at 9 p.m. eastern. >> next on booktv, laurie edwards reports on the over 133 million americans who live with a chronic illness, which constitutes about three quarters of all health care dollars. the author examines the obstacles that the chronically ill face, including the limits of medicine, skepticism about many illnesses, and criticism that many have diseases that could be prevented. this is about 45 minutes. >> hello, thank you all so much for being out here tonight. so much of the writing process takes place on my own, in my case when the rest of his sleeping but so it's nice at this point in the process to be able to be out and connect with readers and see people. especially at such a great many. it's nice to see a kind of come full circle because when i was a graduate student, i was here all

the time. so it's nice to be here. so i'm going to talk briefly about the book itself over all and then read two passages and then hopefully we will have some good discussion in answer questions. so two questions i've been getting a lot lately are why this book, and why now. quite simply we can't afford to ignore chronic illness. an estimate of 133 million patients, as you desert, live with chronic illness. by 2025 that number is expected to reach 154 million. chronic illness is responsible for seven out of every 10 deaths, as well as three quarters of all health care spending. but it's so much more than that. so much more than statistics and economics. chronic illness is not something -- chronic illness is not something that happens to other people. the numbers tell us it will happen to most of us, or people that we love, and there is still

underling assumptions and misconceptions about it that are problematic. for example, there is to this idea that people who are sick or sick through their own fault. you can look at current examples of hiv/aids or type ii diabetes to get a sense of that. this underlying idea that people with chronic illness are somehow weaker, and this is certainly amplified in the way that we treat women in pain, for example. who are often told that the pain is either in the head or that they should simply push through it. scholar and medical historian writes disease is as social committee social development no less than the medicine a competitive. this is true centuries ago when disease would often stem from bodily fluids when infectious plagues are blamed on divine retribution. when people with tuberculosis were shipped off to the sanatorium. or when diseases like multiple

sclerosis were considered nervous or hysterical disorders. we will see many instances where despite the origins of illness, ways in which society response to it, are not so far apart. in the kingdom -- in "in the kingdom of the sick," because i found it was impossible to extricate the experience of the living with physical illness. some of the containing sources and technologies that surround patients. inevitably, this became as much a social history of activism as it is a social history interview. because it's equally hard to carve out advances in treatment and research publications and advocates who thought so tirelessly for them. it is a chronological book that for the most part focuses on world, post-world war ii america which was a kind of irresistible progress. between antibiotics and vaccinations, we had more

control over a cute infectious diseases. we begin to think we're just one step away from caring everything that ails us. it was at this point we were living long enough that we were dying from communicable disease, a chronic disease began emerging in public health priority. as you heard in the intro i am a lifelong patient myself. these experiences inform the writing of this book. i have a rare genetic respiratory disease which is a mouthful for people to say tcd if they can stay out of. as those other chronic illnesses. i also teach writings and i chose the book's title from a quote. i'm going to stay that i force my freshmen to read the illness is the night side of life. a more onerous citizenship. everyone who is born holds dual citizenship in the kingdom of the now and in the kingdom of the sick. although we all prefer to use

the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged come at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place. so for me writing this is sort of a point of all these different divisions and crossovers as a health and science writer and instructor as well as the patients. so that's a little bit about the book in context of that, but the first passage i'm going to reduce from chapter four. as i mentioned this is a chronological book that after some brief historical background picked up in the 1940s and 50s. in the early chapters explore patient rights, medical ethics and the phrase social justice movements of the 60s into the to the civil rights movement, the disability rights movement, and the women's health movement and their influence on chronic illness and modern-day doctor-patient relationships. of all the major themes in this book the relationship between gender and illness is perhaps the most compelling are reticent to a shadow of illness still

lingers today and it's all in your head mentality contribute significantly to delays in diagnosis and treatment of many chronic orders, particularly in terms of chronic pain conditions the i just talked about all this on fresh air and a robust response that continues to pour in shows just how many people are affected by this. for example, women are three times more likely to develop autoimmune diseases. and two-and-a-half more times more likely to develop rheumatoid arthritis, four times more likely to have chronic fatigue and nine times more likely to be diagnosed with fibromyalgia. not only are they more likely to develop pain, but they are more sensitive to it. and research shows women are more likely to have their pain dismissed as emotional or academic. when they are treated is often less aggressively than men. and women are likely to be the prescribed antidepressants where

