ii and korea. we lost one in vietnam. and i think the elite universities today hardly send anybody as a%. sure some go but it's very, very small. how are you going to get them back involved again? on me, i don't know. you may take you there being a fascist but i just about, if you're using government money and your kids are not contributing, we are not going to give any more money. .. >> this is mostly a question

towards dr. marlantes, dr. mcintyre and dr. coffin. you talk about psychospeechuation or the turning of soldiers into animals. i know you said the social acceptance of killing in society will generally accept it and despite -- [inaudible] taught at a young age and be also about having spiritual strength in pride of battle. since i'm also seeking to be a chaplain as a career, and i'm not going to be one under killing, but since i'm going to be around those who are, how am i going to deal with that? dr. mcintyre, you mentioned the strategic possibility of social security. of future leaders -- not me personally since i still have a lot of time to go, but people who are going to be going into officer in less than a month, how are they going to handle not being able to at least project this global footprint that

you've mentioned? and to dr. coffin, because of this idea of psychospeechuation and your talk of moral integrity and military integrity and questionable leadership, how are we going to be able to easily identify this and -- because i'm pretty sure that at an rtc level at least so far, this isn't something that we're taught. and what are we going to do as of now in order to combat this? >> thanks. i think we better break those two up. dr. wright, you know, with your work with veterans' groups, what's in the works to, you know, help employment opportunities for returning veterans? is there any special treatment are they feeling even more isolated because now they're trying to rejoin the economy when unemployment's high when maybe they don't have the education? >> yeah, steve, that's a

critical point. unemployment is high for returning veterans than it is for the population as a whole, and a part of the it has to do with the fact the economy has changed dramatically. the enlisted men and women have a high school education, they do not have any college, and that part of our population is having great difficulty getting jobs. my counseling efforts in the hospital, the one that i helped to set up down at walter reed has been to encourage them to continue with their education. i think it's crucial. it's a different war than their fathers' war. when they came home from vietnam, there was still plenty of blue collar jobs. certainly after world war ii that was the case. it's not the case now. so i do think that education is critical for them. >> well, your work with the senate on the new g.i. bill and, president schneider, i read your op-ed in the free press opening up opportunities for returning

veterans, should this help that situation? >> oh, it should, absolutely. i think what i keep telling these guys that i see in the hospitals, you can do it. you can go to college. most of these people, it's not that they are thinking about at age 17, a senior in high school, i'm not sure if i'm going to join the army or go to mit. they've been on track, some of them, to go into the military for a while. they may not have taken ap prep courses, sat exams or anything. but i keep telling them, you can do it. you've demonstrated they can do it. they need individual counseling and support. >> is psychospeechuation a fundamental imperative for a soldier going to war, that you have to dehumanize your enemy? >> i think so. you make a false species out of a human being. i mean, that's my opinion, that it's too hard to pull the trigger on a human being. i mean, you hear these situations all the time.

i just was reading about a british marine who was in hiding with his unit, they were in camouflage, and a 14 or 15-year-old kid herding goats came up on the position, and the goats were heading right toward where they were hiding. and this guy was on watch that night. now he's got a person in front of him. he doesn't have the enemy in front of him, and he doesn't pull the trigger, ask and they all got in trouble. because if he'd have killed that kid, the mission would have been paramount, but he congress do it because it was just -- he couldn't do it. it wasn't a hajjy or a towelhead. and i think that's the way it's done. i think it's imperative that we understand that. i think if you're able to kill people and they're people all the time, then i think you're a psychopath or a sociopath. i just wanted to address the young man who says he wants to become a chaplain. i always found it sort of

difficult when i was a young man about how in the world can these chaplains come here and talk to me about god and everything when, in fact, the ten commandments are saying thou shalt not kill? what are they doing? i'm reminded of a story that happened to me, and i'm sure it's happened to almost everybody in this room, but this is the way it happened to me. we had a really important football game against north catholic. the local priest from my little town was a real football fan, and he came into the locker room before the games. and there was none of this nonsense about, oh, we pray nobody gets hurt, and we all do our best. he would come in there, we want to beat the other team, because we want to go to state. he didn't pull any punches. [laughter] i'm sitting there, and it's the game against north catholic, and they were the powerhouse in the state. whoever won this game was going to go to state, probably win the championship. he's talking about winning north catholic, and i'm sitting there

going, but doesn't north catholic have a priest? [laughter] that's when it hit me. you know, god doesn't care what side you're on. i think god just thinks we're stupid. [laughter] all right? fighting each other like this. why can't we solve it a better way? but what god is about is about individual souls. it's about what happens to the spring soul in finish individual soul -- >> a live look inside the jacob javits convention center where all this work we're bringing you live coverage. this morning a panel of authors discussing their upcoming books. among them ishmael beah, doris kearns goodwin on "the bull hi pulpit -- bully pulpit." wally lamb who wrote "we are water," and the panel will be moderated by chelsea handler who's the author of a new book.

a few introductory remarks and awards will be handed out before the program gets underway. live coverage from bookexpo be america here on c-span2. >> thbs about as close to our unanimous selection as we've ever had. those of you who are following what is happening in the press might remember when the missouri university press was threatened with being shut down, bruce miller jumped to the defense of this very important midwestern press, and in what was termed david and gliept action by some managed to keep the press alive. it's also my understanding a pretty good salesman and sells a lot of books. so it's my pleasure to present the publishers' weekly sales rep of the year award to bruce josh what mill per of mill -- josh what miller of miller trade book marketing. [applause]

>> thanks, jim. and this is the first time i've gotten a plaque, so i'm not sure what the plaque etiquette is. anyway, i'm honored to be in this room in such good company and to be part of an industry built around the work of writers and the pleasure of reading. thanks to everyone, booksellers, reps, writers and publishers, for nominating me. i'd also like to thank publishers weekly for continuing to recognize the value of university and independent presses. i did not receive this award because i'm a great or perfect sales rep. i received this award because of my devotion to books, the prints word and because of my successful efforts in helping to prevent the shutdown of the university of missouri press. without the guidance and activism of ned stuckey french,

an author and professor at florida state university, these efforts would have failed. these days university presses have out of necessity become their own best advocates. university presses are an essential part of the bulwark against the domination of our business by a single actor. the same is also true of booksellers, and i encourage the large trade houses to build on what they have started recently in taking steps to bolster independent stores. all of us, publishers, authors and sales reps, participant in a cooperative venture. the countless negotiations between human beings involved in ordering, shipping, displaying and selling books create a vital marketplace where the human faith. let's not allow any one entity or business enterprise to control the book-selling scene. i want to congratulate square books on being the bookstore of the year.

