challenging. >> what did you find the most challenging? >> not knowing what i was supposed to do next. i was going to get out of the military when i got back from my

tour and i didn't know what the next step was going to be for me. >> so you started writing a novel, correct. how did you get it to somebody that could publish it? published by little brown? >> i started working on that as an undergraduate. i'd taken creative writing class as writing poetry of that time we i showed it to professors and they were encouraging and he also graduated. he offered to send it. estimate is this based on your experience in iraq? >> i think the work of the imagination that wouldn't have

happened without the experience is that on had. the circumstance that would occur in the book, but i think that a motion of the book is something that i wanted to get out there and communicate to people. questions i've got to ask and other veterans ask what was it like over there. it's hard to know how to answer that question but that is what i was trying to do when i started to write the book is to highlight what is it like petraeus kimmage you talk about the emotional core. what do you bring out? >> i think confusion is probably -- we have a job to do and you understand your job. you may not understand all of the questions down the line the way it affects people around you and particularly the way that it affects your family at home.

i don't think that i understood that until i had some time to mature about what the year was like for her so that is the story that i wanted to tell, too, the effect it can have on the family's. >> where did the title come from? >> the traditional is one of the of the graphs of the book. the yellowbird with a yellow bill which we have had. islamic why did you decide to make this a novel? >> i think a lot of people have really capable talked about the big picture view of what's happened in iraq and afghanistan

and what is going on over there but i felt like there's an opportunity to tell individual story, one person's consciousness for life during that tour there was an opportunity for the story to told of a smaller scale. >> kevin powers, was ptsd an issue for you? >> i don't know. i never diagnosed anything like that. it was tough coming back. it was a bigger challenge than i thought i was going to be but i expected things would be different. that is certainly something that i've experienced, but i don't know -- my experience overseas and coming back maybe they would

raise awareness of what people are going through. >> your students at the university of texas. >> i graduated in may. >> as a first-time author what has been your experience getting published? >> it's exciting. it's not something i expected, but the middle ground is fantastic to work with and i felt i had a system in place that's a privilege people might read something that i've written. >> so the next book are you planning on doing another book? >> i am. i have a book of poetry that is more or less finished and then i

will start on my second novel in the very early stages now. >> is it also based on your military experience? >> no, it's not. >> we've been talking with kevin powers about his novel, yellow birds based on his experience is an iraqi. >> jean edward smith senior scholar at columbia university presents a biography of president dwight eisenhower entitled "eisenhower in war and peace." he spoke of the 2012 roosevelt festival of the presidential library and museum in hyde park new york. [applause] >> thank you very much. it's always a pleasure to return to the roosevelt presidential library and i think this is my 26th visit here and while i'm

going to talk primarily about eisenhower today, let me say a few words about fdr and ike them very briefly when eisenhower was sent to london in june of 1942, a very pro forma session and the white house leader on his way to tehran at the end of 43 the president stopped off in north africa and speak with eisenhower fdr was taking his measure and he liked what he saw.ob they were very much alike. the bonded on the trip to see the battlefield of the carthage

immediately after the conference, roosevelt picked eisenhower to demand the invasion. the job was marshall if he wanted it, but with characteristic self as a plan, marshall declined to express an opinion when roosevelt asked, and at that point fdr said simply it would be eisenhower. eisenhower was roosevelt's first choice, really, in the d-day invasion. by that point, she had three major amphibious operations under his belt. he was experienced leading the courses. the old story that roosevelt did not sleep with marshall out of

washington was still in that was put on it in order to save marshall space buy not getting the command position. ike and roosevelt met one morning in january, 1944, when eisenhower visited washington. they thought alike, they got along marvelously, except on a question of charles de gaulle. roosevelt hated de gaulle and he knew he was essential and outmaneuvered the president which very few people have ever done. now, my text for to this lecture on eisenhower is the letter that ike wrote to his brother, editor, when ike was president in 1955. edgar was one of his older brothers. political party attempt to abolish social security and

eliminate the labor law you would never hear of that party again. there is a tiny splinter group that believes you can do these things but the number is negligible and they are stupid. [laughter] eisenhower was a progressive conservative, and on fiscal matters she was militantly conservative. he insisted on a balanced budget. insisted the deficit spending and refused to cut taxes until the government's expenditures were in line with its revenue. but he also recognized governments have a positive role to play. when the economy turned down after the korean war, eisenhower launched the interstate highway program, which is the mother of all stimulus programs. the cost of the interstate program succeeded the total expenditures of the new deal

after 1933 to 1941, and the entire program was funded without impacting the federal budget. simply by increasing the tax on the gases. eisenhower also constructed the seaway, a public-works project opened in the midwest to the he expanded the social security system adding 12 million self-employed persons, doctors, lawyers, accountants and so forth to the social security rolls and increase the benefits across the board and raise the minimum wage by 25%. but above all, eisenhower took on senator mccarthy and defeated the wisconsin senator restoring sanity almost after a decade of anti-communist. eisenhower orchestrated the army

