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♪ >> let us know what you are reading this summer. tweet us at booktv. posted on our facebook page or send us an e-mail at booktv@c-span.org. >> you are watching booktv. coming up next cheryl sandberg, c 0 of facebook discusses why is difficult for women to achieve leadership roles in the united states and talks about her own career choices and experiences. this is about an hour and 15 minutes. [applause] >> let's begin by the computer history museum for putting on this seminar along with sponsors and such an interesting place to listen, to learn, to not only understand history but to understand the future. thank you, everybody. [applause]

>> i met sheryl in the late 90s when she was running what appeared to be a third of the treasury department. impossibly young and impossibly smart she impressed all of us with what she did in the clinton administration in the first and second term. when it came time to choose a job it became obvious she should be at google. this is somebody we could use to was -- didn't have a job for her. i will hire really smart people and she came in and wander around, worked on our financing, learned the business and figured out we needed to have a different sales force. in the subsequent six years, she built a business that today is somewhere around $20 billion and

established the recruiting practices that led to a company to its current excellent condition. to say her contribution that google was astounding is understated in terms of the number of people she hired, she hired half of the company. and did all sorts of things in terms of customer service, marketing and so forth. and shockingly, shockingly, she shows up and says i'm going to work for mark. i said how can this be? is there something wrong? no, no, no. i am interested in this new area. whatever. her heart was set to go to facebook where shockingly she did extremely well. and in fact she repeated the success a second time which has

really not occurred very often in our industry. maybe once or twice and i thought wow, pretty impressive. so i figured okay, she is doing really well so she decides to write a book can be immediately becomes a number one bestseller. i have no idea what she is going to do for her next on core bug we are talking about one of the great leaders of our industry. today we're going to talk about very serious subject but when i think of cheryl i think of someone who has built two multibillion-dollar businesses already and she has a lot ahead of her. with that it is extraordinary to see you here. >> thank you. i want to thank eric who hired me when no one else would. that gave me the best career advice of my career, which we will get a chance to talk about. we all get to do the same thing because of great mentors and great advisers and eric has been

that through facebook which he was lovely about and -- >> the book she has written is just extraordinary. [applause] >> really liked your book. think it is great, they think it is the best seller. okay. let's try to get a serious interview. let's start by why did you write this book? frankly you are busy. >> as you are. >> seriously busy. >> no matter how much progress we have made, the world is so overwhelmingly run by men. i am not sure how well that is going.

[applause] >> let's consider economic growth, war, disease, climate change. gridlock in washington. >> what is really happening is women have made great progress. degeneration my mother was in, my grandmother was in, it is true that men run every industry and every government and every country in the world and that means when the decisions are made the most impact our world women's voices are not being heard and that is true in the corporate boardroom and for a pta meeting and town hall so i tried to address the issue, to talk openly about the stagnation women are facing at the top and to give practical device to women and men who want to do their part to change it. >> i would like to cover some of the topics in a book. i recommend you all by it. i suspect every single person in

this room has already bought it. if you haven't really going to be selling it here, the book signing, the whole bit. i will give you an example. i want to read a sentence or two to give a sense of it. in addition to the external barriers erected by society women are injured by barriers that exist within ourselves. we told ourselves back in ways both big and small. lacking confidence, not raising our hands and not pulling back when we should be meaning in. finish that thought. this, i think, is the rationale for the movement. what you are doing, the extraordinary social phenomenon, the lean in parties, extensive use of facebook to make all this happen. >> guest: women are held back, not making get to the top and stagnating. women have had 14% of the talk in corporate america for ten years. you taught me very clearly

trends gillick for long time and are flat for a long time, don't go up again. they often go down so you have to be worried about that and women are held back by external barriers, institutional, public policy, institutional barriers, sexism and discrimination and that is important. we are also held back by the internal was asian stereotypes. you were at my wedding so you remember this. my brother and sister gave the test and said high, we are cheryl's younger brother and sister but we are not really her younger brother and sister, we are really her first employees, employee 1 and employee 2. because cheryl never really played as put child. she just organize other children's play. everyone laughed. it was funny that and it is funny now. they said it with love but there's something not funny about that because what they worth saying is i was a bossy

little girl. >> were you about the little girl? >> absolutely. the question is how do we experienced that because of the stereotypes? little boys are almost never called bossy because when a little boy indeed there's nothing to note. it is expected but when a little girl leads or organizes other kids she is bossy. we are communicating very young, it is those stereotypes we internalize. everyone can do this, go to a meeting and watch what people say. relative to the same level of position, more men and women sit at the front and center and more women sit in the back and adverse side. we in reality hold ourselves back as well and if we're going to fix the problem for women in leadership we have to solve the external barriers and internal barriers. >> in the book you talk about the problem of an executive woman at the table and point out that some leaders or ceos see this interruption phenomenon and

they will call it out, it is the will the way in your view, to get this behavior where men dominate the conversation and interrupt women. just like i am interrupting you. >> this is an interview. it is not interrupting. it doesn't count. what happens is more men than women get interrupted every level and so is an example in my book, i have seen you do this. when that happens people interrupt and people say i would like to hear what she's saying and when you run meetings, you go around the table and ask everyone what they think which accomplishes the same thing. the point is all of us need to do this which not just ceos can do this. you don't have to be eric schmidt to do this. the most junior person in the room male/female can interrupt and say i would like to hear what she is saying and that is power. and something that will get everyone -- if we understand the

stereotype and see them playing out and called out we can change the. >> in the book you talk about the situation in education and you point out that what has now become clear, we have a crisis of men, not women in the educational system. roughly speaking, these are broad generalizations, female performance in math and science on a broad base, and for women, broad -- furthermore, 58%, 59% of women are completing college. what is happening, graduate from college, and what happens to them. are they being destroyed unaided against?

a huge cohort of women who coming to the workplace and not gotten to the top. >> the answer to what happens is all of the above. is at higher levels from college and get more graduate degrees and more entry-level jobs with college degrees and so every year fewer women than food to get promoted and by the time you get to the top you are at 14% in the united states and there's not a single country in the world that doesn't have 95% of if, top companies run by men so it goes like this. some leave the workforce, some stay in the work force. >> in the books you talk about a fact showing up in psychology which is called the stereotyped threat where people actually underperform if they are told they are a member of the stereotyped. do you think that is driving these behaviors? >> yes. explains the dirt of women in leadership skills and women in

computer science, and it is so important to say this is the same thing. stereotypes mean if you become aware of the stereotype you will actually act in its support and so this is why if you are mindful, boys and girls that they are boys and girls before batch testing the boys do the same and the girls do worse. if you tell those same girls before a math test girls do really well on this test they do better. our stereotypes of boys are that they are better at math and science so girls underperform. we think more boys are computer scientists. i put my son, 7 years old last summer, at 7 years old you have children, parents are making the decisions. 35 kids in that collapse, of those five girls i put two in, my niece and her friends. this is silicon valley. in its wake up parents. our generation, my h.r. putting

their boys in computer science camp at 7 and got their girls. that stereotype, those boys are being told they are better and they will be better because they went to the computer science camp and the same happens to women and leadership. we don't describe and leadership qualities to women so when a man needs it is natural and when a woman needs it is not. if you are a man here please raise your hand if anyone ever told you your too aggressive at work? if you are a woman, please raise your hand if anyone ever told you you are too aggressive at work. >> i think we are clear. >> guest: what is more aggressive, men or women? >> host: more women brought up their hands. that was a joke. one of the great things is you take people through these phenomenon in society.

another when you talk about is the impostor syndrome which also drives this behavior. what you say for example is men and women are successful but women tend to experience it more intensely and be more limited by it. the beauty of the impostor syndrome is you vacillate between egomaniac and a feeling obama fraud. .. >> never! [laughter] completely wrong. and -- i'm sorry. i'm an interviewer.

