>> host: and unfortunately we are out of time with rick atkinson. here's a picture we didn't get to somebody else featured in your books. marlena deitrick. there's a picture offer, and the tuskegee air men are featured in the work and we didn't get a chance to get to either of those. very quickly, mr. atkinson, six bongs, "the long gray line "pot about the west point class of '66. crusade about the persian gulf war, and army of daab in the company of soldiers, the day of battle, and the guns at last light, liberation trilogy, is the web site. ..

average of the chicago tribune fest continues as douglas foster who spoke after mandela looked at post-apartheid south africa. and marvin kalb present his book the road to war. live coverage of the 2013 printers role that fast includes a conversation between edward and john glassy. that is our live from the printer's row that fast in chicago. our first panel of the day with

walter jacobson and keith koenenman. >> i had no idea, never thought about doing it and never tried to do on it. when i retired five years ago for the first time -- >> the michael jordan of local television. >> in my business retirement is often compulsory. the latest as the air gets grayer, the less management wants you to be part of the team. the first time i retired i was ready to retire, 45 years in the business and i just went off thinking about myself, i had been under so many years of such severe deadlines that i never had a chance to think about what i was doing to myself and what i did for others to no. the more i thought about it, the more i took notice of things and my memory came back and i went

over things i had done in my career since i was very young, started in 1963 and as i continued to write my notes i felt maybe try putting it into a book. my book is not a book like yours is for others, it is not a look at chicago politics, a story about my 50 years in the business. i would describe it as a cathartic experience that turned into print. >> one distinguishing thing about this book is very shark diet and sharp tongue about the changes in the business of the news. you cannot pull any punches. explain to these people who will buy your book in roughly 40 minutes what those changes of not been for the best. >> they have gone up and down. the changes have been positive, technically very positive, they

are not things we were even dreaming of doing back then. on the other hand i don't want to be too critical because it has been my life for 50 years but i have strong feelings how television news particularly local television news focus is too much on the sad side of stories and every night when you turn on the news at 10:00 and see another drive-by shooting it gets tiresome for a while and doesn't make a point. we don't have time in television, you cannot take the time to tell a story that ought to be told in any depth. that is the serious change. too much sex and hollywood stars and famous people and come through town, most people these days turn on television to know what the weather is because they're not getting substantive information. that part of it to me is very sad and i see it getting worse.

>> it occurs to me that most of us who watch television and pay attention to chicago politics, the people in chicago politics are in the name, mostly defined by the images that are projected through television. nobody is doing, know what i know. i doubt if any of you read these 700 pages of the parking contract, yes, no. i bet you have. but is that true? the image of richard daley is to my mind a video image. >> that is true and walter does a great story in his book about doing sort of an exclusive and took him in his car, and tore through the city and talked about his view of the

neighborhood and the reason, you agree, he agreed to do that because he wanted the pictures on tv and characters can be very powerful and some politicians such as daily are pretty skillful about what image they project. >> managing the image. >> one thing interesting about rich daly, in his career he became less smooth about talking and he did it on purpose. i have seen videos of him when he was state attorney in the 1980s. he is giving speeches and they raised fears of >> that that he is quite eloquent and you see pictures of him later where he is quite an eloquent and it was a little bit of a shtick. if someone asks you a really tough question and you give sort of i don't know answer, then

your feet aren't held to the fire. i think he actually in a savvy way, in public, portrayed himself as being less smart and tough minded than he was in private. >> what do you think of that? >> as a journalist after learning a few tricks how to get somebody like the league who is a rather shy guy and not interested in talking -- no questioning of the media as his father was not trusting as well so we have to learn how to guide them into a situation in a way that will let him think he will give his side of the story. when i called to ask if i could ride around town of was told absolutely not and he has everything to gain because as you say the image was there. if i don't use the time to nail him, get him in the car and worry about nailing him once he is in and can't get out.

my approach was haven't seen you on television talking about your neighborhood. you always talk about your neighborhood. i will let you talk about it anyway you want and i should say it is important for a reporter to understand the idea is not to write or get on television something about the reporter or even how the reporter does it but give a chance to talk, let him say whatever you wants to say. like john wayne gacy, go to death row and talk to the man. he wants to say he is innocent. i don't really care about what he says. i want to hear what he thinks about what he is going to say. and getting interviews with the mayor and rahm emanuel is the most -- >> we will get there shortly.

>> you offered richard daley the chance to speak on the record, he turned you down. on some level that is disappointing. >> it wasn't a surprise. i hoped he would chat with meade but when you think it through he is a very savvy man, savvy politician and richard nixon used to talk sort of about plausible deniability but there was no upside in him talking to me. if you wrote a book he didn't like, it would be hard for him to say i don't like his book but if i wrote a book he didn't like and he never talked to me he could say i don't even know the guy and i don't like his book. he would want to reserve the right to say he doesn't like the book. >> what he said. >> he said nothing publicly. >> you do have some private

sourcing, about 140 people for this book. what do you hear? >> i heard nothing official. folks know the daily's quite well, close friends of theirs and talks like this and asked me to sign it. >> anybody ask you to sign it too rich? >> no. they have not. >> any of you have an on trade too rich to think about that? compare, this is a rare opportunity to compare father and son for me. >> that is a tough one. i think basically they are incomparable. there are motivations, visions were entirely different. the times were so different. the father wanted and needed to control everything from the processes of government to workings of the democratic party. the son understood that led to a

lot of really bad publicity for the older guy and took a step away from the inner workings of the democratic party. he was never chairman of the party, his dad was. rich daly, the young one, didn't do as much politics as the older one did but in terms of expressing themselves, there was some similarity. in terms of their love for the city and i really believe it, they were the same. they really did care. both of them really cared. they were not as interested simultaneously or comparatively in how the government operated as they were getting things done for the city. it is a fair thing to say. i am hesitant to be too quick with judgments on them because i want to be accurate and my concern in dealing with both dailies, these are personal

experiences, and was concerned that people who are interesting big thoughts about the mayors of chicago, and who they are and what they did and watch television news and politics and in many ways very negative toward me. they don't like a lot of the things i say. i want to be careful not to say things like we told jacobson that he was wrong on that and here is a fact in the book, and let jacobson be jacobson. >> that is hard to argue about. >> sleep on wall somebody's house. >> i don't care what we did and

do you? >> richard daley beat the kids because of something roy co said. heathrow plate of eggs against the wall. both of them, you are right, they are disdainful, write what you want. did you find that in your research? it was kind of like to give the ship kind of attitude? was richard daley bothered by john cats calling a major short jeans? was he? >> i don't think so. they had a thick skin for most of the staff and try to manipulate the media to serve their political ends. on the question of the father and son, one of my themes in the book that i write about, i think of the song rich daly was a very astute student of his father's accomplishments and mistakes as a politician and he lived in his

father's shadow as all politicians did of this generation and he was very careful when he came to power to not repeat the mistakes of his father. the son tried to work on race relations with the african-american community. his father made huge mistakes and was criticized for that. the son tried to improve public schools which is tied to do but he tried to do it. the father was criticized for not taking care of the public schools and similarly with public housing if you try to improve public housing we cannot debate whether it worked or not. >> the interesting thing about public housing, he virtually, richard m. virtually erasing. is the best housing notion. >> the highways were tragic. he looked at what his father, race relations, school and

housing. his father totally messed up the reputation at the 1960 democratic national convention. rich daly was 26 years old. and it is think and -- try to finish the unfinished business of the at the 17 family. >> who has a better legacy in this town? >> it is a shiny been. >> in terms of the size of a legacy? richard daley was the last of them. they don't make it like that. i'm not a huge fan of the first mayor daley, he did a good job 1965-1963. and i think he did a horrible

job, i give him an f. the first major daley have a large and controversial legacy. it is too early in history. i tried to tell the whole story so people could decide for themselves. >> a child of the city, this area. what about the latency of it? the legacy of those? >> as society grows a little in age, politicians of the past, disappear and our focus that the legacies changed, i work on it for 15 years, most people don't really remember, 65 or older don't remember the father and what he did and how we operated and we are more interested in what the sun has done and now we are focused so much on rahm

emanuel, you see rich daly has rather disappeared which i think he likes, and i know he likes a lot, not being badgered all the time and having to get things done. rich daly's legacy will be tied in so much more directly with who succeeded him. the comparison between rich and rahm emanuel and how carefully has to be about not undermining rich's legacy. that bothers him to great extent. he is so tough and arrogant and difficult sometimes. >> which one are you talking about. i don't think rich daly was arrogant and rahm emanuel is a tougher politician then richard daley was at least on the surface. >> to is the most interesting multifaceted politician you have covered work met in your 50 years in this business?

>> the most fascinating? oh boy. i would have to put up a list of several. and let me say parenthetically, what is interesting to us as journalists is not the kind of thing that is interesting to people who watch what we do. my interest in some of these politicians was more personal. i wasn't able, really didn't want to stand back and look with a greater degree of perspective but i like to get involved with them on a personal level to find out what is going on. rahm emanuel will be one of the most interesting. he will probably be there another six years, another term if he doesn't move on as he says he doesn't want to do and i believe that he doesn't want to go into the white house. as even the fathers said, the greatest job in the world if you happen to be from chicago.

i would rather be mayor of chicago than u.s. senator. i don't know about being president. but rahm emanuel -- >> what about jane? >> oh boy. you know what? is amazing jane could fall for a a memory as fast as she has. she was a fabulous character to cover as a reporter and there were so many wonderful exchanges negative as well as positive between the press, she knew what she was doing as far as the president was concerned. people were telling her how many people watched the 10:00 news and which channels and give misinformation and to withhold it when she didn't so she was very interesting and fun, did you use the word? >> that is one of the reasons

she made a horrible mistake, jane macmillan. and instead of a tie, a green thing that you would wrap a gift in. a green ribbon. jane is a huge player in the life of richard daley. must have made a run at her. >> interesting story. i forget how old she is but she is older now and called her apartment, one of the interesting things about the book, i was raised in catholic grade school, never tell a lie because they're too hard to remember. anyone i would interview or try to interview, i would always tell them the same thing and much easier to keep track of. i called the apartment and i

said hi, jane, i am writing a book and you are very important person i would like to interview you, i would like to get my calendar, you can hear her patting down the hall in her slippers, patting down the hall, she had one of those big oil calendars you could hear, and i have some days for you, what are you thinking, i am pretty flexible. before you tell me the dates, what is your book about? and i said i am writing a biography of richard daley and the phone went -- she hung up on me. i called her back and she didn't answer. >> how big a part did she play? she is a major figure in this book. >> she is an important figure, full of spirit and life and

smart politically, have a lot of personality as an individual and she was the protege of the first mayor daley and she was co-chairman of the democratic party when the first mayor daley died which was unusual for a woman in the 1970s. she knew the first mayor daley farewell and the second mayor daley was sort of jealous about jane byrne's's relationship with his father. the feelings were pretty strong both ways. they were really rivals politically and had strong feelings against each other and it took each of them to make some miscalculations in their career. their feelings were so strong. >> the first mayor daley made jane byrne's as a politician and if it wasn't, if it were not for mayor daily really wanting to have jane byrne's go ahead in

her career she never would have made it. the suns didn't even know how much the mayor liked jane, he moved her along on her career in giant strides and was very disappointed, she was very disappointed when he stepped out of the picture. she thought that would be a time for her to recede after having gone so far in a dance. and the suns didn't like the fact and turning things over. she had in mind, >> he had the weirdest crush on her. i really did and she was younger and quite the dish.