response during the hearings, and at a crucial point during those hearings, issued one of the most far reaching issues ever ordered for government employees testifying before congress. would he handle the entire matter behind the scenes, then he showed his hands, never exposed himself. i'm not going to get into a contest with that skunk, ike told his brother. he did all behind the scenes. eisenhower's appointment to a federal judiciary led the way to social equality, racial equality in the united states. and it was not just the appointments of earl warren and oral brennan to the supreme court, but the host of liberal republicans such as the president appointed himself like albert title of georgia and john

of louisiana. these were the judges that were in the vanguard of the civil rights struggle. but the most significant judicial appointment i think that eisenhower made at that time is that of john marshall hall of the great conservative justice and just after the landmark decision in brown v board of education. shortly after that decision came down, justice robert jackson died leaving the vacancy on the court, and at that point roosevelt turned to the grandson of the great marshall harlem who would be the only dissenter in percy versus ferguson and 1896, the case legalized segregation by appointing the great dissenter eisenhower was making a statement he could not have adored. he said eisenhower was going to

enforce it. when the segregation attempted to swap the integration in little rock eisenhower sent a regular army, not just a regular army but the 101st airborne to enforce the court's order. eisenhower's view on the segregation laws but he recognized this was a bitter pill for the self to swallow so he placed the emphasis on the fact that this was law, the supreme court decision was the law of the land and eisenhower was going to enforce it. it would be easier for the south to accept desegregation if he stressed that the law of the land and the successors lbj and jfk emphasized the virtue of integration. i would stress the rolph law. and if you look back to 1950 and

the early 1950's this might have been the most destructive threat. in foreign policy eisenhower after the election in 1952, before taking office, he went with an army plane the tower and concluded there wasn't winnable but on the spot john foster dulles and a significant portion of the republican party eisenhower made peace and after he did so early in his term of one american serviceman was killed in action for the remaining eight years of eisenhower's presidency. fer eisenhower, the limited war was a contradiction of terms like the great military president ulysses grant,

eisenhower heeded the war and firmly insisted that the united states would not become involved in conflict unless national survival was at stake, not national security but national survival. eisenhower by the way had no national security advisor. he was his own national security adviser. he had a secretary to the council but no national security adviser that came with president kennedy in 1961 and they tested his judgment completely. as president he slashed defense spending, reduced the u.s. ground forces and introduced what we call the new military strategy. the united states wouldn't find the war beneath the threshold, and if it did go to war, it would be with massive retaliation.

under eisenhower that kept the peace. the joint chiefs of staff and members of the national security council recommended the use of nuclear weapons and relieved french garrison a second time and both times he said no. few presidents would have had the confidence and the courage to do that. eisenhower understood that term we learned so much about today but it wasn't a free pass, but an obligation for the united states to set an example as the world's most powerful country, eisenhower believed that the united states and its actions will always be above reproach. when england, france and israel invaded egypt to seize the canal one week before the presidential election in 1956 eisenhower was

livid and was determined to force the withdrawal. we are not going to withdraw a just because we asked them to come he told the secretary of state. great britain's finances were choking and so eisenhower and the secretary of treasury and george humphrey on the british pound on the international marks. two days later, the prime minister called eisenhower and asked for financial assistance. eisenhower agreed to provide as soon as they will from suez by little humphrey to drive the town down to zero the prime minister he had been a friend of eisenhower and there were the oldest allies.

eisenhower insisted on compliance with international law particularly the underdeveloped world was enormous. american prestige had rarely been higher and eisenhower concealed his hat throughout just like his dealings with mccarthy. the documentation pertaining to this has become available really only in the last several years. with eisenhower's style he liked to make everything he did easy and he enjoyed being underestimated by his opponents. many of you here probably remember to the election of 1956 when we had a bumper stickers that read hogan for president if we are going to have a golfer let's have a good one. [laughter]

eisenhower made mistakes as president. he was concerned about communist political activity and listened critically to the cia and didn't guatemala and iran were successful with the consequences particularly in iran had been disastrous. eisenhower also approved the flight of gary powers on the eve of the senate to read this was a dreadful mistake which to his credit he took great responsibility for. eisenhower like grant was the product of the peacetime army. joking to myself about grant, two weeks ago i spoke at the grant presidential library on grant and eisenhower, but if you can believe it, the u.s. grand presidential library is a mississippi state university. [laughter] it is at mississippi state university, and the president said well, look it's on the map,

why shouldn't it be? [laughter] >> none of the six brothers carried that faith into their adult life. eisenhower is the only president legislated to the united states who did not belong to a church at the time. that was not an oversight on

ike's part, but deliberate. it reresented going to church every sunday at west point, and said he was not going back. ize p hour -- eisenhower also understood religion and later did join the methodist church. under ike, question added the words "under god" in the pledge of allegiance and put "in god we trust" on the currency, and eisenhower at the recommendation of ezra taft benson began each cabinet meeting with a silent prayer. one day, the cabinet secretary passed a note to eisenhower who had said, mr. president, you have forgotten the silent prayer. eisenhower read the note and said "god dammit, we forgot the