also a shout out to my parents, jordan and anita miller, who have been running academy chicago publishers for 39 years but are not here today. and greetings to franklin dennis, an old family friend, who is here this morning. thanks again for this award and for giving me a chance to speak. [applause] >> thanks a lot, bruce. okay. and as -- it's not a surprise, as bruce let out of the bag, bookstore of the year this year is being awarded to square books. when the nominations started rolling in, when the office was starting to hook at them and they were like, hasn't square books ever won this before? they've been doing this for over 21 years. so we're glad that oversight was rectified this year. i think everybody would agree richard holdworkts that the

co-founder of square books is one to have the most -- one of the most respected people in the circle. he was president of the ava for a couple years, was also mayor of his hometown in mississippi. and i think it's pretty widely agreed that no bookstore is as important to its community as square books is. no less an authority than john grisham wrote in nominating square books that square books is the heart and soul of a very literary town. and so with that, with that endorsement -- and we're not one to argue with john distinguish sham -- grisham -- it's our pleasure to present the bookstore of the year to square books and richard hullwomplet. [applause] >> good morning. thank you very much. jim, appreciate that.

this award has given us the opportunity to thank the many people who have made it happen; our loyal customers back in oxford, our esteemed partners in publishing, countless writers in the community of independent bookstores -- can you hear me? every single one of which is a bookstore of the year. each of us is only as good as the collect i have world of -- collective world of independent bookstores and of publishers. thanks, of course, to publishers weekly and donna pass and their jury panel, and thanks most of all to the square books staff represented by these people who are here with me. general manager lynn roberts, childrens' bookseller extraordinaire jill moore, on the far end, slade lucas,

customer service 'em press star owe and manager and stand-up bass player. [laughter] cody morrison, buyer. these people are all terrific booksellers. finally, thanks to my co-owner and partner in life, lisa, whose first novel will be out about this time next year. [laughter] true. it's no lie. along the second floor of our main store, there's a balcony that runs the length of the store, and it's kind of a favorite gathering place in the community and the scene of some local literary history. a couple of months ago we had to replace the balcony, and we cut up pieces of the decking when we took the decking off and sold them for $5 each as a way of raising money to help pay for the cost of replacing the

balcony and so that people could own a piece of the historic square books balcony. to date, we sold over 800 of these sticks -- [laughter] sticks and mortar is going to be our new slogan, and we now wish to present one that's framed and signed by all of our staff with the accompanying certificate of authenticity -- [laughter] as an expression of our frat tuesday to publishers weekly. [applause] thank you all very much. [applause] >> that's the first time we received ap award, so we're glad to get it. okay. that wraps it up for our portion of the show. last year we were followed by jimmy fallon, and a couple of months later he got a pretty good gig at nbc. i'm not sure if the same luck will happen to this year's

hostess, but we'll welcome chelsea handler. [applause] >> good morning, everybody. i'm very excited to be up this early. [laughter] i know right about now we're all wishing this was not a last, more of a lunch -- breakfast, but more of a lunch, but here we are. i'm very, very delighted to be sitting here with wally lamb, with ishmael, with doris. i'm excited to be involved with the book community at all since i have a television show on the e! network. so i'm very grateful to every individual here who goes out and sells our books and has our books in your stores and

everything you do for the book community. so it is an honor to be here. i am not sure how the publishing industry is going or what direction it's going in. but i would like nothing more than to be somebody who's involve inside keeping it alive. and i was first asked to come here in person, and i figured i could just appear on kindle, but -- [laughter] they said, no, you're going to have to set your alarm to be funny, which i've never had to do either. i usually do that from three p.m. on. this year i'm going to release my fifth book which is called "uganda be kidding me." and it is about all of my trials and tribulations traveling as a pompous american in places i have no being in. on five-star saw far rays ask -- safaris asking where we can hunt

live lobster. i was thinking about calling it are you there, vodka, me gore by. a, i hate russians and, b, i don't know mikhail gorbachev. so i decided to write a tome detailing my globe-trotting adventures over the past several years, and i've had the incredible e appearance of concern experience of being fortunate in the book and tv community where i've been to some spectacular places. and be i have a merry band of misfits that i take with me everywhere i go. so i want to -- i was going to talk about that, but i'm looking at all of you, looking at me and thinking who gives a shit really. [laughter] i got in here last night at around 2:30 in the morning from there los angeles, and we pulled up to the lincoln tunnel, and i'm like when can i take my sleeping pill?

i have to be up at 6:30 for a book fair, and this 18 wheeler came in right before the lincoln tunnel and couldn't fit under the toll booth of the lincoln tunnel. and i got out of the car, and i was like, no! laugh and there was police officers everywhere, and they were guiding him to back up so he could get back up whatever street takes you away from the lincoln tunnel, and i'm like, i can't! i have to walk through the lincoln tunnel. [laughter] and i got out of the car to go yell at the guy who's driving the truck going, hey, buddy, don't you know how tall your truck is? and the police officer looked at me and said, chelsea, get back in your car. [laughter] i thought, wow, i've really made it. [laughter] so i was about to read a passage from my book, but it is not ready yet, and i am publicly asking for an extension. [laughter] not joking. and i'd love to read a passage, but i wrote it in swahili, and

my translator's been detained in customs. i should have never asked him to bring me a couple pounds of kenyan skunk weed. but we will have a wonderful program, and each author will tell you about their books. first up, he documented his incredibly harrowing tale in the memoir "a long way gone," so please welcome ishmael beah. [applause] >> good morning, everybody. i also want to echo what chelsea said. thank you for the introduction. i want to echo what she said about thanking all of you for making our work possible, for waking -- making our work accessible to the leaders. you're doing a fantastic job. we're still around which which means you're doing a great job. [laughter] thank you for that. what i want to do is perhaps speak a little bit about my

emergence into writing, becoming an author. i remember the first time my first book came out in 2007. i was at an event, and somebody said to me, oh, you are that author. and it was the first time somebody referred to me in those terms, and it took me about two minutes to realize that they were actually speaking to me, and i said, oh, yes. actually, i am. [laughter] but then i realized, okay, i am a writer. book was out. but before that, way before that, even before i'd thought about being a writer, i grew up in a place, in sierra leone, in a country can, in a community, in a small village where as a young boy my imagination was sparked by the old tradition story telling that was part of my life, that was part of the daily deliberations of whatever it is that i did. and so at a very young age i

learned the importance of actually telling stories, of how stories are pretty much escorts of our lives. stories are the most to tent, you know, anecdotes for anything that we can encounter in our lives and how we can deal with them. and also stories are the foundations of our lives and how we build those histories and then after -- how we pass them on so that the next generation can learn from mistakes, joy, celebrations and whatever it is that we want to pass on to them. so as a young boy, i knew this growing up because every evening i would sit around the fire, and my grandmother or other older people in my community would tell stories. and these were stories that were instructions about the moral and ethical standards of my community, about how to behave, and some of them were just funny stories. some of them were scary stories to the point i didn't want to go to the bathroom at night. [laughter] so there were all sorts of

stories, but all of them always had a meaning and a reason for the telling. and one of the techniques i learned as a very young kid is whenever they wanted to tell a new story, they would retell an older story. they would add things that were not part of the story. now, if anybody in the audience did not protest, then they knew the audience was not listening, so they would not tell you the new story, because it meant you were not ready to receive the new story. [laughter] so as a boy growing up, this was part of my life. but to even begin with that, i remember i must have been 6, 7 years old, and my father would put me on his shoulder, and we would walk maybe to the village square, there was dancing going on and ore things -- other things, and he would say to me, describe -- you know, we're going to play a game. i'm going to pretend i'm a blind man, and you have to direct me and describe to me the things that you're seeing. so i would say to him, oh, well, you know, go left.