[laughter] ask a woman the same question, she'll attribute it to outside factors. >> and if she doesn't say that, other people will say it about her. what happens with the imposter syndrome is men feel more self-confident. the amazing thing is i just wrote a book on this subject, and it's still happening to me. after my book does done, published, we had a meeting at facebook. and there's an issue that for years one of our senior technical leaders and i we both wanted facebook to do something, and no one else did. for years. and then over the last couple month, people, mark and everyone decided that is an investment worth making. and i'm pretty open emotionally, and i start the meeting by saying i'm so grateful we're here today so for all these years i believed in this, and no

one else did, and i thought maybe i was wrong. jay looks up and said i knew sheryl and i were right, and you'd all come around. [laughter] so i'm facebooking with jay, can i use that story on my book tour? sure. can i use your name? absolutely. so i write, don't worry, i'll make sure you don't look egotistical. i'm not worried about that. [laughter] i mean, inconceivable that i would have a reaction like that. and relative to levels of performance, we continue to do this. what i find is i can't change how anyone feels, i can't change how i feel because i'm still doing this, but i can know that as a woman i am sitting next to, on average, five jays, and i can know that he feels more self-confident.

women apply for scwoobs when they meet all -- apply for jobs when they meet all the criteria, men have some. >> literally how she did all of these things, by getting people to feel very, very strongly and the passion you just witnessed. a little snippet of sheryl right in front of you. we're going to come back to the idea of the whole person, which i feel is important. i'm still interested in the stereotypes and the perceptions because if they're true, and i believe they're true, they govern all of us. you talk about success and likability. you will remember that as part of recruiting that you did we studied correlations of male questioners versus female questioners, and went men would hire people -- when men would hire people, they would correctly predict the person's success if it was a man, but

when they scored the likelihood of female success, the prediction was exactly wrong. so i'm quite concerned that this stereotype bias even if nice, liberal, open, well-run companies is quite profound. >> yeah. so the gender bias we feel, we all feel -- myself included. so one thing that happens is as women get more successful, powerful, they are less liked. as men get more successful and powerful, they are better liked. and what's really hard to understand about that is it's true of women and men. because often someone will say, you know, oh, well, she's not as well liked, and if someone tries to point out gender bias, the next answer is, oh, women don't like her also. [laughter] we are all raised calling little girls bossy and not calling little boys, so that gender bias holds in all of us. i had it too, you know? i find myself in this pattern. i think it is admitting that we

are there, making it safe to anytime that is a really important part of the answer. >> now, i want to talk a little bit how to sort of deal with these things as a woman in the work lace and men reacting to it -- workplace and men reacting to it. one of the things that's been covered the most about your book is the advice you have about negotiations. and i agree with the way you describe this. so let me prompt the question by saying that you observe that women are much less likely to go for that exrah part of the negotiation -- extra part of that negotiation. you tell some stories of your own life where your inclination was to accept the offer, but your friend or whatever said, well, ask another. and you actually make a suggestion more how women should process this. and way you summarize it is when you go back for the offer, the second offer in the negotiation, i just want more, say, hey, guys, i want more. what's your problem? my god, right? laugh a laugh and the woman --

[laughter] and the woman in your advice is to legitimate the request, right? i think this is very important. women i've worked with have not done well. >> yeah. so because of these stereotype biases, if a man negotiates for himself, we all like him. it's totally fine. he's supposed to want more, redeserves more. if a woman negotiates for herself -- now, there's an important distinction. it's went they negotiate for themselves. >> by the way, they describe it as crossing a minefield backwards in heels. >> exactly. which is difficult. >> i'm sure it is. [laughter] >> you guys have to read his book, but that chapter is truly terrible. >> could we get back to your book? [laughter] >> what i was saying when women negotiate for themselves, when they do the same things men do, they will be disliked, and they

will pay a penalty in terms of future advancement, their relationships. and so this is really important -- >> they will pay a price, they absolutely pay a penalty? >> not every case, but on average the data is super clear. so when women negotiate for themselves, they have to legitimize it. i think as long as we're not going to be treated equally, we might as well understand the stereotypestypes and use them te sure we get those promotions. so women have to legitimize the advice. i did this in my book with mark. i said this is the only time we're on the opposite side of the table, and you remember you're hiring me to run your deal teams. you want me to be a good negotiator. i'm about to negotiate. these are the skills i'm bringing to the table. other things people do, i say in the book, the data shows you can legit maize -- legitimize your

advice that saying someone else told you to do it. there are all these articles that people are marching in for advice and saying sheryl sandberg told me to ask for a raise. [laughter] >> leading me to a profound salary -- >> when i suggested that you legitimize it, i didn't really have me in mind, i had in mind someone in the company. >> the best investment you've ever made. $14, 40% off at your local bookstore. >> but when they say sheryl sandberg wants me to get a raise, i do. joking aside, women get paid 23% less than men for the same jobs in this country, and that's a problem. that's not -- >> repeat the statistic. >> women get paid 23% less. 77 cents to the dollar in this country for the same jobs. and, again, that's not a problem just for the women who come to the computer history museum and work in our industry where

people are well paid. that's a really big problem for the single mothers out there. 30% of our children in this country are being raised by single parents, almost all single mothers. that 23 cents is a big deal. and "lean in" is about equality and actually mopeny through our country. and we have to change that. >> you talk, you talk a little wit about career advice -- a little bit about career advice, and you -- >> so much fun. no, no, no -- >> no, no, no -- [inaudible conversations] >> okay. my book, the best career advice i ever got was from eric schmidt, and i've talked about it, but never with eric schmidt on the stage. [laughter] so the way it went is i was thinking about joining google, and google -- i loved it, and i really was excited to work with eric and larry and sergei, but there was this totally nonjob. they didn't have a job really. >> that's right. >> and so i had a chart of all

my criteria. >> this is, by the way, typical of sheryl. she has all these detailed analyses. >> spread sheet for my job, and google met none of them, and my other offers met all of them, and i came and met eric for lunch, but look at my chart. [laughter] eric put his happened on my paper, and he said don't be an idiot, which is excellent career advice. [laughter] i mean, that alone was worth the price of admission to this. [laughter] but then he said what is the best career advice i have ever heard, and then he said get on a rocket ship. you said google is a rocket ship. yes, you right, we don't know what you're going to do exactly, but if you're offered to see a rocket ship, don't ask what seat. because eric said when industries are doing well,