men would receive painkillers with the same symptoms. most chapters in the book start with a more introductory narrative segment where patients experience and set the context of history and analysis to follow. that's what i'll be reading right now from chapter four. in this passage from the women's health movement in public and you will hear from a young woman with crohn's disease, which is an autoimmune disease of the gastrointestinal tract. as well as melissa mclaughlin zanetti and women who suffers from chronic fatigue and a host of comorbid conditions. will also hear from dr. sutter who is a psychiatrist who specializes in treating patients with chronic pain as well as doctor joe wright, who was an intern is just down the road who has done a lot of research and writing on the early its movement. so, alicia cornwell is a 20 year old woman living with crohn's

disease. when she first began her diagnostic journey, she was a middle school student with stomach pains. she underwent a variety of tests, from and ask these two barium swallow x-rays, hopeful that each step would bring her closer to an answer. when the tests and consultations initiated her, while the test and consultation initiated her into the world of nationhood, they also signal the start of an unfortunate but all too common cycle. in dealing with the dismissal of her persistent symptoms. she was told she had reflux disease, but when her problems continued, so did the attention. as the years went on, dismissal took on a more problematic event, as her physical symptoms were attributed to her emotional problems. at the time, my parents and i were told that my symptoms were caused by stress but i heard this for years, right up until i was diagnosed with crohn's as an

adult t but, in fact, i have hed it so often that until last year i was convinced i was making myself sick. or even worse, that i was making up my symptoms for attention, she says. this storyline evokes outdated images of emotionally wrought women attended to with smelling salts and place in darkened rooms and images that are ingrained in historical attitudes towards e-mail patients. hysterical patients. the term history originates from the greek word history of which means when. and it was once believed that history was caused either when wandering through the body. victoire in error doctors attribute hysteric to an imbalance between sexual organs and to bring. problems that we regarded as associate with hormonal fluctuations were also prominent in the diagnosis of history, notes writer paula kamen. the context for this victorian era belief reaches back much further in history, as we know medieval perceptions of women,

catalogued as evidence that they were near leaky vessels committed to men in ways both physical and emotional. unfortunately, this association between hormones and character is one that follows women while past medieval or even premodern times. for alicia cornwell, the data butter sentenced you to edit confidence which, combined with the age, and a comfy assumption that young people are not supposed to be sick, exacerbated the underlying problems. by the time she entered college, which is when she had what she now knows as a first true crohn's flare, she was also experiencing reflux disease. whenever i saw the university health center doctors about esophageal pain, they tended to focus just on the reflux, she says. i always felt timid around doctors, particularly man which they often were, and my fears

about my made up symptoms cause me a lot of anxiety when i needed to get checked out. usually i'm -- i didn't want to be perceived as wind and we. the fact i minimized it made it even easier for doctors to routinely dismiss it, she says. another patient with chronic fatigue and fiber myalgia considers lack of confidence had been an instrumental part of her long and unproductive diagnostic journey part i was a shy and quiet 15 year old who brought her mother into every appointment the jesus. originally because the brain from a concentrated and women bring difficult period they just didn't take me safely in any way, she said. part of it has been my age, being young, shy and unsure of how to stick up for myself, i often found that i would -- for

years it didn't occur to me that i could argue with doctors results but even if they were contrary to what my body was telling me. i was a good girl, she said, a hard-working straight a student at and was determined to be a good patient to figure everything they told me to do because this was my only shot at getting better. ivan sigal sex pictures into things about midway through college that i finally decided it was up to me and not up to them. if something was making me worse i could stop doing it, even if the doctors told me i should keep doing it. if i could go back i would change that. the sense that had all the control, not me, she says. honing in on one of the most important elements in a patient has, the balance of power in the doctor-patient relationship. as a psychiatrist working with men and women in pain, dr. sarah whitman reminds us that this imbalance of power and