what do you mean by left? what is left? [laughter] well, you know, if you raise this ore hand of yours, make it this way, that's the left. so as a boy, i had to struggle to describe things to him. i would say to him, oh, there's a fire over there. and he would say to me, what is fire? i mean, i'm blind, can you describe it to me? can you make me feel the warmth of it? so as a boy this is really how i started thinking about using my mind to describe the things around me. and later on when i started school, sierra leone being a former british colony, i was one of the literary poets in my community. people would come to me to read letters that their children had written them from the capital city or wherever they were, so i would read these letters to them and write them for them as well. it was perhaps the earliest time for me to start translating, so some of the letters were long and i had to pretty much give the person a succinct version of

what the message was about. but the writing part was the most incredible part because i learned about the secrets of my community. people would tell me things perhaps they didn't want other people to know, and sometimes they would say it in the most elaborate way. for example, a woman wanted her son to come back home. instead of saying that she said, please tell my son who was in labor with him for six hours -- [laughter] his mother who took him to the river to bathe him every morning when he shat in his pants -- [laughter] she went on and on for about seven minutes. all she wanted to say was i miss my son, come home. so i just write, please come home, your mother really misses you. [laughter] to some extent, you've got to get to the point. [laughter] when you're writing, you want people to follow the narrative structure. anyway, before all of this i never thought i would be a writer. i grew up in a community where story telling was a very strong part of our lives.

the idea of going to school and becoming a writer was not really something you want to discuss with your parents because it is useless. let's take him out and send him to school. wants to be an economist, all these things. these are very noble career choices as well. but i want to school wanting to be an economy keys actually, not really. but i was always interested in writing. so this was pretty much my early upbringing, and all of these things -- in addition to the older tradition of story telling, another thing that i learned at a young age growing up was the fact that all the places i grew up have so much richness in language. and in sierra leone we have about three dialects. so you're growing up in a culture where everybody speaks these languages. i grew up speaking about seven of them, and one of my own languages is very, very rich, and i didn't know this until i started writing. when i'm writing, i'm always struggling to find the english

equivalent. for example, in my language when you see night came suddenly, how you describe that is you say the sky rolled over and changed its size. that's what you say. so if i write that sentence, all of a sudden it's a new kind of way i'm using the english language. a -- [inaudible] so if i were to say they kicked around a nest of air, all of a sudden it has a different meaning. so when i started writing, all these things were part of what's made the language richer for me and whatever became of it. now, when i -- in sierra leone we had a civil war that went on for a number of years that ended in 2002, and as a young boy i had the misfortune of being dragged into this war to fight as a child soldier. i was lucky to be removed from that, and through good luck and through remarkable people that i met in my life -- my mother, who

is here tonight, this morning, i should say -- [laughter] who is here. and so, you know, i started living in the united states. i came here. and then really the writing of the book came out of this desire to have people understand what had happened there from my own personal experience of it. because when i arrived here, most people did not really know what had occurred in the country i was coming from. so when i started writing, i never intended to publish it. i was writing, actually, as a way to prepare myself so that when i had the opportunity to speak on a panel -- which started happening to me -- that i would be able to present my thoughts and ideas very well. this was the idea, and i was the university. so i started writing. actually, the first time i wrote for something in the university was a competition to write a fiction for a prize at oberling college. that was $3,000, and i was a poor student, so i thought, you know, why not?

i'm going to give it a shot. so i sat down two, three hours, and i wrote the story about when i was in the capital city when the fighter planes would come at noon, and they would try to bomb the strongholds of some of the rebel groups. and this was the time when the families who go out to cook. because if you cook at any other time of the day, the people with guns will come and take your food from your family and eat it. so when they were running from the planes, that's when everybody went out to cook, so you could actually meet the food. so you can imagine they cooked very quickly, and everybody ate it and sat back like nothing had happened. so i wrote the story called at noon, and i gave it in, and then i won the $3,000. everybody got really upset because i was a political science student. i wasn't studying literature. [laughter] so everybody kind of said -- and then sean, who's a professor at oberling college and a writer, became interested in me and said, you know, you should write. so i started writing what became "a long way gone." i wrote it, my mom read it and

other people, and i really, really was not interested in publishing it. i wanted to go to law school. and then i receive a book, you know, a great literary agent decided to say, you know, let me -- give me 50 pages, maybe i can refer you to somebody. and he read it and i said, i want to take you on. i said what does that mean? i did not know what that meant. we discussed that and he said, you know, i want you to meet somebody, sarah crying crichton. so this very tall woman comes and says hi. hello, we got along immediately, and we started working on the book. but i remember after the book was finished and it's when i really realized what had happened. we had signed the contract and everything, and i remember thinking to myself, oh, my god, i just gave my life away to these people, you know? i don't even know them very well. i mean, what's going to happen?

so i almost wanted to go back and say to sarah, you know, can i have the thing back, you know? and just pretend none of it ever happened. but anyway, i'm glad i did not do that, because the book came out, and it had a life of its own. thanks to all of you for supporting it and for putting on the shelves, and a lot of people read it, and it became -- it had a life of its own. again, going back to my background, where i came from there's a saying in the old tradition that when you write a story, when you tell a story, when you give out a story, it is no longer yours. it becomes whoever encounters it and whoever takes it in, it bams theirs. -- it becomes theirs. so you only become the shepherd of that story because it's coming from you. so you can guide it anyway, but sometimes it will go away where you don't actually intend it to go. but during the editing of this book, sarah and i got really close, and i remember -- i will leave you with one anecdote, and then i'll talk about the new book. i remember when we were editing because it was so spit mate in the journey, it was so

exhausting running from war and all the madness that comes with it. but time i would come to do some editing with sarah, she would have lots of food for me on the table. [laughter] and i kept thinking, you know, i ate. i'm okay. but because save rah was -- sarah was so much in the narrative, i was hungry. she saw me as this boy who was still running from the war, and i was hungry. [laughter] you should have a sandwich, and you should have this. okay, i'm really okay, you know? i mean, we're in new york city now, you know? [laughter] it's okay. [laughter] but in a way, we began to both realize that the narrative itself had already, it had a power of its own because we could not detach ourselves from it so strongly, you know? and so anyway, a long way to go came out, it took me out on the road, and i began to learn about publishing, what it meant and all of this. when it became a new york times best seller, i remember people,

you know, calling me and saying, ah, you know, you're on the best seller. i didn't know what that meant. [laughter] i was at chicago, and they're like, yeah, you're a best seller. i've got to get on a plane for the next event. and later on in my life i really began to discover what all of this meant. so i'm still learning a lot about the publishing world, but for me, the most important part of my work is to share the story, to write the story and let other people do what they can to make the public see it. and for me, i take this very seriously. buzz as i mentioned earlier -- because as i mentioned earlier, stories are the foundations of our lives. they're how we make sense of the realities around us. thai how we, actually, even dream and shape the dreams of our lives and how we can go forward in the future. at the end of the book, "a long way gone," there's a story that i told that it took me many, many years after the war for me to understand what the story actually meant. this story was told to me as a boy, and then they told me as