everyone in those companies thrive, and when industries and companies aren't doing well, people don't do as well. extrapolating from that, the advice i give is go where your skills are needed. not everyone can join the high-tech rocket ship industry, but there are areas of every company where your skills are more important, and there's a growing need for them. and i think that has been the most important career advice i got, and i'm so grateful to you. >> thank you very much. let's return to the book. >> yeah. >> let me ask you, i want to go back to -- i'm still upset about this 77% number. >> i'm glad. i am too. >> well, we agree. >> yeah. [laughter] >> now, when you talk about the decision to have children, obviously, a complicated decision for professional women, one of the problems that you describe is for high-tech stock options and so forth, the math doesn't work. and to me, when i look at single

moms with, you know, kids and so forth, i can imagine how tough their lives are. iffy single component of their life in a day breaks down like car or whatever, it's major crisis as opposed for me, well, you get a taxi, what have you. is the solution to that to get salaries up? how do we solve this core problem women feel? i've got to have a family, i'm -- and you point out in the book that women are doing the majority of house work and kids' work for better or worse. how do we solve that problem? the biggest area that i worry about is the a single mom who's got all this pressure on her. it's amazing to me that women can get through this, and indeed they do. >> that's true. so the childcare issue occurs at both ends of the spectrum. at the lower end it's very clear that we need public policy reform and institutional reform. you know, we need jobs that are more flexible. we're the only developed country in the world that doesn't offer one day of federally paid for

and mandated maternity leave. something like 40-50% of women in this country and men don't get a single sick day paid, a single one, to take care of a child. so we must provide affordable childcare and so some of -- solve some of these basic issues, and nothing else is more important. on the upper end of the spectrum, i think women sometimes do the math wrong. these are college-educated women whose salaries are going to go up to afford the childcare they need over time, and they look and say, well, right now if i pay for childcare, i'm barely breaking even, why do snit and i have a story from my friend anna, she did that calculus a while ago, was about to drop out, and then someone said to her, wait a second, if you stay in, you're going to make more money. so she stayed in, and her salary covers childcare and other things. so we need better negotiating for women, more fair salaries

and women to look ahead at what's coming, not what they have right now. >> you know, you talk about interesting topics of a choice of a husband. and you say i truly believe the single most career decision a woman makes is whether she'll have a life partner and who that partner is. you go on, and let me just quote you. when looking for a life partner, my advice is to date all of them, the crazy boys, the commitment-phobic boy, but do not marry them. [laughter] >> correct. >> the thing that makes bad boys sexy does not make them good husbands. >> correct. very good advice. [laughter] >> i'm just reading from my book. >> i stand by my dating advice, absolutely. you can date whoever you want. you can date whoever you want. it's marriage or life commitment, however one does that. now, if you're a woman and you're thinking about making that life commitment to a woman, you don't have a problem because two women or two men will split

household responsibilities fairly evenly. it's when you get a man and a woman in an ongoing relationship. and everywhere in the world women do the majority of the childcare and the housework. so as a couple a man has one job, and a woman has two. 70 president of the mothers are -- 70% of the mothers are in the full-time work force, and they need that money to support the family. >> they need the incomes. >> exactly. they're doing two jobs. i know no women who have jobs who occupy leadership positions, most of us have husbands and children, and all of us have supportive husbands. all of us. >> and i can actually say having attended the wedding and know dave, you made the right choice. he is, in fact, perfect. [laughter] now, i wanted to -- it dose into his perfectness, which is true. [laughter] but in the book you also describe algorithms that -- sorry, procedures that women can use -- [laughter]

to a little test. you quote, unfortunately, a woman explained that the way she would do dating was she would determine if the boyfriend would support the career, she would arrange a date and at the last minute reschedule it and see how he handled it. [laughter] and if he passed that test, the next date would be scheduled, and then it would turn out that she had to fly to somewhere, and he had the fly there too did this work? did this work? >> she's actually very happily married. that was more of a story than advice. [laughter] but however, it is a really important point which is that i tell women date whoever you want, but marry someone who wants equality. if you want to be in the work force, he's going to support you and support does not say, yes, dear, it's fabulous for you to get a job as they sit on the couch. it's getting up in the middle of the night to change half the

diapers. because that's what this takes. men who have successful careers have had wives who were helping them all along -- >> and you point out, i'm sorry -- >> yeah. >> you actually point out that there's a myth that female ceos are, in fact, not married. >> that's right. >> the vast, vast majority of female ceos are not only happily married, but have strong family, kids and the whole bit. >> like men. and so what happens, and the reason this partnership thing so -- these lessons and expectations we have about men and women are so detailed, if you're a man, please raise your hand and you work, children, please raise your hand if anyone's ever said to you, should you be working? [laughter] don't be shy. exactly. if you're a woman and you work and you have kids, please raise your hand if anyone ever said to you, should you be working?

our assumption is that men will do both, and women will not. women have to choose, and that assumption's wrong because, in fact, most women have to do both. so we have an economy and a society where most women have to work, and most women have children. so they are doing both. and all of our narrative is about how women can't and shouldn't do both, and that's just unfair to women. >> so at the point at which a woman has made a decision to have a child, she's now confronted by the reality of this very limited amount of time off which i've always thought is way too short. i think you would agree compared to certainly western europe is a real problem. these women are forced to come back to work with all these, you know, tremendous challenges, staying up all night and showing up at work. and you talk about in the book how eventually the solution is to give up sleep. [laughter] and -- >> it's a bad solution. >> clearly, a bad solution. and furthermore, you sort of give advice about life in this. and this is sort of another one

of these sort of core messages, i think, that the way you would argue and perhaps you're projecting your list-making self, that it worked when the kids didn't exist, but now have to accept, you know, you quote nora ephron who says embrace the messiness of life, embrace the mess. be complicated, but rejoice in the complications, and don't be frightened, you can change your mind. i know, identify had four career -- i've had four careers and three husbands. so you, ultimately, in the book say under the enormous pressure of this because, you know, you're running this extraordinary structure that you built at google, you obviously have help, but you're under enormous pressure even with the perfect husband. you decided to sort of meeter your time, right? >> yeah. >> and you had to give something up. did you give up organization? [laughter] obviously, your work performance didn't suffer, i know, because i would have told you. so you managed to sort of pull it off. how did you do it? >> i think what happened, it's funny, i was in europe two weeks