silent prayer." [laughter] eisenhower entered west point in 1911 at the age of 21. he was roughly three years older than the classmates. he went to the academy to get an education unlike mcarthur and patton who went there for future glory. he was a color sergeant in the color academy. his first duty assignment was with the 19th infantry in texas. -there he -- it was there he met mami, a wealthy family, wintered in texas, in san antonio, and they were married july 1st, 1916. she was 19 at the time. ike did not get to france no

world war i, but spent it in gettysberg. he ended at colonel, reduced to major in the contraction of the army afterwards and remained a major for 16 years in the army. promotions in the army in those days were strictly by seniority. strictly by seniority. there were no promotions up through the rank of general, and took ike 16 years to come to the top of the promost list. in the decade of the 20s, ike served under the tutorship, really, under a legendary figure in the military, general fox connor, the operation officer in europe, sort of the cardinal of the military profession that's

there. connor took a liking to eisenhower and took him with him in 192 # 1, and by so doing, saved eisenhower from being court marshalled. the inspector general wanted to court marshall him because he submitted a false voucher for a housing allowance for his son who was not present at the time, $250.40, which he repaid, but they wanted to court marshall him. when he went to panama, the inspector general realized the powers were on eisenhower side and settled for a letter of rep reprimand in the file which is still there, in ike's file. after panama, he went to the

sergeant staff school, one of the stations you have to punch -- one of the buttons you have to punch in the military career. if he thought the chief of infantry passed him over, and fox connor, deputy chief of staff transferred him to the corp., and he attended levinworth, graduated first in the class, went back to the infantry, and the chief of infantry was annoyed at eisenhower that he was assigned to fort bening. the 24th infantry, a guy graduating first in the class, chief of infantry assigns him to a housekeeping unit at the infantry school in fort bening. it is a black unit. similar, in that respect, to the black 10th calvary, but considered as the worst unit in the army, and assignment there was understood to be a penal

assignment. again, fox connor intervenes. after three months there, normal duty of duty was three years, eisenhower was assigned to the battle commission in paris. fox connor pulled those string z as well. they enjoyed it enormously, but they were out of the mainstream, and, again, for the fourth time, connor interviewed and went back, and it was there in washington at the war department where general mcarthur, chief of staff, saw eisenhower, made eisenhower the military secretary, and eisenhower spent the next eight years working for mcarthur while he was chief of staff in washington. this began as absolute hero worship on eisenhower's part, and ended in mutual hostility

between the two. in 1939, eisenhower returned to the united states. i might say just a further word about the assignment. mcarthur retired the chief of staff and from the army, and his job was to command -- he was the commander of the army, and eisenhower, in effect, was a senior u.s. army person with the philippine army, mcarthur, the commander, but out of the u.s. army, and roosevelt did not recall him to active duty in the army until june of 1941. eisenhower came back in 1939 to command the first battalion in the 15th infantry in fort louis, and in quick succession, chief of staff of third division,

chief of staff of 9th corp., and third army down in san antonio again where the famous louisiana maneuvers took place in the summers of 1941. the third army beat the socks off the second army, eisenhower chief of staff to third army, got credit for that. general marshall went down to watch the louisiana maneuvers. these were over 500,000 troops marching all over louisiana for two weeks. they asked who should head the war plans division in washington and he said eisenhower. the week after pearl harbor, eisenhower was ordered from san antonio to come back to washington to head the war plans division. in june of 1942, marshall, who would see eisenhower and his effectiveness, sent eisenhower to london to become chief of

staff for the invasion of the war department believed was going to take place in november of 1942. that, of course, was incredible wishful thinking. president roosevelt insisted they come to grip with the germans somewhere in is 1942 and preferably before november because of the congressional elections. selected by default, invasion of north africa. marshall did not want to command the invasion of north africa, and eisenhower, again, was there on the spot, got along famously with the british, and eisenhower was selected to command the invasion of north africa. the invasion of north africa for the american army and eisenhower was a learning experience. rich atkinson has a wonderful book "army at dawn," which is superb. eisenhower learned. he also learned that the state department and roosevelt were

totally wrong about who knew what and who was doing what in france and formed an alliance with the gull at the time that remained throughout the lives of the two. then came sicily, which eisenhower commanded as well, second amphibious landing. we've all seen the movie "patton," and how the campaign went out and got back to mocina before montgomery got there and so forth. what we don't realize is that by going out there, he took the pressure off the german front so they couldn't understand what he was doing, and that enabled marshall to withdraw the entire german army, back to italy where it remained for the next two years. eisenhower -- it was not a good day for the home team in that