most of the older people will say, you know, you would understand this story at some point. and the story goes as this: you know, a hunter went into the bush to hunt a monkey. he sees a upon key -- to hunt any animal, and he saw a monkey sitting sitting in a tree, and he lifted his weapon. the monkey said, hey, hold on there, man, you know, what are you doing? and he said, you know, well, it's very obvious what i'm doing. and he said, well, if you shoot me, your mother will die. and if you don't, your father will die. when i was a kid, they would tell this story in front of your parent be, and, of course, i always wanted -- always said i had to go to the bathroom. [laughter] go hunt the animals who do not speak to human beings. [laughter] there may be others around. but the point of this story really is what happens when we take action, it's what happens when you engage in violence,

when you lift a weapon. it's what happens when you engage in anything. a consequence for whatever it is that you do. when you raise a fist as a consequence, what you decide to write and how you carry yourself, everything has a consequence. and it took me throughout the war to understand what this meant. so for me, the powerful stories and what all of us are doing in supporting this, these things will go beyond all of our lives where some of us may not even be alive. maybe somebody will be touched by somebody has written somewhere so deeply. so in a way we're actually shaping the future through all of us here together; writers, publishers, people who make sure people read some of this stuff and all of us. so thank you for being part of the future in a way and the present as well, because -- and whatever lies in between. now, what i'm going to speak of briefly before i end is my new book which is a novel coming out. it's called "radiance of tomorrow."

now, i had a little bit of thought to myself that, you know, after writing a memoir even though it was, it had, you know, a book that did very well on it own, i was a bit exhausted in the sense that, you know, i didn't want to write another memoir because i felt that, actually, it's not sane for one to speak about him or herself for many, many, many years in a row. i think i did not want that. but also this story was pulling at me because of the first book. i wanted to really have people understand how does it feel to return to places that have been devastated by war. so this narrative is set in sierra leone, "the radiance of tomorrow," and it looks at a family who goes back to their town, to their village to try to start living there again after it had been destroyed, to raise a family there again, to try to rekindle some of the traditions destroyed because of the war. how do you do that? how do you try to shape a future if you have a past that's still

pulling at you in and how also -- what do you bring after you've left your homeland where the traditions you've lived have been destroyed, some of it people don't believe in it anymore. how do you come back and try to recreate yourself again. so people go back home with different nostalgias. particularly the younger generations go back because their parents, their grandparents have told them stories about how this place used to be. the younger people in between sort of not as young as the children have lived elsewhere, so they want anything new, but they don't know what it is. so in this narrative you have all this push and pull about how people are trying to live together in this place, and it's called "radiance of tomorrow." you'll meet some very strong characters, one is the father of this family that returns. and you meet an older lady who first returns to this place and discovers some of the things that are there. so what i'm going to do since we're at the book reading, we're

at the literary gathering, i think it would be a disservice if i don't read a little bit. by the way, this is the first five be pages of it. -- five pages of it. the rest you will see at some point, the galley will come out. and it will come out in january of 2014. so i'm just going to read two short paragraphs for you, and i will end my talk there. so "radiance of tomorrow," first time reading it in public. she was the first to arrive where it seemed the wind no longer and healed. several miles from the ground -- to blind your eyes so that the sun would not promise them tomorrow with its rays. it was only the pack that was reluctant to pluck -- [inaudible] as though it anticipated that it would soon ends its starvation for the want of bare feet that

gave it life. the long and windy paths were spoke been of as snakes that one walked upon to encounter life or to arrive at the places where life lives. like snakes, the paths were now ready to shed their old skins for new ones. and such occurrences take time with the necessary interruptions. today, feet began one of those interruptions. it may be that those -- [inaudible] are always the first to rekindle their broken friendship with the land, or it may just have happened this way. the breeze -- her bony body covered with a tattered -- [inaudible] to once what has been her town. she had removed her flip-flops, set them on her head and carefully placed her bare feet on the path, waking the dirt with gentle steps. with closed eyes, she conjured the sweet smell of flowers which would turn to coffee beans. it was a freshness that used to

overcome the forest and find its way into the noses of visiters many miles away. such a sense of travel of a life ahead, of a place to quench one's thirst and perhaps ask for directions if one was lost. but today the scent made her weep, starting slowly at first with sobs that then became a cry of the past. a cry, almost a song, to mourn what has been lost, why its memory refuse toss depart and a cry to celebrate what has been left, however little, to infuse it with residues of old knowledge. she swayed to her own melody, an echo of a voice first filled her, making her body tremble and then filled the forest. that her strength allow and tossing them aside. before i end -- [applause] >> thank you. thank you very much. so this is "radiance of tomorrow," january 14th it will come out. but before i end, i want to say,

to say this. for me, writing became -- coming from a place, a war-torn place and a place where most people have not heard about, when i arrive in the united states, writing became to me a way to bring to life only some of the -- some of the things that i could not provide people physically. for example, when i write i did not even have a report card. so where my mom would take me around for schools, most people would not admit me. to one of the essays i wrote to get in was why i did not have a report card. when i was in high school, most people brought their baby pictures for their yearbook, so i wrote a poem. most people thought maybe i was an ugly baby, so i didn't want to provide a baby picture. [laughter] it was a way to bring to life some of the things i did not have physically so that people

can feel it. and there'll be more tangible and tactile feeling for people when they see these words. so for me, i use words in that way to fit the landscape, to evoke emotions in people so they can actually see and feel where i'm coming from because i have no proof except my memories. so that's what i try to do in my writing. thank you for having me here. [applause] >> thank you, ishmael. i would like to say to you, ishmael, i did get a lot of report cards, and they're not all they're cracked up to be. [laughter] ishmael and i will be going home together after this. [laughter] next up please welcome presidential historian and pulitzer prize-winning author doris kearns goodwin. [applause] >> there could be no better transition for hearing about

storytelling than my belief that history at its best is about telling stories. stories about people wholied before, about events in the past that create the contours of the present. we study the lives of others in the hope that we, the living, can learn from their struggles and triumphs. i have spent a lifetime telling stories of our presidents, waking up with them in the morning, thinking about them when i go to bed at night. now, it may seem an odd profession so spend be one's days and nights with dead presidents, but i wouldn't change it for anything in the world. each time i embark on a new subject, i'm catapulted back into a different era, absorbed in the the daily lives of a different set of characters, following their personal lives, the people they loved and lost, the events that stoked their ambitions. my only fear is that in the afterlife there'll be a panel of all the presidents that i've ever studied, and everyone will be given ample time to tell me

everything single thing wrong i got about them, and the first one to shout out will be lyndon johnson, how come that damn book about the kennedys was twice as long as yours was about me? now, it used to be a badge of honor to say you were a 24-year-old white house intern, it's gotten a little more complicated in modern day. [laughter] truth is, it was a fabulous program, we had a big dance at the night, president johnson did whisper he wanted me to be assigned directly to him in the white house, but it was not that simple. like many young people, i'd been active in the anti-vietnam war movement, had written an article against lbj which unfortunately came out two days after the dance in the white house, and the title of the article was how to remove lyndon johnson from the power. [laughter] but somehow he said, oh, bring her down here for a year, and if i can't win her over, no one can. so i did end up working for him in the white house and

accompanying him to the ranch to help him write his memoirs when he was so sad and vulnerable that he opened up to me in ways he never would would have. and i'd like to believe that privilege of spending so many hours with this man fired within me a drive to understand the inner person behind the figure, as i moved from lbj to jfk to fdr, to abraham lincoln and now, finally, to teddy roosevelt and william howard taft. i think the answer is simple, the most important cry tier criterion is that i want to live with this character year after year after year. i could never write about hitler or stalin, i couldn't wake up with them in the morning, nor could i write about millard fillmore or franklin pierce when far more dramatic eras are out there waiting to be captured. but there's a problem.