skepticism has far-reaching roots. historically, when women have reported medical symptoms, these are taking as safely as women describe complaints. for example, she says, research has shown that when men and women both report cardiac symptoms, men received more thorough evaluations. and 48 with a cardiac disease, men receive more aggressive and definitive treatment. so a woman reporting pain may be more likely to be dismissed or have her symptoms downplayed. there are some medical illnesses that are unique to women. for example, certain pelvic pain disorders. these are significantly under researched, and it can be difficult to find physicians with appropriate training and clinical experience to treat them. the lack of training and clinical express perpetuates the cycle. if women are not diagnosed correctly because their physicians don't know what to look for, their symptoms worsen,

which can have profound emotional effects as well. from there, it is not a huge leap to write the pain or symptoms on asp hysterical or psychogenic. when you think about the challenges and often unsatisfactory expenses patients have had with physicians, doctor joe wright, uses part of it as the process of starting with a power relationship that happens when you go to doctors. on the perspective of patients, they feel that quote i had social power until i walked into this room. we see physicians only are six are vulnerable. their assessment of what is wrong with us has the potential to validate or denigrate our experiences. activists have questioned their hammocks of what happened in that exam room. there's this real tension about what we want from our doctors and for medicine. dr. white says. and it's very hard for people to just generally make an individual experience political.

it is what people with disabilities did. .. >> and all of these have yielded significant and incremental breakthroughs for patients of chronic illness. but we can't overlook the importance and impact of the internet and what i call health 20 technology such as social media or internet platform that allows patients to connect with each other and health care providers and exchange health

information. patients blog and connect with each other that way, they share experiences and advice, they access and share research, they advocate, and more and more being able to share information immediately and have it spread virally sets up a division between the old guard of established medicine which moves at a much slower and inevitable slow pace of research and publication versus the new guard of social media. so you can imagine if you are the cdc, and you are working tirelessly to combat the association between vaccines and autism and to bring about the evidence-based medicine to prove there is no link, you can imagine trying to compete with jenny mccarthy, right? who is the new guard, right? she has the loud mouthpiece on the issue. so that is the challenge that we face in terms of accessing and sort of sifting through what is good information and what is bad. so this excerpt is from chapter seven, as i said, which is

called "into the fray." and it deals with patients in the digital age. in terms of the larger historical scope of the book, we started right in post-world war ii america where we had a little bit of hubris about medical science, and we really did believe it was on the cusp of curing everything. it was the gold standard, and it would tell us all that we needed to know to feel better. now there's a really compelling pendulum shift if you look in certain patient circles where the science itself and the integrity of the science itself is being questioned. in this chapter i examine chronic lyme disease and how social media and the internet have altered the course of advocacy. and what these examples illustrate in terms of the languager complexities of present day illness. so as you can imagine, autism is a very complex topic. books and books have been written, so i really did try to keep a narrow focus in this

chanter and look at how has the internet and social media changed this, and would we see the same trajectory two decades ago without these tools. and so that was really my purpose. i wasn't trying to retell or recast the story, as it were. so the following chapter, chapter eight, looks at the e-patient movement, and e-patients are empowered, equipped, involved and engaged in participatory medicine as an aspirational model for working for change and collaboration within the medical system. so really how individuals can be more informed health consumers and advocate for themselves and have access to their own health information. this chapter, chapter seven, is about how groups and patient advocacy groups have used social media sometimes to work outside of the medical system, i should say. so chapter eight is within medicine, and chapter seven is how these groups have had to work around it. so in this passage you will hear from jennifer crystal who is,

actually, a graduate student here at emerson now. she can't be here tonight because she's in class, but she's a writer working on lyme disease, and she has suffered from chronic lyme for years, so this is a little bit about her story and how it fit into this greater historical scope. for jennifer crystal, a 33-year-old woman living with lyme disease and two of its co-infections, life changed dramatically with one tiny tick bite in the summer of 1997. tick season right now, so especially relevant, right? it was the summer before her sophomore year at middlebury college, and crystal was working at a camp in maine. i remember the day that everything changed that summer at camp, she says. i came into the dining hall after a long morning of lifeguarding, driving a ski boat and chasing campers around in the sun. suddenly, the room started to spin. i got dizzy and shaky, and my hands were clammy. everything seemed very far away