respected. the landing in italy, eisenhower's third am amphibious landing, again, a near disaster. they didn't have enough preinvasion bombardment, not enough air cover, not enough troops on shore. eisenhower learned from that. he had three amphibious landing, learned, like grant, learn the from his mistakes. i won't say anything about the war. eisenhower was lucky. if you can imagine having 5,000 ships off the french shore, including landing ships, and not being detected, the weather socked in, and the german air force could not get off. incredible. i would like to say a word about paris. eisenhower and the battle plan, assuming they were going to bypass paris, the commander of paris said he was under orders to destroy paris, but he was not

going to, but eisenhower had to get there quick because if not, he was going to be relieved by the furyk, which he would have been. they decided that if he was not going to destroy it, he was going to take it, and so the reason that paris was taken, really, is because eisenhower changed plans and marched into paris or allowed the general to march into paris. the battle of the bulge, the only time in the war in france that eisenhower took personal command. he really decided that they were let them run out of gas, which they did, and they closed it off. it was eisenhower who decided not to press on to berlin. the boundaries were agreed to. he saw no reason to capture berlin, a prestige objective,

which they would have to pull back from it anyway. after the war, stalin invited eisenhower to moscow. a word about that because eisenhower flew in a russian plane, and they flew very low from berlin back to moscow. eisenhower saw the destruction, not a house standing, really, the long, long trip, convinced eisenhower at the point the russians did not want war that had been so terrible, and the losses had been so severe, that it convinced him the russians were not eager. it was a lesson he took back -- took into the presidency. after eisenhower served -- after that, eisenhower served as chief of staff for two years. he really didn't want the job. he was winding the services down. he retired in the beginning the 1948, and then wrote "crusade in

europe," and he wrote grant's memoirs before that. it doesn't reach grant memoirs in terms of literary style, but it's probably the best memoir coming out of world war ii, the most complete -- the least -- eisenhower did not grind axes. eisenhower wrote it himself over a period of four months working 16 hours a day, seven days a week, dictated the script. it's all his. after that, he was president of columbia, and a word or two about that because most academics poo-poo ike's presidency. ike stood four square at columbia in defense of academic freedom on several occasions.

other presidents could then safely hide behind eisenhower. he balanced the budget which had been in a deficit for the last five years, and organized columbia's first fund drive raising $2 million. butler, in his later years, nicolas murray butler was president for 30 years, and later slacked off in raising money. eisenhower was really learning the job. one of the frequently told stories is eisenhower's first meeting with the columbia faculty, like you, eisenhower told them he wanted the faculty to know that the university was very proud of the faculty. [laughter] at that point, a nobel laureate in physics stood up and said, general eisenhower, the faculty are the university.

the fault are the university. at that point, eisenhower flashed that smile, threw the hands over his head, and said, "i vender." he was learning the job and would have been an effective president except on that first tuesday after the first monday in november 1948. thomas duey lost the election. eisenhower assumed that he was young enough, if elected president in 1948, that he'd serve two terms, and that ike would be too old. when duye lost the election in november 1948, eisenhower lost interest in columbia. there was a bigger prize at there, and that was the presidency. he became, while still president of columbia, the unofficial chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. the original legislation did not provide for a chairman. ike was the unofficial chairman. 234 january of 1951, president

truman then headed nato to organize the military forces and nato. it was clearly the candidate of the liberal wing of the republican party. there was such a thing in those days. [laughter] for president -- taft was his opponent. they could not -- duey and general clay, sort of running eisenhower's campaign, couldn't get ike who was in paris to say that he was a candidate. ike kept putting -- they knew that he wanted to run, but they couldn't get him to announce he was going to be a candidate. well, in may, the republican national committee announced that douglas mcarthur would be the keynote speaker at the republican convention. clay, who had served with eisenhower and mcarthur and

knew all of the details of their relationship, told d or -- duey, write eisenhower a personal letter in long hand saying mcarthur is selected as the keynote speaker, and we are concerned that in the keynote speech, he's going to sweep the delegates away with his eloquence, sweep over the convention, and they are going to nominate him by acclamation. the letter was hand carried over by a pilot, pwa, to ike in paris. the next day, the next day, eisenhower announced that he was coming back to contest the republican nomination. that says a great deal about the relationship between ike and mcarthur, which, of course, clay was privy to. after ike -- very close -- eisenhower did not win the nomination on the first ballot. after the rule of the states on the first ballot, eisenhower did

not have the majority, and before speaker martin, the chairman of the convention could announce the results, warren berger waved the minnesota standard and minnesota switched to eisenhower putting him over the top. that evening at the blackstone hotel, eisenhower had dinner with herbert brownmill, really his campaign manager and general clay, and they asked -- brownell told me the story, who do you wish to be your vice presidential candidate? this is in 1952, and eisenhower according to brownell, said, well, isn't that up to the convention? brownell said, we rolled our eyes a bit and said, yes, general, it is up to the convention, but i'm sure they're looking to you exclusively for guidance. [laughter]

eisenhower -- namedded off general electric wilson, head of american airlines, good vice presidential dan tats, and they were looking and said, general, they are fine men, great vice presidents, but we really need someone whose name is recognizable to the delegates on the floor, and if you don't think about it, really, general clay and i think that maybe you should go with senator nixon from california. eisenhower said, well, i met him. if they want it, it's okay. that's how nixon received the nomination. ike was appalled when the -- when nix con scandal broke. he was appalled at nixon's speech. he assumed nixon would take himself out of the race, which he didn't, and relations between them never really improved much after that.