it took me six years to complete franklin and eleanor and world war world war ii, longer than it took the war to be fought, ten years on lincoln, and i'm now on my sixth year of t.r. and taft. and each time i start on a new subject, i have to shift the books relating to the old guy to make room for the new guy, a shift that sometimes feels like an act of betrayal. i'd like to believe that the reason my books take so long is that all of them have actually been multiple biographies. hundreds, if not thousands of other people have chosen the same president to write about for the same reason, they're the most dramatic, the most interesting. so the challenge is to find a fresh angle, a new way to tell the story that will not simply go over the same ground. so i chose to write about three generations of fitzgeralds and kennedys instead of simply jfk, to tell the story of world war ii, i settled on the home front

instead of the war front and chose to illuminate the partnership between eleanor and franklin instead of concentrating solely on fdr. and i loved having a woman at the center of my story. then after the pleasure of franklin and eleanor, abraham lincoln beckoned. the prospect of living with him was absolutely thrilling, but alsoer terrifying. 14,000 books had already been written on him. at first i thought i would focus on abe and mary as i had done with franklin and eleanor, but after two years or more i realized that unlike eleanor who was everywhere i needed her on the home front be, mary's story was, essentially, a private story. her activities would not illuminate the public side of the story, so i was stuck. but then after further reading in the diaries diaries and lettf the time, the true treasures for an historian, i began to see abraham lincoln in a sense was married more to the members of his cabinet than he was to mary, spending time with them in the

afternoons, taking carriage rides, playing poker at night. and then when i realized these central figures had all been his rivals for the nomination, then i finally knew i had the story i wanted to tell, abraham lincoln's team of rivals. well, when i started casting about for my new subject, i returned to my favorite era in american history, the progressive era. that heady, optimistic time at the turn of the 20th century when reform was in the air, when we had corrupt robber-barons, corrupt politicians, corporate exploiters of our natural resources, the country prospering as never before, but the gap between the rich and the poor grown exponentially. indeed, in the census of 1900 it was said that 1% of the people were said to own 99% of the wealth. it was an unnever -- un9/11ingly familiar time. when the quickened pace of life made possible by the telegraph and the railroad and the telephone was producing a toning

increase in nervous disorders exacerbated by the rise of the tabloid press that exploited every local horror into international news. it was an era dominated by thier doer roosevelt -- theodore roosevelt, a man who had fascinated me ever since i was a little girl take to sagamore hill. so i knew from the start that i would love living with this interesting character. how could i resist a man who possessed an unusual ability to laugh at himself, to take criticism with grace, a trait that endeared him to his fiercest critics? when the rough riders, his memoirs about the spanish american war was published, it was given a devastating review by peter dunn. in the voice of mr. dooley, the irish bender who regularly appeared, the review poked fun at roosevelt for placing himself at the absolutely center of every single action that took place in the war. it is the biography, mr. dunn

clearly said, of a hero who knows one. mr. dooley said, if i was him, i would call the book "alone in cuba." [laughter] well, three days after this satirical review was published to the laughter of people all across the country, theodore roosevelt wrote to mr. dunn. i regret to state, he said, that my family and intimate friends are delighted with your review of my book. now i think you owe me one, and i shall exact that when you next come east. you must pay me a visit. i have long wanted to make your acquaintance. and how to resist a man who found be ways, endless ways to relax and renew his spirit. reading, of course, was a staple. in the midst of the worst days of the coal strike which was then when he was president the most formidable deadlock in the annals of our history, he sent a letter to the librarian of congress requesting a good history of poland and some early histories of the mediterranean races. i owe you so much, he told the

librarian two days later, it has been such a delight to drop everything and to spend an afternoon reading about the relations between asyria and egypt which could not possibly do me any good and in which i reveled in anyway. beyond reading, exercise was a critical measure of his relaxation. throughout his presidency late afternoon was the time for a horseback ride, a strenuous hike along the cliffs, he would drag visitors and friends along through the wooded section of the park with one simple rule: you have to move forward point to point. you could not go around any obstacle. if a creek got in a way, you forded it. if there was a river, you swam it. if there was a rock, you scaled it. if you came to a precipice be, you let yourself down over it. journalists delighted in these late afternoon rambles as roosevelt's fellow walkers desperately tried to keep up.

stories plied about this cabinet officer who dropped out and fell along the way, but the great story is told by the french ambassador who left a celebrated account of his first walk with the president. he arrived at the white house, he recalled. he was an afternoon dress inside a silk hat as if we were to stroll in the champs dell say -- champs -- he assumed they would rest for a moment and then turn back. judge of my horror, he said, when hi saw the president unbutton his clothes and heard him say we had better strip so as not to wet our clothes. so he said i, too, removed my clothes for the honor of the french. to be without gloves would be embarrassing if we should meet ladies on the oh side.

[laughter] and there are hundreds of these stories. but, of course, in choosing t.r. i was once again choosing a man about whom so many fine biographies had been written. so once again i needed a fresh angle. strangely, this time -- unlike any of my other projects -- i saw the story of the book from the very start. i knew after only a few months of research that i wanted to focus on roosevelt's long and come to plex friendship with william howard taft, a friendship that strengthened both men for two decades but finally ruptures which in 1912. i've been able to trace their friendship which began when they were in their 30s through the more than 400 letters they exchanged, letters that have never been fully mined. and i found that taft is a far more empathetic figure than i realized. we, of course, know that he was fat, ballooning to 340 pounds when he was unhappy in the presidency, but i hadn't realized that in between that when he graduated from yale he was only 250, when he finally

became supreme court justice and was happy again, he was 250. so eating was his way of getting out of depression. i knew, of course, that he was governor of the philippines and secretary of war before becoming president. but i hadn't realized how extraordinarily successful and popular he had been at each of these posts. one loves him at first sight, theodore roosevelt once said of taft. he has nothing to overcome when he meets people. i real that i always -- i realize that i always have to overcome a little something. i almost envy a man possessing taft's personality. roosevelt had hand picked taft as his successor and was as nervous about his selection as his own. don't be seen playing golf, taft. don't be photographed on a horse, it's not good for you and certainly not good for the horse. [laughter] when he was finally elected, theodore roosevelt said he is as fine a man as ever sat in the

president's chair. and henry adams, an acute student of the american political eye for nearly seven decades, called william howard taft the best man for the presidency in his lifetime. a prominent new yorker argued that taft was the greatest all-around man ever to reach the white house. every subordinate post he had occupied, he had achieved great success. but as it turned out, the man who had served brilliantly as the second fiddler could not fill the first fiddler's place. he did not have the audience sense. he had no comprehension of how to deal with the press, of how to use the bully pulpit -- the name coined by theodore roosevelt. once i determined that the biggest decision tins between taft and roosevelt was not that roosevelt was progressive while taft was conservative, but rather that taft had never understood how to position himself with the public, then i

was drawn to another set of characters in my story. the muckraking press. the journalists who pressured the conservative congress whose complex partnership with teddy roosevelt ai sured -- assured his success. and when i found that the most brilliant gatt kerring of these investigative reporters were all in one magazine, mclure's magazine, i knew i had the story i wanted to tell. ida tarbell, considered the most famous woman of her age, lincoln steffens, whose autobiography is still taught in journalism classes, ray baker praised as the greatest reporter of his era. and their editor, sam mcclure, is a larger than life figure. his restless enthusiasm and manic energy infused the magazine's atmosphere with a touch of genius even as he suffered from periodic nervous break downes.