as if i were looking through a tunnel. the camp nurses immediately suspected dehydration, but when they heard how well i had been hydrating all day, they realized i was having a low blood sugar reaction. that episode was the first of many, and soon i had a diagnosis of hypoglycemia. i'd never heard of it. it didn't make any sense to me or to any of my doctors, why i would suddenly develop it, but no one seemed overly concerned with finding the answers, she says. it would be years before crystal and her doctors would trace her symptoms back to that summer and to a tick bite. but as it turns out, that is not at all unusual when it comes to lyme disease. the controversy surrounding the diagnosis of chronic lyme and the schism it has caused between the patients who say they have it and the factions of the medical community who disagree with the diagnosis, the symptoms and the treatment represents what is now a well established

pattern when it comes to chronic illness. patients report symptoms that are hard to explain, and a space opens up for questions and skepticism. the tempting answer is to let science clear up this confusion for us, since unlike many of its contemporary illnesses, there is quantifiable evidence of lyme disease. except when there isn't. as an infectious disease, lyme is more common than hiv and aids and in its own right is as politically mired. it is the most common vector-borne illness in the country, meaning transmitted through a bite. and between 1992 and 2006, reported cases of lyme disease more than doubled topping at almost 250,000. according to some estimates, up to 20,000 new cases are reported annually, although many patients and experts think the numbers are much higher since lyme is often mistaken for chronic

fatigue, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis and so on. its politics, its patient advocacy community which adapted quickly to the social media milieu, and its challenges all make chronic lyme a revealing portrait in present day illness. along with hotly-debated topics like the association between autism and advantage seeps, these medical dramas have played out online in realtime for much of the past decade. comments and postings often complementing or replacing altogether the protests of decades past. in the case of chronic lyme and other conditions, it isn't so much that the research is just emerging. instead, often the research exists, but it is the strength of the science itself that is at issue. and technology helps fuel criticism and analysis for better and for worse. in the 21st century,

mobilization and protest often take place virtually. technology unites people with like minds and like causes. a rapid, dramatic shift to a digital world has influenced how and where we work, how we spend our leisure time and how we transform thoughts into actions. consider the arab spring be movement. spring movement. one man in december 2010 in response to presentation in tunisia brought about protests that quickly spread through countries such as egypt, libya and syria. technology like facebook, twitter and blackberry messenger helped protesters organize, helped the movements spread their message and helped the outside world gauging what was going on. gauge what was going on. while digital advocacy has not turned virtual collaboration into interperson protests, it has still had an enormous influence on changing how we find, use and spread

information. for example, 80% of internet users -- keep in mind about three-quarters of all u.s. adults are regular internet users -- have searched online for information on any of 15 health topics such as a specific disease or specific treatment, and 34% of internet users have utilized blogs, with ebb sites and online news groups to read commentary about other people's health experiences. if current day controversies illustrate, we've come a long way from the mid 20th century hubris over medical scientists' capabilities. and instead of believing medicine and science will conquer most of what ails us, many of us are questioning it. and in turn, these same patients and advocates face increasing scrutiny too. now, virtual collaboration and information sharing offer patients and groups many benefits. but the flip side of this mobilization comes with a

condition. the message must be accurate and the information reliable. thank you. [applause] so hopefully you guys have some questions. we have some time for questions at the end. of the reading if anyone has any. yes. do you have a question? >> do you generally believe that men are medically stronger than women? >> that is a great question. i don't believe they are medically stronger -- >> repeat the question. i don't think they heard it. >> the question was do i believe that men are medically stronger, right? is that what you said? >> yeah. >> i believe that they are physiologically different, so i believe that our bodies are made differently, certainly, and that influences how medicines work, that influences the diseases that we get and that influences how people perceive us. but i don't think that they're

medically stronger, i just think we have different needs and different problems. good question. very brave. [laughter] other questions? yes. >> i think you made very clear the difficulty of having these types of diseases diagnosed. i'm interested in since you're a person who has one, what the day-to-day is like if you're chronically, consistently not feeling well? >> and that's such a good question, and i think that -- i should preface that by saying the question was, actually, what is it like day-to-day to live with someone that isn't going away, right? chronically not feeling well. personally, my philosophy is the universal illnesses unite us far more than disease specifics divide us. if you're not feeling well because of pain or overwhelming fatigue, or you're not feeling