>> you could get jane macmillan to say yes to a marriage it would be something. let me ask you both. bring up the notion of women, and women in politics and the media here, when walter started in media shortly before i did, women at the chicago daily news were called they went on a trip they would call it our gal in beirut, very male-dominated business. talk about that for a while. >> the boys, i keep saying the boys in the democratic party under the first mayor daley would have had nothing to do, to understand why he was giving her a chance to move ahead. they didn't like her because in those days they were really tough and don't forget this is a very strong male chauvinistic

city. i should say the irish catholic thing, those women belong in the household and mayor daily i made it very clear, to all of our surprise, he said that is not true. they should be more involved which we didn't expect to see. >> goes to another point in your book that i don't think many of these were to give the full weight of influence that she had in rich's life and indeed without taking care of all the kids and taking politics out of the house these two guys don't become who they are. they are listened by fat. >> i know more about maggie, i really think she was a really positive, and her husband rich daly as a person obviously, also some of that because he was a powerful figure, the ways he grew personally became reflected

in our city. maggie daley wanted to fragile, took him to paris and other places which had positive influences. when you come back and say we should do flowers and boulevards and parks and i think she was a cultured woman who like kings like other cultural things that she had a real fine cultural sense which rubbed off on her husband in positive ways. he was a late bloomer about some of these things, and in his 50s and 60s developed a real appreciation for them and because he was a powerful man he could support theater in chicago or other things. i thought it really sort of balance him out and made him a better person individually but also a better leader. >> we in the business have love/8 relationships with the people we cover. we try hard to be fair.

that is fair for me to say but we fall in a sense in love with these characters with whom we are working on a daily basis and with whom we are always in combat. i went to ireland because i wanted a feel for what the daley family ancestors were like and went around the town the parents grew up in, the ancestors grew up in looking for people who might just because i wanted to meet them and went to the cemetery to see the grave of some of the ancestors, what the setting was like because i wanted to feel -- i really loved the guy. i didn't like what he did sometimes, the same with rich, but there was something about them in chicago and being in chicago that made me want to feel, literally feel rather than learn more about who they were.

>> i am the only one saying it. i forgot you had gone to ireland to get that sense. >> i understand the feeling. one of the dailies, if you look at people what is interesting, you sometimes think of people in terms of their job but obviously they are people as well. one of the things about rich daley is he has this love of chicago that i find an attractive quality and as a leader, someone who is running a big city actually became one of his most important political assets because for many years, i will be specific about this, between 1989-2003, a lot of voters voted for rich daley even when they disagreed, but that guy was the city. he had the best intentions at

heart. even if i disagree about this or that. between 2003-2011 there was some scandal and decisions made, chicago really said if you love the city so much why not do that? and i think you saw his approval ratings reflected in a downward spiral between 2003-2011 but this love of the city for many years was an important political asset. >> it is the media that determines what is good or bad for the city. what we right and what we say is what people read and what people here. we are the ones who determine what is news and what isn't news. that is the hardest part of our work. i think mayor daley has been a

angry, the way they treated him and it has been unfair. >> as a whole it makes sense. you think anybody living in struggling circumstances in austin knew what made that happen? no. it became a big story because we wrote about it and put it on tv and it was like a big construction projects and xs across the runway. ..

>> we meet every day for a couple hours. >> it's going well. my first book is really rich in history covering -- starts in 1902-2011, a hundred years of chicago history, and rich in a balanced way. i try to be objective about his strengths, weaknesses, accomplishments, and it's ripping, a straightup history. this book is having a different feel, and it is called "living

with rahm," and i'm a third generation chicagoan, lived here my whole life and parents and grandmothers lived there, and it's like if somebody moved in your house. somedays you like them, others they drive you crazy, you agree with them, disagree with them, and, well, i feel like rahm just moved into my city. i'll write a book that covers the first three years of the administration, starting in may 2011, it's going to may 2014, but it's also going to be a rough draft sketch of periods of his life to help the reader understand how he became who he is today. it's a different feel, more of a journalistic feel, a personal feel to it than my daily books. >> that's a big undertaking. >> yeah. >> one of the days it will be dated by the time you get the period at the end of the sentence, don't you think?

he's so volatile and involvedded in everything. my, god, he never stops. too much. [laughter] like -- title of living with rahm. >> well, because it's rich in first person, you know, you can't be wrong, it's easier to write. if you said tomorrow, what do you think? well, walter jacobson was great, but then i went to the other talk and enjoyed too so much, ad that's how you feel about it. i mean, there's no way you can be wrong. that was your take on printers row. >> usc publishing? >> we'll see. >> shopping for a publisher. walter, what about you? this is such a well-written interesting book, you got october book in you? >> oh, my gosh. i'm not going to write another book, no. [laughter] i have -- >> so this is your one and only chance to have walter jacobson

on your book shelf. [laughter] >> i'm trying to decide what to do. i've been now retired again for three months. [laughter] >> that's not long. >> i know. you know, journalism in this town is such a wonderful thing, and there's so much going on, and there's so many waying to cover it. i want to somehow stay involved. >> wouldn't that be a great thing? >> this is not a book about chicago. this is a book about how i grew up in the business and what it's like inside the business, how we decide which stories to cover, how we decide how to cover them, how we handle troubles we have with politicians who don't like what we say -- >> and what it was like to be a bad boy too. >> that's interesting too. >> out questions from you seemingly very smart people? there's a microphone right there. here comes somebody.

>> i was wondering if you could comment on the olympics thing and how not getting it was the beginning of the end for mayor daly and what went into that and whether it was a good idea in the first place? >> well, i don't -- i'm not one who believes that the loss of the o olympics was the beginning of the end of daly. he put his heart into that, and we should have won the olympics. there were great deal of politics involved in that decision. i don't think that the olympics, do you, have much to do with daly coming or going now at the end? >> i actually think -- three factors, and i think it was one of them. i don't know what you folks do for a living, but my experience with work is it's nice to have a big exciting project to look forward to because work is hard and it's good to look forward to something. if we would have won the olympics, that would have been the product. >> and he's still mayor. >> would have been excited, would have enjoyed it, and having lost the olympics, he

didn't have the project on his desk. >> maggie being sick. >> maggie being sick, approvals at 35%, and i actually think he was beatable in 2011. i think he would have beat him. >> did you imagine rahm running against richard m. daly? >> yeah, i could. [laughter] finally, i would say he surpassed his father to be the longest receiverring mayor in chicago, and that was important to him personally, and by staying for another four years, you can't get that notch in your belt twice. >> yes, ma'am. >> i'd like to ask walter what is respective state of the media now? especially with all the photographers laid off and probably the question where not are we hanging to a one newspaper town? what's your perspective? was -- what do you like about the current state of the media

and what you don't like. >> what? >> the current state of the media, what you like, don't like. >> i'm sorry, maybe i'm not hearing it. i don't -- >> the current state of the media, sometimes layoffs given all mapper of things. i'm going to give you app answer to that. [laughter] >> yes, you are a good one to talk about that, i mean, it's just debts pratt. the print media's on the way out. i mean, it's not -- and they were closing down, just isn't the web, you know, the internet is just taking over for the newspapers. it's not to say it's a bad time

for things that are going on because there's so much to report, and, in fact, there's more to report than there's ever been before, especially when you accumulate over the years, but i think the outlook for the media is pretty grim. that's very bad for all of us. >> i agree. i could go on, but i'm not going to go on for 20 minutes. i think it's shameful what happened to the sun times photographers. i mean, shameful, and i think that whatever amount of money they might have been saving sitting in a room saying, well, if we fire all the guys, how much could we save here, and someone said, well, maybe it'd be not much, like $2 million, and then i thought you're willing to risk the embarrassment and shame worldwide? this was news in shanghai that it was, that is a spike in the heart of old media, and what's going to happen? i don't know, the koch brothers

buy the tribune? i don't know. who knows. it's a time when someone needs to come up with a way to fund journalism. journalism is not going to die. it's impossible. it's not going to die, but someone has to find a way to make money on it, and that's ain't a me. >> we will be charged more. >> yes. >> what do you think a newspaper is really worth? i mean, there's 600,000 people who buy the chicago tribune. i think there's some hope for -- [applause] i think there is some hope for newspapers in that not everybody who wants a hamburger goes to mcdonalds. people say, i'm going to have a hamburger at gibsons. one day, you have to pay for what advertisers have been subsidizing all these years. >> what do you think when you walk to a newsstand on sunday if you want to read the new york times, and you see the price, $6.50, and you say, god, i don't want to spend that on a newspaper. they are really suffering, and

they are all -- the -- all the media right now doing much more firing than hiring. if you walk through the television stations these days, they are barren. there just are not enough people. >> the only reason you don't think of new york new times is h $6.50 because you don't pay attention, and when you can get the new york new york, and anybody says the "new york times" not worth the cost of a beer at the corner tavern is crazy. you just got it virtually for nothing all this time. that's all. yes, sir? >> i want to have a quick comment and thank mr. jacobson. recently, i have to thank -- and regarding a community in chicago, the italian-american community, you made comments that really, i found profound and impact on me and almost -- i

was almost in tears in that you hit it so much on the head in the stereotype and emphasize the contributions of a small ethnic community that you brought to light, and i just have to thank you. only you and father greeley, rest his soul, go in the area and talk about contributions as opposed to the old-time organized crime myth, and i have to thank you for that, mr. jacobson. >> thank you. [applause] >> well, sad thing about walter not doing this is is this is rare thing on television. years ago, there was commentaries. this is an important thing in that it's vanished is the same oh, look, a pothole in kansas city. who cares? yes, sir? >> quick question for both. for keith, great to richard day, do you give grace to richard m. and for walter, we talked about

the mayor candidates, but who are other chicago politicians you were impressed with over the years who would have been a good mayor? >> who would have been a good mayor? >> yeah. >> rick. [laughter] >> i would have been extraordinary mayor, but i have too many skell -- skeletons in my closet, even here. [laughter] >> you know, i don't know that there could have been better mayors than either of the daly's for a variety reasons. i mean, they just controlled things. i believe in a strong centralized that get things done rather than leaving too many things up in debate. i don't think there's anybody out there right now who could do a better job, and the problems are just so immense between the schools and the shootings that there is no other politician, especially -- especially since most of the politicians who are in high office now came through the political system, the leaders in politics now, in government, came more through a political system than a

governmental system. who is out there just by name? nobody, rahm, as difficult as he is, and he is difficult -- [laughter] he is making some progress that has not been made in a while, and i can't think of a name of a person who would be better. >> one last -- >> or worse. [laughter] >> yeah, i think the question's a great one, and i don't know if you caught it, but earlier when walter was talking about the relationship between rich daly and his successor, rahm, the observation is right on the mark. the observation was in a lot of ways, daly's legacy is in ray's hands now. the second mayor daly had a lot of accomplishments, enthose are done, and he had things open to criticism, and they are still there. things like the pension crisis, budget deficit, and the crime. if rahm solves the budget crisis in the crime -- >> and the school crisis.