together these celebrated journalists produced exposes of no knoplys, fraudulent medicines, unsafe railroads becoming the vanguard of the progressive movement. mcclure's formula was to give husband writers enough time and resources. he would put them on salaries for years to produce long, heavily-researched series. it was soon copied by rival magazines producing what has been called the golden age of journalism. i knew from the start that the climax of the story would be reached in 1912 when teddy and taft engage in a brutal fight for the republican nomination complete with fistfights and revolvers, with cries of corruption, a fight that divides their wives, edith and nelly, their children, their closest friends, a fight that tears apart the handsome young military aide that i've sort of fallen in love with. he served teddy roosevelt first and then stayed on with taft. loved both men, so saddened by their rupture that he couldn't

sleep at night. taft told him you've got to take a vacation to get ready for the election. he goes to europe in march, he comes back on the titanic, devastating his death for both men. and i knew from the start that when teddy loses the nomination, that he decided to form a third party, but i didn't realize the full drama of that bull moose convention. the delegates truly believed they were witnessing an historic moment, comparable to the creation of the republican party in the 1850s. the platform called on government to be an agency of human welfare, to shift the national income and the blessings of our civilization so that everyone could enjoy it instead of the few. writing decades later, one of the delegates claimed the new deal went little further. with the republican party split in two, of course, the democrat, woodrow wilson, wins bringing defeat to both teddy and taft, seriously diminishing the progressive wing of the republican party forever. while that forms the natural ending of the book, i mow wanted

to keep the -- i show wanted to keep the story alive a little longer, so i was delighted to discover an incident for an epilogue that would bring the story full circle. shared opposition to woodrow wilson eventually drew taft and t.r. together. in may 1914, they happened to meet in chicago. taft approached teddy with a spoil, teddy ease. they threw their arms around one another, all the guests in the dining room aware this was the first time they had come together since the bitter election began to cheer. sitting together, they talked warmly, and the press proclaimed in the headlines the next day, they have buried the hatchet. when teddy died in his sleep, taft was at the funeral seated with the family and the last one to leave the grave. when harding was elected president, taft finally realized his lifelong dream and was made chief justice of the supreme

court. but the memories of roosevelt remained strong. i wallet to say to you how glad theodore and i came together. had he die inside a hostile tate of mind toward me, i would have mourned the fact my whole life. i loved him, and i will always which cherish his memory. .. became abundantly clear in the interview that tolstoy gave. he told of having gone to a very

remote area recently of the caucuses where there were a group of wild barbarians who would never left this part of russia. they were so excited have tolstoy in the midst they asked him to tell a great story. he told about napoleon and alexander the great and frederick the great and julius caesar. before i finished the chief stood up and said but wait, you haven't told us about the greatest role of them all. we want to hear about that man who spoke with a voice of thunder, the laughed like a sunrise. who came from the place called america that is so far from here that if the young men should trouble there he would be an old man when he arrived. tell us of abraham lincoln. tolstoy was done to know that link and then had reached this remote corner so we told him everything he knew about lincoln. then they said what made him so great and he said he wasn't such a great general perhaps, not as great as napoleon, not as great as frederick the great but his greatness consisted in the moral fiber of his being. so that dream to be remembered which is empowered to link all

his life had indeed been realized. the dream that carried him through his dismal childhood, his string of political failures and the darkest day of the war, his story would be told. for most of us today we may not have our faces carved in marble in washington but the stories of our lives will be told through the memories of our children, our friends and our colleagues. which is why it is important to retain the art of storytelling so perfect to have followed him in our fast-moving world, to share the stories of her parents and of our grandparents with our children and their children in turn. and as many of you know i always come back in the end to wear my own love of storytelling to begin, my own love of history to the days when a father taught me that mysteries art of keeping score when i was only six so i could record for in the history of that afternoon brooklyn dodgers game. when you're only six and your father comes home every night and i now realize, recounted every inning of the play, he

made me feel i was telling him a tag is a story, it makes you think there's something magic about history to keep her father's attention. i was convinced i learned there to the art because at first i would be so excited i was blurred out the dodgers one, or the dodgers lost which took most of the drama of the two are telling away. [laughter] you had to tell a story from beginning to middle to end. much later, even if you're writing about a war as a narrative historian you to imagine you do not know how the war ended so you can carry your reader with you every step along the way from beginning to middle to end. so in some ways i just learned keeping my father's attention, he made it more special for me when i was only six, because you never told me than all of this was actually described in great detail in the sports pages of the newspapers the next day. so i thought he wouldn't even know what happened to the brooklyn dodgers. although my father died when i was still in my 20s before i got married and had my two sons, i had passed his memory as was

his love of baseball onto my boys so when the dodgers abandoned us and went to los angeles i couldn't even follow baseball for a while until it moved to boston, went to fenway park, became a red sox fan, we've had season tickets now for over 35 years and i must do as i always do that i can say with my sons at the park and close my eyes sometimes an imagine myself a young girl once more in the presence of my father, watching the players upon you on the grassy fields below. jackie robinson, duke snider, dale hodges but i must say there is magic in these moments. when i open my eyes and i see my sons in the place where a father once said, i feel an invisible loyalty and love linking my sons to the grandfather whose face they never had a chance to see, but his heart and soul that come to know through the countless stories i have told. which is what in the end i shall always be grateful for this curious love of history, allowing me to spend a lifetime looking back into the past, allowing me to believe that the pride of people have loved and

lost and our families, and the public figures we've respected in history really can live on, so long as we push to tell and retell the stories of their lives. thank you for letting me share with you these stories today. [applause] >> thank you, doris. that was wonderful as well. quite a panoply of others up here, and by the way, you can have the dodgers back. [laughter] they are a huge disappointment. our final offer this morning is dazzling author and is one of oprah's favorite, so by united states law is also one of our favorites, please welcome \mr.{-|}\mister wally lamb. [applause] >> thank you, chelsea.

i'm rocking my new pda thread here. [laughter] hoping i've gotten all the tags out. so i saw the new star trek movie a few days ago, and it started me thinking about time travel, about how if we zoom, say, 40 years into the future, honey boo boo was menopausal. [laughter] justin bieber might need viagra. and beyoncé and j.c. would qualify for the senior citizens discount at wal-mart. but as kierkegaard once wrote from one of the central ironies of human existence is that life can only be looked forward but understood backwards. and so with that in mind i would like you to hop with me onto my time machine. i'm taking you back to 1966. lbj is the president. and valley of the dolls was writing the bestsellers list. i was a high school sophomore.