well because you're diabetic, and you feel like you have sweaters on your teeth, the larger point is that you're not feeling well, you're not able to participate in the same way. so i think what makes chronic illness challenging is it is this great space where some days you're well, and other days you're not at all. and i think from a societal standpoint, that's really hard to understand. how can you look okay today? you don't look sick, right? i mean, that's a big line that people who are caronly ill get -- chronically ill get, you don't look sick. so i think that's part of the challenge, and it's just a question of negotiation, i think. i think you learn early on when you have a chronic illness that you need to make choices, that you're not going to have maybe the same energy or same endurance or same stamina, so you have to pick and choose what's going to get the best from you every day, and some things have to slide. i think it's the waxing and waning that is actually more difficult. most people fortunately, i hope,

are never miserable every minute of every day, and it's almost once you get that taste of feeling better that it's harder to adjust to falling back down again. so, other questions? yes. >> in what ways do you continue with the medical facilities promoting the use of technology and improving the patient experience in medicine overall? >> that's a good question. it's about how our medical facilities are sort of utilizing technology, and do you mean from a research standpoint or sort of social media -- >> the doctor/patient and research. either way. >> yeah. i think that there's a really good movement right now for collaborative care, and there is actually a rallying cry in the e-patient movement right now to let patients help. so i think that there is an increased understanding of the need for collaboration so that the patient is the best narrator of his or her symptoms, and i think you're seeing a lot more of that.

you're seeing a lot more engagement, you know, institutionally. you know, the cdc, for example, has a pretty active twitter feed. hospitals are live tweeting surgeries. not to make this all about twitter, but i think it's a really good example of this emerging interface where they do want to connect, and they do want to share their research. and you're seeing a lot more actual research articles accessible online quicker instead of waiting months and months. and so that democratization of that information is huge, absolutely. i think i saw another hand. was there another hand? yes. >> it was kind of the same point about the collaborative care model, but have you learned anything about differences in training in physicians or nurses or schools that are taking on a more collaborative approach in the training of their care providers? >> yeah. that's actually another great question. i think we are seeing a lot more emphasis on the patient voice.

you know, you can look at columbia university, for example, has a really well established program in narrative medicine where they're actually having all the medical students read patient stories and write their own stories, because that really backs up the belief that if you can empathize with suffering, then you'll be a better provider, and you'll be able to get more from your patients. in fact, one example, you know, if we look at, say, complementary and alternative medicine which millions of americans use but only 60, 61% admit to their doctors they use, there's been a big surge in medical schools that are training people to, physicians to understand even if the evidence-based medicine isn't what they would like it to be, to knowledge their patients are doing it, so we should talk about it. and there's actually a really great book that was just published that was all about how physicians and health care

providers can use social media for better patient care. actually just this past month, a new book published about that. so i think there is a lot more understanding of the need for the patient voice and for collaboration. i think we're seeing it in mainstream media more, and that's a good thing because it does trickle down. so if you look at, say, pauline chen's column in "the new york times," her doctor/patient column, that's usually about bringing in the patient voice. so, um, there's also a lot more writing from the front lines as it were, and so i think anytime there's a great nursing anthology that just came out, and i wish i could think of the name of it right now, but anytime you're having people talk about stories and talk about empathy then it trickles down. fundamentally, it's about respect. it's respecting what both parties bring. so the medical and physiological expertise plus the lived experience of your own symptoms. so, great. any other questions?

yes. >> do many people with chronic illness experience depression? >> yes. yes. it is very, it is comorbid, absolutely, and i think the rates are higher in these sort of what they're called neglected pain disorders, so particularly for women. if you don't know what's wrong with you, and people don't believe you and you not working because you're sick in bed, you're going to get depressed. it's a vicious cycle. it was something i was just writing about the other day. in may there's going to be a new diagnosis in the diagnosis manual for meantal health. mental health. and it's going to be somatic symptom disorder where, basically, if you're a patient and you've had at least one physical symptom for six months coupled with what they consider heightened anxiety or hyperfocus on your symptoms or hyperanxiety about it, you could qualify as having a mental illness.