ago, and the man said you want to hire the post efficient person out there, hire a mother. she said i'm going to work 8 to 3, i want a full-time salary, and i'm going to be your most productive copy editor, it was something you could measure, and she is. i thought i was efficient before i had children, oh, my god -- >> by the way, you are really efficient. [laughter] >> every minute became precious, and when every minute became precious for me, it became precious for other people. my tolerance for unnecessary meetings went way down. and i think what's happening to working women, working mother is the the following: we compare ourselves unfavorably on both sides of the ledger. we compare ourselves to our peers at work, largely men, who have fewer home responsibilities than we do, and we fall short. it's easier for them to take the trip, to stay later, and then we compare ourselves at home to the women who are at home full time, and we fall short there. as working mother, you can spend

your entire life feeling bad, and when you don't, people will do it for you. [laughter] i have a story about dropping my son off at the local public school we go to here, and i dropped him off on kindergarten on st. patrick's day wearing his favorite blue t-shirt. he's supposed to be wearing green. i think, really? >> oh, my god. >> really? i'm lucky he has a t-shirt. [laughter] now, this would never happen to my husband. if my husband dropped our son wearing the same t-shirt, that same woman would open the door and say, you are such a wonderful father for driving your son to school today. [laughter] but i'm a woman so, of course, it did happen to me, so i did what anyone would do which is i spent my entire day worrying about the green t-shirt. will i be the annoying mom with the green t-shirt -- >> and by the way, the man would have forgotten the entire transaction about five minutes after. [laughter] >> correct. but halfway through this episode

of absolute panic, i called my husband, and i explained how everyone has a green t-shirt but our son, and he'll never go to college -- [laughter] and it'll be my fault because i'm a working woman, and all the other women they don't work, and they remembered the green t-shirt, and my husband just laughed and said, you know what, sheryl? our son learned something so important today. he learned he doesn't have to be like everyone else. and that is the difference. because my husband and i, we do about the same with our children. and i feel guilty all the time to this day even having written a book telling everyone else and myself not to feel guilty, and my husband thinks he's a hero. [laughter] he's a hero. the hero of blue t-shirts. and the difference is about letting ourselves off the hook. most of the things we do, we do 80% of them it's most -- >> well, and the way i would express that is redefine the situation you're in to be success, and that's what your

husband -- >> success at 80% or success doing the best you can. >> is and one of the things which you actually talk about which was news to me is primary care giving expectations for working mothers have actually gone up. somehow we think people are spending less time with their parents -- with their kids, but the last couple of decades the number has gone up by 60% according to my math. >> working women, working mothers but all of us, expectations are going up on both sides. due to the wonderful technology eric and others here have built, people work longer hours. my mother says, god, work in my generation was 9 to 5, and that was it. there were no cell phones, there was no androids, you couldn't be bothered. and that's changed. we all work longer hours. mothering has gone through the same expectation. a mother was a work at home, stay at home mother. full time. we didn't have play date cans arranged. she didn't arranged a single

play date. we rode our bicycles down the walk and played. so it's called -- sociologists call it intensive mothering. the data shows that a full-time working, full-time mother working outside the home today spends as many hoursen gauged in direct -- hours engaged in direct child action as a nonworking mother did in the '70s. it's an amazing thing to understand. and when i think about -- >> by the way, that's a pretty hopeful statement. >> absolutely. >> because your kids, the kids are going to be pretty good. >> my mother, when i figured out that i'm actually spending as much real time with my children working full time as my mother did, we actually talked about it, it turned out to be true, boy, was that a relief. and so these expectations of full time and more than full-time work and then this intensive mothering, they're really hitting women. it's not possible to do both of those. >> and i want to sort of finish up and get to you all's questions. i have a couple more questions. um, you talk in the book a little bit about how women treat

other women. and you also when you went to facebook, you faced -- let's just call it increased scrutiny because you were a woman and because you were seen and, ultimately truthfully, correctly, as someone who was become a significant power force in the industry overall. marisa, who, of course, is fantastically talented has gone through this with yahoo!. we told her to stay at google too. [laughter] >> you train us all so well. >> they don't listen to me at all. [laughter] and to me you have a quote if here from madeleine albright, a special place in hell for women who don't help other women. what's sort of the message here? is it -- what do you want women and presumably men who are supporting women to do based on sort of set of criticisms? >> yeah. i think, look, there's a lot in the work force and a lot in the general narrative about women not helping other women, and some of it's true particularly historically. in a world where only one woman was going to get to the top, then it made sense that those

women were super competitive. i don't think that's true anymore. every company i know wants more women, not less. every company. the other thing that's happening is we have different expectations for men and women at work. we all hold them. if a man is asked for a favor at work and he does it, everyone, men and women are grateful, what a great guy. and if he doesn't do it, he faces no penalty, he's got stuff to do. if a woman is asked for a favor at work and she doesn't do it, she faces real penalties in terms of promotion, salaries. and if she does it, no one's particularly grateful. so part of what's happening is women have been and sometimes the still are feeling competitive. i think a competitiveness that's rooted in our own insecurity. and we need to face that and support each other. and some of it is different expectations. i think the fundamental observation is turns out we're 50% of the population. >> shocking. >> right? and if we work together, if there are no more mommy wars, things change. i've within working with the

folks who run babble, one of the most important mommy blogger sites about bringing women who work in the home and in the work force together. i just published my mothers to thank our mothers for mother's day. and we're all doing it. and some of them are beautiful. and women need to support each other because when i think about the women who are at home, i can either feel insecure because i don't feel like i'm as good of a mother, or i can feel grateful for everything they're doing at my kids' school. and i think the same thing for mothers like me who are working. and i think if we can feel better about ourselves and stop beating ourselves up so much, we can all be more generous to each other. >> okay. let's, let's talk a little bit about the book and the book tour and the reviews and so forth. with the typical courage that you have, you've managed to launch into this, and number one on the bestseller list for the last two months, likely to be

number one for many months to come, i think. it's really, essentially, unleashed a global conversation that's incredibly important. let's start by asking what's, what's the stupid criticism that you've ever heard of you and your book. [laughter] the stupidest one. >> to criticize my book. [laughter] everyone loves my book. [laughter] i think that the criticism that i don't think is that helpful is saying that i don't believe that other things need to change other than internally. the criticism that i think is just not grounded is i'm blaming women. be you read my -- if you read my book, it's very hard to decide i'm blaming women. i'm very clear that we need institutional policy and public policy to change. i also, you know, do a lot to explain why we are holding

ourselves back. encouraging women is not the same thing as blaming, and i think that distinction is one that's really -- >> it sort of is a myth as well. so the symmetric question is what's the most sophisticated criticism? what criticism that's been the accurate that you actually said, yeah, that person's pretty smart. they read the book, you would and either missed that, or they're right, and it's something i need to go explore more? >> the best criticism of my book, and it's one i struggled with a lot is that -- and it's sophisticated. in trying to change stereotypes, i am embracing those stereotypes. so, for example, i tell women in the book to smile and say we and justify their acts for promotions and raises. that is embracing a stereotype. i am acknowledging that you will be more successful getting a raise if you smile, say we.