my biology teacher had set up a genetic experiment in which we are to study heredity and characteristics through several generations of a single family of fruit flies. now, the fruit fly is an ideal subject for such study because of its manic lifecycle. she said. which is true, it's possible if you're a fruit fly to be born on monday morning and play with your grandkids by thursday afternoon. [laughter] we budding biologist are assigned tasks, and mine is to feed the flies pixel at the end of each school day i climbed the stairs to the biology lab, open the glass jar that hold our population, drop into each piece a piece of rotten banana and then screw the lids closed again. now, sometimes after completing my task i put my face to the jar and study for a few minutes that these things come in

fornicating, that will ensure the continuation of the species are now, a genetic experiment proceeds on course until the fateful friday afternoon when i climbed the stairs, open the jars, dropping the banana and then forget to replace the lid. by monday the entire four-story building is infested and she gives me a bracing finger wagging speech on the subject of scientific responsibility. all the while batting at fruit flies around her. now it's two years later and despite my shortcomings in the life sciences i find myself in a senior class titled honors physiology taught by none other than mrs. menke's husband, mr. menke. we've become so proficient with scalpels and fraud innards that we're presented with a dead cats. one plastic bag courts for each future physiologist. these specimens are expensive, mr. menke tells us, as the yanks

one after another out of a big plastic barrel and presents them to us towards. these cats have cost the school a lot of money. our having them come he said, was an honor. i achieved my body back at and stare down in fear and horror. it's for is pungent with formaldehyde. its teeth and claws are bared. it has died in mouth open as if in mid-howl, kind of like this. [laughter] studied in sheer terror in the instant not to die, and it's mind for the rest of the semester. the following year, as a college freshman i will sit in a darkened history class and watch silent black and white footage of blank faced naked corpse being bulldozed by the nazis into a communal pit. in that same semester across campus, in a darkened appreciation, art appreciation

classroom, i will get my first glimpse projected from a slide onto a screen of edvard most famously disturbing painting, the screen. and from that day to this one, may 30, 2013, i see that trio of images superimposed. the face of my dead cat, stiff be formed on the lab table, the death mask of hitler's victims and the tortured soul in munch's painting who stands slap against his face and screams in horror at, at what? life? death rex the 20th century? the 21st? now, mr. menke is a coffee drinker and he's a man of displaced fate. so as we are an honors class he makes it such that we'll act

honorably whether he is in the room or not. and so it is his practice to leave us for long stretches of time with our dead cats and our worksheets as he strolls down to the teachers room while we engage in higher level scholarship. but we are not honorable. we are kids, irresponsible, and i see now in retrospect intimidated by all that rigor mortis around us. although silent screams of death. and so in fear we grope for comic relief. and it is i who proposes the idea of staging a mock wedding. [laughter] to my surprise the concept catches on and my peers and i abandon honor and scholarship in the feel and circulatory and digestive systems, and we throw our energy into the surreal nuptials to. on friday, mr. menke leaves class on schedule at the beginning of the our with the coast clear we dress our corpses in a makeshift tuxedos and gowns, karen's cat is the bride,

jimmy bradley's the grim and connie has made brownies for the reception. [laughter] imb officiating man of god, father wally. unwisely, i am performing the ceremony with my back to the door when all around me my classmates eyes dropped and their cats bulk back down against the lab tables. mr. menke has made an unscheduled visit, has crashed the wedding. who started this foolishness? and so with two scientific strikes against the and the blessings of both mr. menke and mrs. menke i abandon my brilliant career and life science and become instead first an english teacher and later a fiction writer. still examined life, of course but doing so without cadavers and sharpened instruments. you know, like tommy think about when you boil it down to its bare bones, reduce it to the

lowest common denominator, when it comes down to i think is that we are governed by three basic instincts. they need to find food so that we won't starve. they need to satisfy our sex drive so we won't become extinct. that by the way, chelsea, is why we're supposed to be young, have sex. and three, the need to understand and interpret the world around us on some intellectual level, delivered overtly as thoreau put it while he gazed at the waters of walton spawn. it's the third in polls, are hungry to figure out the world that establishes us from the lowly fruit fly and instinct driven can't. and so unlike the simple life forms we scratch our schools that hollows are brains and we think we try to make order out of chaos because we hunger to understand the world and our place in it. and thinking of course leads to reading and writing. which is where you and i come

in. at times understand the world, making order out of the chaos, seems insurmountable. i mean, how could the holocaust had happened? why do hunger and homelessness persist in this land of plenty wrecks how could that psychotic young man had entered sandy hook elementary school and opened fire on five and six-year-olds? and what did those brothers imagine they could accomplish by detonating pressure cooker bombs in the midst of innocent bystanders on that beautiful sunny day in boston? vroom vroom. it's the 70s. i'm a college sophomore during turbulent and seductive times. politics and cultural see changes are inviting baby boomers like me to fight for social justice, and party hearty. the sexual revolution has arrived, and marijuana perfumes

the dorm. the vietnam war and the civil rights battle intensify, and the soundtrack of these years segues from this is the dawning of the age of aquarius too, by the time i got to woodstock we were half a million strong, to 10 soldiers and nixon coming, we are finally on our own. prepare ourselves for the real world and shit, men can we are going to fix it. i'm on strike, i told my father over the phone after the invasion of cambodia and the killings at kent state. the hell you are, he shouted back into the receiver. you get to class. but my dad and richard nixon, were more or less interchangeable that seasoned. [laughter] so i hang up the phone, on the old geezer and i stick my fist in the air and i joined the protests. vroom vroom, vroom vroom. it's 1972. i've graduated from college but i've not launched myself into the chaotic world at large.

i've taken a u-turn, returning to the high school from which i had graduated in order to teach english hello, mr. menke and mrs. menke. [laughter] wally, please, we are colleagues know. it's dorothy and jimmy. oh, okay. my first pass is the one in the other teachers want. comprised of students have been retained so many times that some of them are my age, 21. [laughter] that's what dogs, they're fond of calling themselves, my plan is to win them over by releasing them from the prison is school has been intel i had gotten there. i will open defined by making their education relevant. the sweat hogs and i hung on for about a week until the day i approached staff, a servicing and ask them to take his head off the desk and pay attention. seth works nights and so he sleeps at school during the day. and he raises his head as i fast, opens his bloodshot eyes and says, why don't you go, why

don't you go, i know doors and ishmael would be cool if i said what seth said, but i don't want to ascend chelsea's more delicate sensibility. [laughter] so let's just say that seth suggests in a profound way that i engage myself in an activity more commonly that involves two people when they are naked. [laughter] the class and i hold our collective breath. the school of education is not prepared before this. and so i have no clue about how to respond, but then mercifully, seth unfolds his long legs, stands, and animals on the out the door and up to the principals office, thereby saving my teaching career. and so i remained at the school for the next 25 years. [laughter] now, about nine years into my tenure at the high school, without any premeditation i sit