so it's a big, i mean, it's a big problem. what some people would see as a natural reaction to a major life disruption could be categorized as mental illness. now, certainly there are people who have depression, but often it's as a result of their untreated illnesses. yes. question in the back. >> chronic illness is usually associated -- [inaudible] neurological disorder. how it's separated in this society neurological disorders, does it affect chronic illness versus mental illness? because some neurologists usually when you go to them, they write like mental diagnosis and neglect neurological. >> yeah. so i think the question is about sort of the distinction between neurological disorders and mental illness.

and i think that's a, i mean, that's a really tough line to navigate. you know, i think that there are many neurological disorders that present with similar symptoms, right? so it all goes back to are you getting the appropriate diagnosis early enough to get appropriate care? are you working with people who are committed to finding out what's really wrong with you. and the challenge is if we're talking about the stigma that exists with physical illness, the stigma with mental i'llness is even -- illness is even greater. yes. >> following up on the last point that you made that, you know, in the dsm people are going to be categorized as having a mental illness because of chronic pain, but since they're not being taken seriously, how is that a benefit to anyone? will they be more likely to seek treatment if they have a diagnosis? >> if they have a diagnosis of -- >> if somebody says they've been sick for six months and i'm

hyper-aware of it, and you're saying the dsm is going to have a category for that, who does that benefit? >> no one really. i mean, i think it was well intentioned, the point behind -- and i actually spoke to a lot of people who were on the committee that did the dsm before. and actually very critical of this particular manifestation. and then the point was to try to catch the people who needed mental health intervention. but the problem is the application of it, i mean, it's millions of americans, i think it's up to 7% of the population stand to be potentially misapplied with this diagnosis. so it's, it's contentious, certainly, and i think that there's a lot -- for women who are already told it's all in their head, a nightmare. yeah. >> couldn't it be a financial benefit to the patient for health coverage? is. >> well, it could be, except they could get if they now had a pre-existing condition that's

diagnosed, that could also cause problems too conversely. and it can also increase stigma in the workplace and employment if they're diagnosed as having a mental illness. a different kind of stigma, certainly, but -- yes. >> um, it seems like there's a risk with any diagnosis of people with serious illnesses being misdiagnosed as having a mental illness. has there been any research that you're aware of, of how many people who would fall into, who say would have something like ms or heart disease or diabetes who might fall into a -- >> yeah, that's a great question. is there any research that could show the potential danger of this misclassification. there has been one field study so far, and it has shown, um, i think it was -- i forget the exact statistic off the top of my head, i think it was 7% of the population as a whole could stand being misclassified. however, within that study

patients with fibromyalgia and with cancer were actually captured as having mental illness instead of physical conditions. and there was one study, and i do have a link to it in an article i wrote, but the exact breakdown of that i can't remember, but those were the three conditions that were missed and that were, these patients were all told they were mentally ill, not physically ill. yes. >> how would that affect conditions that are so difficult to diagnose like chronic fatigue? i mean, you could suffer from chronic fatigue for a long time before being really diagnosed appropriately and even likefy to myalgia and even lyme disease if the doctor's not on top of it. so you could have that for a year, two years, and they might fall into that. >> well, and i think those are the patients who are at greatest risk, absolutely. because they're already harder to diagnose.

they're already lacking diagnostic criteria and lab work that can give you the answers, so they're already predisposed to not be taken at face value. not responsible -- [inaudible] of their pain anyway. >> right now is the best way to diagnose lyme disease through a special blood test? >> well, that's actually not as easy an answer as you would think. there is a blood test for it, the western blot. but what many patients say and advocacy groups say is that the standards for that test are not complete and thorough, so it misses a lot of people who have it. plus, a lot of people don't think they get tested because you don't always get the bull's eye rash. so there is this very characteristic rash that signals lyme disease, but many people don't get it, and the symptoms are so diverse that, you know, you have sort of a warm joint, or you're achy or tired, well, that can be a lot of things.