i don't want to embrace a stereotype to change it, and i struggled with this so much in the book. and i decided that i'm pretty much a pragmatist, the world is what it is. if more women smile and ask for raises, they'll get raises, become ceos, then people will ascribe leadership to women, and the next generation won't have to smile and say oue. >> this is sort of well nhl 2.0. -- feminism 3.0. women need to be treated the same. feminism 2.0 is there's a way to do this which gets you into power. >> yeah. and what's happened for me is i struggled with giving that advice on negotiated. and then i decided when i negotiate and you were one of people who taught me how to negotiate, i always tell my teams you go into that room, you're going to win or lose before you go into that room, and it's how much you understand about the other side. and so i decided that empowering women to understand the

stereotypes and use them to their advantage was part of preparing well for a negotiation in an unfair world. but it is still hard for me when i give that advice. it's fair criticism. >> um, let's ask some of the audience questions. how do you feel about the book's reception? how do you feel -- did your point get across? do people really understand? >> eric makes an amazing point in the book that he and jared wrote which is that revolutions are easier to start than maintain. and so i don't know if this is a revolution, but i wanted people to notice that that women were stagnating to understand the stereotypes that are holding us back and for men and women to try to change them. and i've been, look, if you're a business person and you write a book, the real fear is no one will read it or care, and i'm really gratified that so many people have rated it, and it's doing so well -- have read it, and it's doing so well. so the real question is what

happens now? does anyone remember that too many women are called aggressive at work two years from now, twenty years from the now? my book can only do so much. i'm going to do the best i can. started leanin.org. we do hope you join us. we're this close to 175,000 participants, so if you go on to facebook and like us, we're there. but we want men and women to join. it's unclear what happens from here, and this is going to take so many more voices. men and women. men as well trying to change the stereotypes to change them. >> you know, another question, how have you responded to the critical feedback of your book and that the movement has received? has it changed anything about your approach, modified anything based on the reception and the sort of cavalcade of comments pro and against, so forth? >> i don't think there's anything that's been said about my book that i didn't actually try to address in my book, so i

think what people said wasn't surprising. the volume, positively and negatively, you know, completely shocked me. >> but your book is at a metalevel to that because you oint point out that women face greater scrutiny, therefore, you face greater scrutiny. >> yeah. >> calls recurls. [laughter] >> i think what lean in is doing and tries to do, i set this up, you know, as, you know, a book but also a community, and we did it in a very specific way. by its very nature the community is created by the community. so one of the things we're helping people do is set up circles. usually women, they're starting all over. it's been exciting to see. and a circle is whatever people

want it to be. so we envision them probably as women who were meeting, you know, maybe they were in the same industry, maybe they were in a different industry, and they would meet once a month, and they would support each other. i heard today that there are a group of circles being started by fathers and daughters. >> good. >> fathers with their daughters are starting circles. never thought of that. brilliant. love those fathers. those daughters are so lucky. and so what we do is we created a platform, right? it's what we do in our industry. we put out ideas and people are running for them. and as your book says so well, we don't control this, right? the internet is the first thing we invented and don't control. >> right. you've unleashed the movement. >> we've tried. and where it goes people will go and we will follow and try to support. >> the, another question. what was a pivotal transition event or moment in your career that defined who you are or what you did with your career, and was it something that you anticipated, or did it occur sort of randomly?

>> i mean, so many of them. certainly joining google with you, understanding the mission and how important the mission was to me and what i was doing. i mean, when eric recruited me to google, all of our initial conversations were all about what google was doing in the world. and you kept saying -- >> sorry to interrupt you. >> please. [laughter] >> one of the simple secrets to motivating people is give them the mission to change the world, and they'll work for you hard. >> that's right. and so when eric and i were first at google and he had just been announced as chairman, you were about to be ceo but the world did not know that, eric kept saying look at what google is doing in the world. look at what google is doing. and my greatest hope is for lean in is not a book, my greatest hope all those women who got raises and all those daughters whose fathers are having monthly meetings to give them the self-confidence to belief they can do anything.

>> another question, would you have had the same success with women mentors that you've had with male mentors, and the corollary question, how do you make yourself available as a mentor, and will you be my mentor? [laughter] >> so this person has not read the book, because in the book i say one of the worst questions you can ask anyone, a stranger, is will you be my mentor. it is interesting. so i've only worked for men, eric's among them. i've had a couple of female mentors, but mainly men because i've worked for men. one of the points i make in the book is if we rely on only women to mentor women, we will never succeed because there aren't enough women at the up top. there are unspoken things that are holding us back. a man and a minnesota in a -- a man and a man alone in this a room looks like businessmen to having, a man and a woman meeting alone or having a drink looks like -- an older man and a younger woman -- [laughter] meeting alone.

but let's be clear, if we're talking about getting more women into positions of power, you know, 86% of the people in power are men, and they're older than the women who are trying to get there. so this is all about not just making it safe, but cheering on men to spend time alone with women -- >> well, in fact, you tell the bob steele story where bob at goldman sachs who's a very good friend of mine now, sort of running half of the city of new york says he treats men and women equally so he has breakfasts and lunches, but not dinner. >> i didn't know him, but you know him -- i've met him since. >> he's a fantastic guy. >> he announced one day, he had daughters, that he didn't feel comfortable having dinner with women, so he would have no dinners. and big uproar at the time -- >> by the way, he had dinner with his family. [laughter] >> yeah. but he was basically saying i understand this implicit bias that no one wants to talk about it, and i'm making access equal. what i'm saying is let's make access equal. some men will have dinners, one

was asked will you have dinner alone with women, he's the ceo of american express, he said, absolutely, it's my job. some men will say yes, some will say no, but let's make it explicit and equal. >> these are, again, examples of subtle biases that we have to overcome. and i think we may have other questions in the audience. we have one over here. let's get them to carol. what tips do you have for women and men who have taken time off and are finding it tough to get back into the workplace? >> yeah. the issue of reentry is a big one. it's usually an issue for women because they are the ones who are more likely to take time off, but with the recession it's also been an issue for men as well. my best tips for are, again, looking for areas where your skills are needed and being adaptable in your skills. i actually think silicon valley and you in particular, eric, we set a really good example for the country in this.

a lot of people hire based on experience, and silicon valley hires based on can skills. >> yes. >> and if you hire only based on experience as industries change, experience is less relevant. but if you hire based on skills, you can then adapt. and i think other industries should look to silicon valley which has done very well by, basically, adopting that practice, and that will help a lot of people get back into the work force. >> one of the other ways to promote women's interests and getting promotessed in the economies is to have a growing economy. but the simplest way, in my view, is to have hiring going on. we've just been through sort of a terrible recession, right? it's been difficult to get hiring going on and so forth. >> and that's a problem that's very relevant. we're struggling with -- we're struggling with, i think, public policy issues in this country, and they're directly related. we should make the whole economy a rocket ship, and then there's plenty of seats. >> revenue sos all known --

solves all known problems, first principle of business. [laughter] >> he also would say we want with cash, cash. >> cash in the bank. >> not hypothetical cash that y'all are going to bring in, but in the bank. we have a really big question facing our country which is is our economy going to grow at the same rate it has grown historically, and the answer right now is no. the reason it's no is we do not have the work force we need to grow our economy quickly enough, and there are only two answers to this. there's education and immigration. we do not educate our children close to where other countries are educating. computer scientists coming out of india and china every day, there are more of them, and they're better educated, and we need to fix, you know, we're graduating 11% of our kids not knowing, you know, not being able to read. and immigration. a lot of the great companies at silicon valley, the companies that are celebrated in these halls were built on immigrants. you know, facebook, we opened --