down when they added begin to write fiction. this is during the summer of 1981, the exact same month that jared, the first of our three sons was born. jared, and when he is a toddler and i just found out that my first short story will be published, i will pick up and tossed into the air so exuberantly tha that is had wand the kitchen ceiling. [laughter] but not to worry, our kitchen at the time has one of those drop ceilings, the acoustic foam panels that jared doesn't clock is a. it just disappears for a couple of seconds and it comes back into view of. [laughter] jerrod hu later, when he is a high school senior, i will over here complaining about the old geezer. and i will look around to see if my father has come. [laughter] but, no, he will mean me. you know, the great singer-songwriter joni mitchell once observed that the seasons

go round and round, the painted ponies go up and down, we are on the carousel of time. which indeed we are. you know, parenthetically in another of joni's songs she sang, woke up, it was a chelsea morning, which it is. [laughter] wilbut that's beside the point. dea has invited here today to tell you something about my forthcoming novel. "we are water," a story set both in new york and also like several of the earlier novels, in three rivers connecticut. now, the template for the fictional three rivers is my nonfictional hometown, norwich connecticut. you know, when you mentioned that you've come from that stage are likely to conjure in peoples mind images of leafy bedroom towns, residents commute to manhattan and unwind at the country club and send the kids

to prep school. but i come from the other connecticut, east of the connecticut river connecticut. we are more feisty than fashionable. we are more liverwurst than pat day. boston and providence have a greater poll as the new york so drop our eyes can root for the red sox and use the word widget as an advert a as in this exhibitor we had a nor'easter last winter and it snowed wicked hard and it was wicked heavy to shuffle. [laughter] inviting we are water our time travels back to my own childhood, focusing on to dramatic events that are membered vividly. the first was the death of a black man that was ruled accidental but that might really have been murdered. the second was a terrible flood that cut a path of destruction through the city and took five people's lives. i was eight when alice rose frozen body was discovered at the bottom of his driveway,

which was stained by a trail of blood that led back to his house. he had been a labor who, at later in life, again and explicitly, inexplicably and incessantly to make art. he was unschooled. he knew little about perspective or techniques, but his paintings were i live with color and story. he couldn't sell his work in his lifetime, but today it is highly prized by collectors of american folk art. now, two things about alice made him noticeable. in the 1940s and 50s in norwich, connecticut. first, because he had been awarded a substantial insurance settlement due to an accident in which you been hurt, he had been able to afford aid cleaning buick convertible. and second, he was norwich's first african-american resident who had married a white woman, a german immigrant.

and when alice would try to norwich in his big car with his white wife beside him, he was construed by some as rubbing his good fortune in accounts face. perhaps he should've been more leery because a few years earlier a relative who lived on his property had been found drowned with his feet sticking out of a shallow well, and the coroner had ruled that death accidental, too. now, i was 12 in march of 1963 when an earthen dam holding back a lake at norwich's north and gateway on a rainy night unleashing millions of gallons of water and sending slabs of ice the size of refrigerators shooting downhill carrying trees, cars, family pets, and human beings. the raging floodwaters came perilously close to our own house, and to this day i can still hear the thunderous roar

as well as the screams of third shift factory workers who were buried alive in the rubble of a collapsed yarn mill. besides those factory workers, a young mother lost her life that night. she and her husband, both in the mid '20s, made the fateful decision to try and outrun the water that they had reward was headed their way. so they loaded their three little boys, age four, age two, and 10 months, into their car and they took off. but sadly, they couldn't outrun the flood water. it carries the car along with it and then pitched it off a 10-foot wall. the family went underwater, but managed to get out of the car and onto the low growth of a storage shed at the back of a ford dealership. the father climbed into a nearby tree. the mother handed the three boys up to him, and then just before margaret mooney herself got into the tree, the water carried her away and drowned her.

her husband has passed on now, but those three little boys have survived and thrived, and are today in their early '50s. in the writing of my novel i became their friend. and two summers ago the four of us walked the flood path all the way from the now fortified dam to the tree from which they were rescued. the tree of life tom and jimmy and sean moody, nicknamed that tree. and, indeed, it was. so when i began writing "we are water" i took those two actual unrelated hometown events, alice's untimely death and the norwich flood, and i set them apart from each other like polls, electrodes i guess, and in the space between them, a kind of electrical energy began to bounce and crackle and generate itself. and electrical arc, if you will, that over the next four years

became the arc of my story. and so as fax became fiction, ellis became the younger and more virile so this is jones who died at the hands of the bigoted white father who's suspect that ellis had had a clandestine sexual relations with his daughter. ann-margret moody became -- and, markedly whose baby daughter perishes with her in the flood, and his five year old daughter froze up -- grows up and becomes an artist and one of the novels two main characters. so before i close let me do one last bit of time traveling. this time into the not-too-distant future. at the end of october of this year, we are -- "we are water" will become available in waters under in -- libraries and i want you to know how grateful i am to each and everyone of you, the

publishers and booksellers and librarians and writers and bloggers who will connect my book and ishmael's and divorces and chelsea's to those who might wish to read them. i want to think of it this way. that the writer and the reader are two poles apart from each other, and you, ladies and gentlemen, are the electricity that connects us. thank you. [applause] >> thank you, wally lamb. you are obviously sexual obsessed with m. and i think it's pretty inappropriate to talk about

those things this early in the morning. [laughter] this is been wonderful to hear for everybody, and again i wanted to reiterate how grateful all of us are as different as each one of us is, how grateful we all are to people like you are able to put our products out into the open so we can reach and touch somebody people no matter how we do it. [laughter] we're going to continue today here doing whatever we do when we come here, and i think a bunch of us will go and take photos for whomever decides to having one with each one of us. and hope you all enjoyed your breakfast down hope you'll enjoy the rest of the day. thank you very, very much. [applause] >> [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] c-span2 will have more live coverage tomorrow afternoon from book expo america beginning at 2 p.m. eastern with a panel discussion titled self-publishing, disruptor or defender of the book business. then at 3:30 p.m. eastern a look at what those new in the publishing industry think about its future. a panel of graduate student in the university publishing program will share their thoughts on the industry.

follow our live coverage from book expo america through the weekend here on c-span2. >> each evening this week in primetime we are featuring booktv on c-span2. tonight's topic, addressing partisanship. that's all tonight beginning at 8 p.m. eastern here on c-span2. >> we've got more coverage of nonfiction books in the book industry here on c-span2 every weekend on booktv. along with our schedule you can also see our programs anytime at

booktv.org. and join our online book club as we feature current bestseller each month. get the latest updates throughout the week. follow was on facebook and twitter. >> tonight on c-span we will discuss the u.s. budget and the future of science research. our guest is juan enriquez, founder of the harvard business school's life sciences project. at 8 p.m. eastern we will begin with a look at his remarks from a recent fiscal summit where he spoke about the urgency of addressing the nation's growing debt and how it's impacting investments in science. here's a preview. >> let's pull ourselves out of the business of discussing the fiscal deficit and start talking of things which are really important which are the long-term trends. because right now the fiscal debate is taking all the options out of the picture either on the side or you're on this site. you have all kinds of fights about stuff, which is reasonable compromises that have not