>> and the school, then people -- history will forget that those were problems for daly. if rahm doesn't solve it, people remember those are problems from daly. it's very recent history, and with recent history, it's an open book. it's too early for grades. whereas with the first mayor daly, it's not in the past that it sort of is what it is, and you can have your opinion about it, might agree or disagree, but i feel comfortable looking back on that. >> center of the huge metropolis, but chicago, its government divided, la tee know, black, and white. what do you see in the future? what kind of governmental future do you see? one ethnic group popping up, or how do you see it? >> i don't think there's a way to predict. there's so many things that pop up into the public eye.

we know what happens in population treandz and chicago is increasingly minority population, so that's going to change the map on politics and the politicians. the exciting politicians are leaving the scene because politics is not as important to anybody anymore as you've been observing as government is. you know, in the newspapers today, dick mel is saying he's going to lead the city council to find a way to make room for his daughter to take over his ward. >> i think politics are volatile, and the hispanic, mexican population will be very large within the lifetime. if i was a better person, i'd say there's a hispanic mayor

within the next 20 years. that's a safe bet. >> amazing, contemplate that. contemplate richard m., richard jay's legacy, contemplate chicago. i don't know better or worse. thank you, all, have a great rest of the day, and buy these books! [applause]

[inaudible conversations]

>> right now i'm reading where you go bern debt. it's a novel told in the form of

e-mails as a daughter tries to piece together clues about why her mother disappeared. the mother is ease centric, and the story's set in seattle with corky characters. i don't know where it's going, but i'm excited to finish it. i'm doing a book club with my son, miles, who is 16. we did this a couple summers ago, picked books, read them, and then would go to the local diner to discuss them and have breakfast, and this summer we have pickedded two books so far. we're reading a biography of bruce springsteen which i think should be fun. we are both springsteen fans, and interested to learn a little bit more about his background in new jersey and how he got to be who he is, and we're also going to read dan browne's "inferno,"

which i think is the ultimate summer beach book. i've read the other dan brown books, and i think miles will enjoy this one. he has a real knack for ending his chapters with cliff hangers that make you turn the page, and i think miles will enjoy that a lot, and i think we'll have a lot to talk about. should be a fun summer of reading. >> let us know what you are reading this summer. tweet us @booktv, post it op facebook, or e-mail us at booktv@c-span.org. >> the book was called "if you knew me, you would care" everyone thinks as women in war as victims, but i did not, actually. none of us wanted to convey the victim story. there is victimhood in the story, their story is so far more than just a victim story. they would not be defined by the

actual story. what they are defined is by what they make out of the story. claudie is an example of a woman who wanted to be a doctor as a kid, had an aspiration, everything is good until her father dies at 13 years old, has to leave school to work and support her mother. what she went through, i can tell you, when she was 16, she fell in love with a young man. she saw him into the church, glanced at each other, and had crush on each other, and they giggle and until today she golf course les talking about how she fell in love. they got married at 18, for those of you who are young in here. they got married later op, and they had a happy marriage and had kids and they had a house, and it was a happy marriage, until the war, one day broke out, and when the war broke up,

it took everything away from them, and he started drinking and being alcoholic, and when he start drinking, he start beating her up. one day, it was so bad that the hospital refused to treat her unless he tells who did this to her, and that's how her new gorpny started. she told the hospital, took him to prison, and when he left, he divorced his wife. the thing is i want to tell you, yes, she was raped two years ago by a soldier he did -- she did not know in congo, but she made her hair in this style, see how cool it is? she was a woman in love, a woman who was beaten, who survived, who has a farm right now. it is the story that is never a simple story of those others, and in other parts of the world, and in this case, in congo.

i started thinking the world is saving me, and the woman helped me. when i asked her what peace mean for her, i asked every woman, what does she mean by "peace," and part of women for women's goal is to understand war and peace from a woman's perspective. what does she mean by "peace"? peace is inside my heart. no one can take it away from me, no one can give it to me. i go to yoga every single day, at least i try, spend so much money on yoga studios, meditation, all things so i can understand the peace she is talking about. peace is inside my heart, no one takes it away from me, no one can give it to me. if i tell you she was actually locked into a room for three months and raped day in and day

out by one military commander, and when she was to be killed, he said i can't see you to be killed, gives her the uniform, $30, steals a motorcycle to take her to the home village. the child she has from rape is her profits. she teaches me how to love. that's, if you knew me, wow would care, you would care that you would understand the infamous stories, not just the horrible stories, and do not look at me as a poor woman. i was a rich woman once. she had her cows and chicken and goats, and the war came, and they just stole it away from her, and we have to connect what i learned in the journey, but this woman was not smiling base she has a gap in her teeth and like many of us, appreciating

beauty and was embarrassed to if we connect on the beautiful stories, the love stories, and connect on the marriage story, this woman's husband cheated on her, and as a result got her hiv, but, you know, this is -- there are stories that any of us in here could go through, and they are not all the bad stories. it is stories i learn from this woman who was a beautician. ilearned how to pay attention to my upper lips and eye bros and helped me clean it up afterwards because in afghanistan there's abusive that every woman appreciates, and we see them only as the woman behind the burr cay. this woman has a beauty par low. she makes sure that she does all the weddings. she was talking about makeup and all of that, but she was married to a man 40 years older than

her, and her parents did not want her to marry the man, but so worrieded about her they had to -- they gave up. they were so worried he would kidnap her anyway. she's struggling day in and day out to send her four daughters to school. she's been victimized, but she is not defined by her victim's story. if we cannot see her beyond the victim story, it is shame on us. if you cannot respect those you serve, then better not serve them because they would feel if they do not respect them. >> watch in and other programs online at booktv.org. >> what are you reading this summer? booktvments to know. ♪

♪

>> the famous passage said for every southern boy, 14 years old or older, it's still one o'clock in the afternoon on july 3rd, 1863. the charge has not happened yet. it's all on the line. they can, in mare imagination say this time, maybe this time, victory, independence, so in the minds of, i think, both northerners and southerners, northerners at the time, but southerners more in retrospect, this became the mystic moment of victory and defeat. >> the 150th anniversary of the battle of gettiesberg, live all day sunday, june 30th, on american history tv on c-span3. >> you're watching booktv, 48

hours of nonfiction authors and books every weekend on c-span2 #. live from illinois at the chicago tribune book test, and visit booktv.org for a complete schedule. at 6 p.m. eastern, book notes. >> talking about the scene. >> the fraud in the rare wine

market having to do with the most expensive bottle of wine ever purchased, 1787 bottle that apparently had thomas jefferson's initials on it. i don't make it a habit to drink $10,000 bottlings of wine, but it's a look into very rich person's world. second book i'm looking forward to reading is "the mountains echoed," the latest book, a look of fiction after his two best sellers, a thousand blended suns and the kite runner. i enjoyed the first two, and there's a leer deer lyrical way of writing, a culture we don't experience much, and i'm looking forwards to that. i'm actually just saw on c-span's booktv, the deliberation trilogy, the latest book "guns at last light," looking forward to that. that'll be hi history fix for the summer, an in-depth look at world war i, "guns at last week"

looks at the last two years of the war, 1944-45, i'll do that to improve my mind over the summer. >> let us know what you read this summer. tweet us @booktv, post it on facebook, or e-mail us at booktv activity c -- booktv@c-span.org. >> booktv live from chicago talking bow the follow-up memoir, the cook's seed. [inaudible conversations]

>> good morning, welcome to the 20th annual chicago tribune lit fest. a special thank you to all sponsors who helped make the lit fest a success. today's program will be broadcast live on c-span2's booktv. if there's time at the end for a q&a session with the author, use the microphone locatedded in the center of the room so that our viewing audience can hear the question. if you'd like to watch the program again, note that our coverage reairs at 1 # 1 p.m. central time on saturday and midnight central time on sunday. please keep the spirit of the lit fest going all year with a subscription to printer's row. the tribune premium book section, fiction series, and membership program. visitor the welcome center for special subscription rates and perks including tote bags and posters. finally, the author's books will be sold on the second floor of the university center, this

building we are in, and the book signing in the art's room. book signings immediately follow the program. before we begin today, please, turn off your cell phone and other electronic devices, and without further adieu, i'd like to welcome our moderator, mary schimdt of the chicago tribune. [applause] >> thank you for this great turnout. i'm really excited to be here today. i read her first book back in 1995, i think, shortly after it came out. i assume many have read it, her first memoir after growing up in the cultural revolution in china, and it took her up to approximately the time she landed -- can you not hear me? can somebody regulate the microphone for us, please? can you hear me now?