>> well, indeed, there's a forward.u.s. group, right, that mark set up which i'm a member of including lots of other people which is trying to get this done, and we may actually break that log jam n. the spirit of another audience question, have you had much response from washington? what efforts are in the works for policy change? you're setting out an agenda, is anybody actually listening to you? or are they ignoring you as usual? [laughter] >> i think the private sector moves faster than the public ec to have. the fastest change we've seen the people in companies and individual women and men. we're seeing a lot of engagement arnold lean in, a lot of people asking for raises. which is great, please, keep telling everyone. i do, i want you all to have raises. on the corporate sector, you know, men like john chambers, john chambers, you know, saw me speak, assigned the book to his top 400 people and publicly and bravely said -- he's the ceo of

cisco -- i thought i was good at this. and he stood at a stage, i joined him at his management off site, and he said the only way to be the best company in the world is to have the best talent. warren buffett, at the annual meeting, talked all about women this year ask talked about women as a competitive advantage. i want men and women but mostly men running companies to invest in men not to be nice, but because it's their bottom line. >> well, the other argument in favor is that we face a global competitiveness with asia, and asia continues to discriminate against half of their work force, and it's pretty clear that you need all of your assets in play in order to compete. >> that's right. >> so the globalization argument favors your arguments for women. >> that's right. and there's been studies saying that economic growth over the last 30 years, a good percent of it has been caused by women entering the work force. so if we want that economic growth, we're going to have to continue to do that. >> ma head you so brave -- what

made you so brave as to call eric schmidt for a job? [laughter] was your mother and dad affirming you positively as a child, or did she chastise and correct you all the time? [laughter] >> i would say both. >> that's what the question says, i'm not making this up. >> you know, it's mother's day, so we're all thinking about parenting. i think both. my parents were incredibly encouraging. you can do anything, but they weren't, you know, oh, go sit outside and have an iced tea. i mean, when i was sick, my dad would be in my room, you're well enough to go to school, fever doesn't matter. you know, if i was in college and my dad drank a little my father would say the best thing for a hangover is a good run. we're going running. so my parents were, you know, definitely go out and do 'em type of parents, but they were also incredibly supportive. >> many political problems seem to be driven by old men in policy positions. laugh -- [laughter]

climate, health, gun control, environment, dot, dot, dot, where women tend to have different view, how does your advice contribute to getting more women into politics? >> yeah. the week is exprison sitly -- explicitly arguing for more women in politics. i happened to be in london a few weeks ago when baroness thatcher was with buried, and she was elected 34 years ago, she was the only female head of government in the world when she was elected. fast forward 34 years, there are 17. there are hundreds of countries, and that's just not good enough. i believe that if we had more women in politics, we'd have less war. >> yeah. and i agree with that. [applause] so following up, question from the audience, do you think it's hillary clinton's time to lean in and win the presidency? [laughter] [applause] that's what the question is.

>> yes. i want hillary to run. i've told her, i'll tell you. one of the reasons i wrote "lean in" is because my daughter, we brought home a song more my kids from president's day, and we played the song, and she looked up and said, mommy, why are they all boys? and i think hillary can be our first female president, and i hope she does it. but if not, i hope it's not too long before there's another. >> good. another question. do you think an increase in female entrepreneurship could solve, help solve the issue of women not receiving promotions by giving women the power to make these decisionsesome. >> yes. i believe very strongly that women in leadership positions helps not just those women, but it helps all women. companies with more women in senior roles have better work life policies for women, smaller pay gaps, and so, yes, we need more women in our big companies, more women in congress, and we need more women entrepreneurs.

we have a lot of female entrepreneurs in silicon valley, we don't have nearly as many as men, and they don't get funding at the same level. interestingly. if you look at the return, there's a recent study done that the return on investing in a female entrepreneur is higher and that they ask for the money they need, not the money they might need. and so we need more female entrepreneurs. we need to ask for more funding, and they need to get it. >> and they're more cash efficient. >> and they're more cash efficient. >> excellent. you built the hiring machine, as i describe, at google which has been fantastic, and your legacy in the company, you know, i see every day, and i'm sure you feel the same way about facebook, because i know you did the same thing at facebook and built quite the organization. one of the questions here is what do you look for when you're hiring someone? how do you actually make these decisions? >> the most important thing i look for when i'm hiring someone and, again, i think i learned this from you is skills.

not experience. experience is great. our industry changes so quickly that almost none of us have done anything we do now before, right? it's all new. and so you have to have skills. i ask people how they would handle specific situations, and i'm looking for flexibility. and i'm looking for the skills that they can adapt. one of the other things we are looking for is flexibility. you did this at a meeting we had with our summer interns at google. a lot of them were mwa students, ask -- mba students, and you said the worst question you can ask is what's your career path. because we want you to be flexible. >> when people would call me up and say i'm a vp now, and i need to be, you know, senior vice president or chief operating officer or whatever in your company, and i would say click. [laughter] that's not how we operate. we want you to join our cause,

we want you to believe in what you're doing, and you will do just fine. and that advice has worked well for all the people who actually managed to not screw up and showed up and said how can i help? >> there were a couple of people you and i recruited together, if you remember -- >> i do. >> who turned us down because we wouldn't make them vps, and that was probably a bad decision. >> yes. but they still remember. [laughter] >> but the point about, also, and i give this ad vice in my book, titles are the wrong reason to take a job. titles don't mean anything. every job i've taken both at google, as you pointed out when we talked about my spread sheet, i was offered bigger titles elsewhere, but the bag to job was better -- google job was better. titles, that doesn't matter as much as the opportunity you have to have impact, and you need to focus on that. >> another question. you shifted to a new company to get a bigger role, at facebook from google, obviously, does it take leaving to get that new,

big opportunity, sort of the career mobility question? >> yeah. so the data says that for women it often does but not always for all of the negotiating reasons we've talked about. but i think, again, as we educate ourselves on the biases, we can change that. i don't think it takes moving on. sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. but i think it takes solving problems. i think the right way to approach a is career is to say what problems can i solve. i just joined facebook, a woman called me and said i think i want to come work with you at facebook, so i thought calling you and telling you all the things i'm good at and i like to do, but i figure everyone's doing that, so instead i want to know what's your biggest problem, and can i solve it? >> right, exactly. >> my job hit the floor. no one says that. my biggest problem is recruiting, because i didn't have anyone running recruiting, and we'd gone through every interview and hadn't found anyone to hire yet, and you can solve it. and she came in, and now she runs all of human resources, and

she's been magnificent because she's trying to solve our problems, not hers. >> this is a great question. pay attention to this question. do you think that part of gender bias behavior in men and women may be genetic as well as social? [laughter] >> it is such a profound question. so, and i try to be really clear on this in the book, i do not think men and women do not have genetic differences. that's silly. >> that's too many negatives. >> sorry. i think men and women have genetic differences. two negatives is never good. [laughter] you know, i have a son and a daughter, and my son will take any toy and hit the other toy, and my daughter will take two swords and make them kiss. [laughter] i mean, you know, there are differences. [laughter] >> and you're trying to solve these by forcing -- no. >> yeah, but here's what we know, i don't -- i believe there are yes anytimic differences between boys and girls and men and women, i do not believe leadership is one of them. >> good answer.