after -- i spoke to the eisenhower presidency earlier, but after the term expired in 1961, he returned, stayed out of public life, wrote a two volume work on his presidency which does not compare to "crusade in europe," avoided politics, taught himself to adjust to civilian life, had to learn how to dial a tornado -- telephone and learn to drive a car. he had heart trouble. died after a prolonged illness at walter reid hospital on march 28th, 1969. he was buried in a very simple ceremony. in a gi casket, a $90gi casket

wearing simply his ike jacket with five stars on the shoulder, but no decorations or medals. i think eisenhower really was someone who was closely underrated. in many respec, i think, was the second most successful president in the 20th century after fdr. i think i've been privileged to be able to write the biographies both of eisenhower and franklin roosevelt. i'm happy to answer questions, and there's several issues that i didn't cover which i'm sure you'll ask about. i thank you very much. [applause]

>> [inaudible] >> thank you for the wonderful talk. just before i ask a question, i wanted to tell you my brother was at columbia when he was the president. he had gone there under the gi bill. he was a member of the american veterans' committee. they went to eisenhower's office for some reason, and eisenhower said, why aren't you guys in the american legion, which was just the opposite of what the afc was all about. i'd like you to tell us a little more about eisenhower and mcarthur at the time of the veterans' march on washington. eisenhower was mcarthur's

military secretary. he had the next office. >> eisenhower was a major, and mcarthur was chief of staff. there's a picture in the book of eisenhower and mcarthur. there you see eisenhower, starry-eyed, looking at mcarthur. eisenhower, later in his -- eisenhower later said i told the general he shouldn't do this and so forth and so on. there's no evidence, whatever, to support that. eisenhower wrote the official report, which mcarthur's report on the bonus march. he defended it, he was in sympathy with it, and it's only later that eisenhower decided that that was probably not a good position to take and changed his position. eisenhower has done that on several occasions. he is reinterpreted -- he was

very much in favor of it. george patton led the troops across the bridge, and -- yes, sir? >> yeah, hi. i have not read your eisenhower book, but your fdr book is marvelous, especially the parts about warm spring. i have two questions for you. if you could ask dwightize p hour one question, what would you ask, and what do you think his answer would be? same question for fdr. if you could ask fdr one question, what would you ask him, and what do you think his answer would be? >> his weak point was the relationship with the gull which was inexcusable. i'd have to ask about the relationship with the gull and whatever. with eisenhower, gosh. you know, i really think i have

to take a pass on that. i'll tell you a story. many of you will not remember, but a rollly poly first baseman for the washington senators in 1939 and 1940. immobile in the field. always led the american league in fielding. a reporter asked him, how can you lead the american league in fielding, you're immobile out there. he said it's simple. if you can't touch the ball, you can't make an error. [laughter] i think i'll pass on that. [laughter] >> i voted for stevenson. [laughter] >> so did i. >> to my surprise, i found myself at a cabinet meeting with eisenhower, and he was a wonderful person.

he was a wonderful person. he was interested in the time, in the moment, and he got concentrated on the moment and the issue at hand. i was presenting a slide projection that was built for rockefeller's presentation because rockefeller had not left yet. i went there at 7:30 in the morning to the cabinet meeting and preparing the slides and all the sudden, i feel two hands on the back of me. his son, will you take me to the

show? i took him to the show. we spend a half hour together. took him to the show, and then when the cabinet got together, you know, he listened to me. he listened to every word, and every time rockefeller presented a pie chart, for instance, about the school construction and why was it, he asked me questions. eisenhower, focus on the pie chart? the school construction, mind you. he built the schools too. why is it a half a budget going to be presented paid by the government, a quarter by the state, and a quarter by the locals, and the reason was -- i told him the reason was they wanted the local people to be able to decide where their

schools were going to be. the moment rockefeller presented that chart, he says, that's right. [laughter] because he took what i said. every time with the chart, he said exactly what i said. he paid attention and had respect for the cabinet. he had cabinet meetings every month. i don't know if you know, but the question is, do you know if the presidents, do they have respect for their cabinet and cabinet meetings too, usually? >> you make a marvelous point. eisenhower met with the cabinet about every week and met with the national security council also every week. there were roughly 300, 372 meetings in the national security council when eisenhower was president, and he presided over 360 of the meetings, and

the 12 missed was because he was out of the country or in the hospital. eisenhower knew all of the details, did not have a national security adviser, and with the cabinet as well, met the national security council tuesday and friday, and he was there. he presided over them. they had respect, and he expected the officers to run their own show and not to raise anything in a cabinet meeting having anything to do with their department because they should handle that themselves. eisenhower gave them a great deal of -- unlike fdr, perhaps, gave them a great deal of free play. >> [inaudible] >> thank you. [applause]