okay, excellent. the second book is just coming out, starting when she lands at o'hare in 19864; is that right? before i ask questions, before you think about this, she is traveling with a backpack. [laughter] she's just lugging everything that she has around, and i asked her when we met down in the green room earlier today. i said, is that everything you have? she said, yes, and she said we learned growing up in china to pack quickly and to pack everything that we have. >> because we were told the americans were in vietnam going to take over china and invade china, learn to defend ourselves, and any time. >> some things never change,

however americanized you may be. i want you to start by just telling us in the way that your book starts about your arrival in chicago, who were you? what was that like to land in this cold, strange place? >> my life ended in turna, a long story. to make it a short, i was in the labor camp. it's nothing unusual. it's half of china. if you know anything about chinese history, mining history, culture revolution, they used it to help them get rid of the political rival, once it is done, the use was getting unsettled in the city, and they needed to get rid of them, and so he says the university, the best one is in the countryside, and you go and study from pes cants so half of the time was sent there, ordered there, and i

was one of them. after a few years in the labor camp and getting disillusioned, and my labor camp in the east china sea, ten labor camps there, about a hundred thousand aged from 17-25, and that makes the book how we were contained, basically by one, and we were captured like mop keys in the lot, and to speed it up, i'll come to this point was in late 19775, early 1976, we did not know he was tieing and in line to take over china to be the next ruler of china, and she needs to make like a campaign movie to pave the way and needs the faith that her idea woman to

be on the screen, and she looked everywhere, sent talent scums, and i was pickedded from the cotton field, and shipped with tractor and the trucks back to the film studio to be screen tested. i permly had no say in it because i was -- like everybody else in china, it was just because i've had the correct -- the right amount needed. disappointing, isn't it? [laughter] >> you don't like using -- hearing the term you were "recruited"; correct? >> correct. >> what's your objection to the word "recruited" because in the book; right? >> i had app act, and i -- after -- i saw all these beautiful women of my own age, and some know how to agent, and

they, somebody who knows acting had cultural background in the family so that's considered politically not reliable, and they were looking for a piece of white paper. i was taught, and -- >> can you give us a little rendition? >> well, for example, teach how to drink water correctly. i was given a cup and start drinks water, ready, set, action, and the little pipingy here. the correct way to drink a water is one breath and wipe my mouth with both, and that's what i did. anyway, i was picked, and i just

remember -- i couldn't perform. there was no way. oh, all i could think is i did not want to go back to labor camp because i had a back injury. that shows, and later on, the extent was sent, and there was -- her office said it was awful, and we were caught in beijing to watch the favorite movies and to learn technique and not be poise ped by its contents, and we need a study section to go through that, and the moment we saw all these -- the movies, in the film roomings and we all got poisenned men mentally, and you see because she saw herself because they were 20 years older, and they got a mad woman in the back, and

there's a sec wife who was a mad woman, everything matches, and second movie was "sound of music" because they have to take care of the kids, and a beautiful -- was responsible for merging so many chinese people, but in the meantime, her fantasy. anyway, september 9th, 1976, died, overthrown, and two months later, i was denouncedded. the next eight years, i was punished for guilty by association, and by the time i thought i had no way out, i was -- put it that way, if i remained in china, woi would be

dead today. >> what point did you determine you wanted to come to the united states, a nation that you had grown up learning to hate and fear? >> i was caught in blood, and i got shadows on my lung, liver, and they were working, and i thought my life was ending, and it was then my old friend on -- when she was in china, she was told not to be my friend, and then she went to america. we were best friends, going up to be a superstar of china, and i was going down, and then after she arrived, america was creating a movie called the last emperor for, oh, and she felt safe enough to contact me, and so she wrote a letter, and i learned her life in america, and

i was surprised she was not treated as a princess. she was like every chinese student, and -- and in americaings you have to work for your tradition. a lightbulb went off, and i said, could i be one of those students, and i don't speak english, but i would be willing to work hard. i'm from labor camp. she applied everywhere in the united states, help me, but nobody would accept me, and then she says, she says -- thank you -- can you have any talent, and i said, i grew up painting murals, public murals, and so at that time, lucky enough, there's french impressionism, i can copy things of van goeh.

[laughter] my mother came back and saw the paintings, and i applied to school of the art institution in chicago, and they thought i had a potential, and then -- >> you basically lied about your english; right? or misrepresented? >> well i couldn't fill out the application form, and first, my name, and i didn't have english name, and the neighbor, a white man, said, you should name yourself to be an american name, so i printed out angel, and years later when my daughter was 11 years old, i gave her the application form as a gift saying don't ever forget where your mom come from, and i come, and my daughter look at the name, and ape jell, she says, mom, that's not angel, that's angle. [laughter]

the next line was sex, and i consult the chinese english dictionary, and there was no explanation. i did not know how to fill out male or female. i didn't know what to circle. i took it to a friend who helped me fill out the form, and by the line of english language skill, there was an option poor, average, good, excellent. of course, excellent. [laughter] so with that, i came to america, and i got stopped right at customs. > at o'hare? >> no in transition before coming to there, for deportation. >> you get to chicago, get to the school, your english is not good enough, you take english classes, but eventually, you begin to establish yourself. tells about your early life in chicago, where you livedded,

what you had to struggle with. >> i lived everywhere, i lived in somewhere downtown. first, deportation, and i broke down, told the translater my feet are in america, and, please, i beg you for a chance. i'll be dead in china. i didn't have the fortune to die in china, so she went, the translater went back with the immigration officer, and they discovered there's a clothe that says it's upon the arrival of the student if english is not sufficient, sent to university of illinois for english intensive language for six months, and. the six months, i have to master english and make it back to the art institute that gave me the i20. if not, the school is

responsible for reporting my situation to immigration, and from there, deportation. i bet youssef mejri learn chinese in six months if you're in my shoes that desperate. [laughter] anyway, i learned english by watching sesame street and by radio, public radio, and newspaper and it's just everything, and the most difficult thing i have to pretend all these years i was doing well making america because i have burden to rescue my family in china. yesterday, i was passing the downtown post office, and i remember my first photo and asked to take a picture of me under the flag. why the flag? we have a lot beautiful buildings in chicago, why -- i said, once, to be under the american flag. >> your life in chicago when you got here was very difficult. you had a lot of difficult jobs

that didn't pay you very much. >> five jobs, but i have a different mind set thought i was given the right to life. it was up to me, fortunate first time, and so i -- to answer the question, wicker park, logan scare, irvin park, and unfamiliar with the train because i had a job as a delivery person in downtown, walk everywhere, the chinese restaurant, the door in downtown chicago where my legs carry me, and downtown south, outside of china town, like, 26, and then on bridgeport, and so i -- my happiest of place was 4311 south hulsted. i had a storage room. for the first time in my life, i had my personal space. the best thing was that the -- the feeling was the wall would

not close, and there was a retarded map, and if had had diarrhea, it came in the room. [laughter] i was happy. >> when you complained, he said, that's why it's cheap, it's a storage space. >> yes. my health broke down. i passed out and asended to the hospital, and doctor told me that do you have anybody to take you there? i said, no. i can walk there. i take the train. he said, no, you will collapse any time. he reported to the hospital thinking i have some sort of disease or something, so the moment he dropped me at the hospital, the men came and escort me in isolation room and put me in the white suit to test, because i was coughing blood and everything, and they found nothing was wrong. it was just depression.

they sent me to the depression and to see a psychiatrist at the school at the art institute, and i saw -- i figure it's a good opportunity to learn english. [laughter] it's a disappointment because the psychologist is not -- she would not talk to me or fix my english. [laughter] the chinese people at that point see psychiatrist, was thatted why of psychiatry new to you? >> right. how can a person be depressed when she doesn't feel depressed? >> a lot of what you talk about are events you wrote about in the book. two-thirds of the book are your life in chicago before you gain all this success, before you moved to california. talking op the phone the other day, you -- you talked about how difficult it was to write this second portion of your memoir, that you embarked on it, when

you were a hot commodity, and it didn't work. talk about the difficulties of telling this part of your life story. >> well, after 20 years of making a living as an author, and sitting next to jkrowling, i, as an author, i start to realize the asset of my life. it's how i approach it. by now, i know the right way to write the book. the book ought to be written, but the point is do i have the courage. pickedded daughter says if you leave me anything leave me your stories, but not the sugar coated or air blushed version.

that was key. >> i read a lot of imb grant stories, told by second generation about the mother, and i found a lot of things mothers left out. i know exactly why. these are the things that i wrote. >> things mothers left out because they didn't want their children to nose these things? >> uh-huh. the dark side. >> can you talk a bit about the dark side you had to plunge into in order to tell the true story? >> it was loneliness and lack of money, that drove me to live in the deepest place in chicago, and submit myself to the most vulnerable situations where i was raped, and the other day, i was -- i'm on book tour in san n

diego, and there's a chinese woman who cried and said same thing happened to me, exactly, it's a mirror image. i was raped and i did not report, and i felt the same thing, that people were not in normal situations, where they are in dispair, crushing loneliness, helplessness and the hopelessness just drove people to madness, and the rape and the strangling, and it's the things that happened in. on the other hand, i have problem with my siblings and my family. why do you have to reveal that to the world? >> did they say this to you after the book came out and knew you revealed it? >> i was -- i am going to -- i am not going to sugar coat, so i might say something that would have negative effect on my family, but i feel that i don't

owe my life as american, i see that, i see that. i see -- i owe that to america and owe that to my daughter. if i -- >> to tell an honest story? >> right. right. i love america and chicago so much, and i think it's -- the -- this is -- it's the right thing to do, and also another thing was about this talk about my christmas, and thanksgiving for three years, i didn't have the money, and mostly was afraid that i may not get a visa back if i ever visit my home, so i was here alone all by myself. i could have been -- go to friends with the chinese community, and i thought -- but i would never learn english the way i do now. i must deny myself that part, so for my christmas, thanksgiving,

i was alone, and value type's night, my gift to myself was this pornography tape. i have a relationship with the tape for so many years, and that's part of -- it was by incident that i entered into the shop. >> the same tape over and over; right? >> right. it's called "sex education." [laughter] eventually, the store owner says -- he says, look, why don't you buy it? i sell it to you for $25. you can have it. you're the only one renting it anyway. [laughter] i bargin did down $20 and said it was the cam panon for the rest of my life. >> does english come to you

naturally now, or is it still difficult? >> still difficult. my daughter come up to my cabin and she would peak, you know, teenagers, and three weeks, comes back and says, you know, same sentence, same page, i'd rather go to medical school. [laughter] >> you were talking about when you write, you write in chinese. >> i compos in chinese everywhere, walls, notes, my mirrors, and my husband says it's everywhere. i just step into the ocean of notes, and it's all in chinese, and when i write, execute in english. >> what, tube an immigrant is to leave the people you love behind. you left your family.

your mother died. >> uh-huh. >> that's, you know, this happens late in your book, but it's actually very emotional thing that your mother dies, and she's so far away. >> yeah. >> and what did that change for you? mentally. >> i think she became part of the driving force that i wrote the book because i never realized my relationship with my daughters, and until my mother passed away, i feel all these ten years, 20 years as immigrant , and i was not able to attend her illness, and later on when i became wealthy enough to visit her, she was already in her alzheimer's, and i couldn't get there when she was dying. my father called, and i think every immigrant fear that late night, early morning four o'clock call.

you know something's not right, and my father calling and saying, this voice, your mother is impermanent sleep. i said, why can't you just say she's dead? it's everything in permanent sleep. i think it's something that changed for me, and my relationship with my daughter, and it's a difficult one because she was at the beginning would not understand me, and she was born in chicago, and a child of immigrant, new imgrants, she had to help. you know, i wanted to take her to disneyland, to her birthday, but i took her to home depot. [laughter] her gift was a lesson how to use the power saw and a book called plumb me 1, 2 #,3, and that was

her life until she was a teen where she broke down and rebelled. i said, no, i'll talk to you about milking the system because i know that making the american dream was by hard working is backfiring because my daughter often see the opposite. she came to conclusion, mom, it's not the end of the world being poor, okay? i just -- i see that to make us kids are having, we're serving, they are having the american dream that you come to america for, and her kids are happy. they have their own rooms, their tv, their games, their skating boards, their stuffed animals, and i wanted what they have. i don't want to live this life that working with you and no weekends, no summer, just carrying concrete bags in and

out, helping you hold the dry wall and mixing cement while you do the tile and working the switch. when i come home, even a bottle of shampoo can want get ri of the stink in my hair, and i don't think i'm asking too much, so she broke down crying, and that was my tough time, tough moment. >> home depot figures fairly regularly in your book. [laughter] >> we almost lived there. i lived there. [laughter] >> learning to repair things, take care of things, do just basic work is a real theme of the book, and in the conflict you describe here between the life that you led, the skills that you were forced to learn, and the life of your daughter, the lives of the far more privilegedded children of most americans now. i mean, that continues to be a

conflict for you. some reviewer described you as the original tiger mother. >> well, i asked my daughter, she'll tell you, lloyd, my husband, he is the tiger dad because i -- >> a vietnam vet. >> a u.s. marine, and english teacher of 30 years, and he tells my daughters, you tell your mother, she's an immigrant, no idea what the american school wants, and you can get away with it. you try me. [laughter] ..

i don't see anything wrong to -- i see here -- if i'm ever a mother. i'm on point. ly not let you get away with being gnars sissic and feeling sorry for yourself. you have to help your mom pay back america. i would never -- america give me the opportunity. you will never be -- she's at stanford now. she'll never get that chance. being somebody knob's daughter. you have to pay back. i can see her being helpful, like with her skills building house, plumbing, and he can surf where people needed her. i think that was my -- yes.