>> leadership, leadership can have typically male trait, typically females. the best leaders have both, and that's been documented over and over. >> i agree with that. >> the best leaders have both. we can associate what is femme minty with leadership. >> another sort of one of these interesting and loaded questions, what is your opinion about a woman's physical appearance in the workplace and how it can help or hurt her career? >> you know, the physical appearance one is a real issue. it's much more of an issue for women than for men. you know, i used to tell women at google to dress appropriately. again, it wasn't -- >> not with, you know, shorts and tank tops. >> dress for success. i used to give, my boss at the time called it my dress for success talk. you know, we would hire these amazingly smart women from great places with great skills, and, you know, sometimes they looked like they were going to a nightclub. and that wasn't going to help them at work. and it was the same kind of advice as the negotiating advice. i didn't like telling them maybe

you should dress a little more -- i mean, it's silicon valley. i was suggesting jeans, not shore shorts, right? but i actually thought as presenting themselves as professionals was pretty important. i don't overly focus on it, i'm not someone who's into fashion or clothes, but i do think that presenting ourselves appropriately the same way we wouldn't walk in and say something dumb, you know, we want to care about the perception we give. >> another question, how do you get more women into real and perceived places of power such as public company boards of directors? should we doha some your -- do what some european governments are doing and require a certain percentage of women be board members? >> so the issue on quotas is a very raging debate not really here, particularly in europe. and i think the issue is that i think each country has to pick what it wants to do. i am not arguing for quotas for corporate boards in the united states, because i don't think it's the most important

intervention for us right now. and the reason i don't think it's the most important intervention is because if you look at the countries that have put it in such as norway and some of the scandinavian countries, it hasn't actually moved any other numbers. so if you look at norway, they put in a law in 2006 that required quotas for women on corporate boards. they've achieved that, they're up to over 40%, and it hasn't moved any other numbers. and having both, you know, and i think what we really want to do is move the numbers all the way through the to operating jobs, to ceos. and i wanted to see us do things that move the numbers throughout, not just in one place. >> another question from the audience, how do you react to external signals such as messages like you're too aggressive at work? how do you actually handle it when that comes in? how do you behave? >> probably the most important thing lean in is trying to do. i am trying to help it be easier for people to address that. and part of me is really gratified to think it's working a little bit. i notice that joe abramson who

is a friend of mine -- jill abramson, there was an article written about her somewhere which criticized her for these things, and a whole bunch of other people wrote, but wait a second, she's being told she's too adepress withive. that happens to women and not men. >> yeah. so the ability for the crowd to crowd source the response mitigates it to some degree. >> that's right. and i'm hoping lean in and other things are helping to change that. whereas before you would have had to go in and start from scratch and say, well, i appreciate it, what are the ways i'm too aggressive, you know, we're getting help, i think, training our managers so important. there's a man who works for me at facebook who started this conversation oddly by saying i didn't read your book which is a little weird, right? wouldn't you at least pretend you read my book? [laughter] let's leave that lapse in judgment aside. he said i haven't read your book, but i have listened to you for the last five years i've been working for you, and i listen to what you say, so we just did our performance reviews, and he got feedback that a woman who worked for him

was too aggressive. and so rather than write down too aggressive, he went back to the men and women who gave that feedback and said i want to ask you what did she do that's too aggressive specifically, and they answered, and he said if a man had done those exact same things -- >> would you have said the same thing? >> and they said, no. >> yeah. >> so the best thing we can do is i want men to read my book, i want the people in power to understand that. >> with so the core message here is that men have to sort of police this bias? >> and women will be able to say, you know, there's a lot of data that says, i want to ask you specifically. the best thing with feedback is never be too defensive. when you're trying to give someone feedback, you want them to be open to it so you'll continue to give them feedback. but say let's talk about this, how am i too aggressive, and then can we get specific, and i do think it's appropriate to bring up gender, let's also talk

about if a man had done those same things, would he have been too aggressive? >> right. let's do a couple more, and then we'll finish up. lean in gives lots of practical advice for solving the internal issues. what can we do to solve the external issues which i think is referring largely to public policy -- >> and institutions. >> institutional issues. so i think there's a lot we can do. >> i think we can pass better laws, i think we can elect more women, and i also think we can run those companies and change the policies ourselves. so the book starts with a story, it happened at google. i was pregnant, very pregnant as eric and everyone else will remember. they told me that project whale was named after me. [laughter] just one, you know, particularly sensitive engineer. it was actually a very fair comment. one day i was late for a meeting, and i had to park far away, and i was really sick because i tried to run, and that didn't work, and i talked to my husband, and he said where's the

pregnancy parking? he told me that yahoo! had it in front of every building, and so i marched myself into larry and sergei's office -- >> and sergei, by the way, was doing yoga. [laughter] >> correct. i completely interrupted him and said, sergei, we need pregnancy parking, and he looked up at all of me, and he said, we sure do. [laughter] but then what he said was i never thought of it before. let's do it immediately. >> yeah. >> and -- >> boom, just like that. >> and i had never thought about it before. i left google, as you said, but the pregnancy parking is still there. and so my point is if we get more women into these jobs, we will make those institutional reforms. >> and in the book you actually say that you have to ask, and it's okay to ask. and you use this as your example. >> but i think i felt more comfortable because i was senior at google, i was running a big chunk of the company. i'm sure a lot of other pregnant women at google wanted pregnancy parking, but they weren't in a

position to march into sergei's office and interrupt his yoga. [laughter] actually, sergei's so nice, he would have probably said the same thing. but i was senior, and my point is that we need all the institutional reforms, but one of the best ways of getting it is the women in this audience. go run these companies. put in pregnancy parking. [laughter] pay women equally. help women negotiate. train your managers not to tell women they're too aggressive. i think women can be a huge part of the answer here. >> the final question from audience, are you gearing up for a political run in 2016 to help shape some of the policy discussions you speak about, and if so, which office? [laughter] >> i'm not running for office in 2016 or thereafter. >> president of the united states will be open. >> yes, well, they will -- again, i'm rooting for hillary to go for that job. i'm not, i'm not running for

office, but i do think more women need to run, and i think more women need to run companies. i'm happy at facebook, i love the influence facebook as in the world, and i want to both do my job, but also help more women get into these positions. >> this has been a treat for me for reasons that you all don't know. in 2006 sheryl and i were chatting, and we thought it would be really fun to have distinguished people come by and talk in the company. ..