>> next, we hear from john stagg on his book "the war of 1812", and from charlottesville, this is part of booktv's college series. this is 20 minutes. >> host: john stagg, the author of "the war of 1812: conflict for a continent," university of virginia

professor, john stagg. is it the second american war? >> guest: they called it the second war for independence in the sense of their regard that it's a necessary sequel for the first war of independence, the american revolution. there were reasons they thought that was the case, and the title's more or less stuck. you see it used even in the 20th century books. most historians now say american independence was not really at stake in this war, but contemporaries had their own reasons for thinking it was at stake, and so it's a title that dates from early after the war, american staff and publishing books about the war as early as 1816. >> host: calling it war of 1812? >> guest: both the war of 1812 or light war with dwreat britain. one of the books was called the

great war. it's a strange anded odd book to read as it reproduces the cadences of the bible, and, thus, james, spake to congress. this way of thinking about it starts immediately after the war is over in 1815. >> host: why was this war fought? how did it develop? >> guest: well, it's one of the more tangled problems in historical war causation and american wars. historians point to a range of grievances that the united states had against great britain in the early 19th century. many of them are associated with maritime disputed between great britain and the united states because this is the middle of the that wars, the trade

dominated by napolean. the british need to conscript crews to keep the royal navy manned. there are disputed over whether the british are inside the front here. british policy affected american agricultural prices very badly. prices for american exports slumped in this period causing an agricultural depression making people angry. there's a whole range of those grievances. basically, i think why the war was ultimately fought and why it was fought when it was because many of the disputes have been proceeded taking a number of years without necessarily producing a declaration of war is that by the summer of 1811 #, the main grievance was something called the council, a british

form of executive order. the american version ises executive order issued by the president. the british proclaimed sweeping blockades in europe designed to stop mutuals. america is the mutual in this stage from taking their exports and produce to europe, the british wanted to deprive the french p empire of resources. they had been disputing this since 1807, and it seemed for awhile, at least the americans hoped this dispute could be negotiated by the diplomacy. by the summer of 1811, basically, the american government comes to the realization that the diplomacy is not going to solve the problem. the britishs are not going to remove these orders until, basically, they got napolean clear, they want him, which is considerably less dominant

position on the european continent which means as far as the americans are concerned that the americans, the british are going to violate british neutrality for as long as the war lasts. when madison realizes he calls congress into an early congress, the 12th congress, and says, folks, we need to prepare for war, and it takes off from there. the law was fought as a tactic to try and force the british to republic american neutrality, and by 1811-1812, diplomacy was exhausted. madison thinks the only way to do something about this is to go to war to force the british to sign a treaty committing them on paper and the national war to respect american definitions of its rights and interests. >> host: so -- >> guest: stems from there. >> host: so the u.s. declared war on great britain, in this

case? >> guest: yes. >> host: were there british troops in the north american area at that time? >> guest: only 5,000 troops in canada. troops in their various colonial positions in the west indies, but there were no british troops actually on the territorial limits of the united states in 1811-1812. there had been a number of years after the revolution. that's well-known, but after the peace treaty in 1873, the british did not abandon all the erican territories that they said they would do. they continued to occupy a chain of forts along the st. lawrence and under the great lakes extending out into the midwest, a violation of the peace treaty and american sovereignty, which annoyed americans considerably. there are no british troops actually on american soil at

this time, but that didn't stop americans from saying well the american troops in canada are meeting with the indians in the midwest or old northwest, and that fearing and concerns now becomes a grievance which is part of the tangle of problems that americans want to sort out by going to war. >> host: how popular was this declaration of war against britain in the states at the time? >> guest: oh, well, it's hard to measure in the sense that we can't take public opinion the way we do now, but often, this is said to be the most unpopular in american history. that was certainly said up until the time of the vietnam war. maybe it was about as unpopular as the vietnam war. the deck lar rigses in congress -- declarations in congress, the votes, were not by wide margins. in the house of representatives,

there were 79 for and 49 against. in the senate, it was closer. it was 19-13. if you put it another way, if three votes changed in the senate, the senate would not be able to pass a war bill, and the senate debated it for nearly two weeks, and it was touch and go. nobody really knew what the outcome was going to be. that reflected all sorts of misgivings about the war, some of it was sheer doubt about whether it was expent -- expent and wise for the united states to go against britain with a fairly sizable army whereas the united states has neither a sizable army or navy. >> host: did they have a standing army at that point? >> guest: you had a small army, but on paper, it was supposed to have 10,000 men, and

officers in the ranks. on the eve of the war, it's a little more than half that. the other political party, the federalists, they were bitterly opposed to war. federalists voted for the war. >> host: who was the federalists at the time? >> guest: they were confined to the new england states, but some of the more prominent federalists was james ashton, rufus king. hehe became a senator from new york. those were the leading federalists, but the federalists had not held national power since the election of 1800 when they lost out to thomas jefferson and the republicans. they've become something of a regional rump based mainly in new england, particularly in massachusetts and connecticut.