>> you mentioned on the phone the other day, you go back to china regularly, and that you're worried that this generation of chinese kids is going in the direction of the privileged, spoiled american. >> i went to china, and my friends' children's birthday whatever celebration. the highest place is mcdonald and kentucky fried chicken. that's where they celebrate. it's everything america. now kids asking them for money to go to america. right now china spends a fortunate -- family fortunate to send their kid to america for school. it's a number one choice for

family to invest in their children's education. >> there was a report that came out just this week about the increasing distrust between americans and chinese. but just in the past couple of years on both sides of that divide, people are more mistrustful. do you per receive that that americans are becoming more distrustful of chinese and chinese becoming more distrustful of america. >> i'm not surprised. the china i know in american textbooks and how crazy we are. china is our partner and rivel, and we made no point to teach our children about china. that doesn't make any sense to me. >> what do you think americans don't understand and china and the chinese it's important we understand?

>> if you see the -- i think it's americans see china, to me, black and white. 80% of china is gray. that's what my book -- that's where i go. china wants to make america understand china, but in the meantime china is unwilling to reveal the dark side. and chinese people telling my family telling me to hide it. and a chinese people will not write the i do. i will not write the way i do if i'm not americanized. i do see that, believe the mistrust. the china presents itself with perfect image. the image looks so fake. and as american, i know that revealing your honesty, your flaws, it's not necessarily to your disadvantage.

because americans thans humans are flawed. they think it's -- you look at your scarlet o'hara in "gone with the wind "the hero and the her and i think that's the part that the chinese don't understand. and oftentimes americans not being able to understand the chinese is not being able to have access to chinese literature. it could never make it to american main stream market. >> why not? >> chinese is the authors -- the censorship, even in my them moisture, i think i automatically -- how many times you see in the memoir protag nist, the self, the author project themselves as flawed?

part of my chicago story is to show that. >> are you saying saying that chinese literature the protagonist would never be flawed? >> it's automatic. not at depths. flawed in the harmless way, yes. because you don't exam yourself and dissect yourself to autopsy on my mistake as hon ally as america could. for example, a lot of things i got scammed in chicago when i was a new immigrant. i was part of the fault. i was greedy. i was because of money i needed money. it was like flies never park on an egg that is not cracked and stink. >> there is through your whole life and your work a striving, a constant striving to somehow be

more -- not exactly have more, but to be secure. a striving toward a certain security. you live in beautiful northern california, you have a solid second marriage, your daughter is at stanford. what do you strive for now? >> to feel secure. i'm deeply insecure with my writers. i feel retarded. lack of talent in everything i do. you see, my talent is in the knowledge that i lack of talent. i know the bar is there and how far i want to jump. i know, if i make an effort i will. but i'm not equipped. every day i read chinese and a

book a day. reading in chinese. in my best days writing english, i actually feel like i was writing in chips. -- chinese. americans in the main stream bookmark, i want to entertain but i also want you to walk away with solid knowledge of china. i feel like china has been misrepresented and misread. i think it's just ridiculous for americans who get the wrong message understanding about china. and i know i'm given the liberty that i can of my story especially historical fiction. i'm untitled to to that. do i want to throw one more rock in to the well where china is already at the bottom to mislead american public further? i choose not to. if my book doesn't sell, if it give you the satisfaction totally, and i see t my choice.

and my -- my book had a struggle. nobody wanted it. because the publisher, they did not nothing the american reading public to brace the story. the sad story. -- [inaudible] on trial sentenced to death after 38 years of marriage and she was considered demon and still considered the george washington of china. as a child they condensed the video of the tv to a few second where she was given basically portrayal of herself. she shouted in chinese. [speaking in chinese] that's a perfect self-portrait. the translation, i'm -- asked me to bite. i bit. that was precisely her role. after mao became the emperor of

china and she became the -- [inaudible] you want to find her way back to mao's arm. that was her life. i felt it a beautiful ending. in the ending she hanged herself in the tale. using socks, she tied all the socks together. there's nothing to tie and she tied it bed frame and rolled herself over. what kind of determination to die, i was wondering what -- [inaudible] her thoughts with mao or her long life? what was it? so the book is written and nobody wanted -- and my current editor he the guts to take it. at the time making money with

lord of the ricks. they thought they could invest in the literal work. took a chance on me and immediately it's a best seller because paper -- it's chinese history. and also my other books. i'm with bloomberg who published harry potter. i think they took a chance on me because they had money on harry potter. so any book is -- [inaudible] chances. and i really appreciate the american critics, the quality of their -- people they sent to me. and my for example -- [inaudible] he asked me the first question. ultd like to discuss you on the topic for a writer's pen name the free villagers who

instigated the cultural revolution. i go, where do you go to school? what was your major? he said culture revolution. [inaudible] >> we have four minutes here to take a couple of questions from the audience. we have 0 microphones there in the middle of the aisle. >> it's a pleasure and honor to meet you. i'm a native of your chicago. your story is very moving. my first view to china is a famous fictional account about an american in china. she presents two views of china that she was amazed how exotic it is. but she characterized the main

protagonist, the laborer and how harsh it was to. did you ever read that? what was your reaction to it? >> i was brought to denounce it in 1972. right before nix son's visit. we were children -- i remember i was welcoming nixon, i was giving two red flowers in welcome and i was -- when nixon's car passed i was at the correspondenter and -- corner and i saw -- do i shoot him? we were so young. the man is so daring to come to china. because we wanted to -- i did not know. she was scared to come with nixon. at the last minute chef refused a visa to come to china. before that they paved their way to -- [inaudible] organized denouncer. i never know this name. what did she write.

we're giving them -- she insulted the chinese president. so i did -- was not able to get any book. as i remember -- [inaudible] it wasn't until the book tour actually in chicago. i first read her "the good earth "i just broke down and sobbed on the airplane. i have never seen any author income -- including my favorite chinese author portray of the chinese -- with such a faction and the accuracy. it's a life she's the only one -- i know she had a debate with the chinese professor in "new york times" after she got the nobel prize. and the debate was mr. khan was saying why can she protray china

and 5% the best of chips. why would she choose the ugly said. she said i'm glad. i happen to be interested in the 95 percent of chinese population. i'm having the same thing. the chinese people tell me who are you? are you mao's daughter. you're so average. you're so plain. so i give them her answer. i happened to be as average as 95% of the population. thank you. [applause] >> we are out of time. i really enjoyed this book. we are really out of time. i have a question. >> chinese and i come here about fifteen years, and just -- i was

working if are newspaper before. and two years ago i changed to another job working for american company. and just two days ago, my american coworker bought this book for me, because he wanted to try to encourage me for english. and i'm really honored to be here. so my question is [inaudible] struggle forking -- [inaudible] use english and what is makes you more encouragement to learning english. >> to survive. >> well, you are already in america. let me tell you, english is easier than chinese. [laughter] >> thank you. because i working for twelve years on the chinese -- i'm working for the chinese newspaper.

t a reporter too. >> yeah. >> i think that the most difficult for you would be try to stay away from the chinese community. [laughter] that's why i denied myself for so many years. i know if i didn't speak english i e would never be independent in america. >> that's what i want. thank you so much. i'm really proud of you. thank>> thank you. [applause] >> that was a great chicago story. a great immigrant story. thank you. [applause] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible conversations] >> you heard live from the "chicago tribune" printer lit fest. we'll be right back.

what are you reading this summer? booktv wants to know. >> a lot of history and biography i'm reading.

the book i'm reading currently about half way through is book by harvard professor. it's an excellent book on different leadership styles. basically has the leadership filtration theory. lincoln was such a leader and only one term in congress was an ab secure figure from yale. -- illinois. when he got in the white house he was unpredictable and proved to be one of the best leader in the history of the united. that's not always the case. but it's a fascinating theory he applies the theory to a number of leaders like jefferson,

church hill. i'm half way through that. books i recently read -- [inaudible] and thomas is a great writer and biographer. his theory in the book sort is that ike eisenhower wasn't as appreciated. had method to the madness. he actually was quite shrewd and very much in charge. i have to admit having read the whole book and being open the theory, he doesn't mean to. he proves the opposite. it pretty much tells you that iressen hour was often a sick man. a heart disease. and often very disengaged from his own cab cabinet. delegated a lot to his secretary of state. it's an interesting book.

he disproves his own the sis. which is kind of fun when you think about it. another book which is important to me. i served in the senate called the "the last great senate "a number of senators what he think is a golden age in the senate in the '60s and '70s. and characters like ted kennedy, ed who got thing done. who reached across aisle. kind of bemoaning. but he don't it anymore how much. how much got down with the spirit of collaboration and comprise.

by leader of the state where the state directly intervened. and sifted on certain precept of orthodox sincerity, and from that what instituted it. and -- [inaudible] who inzigsed on that. it changed the course of history from his point of view. it kind of silence dissent. it squelched. and lead to the persecution of people who deviated from orthodoxy over the century. it's an fascinating account of early christian history and the consequences that flowed from

the actions of the emperor. he's the author of one of the innovation of iraq. and what went wrong. brilliant book. this is a historical book about how generals were made, promoted, and demoted from world war ii to the present. his thesis is seizely that -- served as army chief of staff and joint chief of staff during fdr. removed many generals from the battlefield. he insisted on performance. sometimes reassignment to something et. cetera and give them a second chance with impunity. he removed people until he found

the right person for the right job. what he talks about is that culture of accountability and responsibility has very much been deluded in subsequent period such that by vietnam, performance seemed to be very small criteria when it came to appraise sail of generals. and there were very few consequences for poor performance and poor outcome. he highlights general who was in charge of the vietnam war effort for a long period of time as an camp of that. and he argues that right up to the present day, that saying is true. and it's -- and has real implications in term of u.s. defense and national security policy.