the. >> i want to end by thanking everything you have done for us. this is interesting. i have not actually read for my book before. >> you can listen to your own audio book enact. [applause] >> i did not. >> it is fabulous. so you don't like these kinds of books and you don't like electronic works, by the audio book. >> i will read a little bit at the end. i have written this book to help people achieve their full potential. i am hoping that each will reach for their dreams with gusto. i'm hoping each man will do his part strong support with women

in the workplace. our institutions will be more productive, our homes will be happier, and the children being brought up in these homes will no longer be held back by negative stereotypes. critics have scoffed at me for trusting that once women are in power, they will help one another. that has not always been the case. i am willing to take that step. the first wave of women who ascended to leadership positions were few and far between. to survive, many focused on helping others. the current wave of female leadership is increasingly willing to speak up. more women obtained position of power and the less pressure there will be but storms and the more enjoyable it will be for all women. companies with more women in leadership roles have better work policies and executive compensation. also more women in mid-level management. the hard work in generations before us means that quality is

in our reach. we can close the leadership gap now. every individual can make success a little bit easier. we can do this for ourselves for one another, for her daughters, and also for our sons. if we push hard come in this next week and the last wave. in the future there will be no female leaders. there will just be leaders. back i think that we have seen this is a second extraordinary business. it is not just her intellect.

it is the whole show, all of her, the charisma, the leadership. i'm so proud to work with her and i'm looking forward to working with you and all means you're going to do. what an extraordinary leader. [applause] >> you're watching booktv. nonfiction authors and books every weekend on c-span2. >> here are some of the latest headlines surrounding the publishing industry this last week. a $75 million settlement has been settled. lester the department of justice received lawsuits against apple and publishers are engaging in what they believe to be the price-fixing between the company. miller and harpercollins agreed to pay 32 million and simon &

schuster agreed to pay 80 million. apple is still fighting a lawsuit. stephen king has announced that he has no plans to make his new book available in electronic format. the author has been an advocate of e-books in the past. but he attributes his recent decision to his love of paperbacks as a child. "the new york times" has made some changes to the book review section. the bestsellers list will no longer appear in the version of e-books for the prices will no longer appear in the best sellers list. and a new column entitled open book test replaced this up front column that previously appeared in the section. the changes were made by pamela paul, who took over as editor of the book review earlier this year. stay up to date on breaking news about authors and books and publishing by liking us on facebook at facebook.com/booktv. or follow us on twitter apple

tv.com. you can also visit our website at booktv.org and click on news about books. >> what are you reading this summer? booktv wants to know. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ double mocha.

>> let us know what you're reading this summer. post on her facebook page or send us an e-mail at booktv at c-span.org. >> here's a look at some books have been published this week. in the book straight flush, the author recounts the creation of absolute poker.com and how the u.s. justice department ended its operation. and this historian details from when roosevelt hand on involvement as a strategist and gore to world war ii. and this mexican-american journalist reports on the mexican drug war and the threat against his life in 2007. that is the book at midnight in

mexico. and then a range of topics are discussed in american savaged by dan savage. inside, slights, and fights on sex, faith, love, and politics. in spite of the grand eagle, grand strategies that brought america to independence, conrad black, founder of canada's national post, details nine phases that he ensure the rise of the united states. much of these titles on booktv.org. >> the way that you talked about the evolution of edison protecting the incandescent light and the evolution that we

talk about in regards to computers as well, you have spelled some of these out and i would like to get you to talk about some of this. first of all, most progress stems from alone in the lab. that there is a eureka moment, a flash of brilliance. but it happens in this isolation, not so much in the ecosystem. you say that that is not really what happened, it wasn't true in essence time. can you talk about that and what you learned? >> i think people long for that story. the great eureka moment. it is exciting and accessible to people. it is a lot more complicated than what people understand. the competitions and patton, the battles over the marketplace. these great ideas are being passed down as part of

technological creativity. >> in the case of edison and the lightbulb, how did it happen? >> first of all, edison entered very late is a candidate for a the incandescent bulb. many held together citizens crucial patents. so edison was entering into a crowded field. he was learning from the mistakes and successes of his rivals. >> another fascinating character is known for beating edison to some crucial practices and he

had a working lightbulb in the field before edison dead. justice warren also was working for years on developing a working lightbulb. he actually put money into the field, and nearby mansion, he set up the first outdoor site. there were many people converging on the big test was taking place in paris at the lexical exposition. edison won the day when he arrived at best. he was one of five other people who also have been working with incandescent lighting system. >> were they all aware of each other's work? >> yes, they were. there were at least a dozen people. the first person to identify the possibility of this was cervone serve comfort davis

they really converged in the 1870s. >> what did you discover about the way that edison felt about these incremental stages of progress that others were making? i suspect like many others he had a sense of rivalry. he announced that he had this in way that no one else had and the big breakthrough was to suggest that they were trying to create a carbon filament involved. when he announced this, edison said that he could do this. it turned out that six months later had to do with the crowded

field. >> as we talk about this crowded field, let us talk about how edison invented a whole new style of invention. including the modern way that we think of things happening. >> it was to create a research and development laboratory. he often was very critical of college education and was largely self-taught and he was often proud of that. people who understood the latest chemistry to help him in this product, he also had to hire technicians to realize his ideas. he needed someone who was able to realize the various ideas that he wanted to experiment with. so he was there with the entire team, working very

collaboratively and intensively. but he was the guiding intellect that many knew more about. edison was the one who set the agenda. he also was the one who had to negotiate in order to get the money to pay for what turned out to be a very expensive research and development process. edison lost this and he called it an invention tellier. he promised that he would come up with a minor invention every 10 days and a major breakthrough invention every six months. >> uke must ascend other programs at booktv.org. >> i don't mean to put you on the spot here, but representative tom cole. i am a criminal graduate.

we probably don't have the same politics, but probably next up for me, i have not had the time to read the act of congress, but the reviews have been pretty compelling. i think that that is going to be an interesting case study. you know barney frank and senator dodd, you know some of the legislators. it is interesting to get that perspective for some of the staff. then there is a book that i have just ordered on james burns who was a legendary south carolina politician. jonathan martin of local put this on my radar. he was vice president in 44. he played an extraordinary role in politics including in the south in 1962.

he popped up working with harry hopkins in 1940 nomination of fdr. it was pretty neat political work. so i like to read about the process. i read more policies on history because i seem to learn better with history. >> let us know what you're reading this summer. send us a tweet at booktv. send us an e-mail at booktv at c-span.org. up next, a panel on the political leanings of professors in the united states. this is about an hour and a half. >> okay, we are going to get started, everyone. thank you for coming tonight. i am the director of the institute for public knowledge. on behalf of the institute for public knowledge at nyu,