it's very complicated. and there's a lot of sort of conflict of interest things that are being tossed around in terms of chronic lyme and the parameters of the testing too. it's actually very controversial to treat chronic lyme, because the standard line of treatment for chronic lyme is long-term iv antibiotic therapy which is, a, expensive and, b, comes with its own risks and drawbacks, so there are many people who will not treat or who are, conversely, in danger of losing their medical licenses for long-term iv treatment in patients. so very contentious, absolutely. so any other questions? okay, well, thank you all so much for coming out. it was really great to see you. [applause] >> for more information visit the author's web site,

laurieedwardswriter.com. >> max holland is the editor of the web site washington decoded and is the author of the book "leaked." why did mark felt become deep throat? >> it was completely for internal bureaucratic reasons. he wanted to destroy pat gray who was the interim fbi director after hoover. had nothing to do with principle, had nothing to do with protecting the fbi from nixon. nixon was his ticket to becoming director. so felt leaked in order to destroy gray and pick nixon think well of felt and make felt the director. so the idea that he was a whistleblower or leaked to destroy richard nixon is completely untrue. >> so felt was a company guy. >> i'm sorry? >> so felt was a company guy? >> the bureau was everything to him. it was his life. and being the direct or of the bureau was a once in a lifetime

opportunity, and he did everything in his power -- engaging in dirty tricks, you know, fbi co-intel tactics -- to get to the directorship. and he flummoxed woodward. i don't think woodward really understood what was going on. >> do you feel that he was misrepresented by woodward and bernstein? >> absolutely. i don't fault woodward and bernstein's reporting in the fall '72, what i fault is their book about the reporting. it's a fairy tale. >> bob woodward, following the death of felt, bob woodward put a book out disclosing his relationship with mr. felt. what are your thoughts? >> it's called "the secret man," and it furthered the fairy tale. it wasn't -- and i think woodward's not obtuse, and he has to know better, but he's sort of riding a tiger. he created this myth. he can't get off. >> so you're calling it a myth.

what are your sources to demystify this myth? >> fbi files, fbi investigated the leaguing at the time, and they're very revealing. people who were in the fbi with mark felt, it's an untruth that the fbi's investigation was stymied and felt had to leak the details in order to, you know, press it forward. the fbi -- there was nothing in "the washington post" that the fbi didn't know sometimes days, weeks, months before the period in the -- before it appeared in the post. >> how premeditated do you believe mr. felt was in regards to his leaking? >> completely premeditated. and, in fact, one of the things i discover is he leak today a time magazine reporter named sandy smith more than he ever leak today woodward. woodward, you have to remember, was a cub reporter, almost wet behind the ears. felt didn't know if he could trust him, and, in fact, he couldn't trust him because

woodward betrayed the secret of felt's existence. >> why continue the relationship over the years if he felt he couldn't trust woodward? >> well, it ended in '73. it didn't -- and felt was very upset. i mean, that's one of the things woodward is honest about, was how upset felt was with "all the president's men." you know, he stopped talking to woodward. >> and in regards to today, we look at, you're looking at the current administration. is there a mark felt that, is there still a chance that mark felt can exist out there and do such a thing? >> absolutely. because one of the things i think is important about my book is it shows the complicated relationship between sources and washington reporters and the, you know, the true blue whistleblower who acts completely out of principle, that's a very rare bird. and the truth is why people leak to the media, it's much more complicated and compromising for

both sides. i think felt leaked for reasons that would not be principled or looked upon well by his colleagues in the fbi, and the way wad woord has portrayed -- woodward has portrayed felt is a fairy tale of the media's making. >> max holland is the author of "leak." thank you. >> thank you. >> you're watching c-span2 with politics and public affairs. weekdays featuring live coverage of the u.s. senate. on weeknights watch key public policy events and every weekend the latest nonfiction authors and books on booktv. see past programs and get our schedule at our web site, and you can join in the conversation on social media sites. >> marina von neumann whitman, daughter of mathematician john von neumann was the first female to serve on the president's council of advisers you should

president nixon and -- under president nixon and in the 1980s she served as vice president and chief economist of general motors. she's next on booktv discussing her memoir, "the martian's daughter." >> in his 1999 autobiography, the physicist edward teller wrote this of the group of geniuses gathered together to work on the hydrogen bomb: we are martians who have come to earth to change everything. change everything, they did, and among them, of course, was the brilliant mathematician john von neumann, father of what we now call the von neumann architecture for modern computing and, of course, so much more. today is not necessarily about john von neumann, of course, but it is about a martian's daughter, marina von neumann whitman whose own great intellect and considerable business talent have been applied to