and in this book, he really documents the conservative assault on many facet of american life from education to civil rights, to personal liberty, to corporate law, and his theory is that this is a concerted ideological assault on liberty and on constitutional principle. ironically, many folks on the conservative side like to hold up the constitution and say we believe in the constitution. the gentleman actually makes the opposite argument. they are endangering the constitutional liberties. and many of the precepts we care very much about as a country. thought provoking. very good book. two books i haven't read.

one the gun of last flight. the first was a book on the north africa campaign and the american involvement in it. the second is sicily and italy campaign that -- brutal part of the war. this is a book about madison and monroe.

it's a little piece of virginia history, but actually madison monroe ran again each other for the united congress. and the district had been carved to favor monroe. madison decided to contest it. in an upset he beat monroe who was a friend of his and succeeded him as president. this is quite an interesting book. because madison won the election. we got the bill of rights. madison was a champion of the bill of rights. it had great consequence. it's not well known but it's a critical piece of history. it's a book i look forward to reading this summer.

our live coverage continue. >> what is the interesting aspect of the build's history is the fact exists at all. and really much of the reason that the building is still here is due to our governor at the time. when the civil war started to come to a close, and union troop were camped outside raleigh, he was very concerned about the fate of the people of raleigh and the buildings. and he knew what had happened in many of the other southern cities when troops came through. he crafted a peaceful surrender of the city of raleigh. he agreed to leave the city of raleigh and have the confederate troops leave peacefully. if the union troops would take charge at the city of really raleigh peacefully and specifically spare the state capitol with the museum and library. >> we have three representativation of george washington here at the state capitol.

one out and two inside. the statute down spares is actually a copy of the original statute in the state house that burned. that was destroyed. that statute was made by an italian sculptor. he represented george washington in a way he felt matched his reputation. as a military leader, as a political leader, and so he made him and a classical way. it looked like a roman general. that was not entirely a popular decision with the people of north carolina. and probably the thing that shocked people the most is his leg and treat completely bare. many people thought it was disrespectful to show a president with the leg and toes showing. >> more from the north nc state capitol next weekend.

our live coverage from chicago continues with sonia. her memoir "the watch maker's daughter." .. that the home viewing audience is able to hear your question. if you would like to watch this program again note that our coverage will we air at 11:00

central time on saturday and midnight central time on sunday. keep the spirit of the fest going all year with the description to apprentice roll. the tribune premium book fiction fiction series and membership program. visit the printer's row welcome center at harrison and the yearborn for the test subscription perks and rates including the list fest bag and poster. finally the author's books will be sold on the second floor of the university center and it is right outside has you came in which is where the books will be sold and there will be a book signing following this session in the arts room. books lining will be immediately after the session. before we begin the program i ask you to turn off your cellphones and other electronic devices and i would like to welcome our moderator rick howard of the chicago tribune.

[applause] >> i am honored to be with this great honest -- audience and our colleague sonia taitz who has written a hunting book called "the watchmaker's daughter". we will tell you about the watchmaker and the daughter but let me ask you you are the daughter, tell us about the watchmaker, what was it like to live with him? >> i was born into a family of a hero a couple who had survived the holocaust and seemed more like victors than victims. my father was a charismatic man. i would say physically you could combine you'll brenner in the role of king in the king and i. and he was a good as it did good dancer and good walter and pablo picasso who always looked open but never got old and he saved lives from the holocaust so he became a watchmaker through

unfortunate circumstances but his life had a way of turning everything, turning lead into gold. my father was a baby of 3 when he was shot and his father had been in the river mill and his mother, my name's sake, sonya, had to scramble to protect her three kids. when my father, young this turned 13 he had to apprentice kind of trade, not stay in school and shows watchmaking and he took to it and became a master watchmaker. flipped the calendar year, years go by, the russians came into his country of lithuania and lost his shop, the harley was an index of that and after that the nazis came and lo and behold when they asked each person what their profession was he didn't say lawyer which would have been useless to the regime, but watchmaker. sort of cliche but the germans have or had a tremendous respect

for punctuality and my father could fix any timepiece from the smallest pocket watch to big band. that saved his life. he not only became a watchmaker in the concentration camp but save the other prisoners, people who were starving and couldn't stand confinement as most of us couldn't he would lead them in and say i need an assistant and show them how to put the loop in there i and play with the micro tools, cautioned them not to break anything and had a workshop with a lot of watchmakers, that was living with a hero and my mother saved her mother and she came to america and she was -- her other scheme was flowers and she played the piano. and conservatory about to graduate when the nazis came so she played for as and i would lie under the piano listening. my householder was a strange place of clock's ticking, kudus

to doing and hearing rock one of and chopin and living in at different time and place, the past and present which was america and had nothing to do with any of that but when you grow up -- >> for the first several years you did not really know this story of your father's heroism of what he did, almost like a coincidence. tell us how you found out about it. >> i didn't know he was the hero but a lot of people who come out of my experience as an american child born of immigrants in particular war refugees and most particularly the holocaust didn't get to here and there was a feeling of silence because people were traumatized, no one was aware of that and they went on with their life and i felt heroically there was no one i knew who didn't get up in the morning and shaver and go to work. my parents did all of that but

talked about it nonstop. i did know about his heroism but i did know they had been in camp because it was the day by day, because i ended the mount sinai birth room, i am sure i was told something. it hurt more than in the holocaust. my mother was in the twilight sleep. she always explained giving birth was painless and found out to the contrary having babies in that era of was painless. in any case i learned about my father's heroism at that time, but they seemed very unbroken, very together and also linked it to things. they would link the fact they were in the holocaust to great things, i had tears and joy and having a really bad time and whisks you over to paradise conlan they sent me to a

religious jewish day school, and every holiday made sense, to the pull jokes about the holidays they tried to kill us, didn't win, let's eat. for me passover was my father's story. like b.a. kennedy. talk about these things happening in the real world, having passed over without being a slave or being released and they did tell me when i was little about having a nazi, that was an interesting, you want to hear that story? >> you went to israel for the first time and you were there with your father and people started gathering and recognizing and say he saved us, talk about that moment of discovery, what he did with the watchmaker. >> it is true. when i was 10 years old my brother was 13, for a present for him we went to israel. we were not rich. i remember going to seven stops and that is the athens and rome and paris and we arrived and

went to jerusalem and into this park and my father was admiring that there were so many trees and the country was green and things could be born out of the dust and sand in the desert and swamp and i was having jerusalem syndrome, my eyes were as big as high places and people start to come out of all the trees in all directions and they gathered my father in the group of them said are you the one who saved us? so i thought my father was pretty great but i hadn't expected this. this was more than hero worship. that is how high learned he saved lives. as i mentioned before, it was i guess a very climactic moment and a homecoming to sees it even if you were in the worst circumstance you could be standing on a beautiful palm tree and a place like jerusalem and feel nothing but admiration for courage in the darkest time someone could be helping other

people that that was -- being a hero, doing something instead of sitting back and watching was one of the big legacies' my father gave me. >> also at the same time, living with your father was not easy. it was difficult and dark and violent side of that. >> my father. my father had a very bad temper. his shakespearean fall would be he had a very bad temper and that is where the holocaust went and periodic eruptions of rage. used to be someone like my brother was in my neighborhood which was washington heights, full of jewish day schools and refugees from europe, fairly observant and close-knit community my father was a maverick and he didn't fit in very well and my father hadn't had a father so my brothers, sometimes age opprobrium and sometimes fresh response like my brother would learn to say you

don't understand anything, that kind of thing. my father would freak out. he had been pushed too many times in too many ways and didn't understand that some my brother would enrage him and that was an issue in the family that my father really didn't understand my brother and chose me as the honorary boy and the honorary olympic runner. here is the torch, you go and run. he definitely would lose his temper and i would be very worried about him and i did think about the songs of david, king saul was crazy, needed david right psalms and i think i was the david and always tried to console and comfort my father ran in turn he consoled and comforted me because he told me the world is really black and white. it has some very bad people in it and we are not safe and there are so many other levels than the one you are looking at. everything seems safe except she never calls out my name.

it is not happy and peter but just to sort of make the world safe i think he gave me a lot of strength and in turn i think i gave him a lot of strength but it wasn't easy. it is not an easy relationship to be your father or mother's confidante and tiny midget messiah. >> remember what happened when you came home from summer camp at one point and you said dad, i learned something at summer camp. >> i see where you are going with this. that is, i became a writer. my father's final attack on me. almost never got a angry at me. for one thing we are on the same page, we were on the same page about most things. always good at school and he loved that he had not had his education, what did you learn today? i would tell him and i got very good grades when my father wanted me to go to law school so i was running a good race but i went to summer camp and that wasn't about at all about

academics or being a good girl and in my camp it was the jewish camp but was about having boyfriends and a id bracelet and i was 13 or 14 and coming in to my own as a female and feeling very good about it and i had been very sort of feeling like i was very ethnic but suddenly barbra streisand was out and share was flapping her black hair and considering herself a gypsy and indian and all these famous and was really great so my father was being overbearing, we had to greet him at the door and say how was your day? he was very old school your of the enhanced said i realize now lie and grow up like you and don't need to listen to you anymore and i'm laughing because his arm didn't go like a windmill but that is all you need to say to make a good comedy routine but he flipped out and he hit me. it sounds like it was violence and it was.