those are the stronghold, and the state governments of those regions and probably the majority of people in the new england states, not all of them, but very strongly opposed to the war, the clergy preached against the demonstrations, republican congressmen voted for war were assaulted by people in the streets when they went back home, the president was hanged in i effigy, all of those sort f things. partisanship, if the republicans were for it, the federalists were against it. federalists thought the war was a major mistake. they tended to be pro-british thinking the republicans were pro-french, and that this war served in the interest of napolean, and the federalists wanted to trade with the british empire and england. they wanted to trade generally.

republicans tenned to try to cut off trade as a way of bringing economic pressure to bear on the british about interest of federalists merchants in pots like boston and new bury port. the war was not in their interests as they understood it and as they experienced it, and they were pretty vocal about it. eventually, that opposition culminates in the bottle called the hartford convention which met in hartford in 1814. extensively, the purpose of the hartford was to pressure the federal government to provide better defense than new england, which england did not think they were doing a good job of by 1814 and doing more by getting tax money to pay for the defense of new england. that sort of thing, but so the

republicans suspected that this was really a plot, and what the federalists in the hartford convention wouldn't do is either succeed from the union or make some sort of arrangement with the british that declared new england neutral in the war, which they wanted no part. now, none of that actually came to pass, and even to this day, historians have not been entirely clear what the hartford convention was about. they were careful not to leave a significant paper trail. we have no records of their debates. its actions were considerably mored moderate than rhetoric suggested, but it was the most extreme map -- manifestation of a symptom of the widespread federalist discontent for the war they thought was a misconceived disaster right from the outset, had no redeeming features as all

as far as madison's opponents could see. >> host: professor stagg, how did this war wrap up? >> guest: well -- ha-ha -- it's often said that it's a draw though it's not. i prefer the word "stalemate" to "draw" in the sense that stalemate carries more implications of exhaustion rather than a draw does with two sports teams that are fairly matched and you don't have a result on that particular occasion. it wrapped up at the end of 1814, and the underlying reason for that was that napolean was overthrown in 1814, and the wars in europe were winding down, and in that sense, the pretext of the british had been trying to control american trade, europe, and things like that were

disappearing, and it was becoming more and more questionable that there was any point on either side, the american or the british side, whether this war should continue if peace returned to europe. now, eventually, a peace treaty was negotiated in the city of gint on christmas eve, 1814, and the treaty said absolutely nothing about the issues that had led to war. it's entirely silent on the cause of the war, and the treaty did not settle the problems that the united states wished to solve by going to war. it's largely a document that concerned procedural issues about the restoration of peace and the establishment of binational commissions which dealt with unresolved issues in the post war period. the united states chose to interpret that as a significant victory. the canadians have always said

it was a great victory because they repealed the american invader, r and that's what they are celebrating extensively this year since we're in the bicentennial year of the war of 1812 itself now, although americans don't appear to know this. the british say they have forgotten all about this war. they nearly even remembered it, and that that doesn't say much about it one way or another, but if you press them hard, they say, well, we certainly don't think the americans won so there's all jokes that goes round, but the americans are happy because they think they won the war of 1812. the canadians are even happier because they know they won the war of 1812, and the british is the happiest of all because they forgot the whole thing ever happened. >> host: where did you grow up, professor. >> guest: in new zealand in the city of christ church, which

now today, you think of that's the city having 10,000 earthquakes over the last year that gained attention in the american media, but that's where i grew up and went to undergraduate. >> host: how did you end up at the university of virginia? >> guest: well, they offered me a job. i was back in new zeal land at the time teaching american history, in the 1980s, they offered me a job here which included the task of running the papers of james madison which was one of the definitive editions of the papers of the founding fathers. there's a number of them going on, papers of john adams, thomas jefferson, george washington, benjamin franklin, and the madison papers are part of that consortium, using that word to describe that, comprehensive papers of the founding fathers, and i had written on madison and

this war and the university of virginia said, well, why don't you come and run the project and teach for us in the history department. looks like you're an anthropolings, and if you're invited, what does the anthropologist do, you accept the invitation. >> host: when you taught in new zealand, what were the important things that you think other people should know about our history? >> guest: you mean foreigners? people overseas? >> host: yeah, uh-huh. >> guest: well, i'll give you an example of a misconception, the sort of thing you have to deal with. american media films television impacts societies enormously in australia and new zealand because they're the major

producer --s united states is a major producer of entertainment, and, of course, english is a common language so in some ways, you know, the united states is enormously influential in terms of popular culture in those societies, but i would often start off my classes in new zealand saying how many of you have been to the united states? not terribly many had, and those who had, they had been to the west coast. almost nobody had tbon the east coast. i remember one student, sort of said to me, she'd been to disneyland, and she said is all america like disneyland? for a moment, you almost have to pause before you give an answer to that question, but then, of course, you have to say, no, it's enormously large and diverse place with many, many