when you hit someone in a anger even in the old days when people did saying their kids it depends on the mood and whether you are doing it because they have done something wrong and want to teach them or because you just really flipped out and buy things he flipped out. that led to my becoming a writer and a funny way that i disclose in the book. i was so angry at him that i wanted to hit him back and really would have but of course i couldn't. that sort of thing you get killed for. so i went to the batter and took a piece of toilet paper, churning up in the bathroom and data can and wrote some notes about how much i hate to daddy and i will write about this and then i flushed it down the toilet. sent my words on the atlantic ocean. that was the first indication that you could rewrite the world, you could respond to it and reshape it and you didn't have to take anything in life without having a conscious response to it, reaction to and

make it make sense or make it better or even just then. an interesting day. >> tell us about the dynamic between your father and your mother. she is living with him too in this volcano of energy and danger and how did they interrelate and what did they find in each other? >> they met in a very weird way which i will have to convince you was romantic because they didn't meet in lithuania. they came from the same town and they didn't meet in the -- everybody left their apartments at home and got concentrated into this little village. they were both there. they didn't meet and they didn't meet in concentration camps because they were male/female. my father was with his father-in-law to be, who died there and my mother was with my father's mother who died, did know that the. they didn't know any of the sense that four years at this

place. they come to america and everyone is desperate to get married and they want to get married in america because it is a land where you don't have to have a passport that says what is your religion and everyone gives you a chance. my father felt and i felt too that it is a unique country with tremendous, tremendous democratic values and gifts that certainly weren't true all over the world and in some cases today. he came here and wanted to marry and the beginning on years, i thought was 41 osborn and they went -- this is a mouthful but a lithuanian holocaust survivor's ball. that sounds really hot. but it was. my father was an incredible dancer and it wasn't just the waltz, wasn't just shall we dance but it was the pull the. i saw my parents and my time and they never touched the floor. it was like watching a pair of pros and i bet he did most of

the work. he was a candy in skater. he skated around in his part of the world during the winter and i thought i was really good until he left and i hit the ground. they danced and he fell in love with her beautiful green eyes and she played the piano at that was a huge thing for him because she was cultivated and he hadn't gone to school after 13 and she loved the way he danced and he was very sexual. she never used that word but i feel there was a charge between them. she was estrogen to his androgen. at the same time they lived through a certain period where the relationship of male dominance over when and was changing and although all their lives he was sort of edith to are cheap, she began to see i was living in different life and there , she began to see i was living in different life and there was stress because of that

and my father had chosen me in a family destroying way to some extent. we weren't destroyed but it was come back to the bible. the main stories are all about in the. everybody hates joseph for having the beautiful coat and my father put that mantle on me at an early age. there were times my mother, with my being liberated and wanting to be a lawyer she did resent me and probably felt envious and hurt. i knew my parents had a really good life on some level because every time they went dancing they went right into the first scene so that is complicated. >> tell us about what the song love roads meant to them. >> i happen to love that. i am glad you mentioned did. it is a small element in the book but that was their song and i thought a little bit about it.

it is like in pink it is interesting because that wasn't really there motto. in essence they didn't look at life through rose colored glasses. is a good song to fall in love to and you begin to see all the colors primarily gray and black because no matter out great the initial love story or the birth of the baby there are problems and as everybody knows, the human condition, they felt like as it was and grew to have as i say in the beginning of the book didn't understand the americas that i was born into where everyone just seemed to be infantile and wanting to be happy ending was very neutral like the man in the gray flannel suit and a madman era and the women wearing beehives and a pleasing brill cream and everyone having a two car garage and smokes cigarettes. all their friends from the holocaust seemed to gravitate to the suburbs and develop a taste for shrimp cocktail and lincoln continental but parents didn't

want that because they wanted to be significant and meaningful. they were both in this way, wanted me to have an education the understands we suffer but if it has meaning we can endorse anything. didn't want me to say that is over, i was mugged, i will have a party. it was more like interweaving their history with the history of the world, the history of suffering or the history of every individual who has problems. it is like the times they danced. something kept them together. they could always meet in that spot. >> let's talk about your mother. she was quite an accomplished pianist who played serious repertoires. that was one of her many losses. one of her many losses because of the holocaust. the potential career, that artistic life. tell us what she lost and what kind of told did that take on her? >> my mother was raised in a

middle-class way, my father was from a poor family. he always admired the fact that she had a grand piano and puppies and mades because she was very gentle and being raised to be a concert pianist and was really talented and when she came to america she really didn't seem interested in that career at all. she didn't seem to want to but she did give lessons and she would say periodically daddy made for me nothing because she was his helpmate, she ran and got things like this big jewelry store with watchmaking practice and she would run to get the park and she liked to run. i never saw that. she had a brain tumor because one day she took a nap and that was unique. she never sat. she would run to the kitchen. she was in some sense in his

shadow and when she came, everybody would go silent and with a brain tumor at the end of her life, it was inoperable, she became really quiet and smiley and sweet, i had the best talk with her then because she was no longer envious of me and we would sit on each other's . she did goto the piano and play as well as she ever did. maybe better. she only had a few days to live, a neighbor knocked on the door and said what radio station a you listening to? so the piano was always there for her as watches were for my father and parallel to my mother my father died of cancer which seemed really more of pull because they suffered and been in prison and his hands were fixing watches. and she was able to make the whole world's resonate with not

just beauty but emotion and death. >> the thing she grieved for not being able to become the pianist she might have been or the artist she might have been to perform for others? >> i didn't see that but she wanted to know -- she took on america very strongly. she would have loved to have one of those houses in the suburbs and maybe she wouldn't have had the some cocktail or anything not kosher but she would have still enjoyed having time off. she thought she would enjoy being a lady of leisure. in actual fact it suited her very well to have things to do all day because my brother and i left the house she still wanted, she had nothing to do and when my father died she was completely at a loss. i didn't see her thinking oh my career it could have been. i don't know why they put her in the conservatory other than it was something that would earn the panel. en she wasn't a real star

personality. it wasn't a nice life where people have nice things and you weren't scared or stressed or that kind of thing. >> you mentioned the favor your father had with you but the onus of that, responsibility comes out and your father had a request, very significant request she made of view. >> my father made a few, a man of few words, and his voice was really deep, really asked for something, i don't like to ask for anything and my blood would run cold so it was a very good student, and how relevant it is to go to an ivy league school and in many parts of the country, a child who hadn't gone to college and did really well through high school and all of a sudden the principal says to my parents i was well aware that i

was doing well and had good as 80s the-know what that would translate into, tell my father i could get into yale landed at a verbal guarantee i would get in and somehow my father had a question at the time, and i don't know how many i have left that you are the apple of my eye and don't want you to go away but i want you to stay in the city. i went to barter college, very good woman's college, part of columbia that created a spring in me, the desire to go further because even my grandmother had me literally on a leash in the park when i was a little girl, had those polyester silk dresses that were itchy and it would be hot and all the other kids in the neighborhood, the immigrant kids primarily irish frolicking in the fountain, and imus literally on a leash, but this request as well. i had a desire to not stay but i did for him because he asked me,

why didn't i do it, i took care of my parents. they were my children in a way. i was their parent, i was there caretaker. i pitied them. i nurtured them. i felt my father sat have no family and don't want you to go. i just wanted to do something that would help. it is an honor when someone asks to do something like that. my father was not well with cancer. i had three kids and why are you doing this for me? is a great honor. you were always so busy and i feel this such a great time for me and tried to put it that way. my father saying i need you around, you make my life light up so anyway i got into yale law school and twice as happy until the time i was at law school and hated it and a lot of people there, high was 21, very young, sort of in over my head in terms of the society i was in and the

career we are talking about. i loved english literature and art and this was all about literally big bucks all the time. some people had very big next from the midwest and very frightened. a lot of these people had ph.d.s because it was not an employable degree, so they went to law school and that was the fall back, goes to law school, and i again way. so i would like to take a leave of absence. it was such a cool thing, go activate it in indonesia, go to oxford, and i had to talk my father into it. he wanted me to be, when i was very little one of the main stories besides the exodus and slaves being free, the story of queen esther and it didn't work.

and the story is in persia, there is a great threat to the jews as there might be right now and there is an alcoholic idiot who has banished his wife, doesn't want to dance naked for demand holds a beauty contest for a new queen and chooses queen esther, and her uncle says it will be good to have a jewish queen. esther comes up to his chamber and says there are many wives and i'm disillusioned by the storage becomes into his room and says the people you want to kill are actually live people. he goes really? she goes yes. i am a jew and these edges. my father in some sense wanted me to go to moscow and do that and some combination -- and asking him i can go to oxford? i put it this way, this idea of

having breast buttons or authority and status in the world, i have accomplished a lot, did you accomplish something? i published a lot in your yale law school. i hate it. i would like to take a leave of absence and go to oxford. if i get income ago? why? oxford, that is even better than harvard or yale? if you would say is, a go was the highest certification. in a wily way, suggested that, if oxford, at harvard was the omega then oxford was testing. he was very impressed and on top of which i want to go where you were thrown away and come back and the student and make an impression in and get a degree. so he was very kind to me in a sense and let me go but first there was another request of a foul. the know what that was?

like a fairy tale so he said i will let you go but i have another request of you. oh oh. i want you to vow that wherever you wander and wherever you go, and that is not likely to happen. in the birthing room i was told, this incredibly -- it wasn't going to be that i would forget. >> tell us -- >> where jews were regarded in england. >> my trip to oxford every adventure begins with the journey. and a million things happen and anthony goes home, my parents said their journey across the atlantic, is a drama was told to leave the place you are used to and go to a new land so i

crossed the atlantic, and it was very monolithic we english at the time. and it was far more mixed and english people and english culture speaking english in england with the church of england so outsiders were treated somewhat white outsiders and being jewish was certainly thought to be subject i would be ashamed of and so if i would say someone to someone else they would say you jewish i wouldn't dream of asking, and if their descendants of abraham and moses, and a communicable sexual disease so my geiger counter was going up and i was very excited, op-ed not experience what my parents talked about all i believe the them and i read a jewish history and was watching the world's, it was fraught with

conflict. and i fell in love with an english guy, that would have been the last thing my parents would have wanted because my mother's view was particularly if you marry a gentile, he will drink and be you and call you a dirty jew. that didn't happen. my husband, this person's parents absolutely hated you. and his mother said clearly that she hated them and was very open, it was not politically correct and i thought misguidedly that they would like me as soon as i got to know me and that didn't happen. my charm failed miserably and telling them how good i was in school nothing worked and they seemed to be saying to me that we are in england and even if you discovered a cure for every cancer and had a board made of solid gold we don't like you. we are english and we stay in england. we don't wander the world and

link people. and flirting with their sons. we don't do that. there's a lot more to the story. much more. >> didn't his mother save this incredible phrase in response to you and his courtship of you or your courtship with him, better a negress that a jew? >> it is loaded in so many ways. the thing about calling women something, and a baby was a baby woman, so yes, and this was my mother-in-law. and eight presence for hanukkah for each of three grandchildren is 24 and mailed them from england and they are softball. she did say that and was told she was brought up that way in a small village in wales where she definitely met jews and in

england they were about centuries with note jews in england and kicked out in the middle ages from york and a lot of the literature has illusions to jews and very negative ones and she learned prejudicial things my father experience in eastern europe. and try to beat him up and say that he drank christian blood. i don't know what her particular images were but she felt they dread of me and my family. and in the end she met them. >> you wasn't the only one who tried to stop the court should. >> needless to say my parents believed in continuity of their heritage. and 5% remaining that got out and they felt it was their duty

to transmit this torch, to the next generation and white it again and the worst thing that would happen is it would be snuffed out and forgotten. not just their life all the way back, so a long, poignant, resilience tradition easily snuffed out, both my parents thought this would be a good thing. and make the argument, this is the greatest attempt, and in love with one of the 36 and this was all jewish legends and 36 in the world are not jewish and they make the world so good. and the father said gave us some consideration, i really don't think so. so now that i have been married for a decade i can say yes, not one of 36 for sure.