regional differences, and the east coast is quite different from the west coast, and i specialized in early american history, and the west coast was not even part of the united states so much as a subject matter that i taught. really important to convey to them some sense of why the united states even existed at all, what independence was all about, why the united states wanted to sort of leave the british empire when you teach societies that remain part of the british empire and never broke away from it in the sense that the united states did so you generally the problem is actually to convey some sense of the span of american history, all of it, because it was not much taught in the schools. you have a society with an

enormous number of preconceptions about the united states they derive from american popular culture, but very grounded in any sort of very thorough knowledge of the history of the united states and its development, and, of course, the united states as a dominant world power, always very conscious of the presence of the united states in all sorts of ways, and they don't know all that much about us, but i don't know how much success people teaching in the universities actually have in offering a larger picture. you're up against forces beyond the control and the individual professors in the classroom. >> host: timely, professor stagg, back to your book, "the war of 1812", what was james madison's reputation in the u.s.? >> guest: well, it started to improve dramatically from the moment the peace treaty was

signed during the war itself, it sunk pretty low. everybody thought he'd made a bad job of running this war and the supporters were disenchanted. they supported him because they were loyal to him and did not like great britain and thought the war was just not going terribly well, but once it was over, and the americans have a peace treatly, and turned the survival into a major history and lost two years of madison's presidency, the two most popular years in all of the eight years in the white house, and that two year reputation, miserable between 1809-1815, but he went out on a great cloud of popular

ity. >> host: here's the cover of the book, john stagg, "the war of 1812" published by cambridge university press.

>> because the idea of reform and opening was not unique to xiaoping, and criticized his successor that now was chosen, turned out not to be rial a great strong leader was in favor of the reforms, and a lot of the senior officials were in favor of the reforms. to some extent, he had a long time perspective, and whether "visionary" is the right word, but when he thought about hong kong, he said, you know, for 50 years they can keep the present system, and if you ask obama what he plans to do for 50 years for this country, that's hardly a serious question. no american leader can, you know, four years is long term --

[laughter] to think to the end of the term for the next election, and so i think he did have a long term at the same time, he was experimental and didn't have fixed notions, and he was using the expression cross the river by groping for stones, and that was -- again, that term was somehow attributed to deng, but-not unique to him. he didn't invent the term. he used the terms, used the ideas, and-a manager who -- he was the manager who put it together and provided the direction with a firm hand that made it happen. watch the entire interview on the biography of xiaoping tonight at 8 eastern here on c-span2. >> i know many of you were not born in 1973 when watergate took place, but richard nixon one in the biggest landslides in the

history of the united states meaning most americans voted for him. yet, when facts came out suggesting that laws were violated, the american people, including the overwhelming majority who supported richard nixon said, congress, you have to investigate, need a special prosecutor, the laws have to be enforced no matter what. in the end, when the house judiciary committee agented on a bipartisan basis to vote for the impeachment of nixon, the country overwhelmingly supported that verdict, and what did that tell us? that more important than any political party and more important than any president in the united states and more important than any single person and more important than any single ideology was the bedrock principle of the rule of law and the preservation of our constitution. americans united on that scene

regardless of how they voted just about a year and a half before that. we're not talking about ancient history. people put behind them their own partisan views and said what is good trt country and the rule of law, and one standard of law was critical. i said, gee, you know, that's a really important principle, and i believed in it too, and then we got the bush years. the accountability principles pretty much worked. i won't say they were perfect, hardly, government doesn't operate in a perfect world, and in itself, it's rarely perfect, but then we got to the bush years, and things changed. i and my co-author, cindy cooper, wrote a book about the

country, that ten of us had the experience with dealing with the terms of the constitution and the impeachment proceeding that workedded, the nixon impeachment proceedings, but we saw and wrote a book and saw, however, there was no accountability through the impeachment process, and so then we said, well, let's look at what else can be done. we knew the framers of the constitution understood and it's clear in the debates about the constitution that once a president leaves office, he someday maybe a she, can be prosecuted. there was nothing in the framers' debates that said, oh, you've been president? free. you get a forever free from jail card. nonsense. the framers understood that presidents could do very bad things. i mean, they were human. they created checks and balances and because they understood presidents could do bad things and understood congress could do bad things. they were not idealistic about

people, but they were practical and pragmatic. we said, okay, let's do this book about what kind of a accountability can exist, and to our surprise as we began to look at what the criminal stay chutes were, what we saw was not just the possibility of accountability, but that the bush team was excruciatingly sensitive to the possibility of prosecution and had tried to erect barriers in a variety of ways including slicing and dicing and rewriting criminal laws to protect themselves from accountability. to protect themselves specifically from criminal liability. you can watch this and other programs onli