but who it is, they were broken up. married someone else who fit the bill, a law student who became a lawyer and his father was a professional and my parents didn't get what they wanted because there was a big piece of ham in the fridge and a offered something to my father and said why did you read this handy of the guys is why don't you? it tastes great so even though they were jewish and was not quite the familial feelings my father wanted, but about to marry the wrong guy. i call him dan and have a lot of misgivings. i'm thinking of the boy in england that i loved and i am getting older and older and feel this was one and i am sure and about to walk down the aisle and i pretty much like a lot the don't think they should be marrying him and i went to my father and said let's call it off, always go forward, not backward.

that might have been how he survived. doesn't work in a speeding car rushing toward the cliff or if you are a living, but i sent an s o s letter to paul, what do you think? something like that. i learned later my mother had fort up those letters. what i finally did get back together i separated from the husband and left my wonderful job as a beautiful desk and flowers on it and went back to england because paul said he would marry me and things were different now and by the way why didn't you answer my letters? at the wedding day my father apologize, i for the month, i am really sorry. i cost you so much time. everything happens for the reason. i guess we were both more mature, in our early 20s, now a more appropriate age and it was very hard to get the jewish

divorce. that was from the first husband died decided to do it in a religious way, no question we were divorced. the impression was i was married to the father and it was like a court when you get a jewish divorce and stood up on the stairs and the rich three rabbis like the smith brothers won high, one low and one sideways and it was humiliating because i had to be given a bill of divorcement in the old-fashioned way and one said to me do you have children? i said no. thank god. i went through a lot but as a writer it is for the mill so that is what happened. >> let me ask about something that is more difficult. two subjects, shame and guilt. you say when your parents came to one of your college graduations in law school how ashamed you were about how they

looked and like everyone, the other people's parents and how guilty you felt about that, the shame you felt when people came to your apartment and saw what it was like. tell us about those things and how you deal with that. >> i wanted to come back and talk about the wedding and by parents were madly in love with each other and it was the most beautiful scene of a tiny wedding band on his deathbed many years later my father said thank you for bringing these people into my life and so my fear is and shame and all that vanished away. i felt i was a teenager that my parents were so different was ridiculous and i now know that as a teenage thing because my parents also think that of me, wonderfully, mommy, don't talk, we see someone in the department store i have to hide behind the rack so i know it is a common

thing for children. it is like you are talking too much. i probably am. with my parents my parents were coming to visiting day and there was, became very sassy and told my dad i was a grown up because i had a id bracelet from some cute guy. i got the look and my long hair and was as straight as it always has to be and i am doing my thing and here comes mom wearing soft sandals and has a bag, everyone getting snickers and m&ms and my mother says i brought some hardboiled eggs and reasons and the eggs are in their appeal and diffusion of the one they're not that hard. my father is wearing a straw hat which he wore every day in the summer. at some point he sleeps on my bed asleep and snoring with a yiddish paper over his face. that is really cool. i have no idea what i had to deal with.

i was always ashamed and even if i was with religious people so few people came from the holocaust but also my parents who knew the rules and on the sabbath and was sitting with the rabbi's daughter and turned on the light and said you are not supposed to use electricity and she says you are not? you could never do this because -- the pinnacle that howard was bringing up, graduating from law school, before i went -- it was exactly like oxford and everybody's parents, the dads were all 6 ft. one, silver hair, beautiful hair, the moms had been a player in the page, that kind of thing, here come my parents and my father with a hat and my mother has food and at this time it is the banana that is five days old and brown and i can't think it was an accident, this is where she got revenge on me for being a smart alec, being my dad's favored and she said

the when the banana? yes standing in the cap and gown and i write about this, one of the kennedy kids, bobby shriver in my class and we are friends and his parents are like what i just described and maria who is not yet journalist, she is not going to get my mother opening the tinfoil, bananas and tin foil and the tinfoil has been reused. it is like catching the sun in so many ways. that was -- a horrible thing for me is my kids when they are mean to me, hide behind the coats. they don't feel guilty because my husband and i are strong modern parents. i would feel bad that i was ashamed of my poor parents and feels that the kids would come to my house because we were in the wrong neighborhood but also why would be relieved. there was a very big conflict. they couldn't return. i could address them.

they were adults, or answer the phone and they would have accent's. it was hard for me. >> i want to ask you. what is it, you devote a lot of to and pages in this book to the deaths of the each of your parents. a lot of time why do you do that? why is that looming so large in the context of your story? >> i just want to say a lot of immigrants will know what it is like to feel ashamed of yellowing plastic on the furniture and plastic flowers but okay. about their deaths. i wrote the book many years after my parents passed away and i was not going to write this kind of book. my mother used to say to me everybody has the story. i have a story and she wrote her story and is in the book of how she survived and she said tell my story but i agree that

everyone has the story. everyone out here watching has the story and can be vivid and amazing. you don't have to have gone through these dramatic things to have a story. there are a little dramas everywhere. i waited, they passed away, almost like a couldn't go on living. i was so much in their world and felt by failed them and each of them died of cancer and i was heroically trying to get them the surgery that was impossible, so you have to get mad from pluto i would try to get mad from. no. i remember playing tapes from my father, new age things about did you really fulfill yourself? is it something you didn't do? do i have to listen to this? after they died, many years later a started to write the book and i feel only in terms of a memoir one should be writing a diary, a journal, but really see the characters of people as fully fledged, rounded people with good and bad.

i have to fall in love with my characters to see them as real people, not all rose and pink and sentimental, but some bland. i hope i did that because i saw this story as being a story, it happens to be my story but it has the drama of a novel in that i'm born in two world, america and there's, they so don't go and i take the journey and meet the catalyst, the person they least wanted me to be with and he converted and all families are happy and my father's that he says thank you for bringing these people into my life and i feel i delivered to them certain sense of peace and my father had even though he was a coma he was able to have a last moment with my brother where they sort of gave each other and told the judge that they love each other and my mother and i had that moment as well. the death is important because i also think people think they can

keep their lives safe, in some way we think we are not going to get sick or die. it is part of life as with the holocaust or any challenge how do you deal with this? they were lucky to be surrounded by love. >> tell me saying sonia taitz. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> we will be back in a few minutes with more live coverage of the printer's row with test in chicago. >> what are you reading this summer? booktv wants to know. ♪

♪ ♪ >> let us know what you are reading this summer. tweet us at booktv. posted on our facebook page or send us an e-mail at booktv@c-span.org. >> here's a look at some books being published this week. in lincoln unbound:how an ambitious young rail splitter save the american dream and how we can do it again rich lowery, editor of the "national review" details president lincoln's

economic policies. carl heart, associate professor of psychology and psychiatry at columbia university presents his research on the relationship between egyptian and the brain in high price:a narrow scientist's journey of self discovery that challenges everything you know about drugs and society. in the great generation power institutions the k and economies by historian bill ferguson argues markets today are hindered by overcomplex regulations that render them increasingly incapable of supporting america's economic and political system. david leper, director of the innovation and technology for a matt new york university polytechnic institute discusses how group of moderate founding fathers made the american revolution of possibility by keeping radicals from acting too fast in the founding conservatives:how group of unsung heroes save the american revolution. and in dollarocracy, journalist

john nichols and media critic robert mcchesney argue citizens united and a profit driven media are putting americans in danger of being less informed and more open to manipulation. look for these titles in bookstores this coming week and watch for the authors in the near future on booktv and on booktv.org. >> in your first book, the exception to the rulers, you write, you're quoting the washington post, that any goodman is the journalist as an invited guest. why do you write that? >> we are not supposed to be party to any party. we are journalists. there is the reason our profession, journalism, is the only one explicitly protected by the u.s. constitution. we are supposed to be the check and balance on power. >> in that book also, war and peace, life and death, that is

the life of the media in a democratic society to provide a forum for this discourse, to do anything less is a disservice to the servicemen and servicewomen of this country. >> i had just flown in from denver at the national conference on media reform and when we flew into the airport where people hold up signs when you come out to pick you up and as we were walking there were some soldiers, they were going to be picking up a general and as we walked by we were waiting and i thought the general was waving because there was a sign for the general, didn't look that way. i thought i am going to go back and talk to them. we went back and said do you watch democracy now, they said every day. so i said really? widely watched? they say it is objective and you cover work. it is not about whether you are for or against war. it is about covering the most serious decision a country can

make. i see them be as a huge kitchen table that stretches across the globe, that we all sit around and debate and discuss the most important issues of the day. as you quoted, war and peace, life-and-death and anything less is a disservice to the service men and women of this country. they can't have these debate on a military bases, they rely on us in civilian society to have the discussion that lead to the decisions about whether they live or die, whether they are sent to kill or be killed. anything less than that is a disservice to a democratic society. >> one of the recurring themes in your riding is the corporate media as you call it. what is the corporate media and what does it do or not do? >> what most people see on television on those channels. and channels, nbc, cbs, abc, cnn, that break for the advertisers, turned to corporate

support. i see the hope as public media, listeners and viewers deeply committed to independent information. and it is not brought to you by the weapons manufacturers, and when we cover the health care debate in this country not caught by big pharma and the insurance industry, and brought to listeners and viewers by listeners and viewers who feel that information is power, information is essentials, is the oxygen of a democracy. >> back to the exception to the rules, our model is to break the sound barrier. we call ourselves the exception to the rulers. we believe all media should be. what do you mean by sound

barrier? >> so often in the networks we get this small circle of pundits who knows so little about so much, explaining the world to us and getting it so wrong. we go to the community to talk to people in this country and around the world who are the heart of the store. is not easy to find the people sense authentic voices. i think it is why so many young people listen to democracy now. we have a diverse audience in this country and around the world because it is people knowing what they're talking about because they're talking from their experience. that is the best kind of journalism, providing a forum for people to speak for themselves, providing a forum for people from different strata of society to debate and discuss with each other critical issues, but hearing those voices, great

diversity of people, that is the role of journalism in a democratic society. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> what i you reading this summer? booktv wants to know. >> i am robert cox, washington editor of "national review," have a lot of books on want to read this summer but as a political asylum looking ahead at the 2016 presidential race, looking at candidates who are probably going to run especially on the republican side and one of the people i'm looking at is chris christie. i picked up a new book called chris christie:the inside story of his rise to power, it is a fun read so far and it takes you back into chris christie's political ascent in new jersey before he became u.s. attorney. he was a morris county freeholder involved in a lot of county politics, it takes us behind the politician with a scene on magazine covers with president obama in new jersey and asks who is chris christie and is told by people who really

know new jersey politics. it is a fun read so far. chris christie is a likely contender and got to know where he came from and what his politics mean ahead of the election the second book on my list is by colleagues. kevin d. williamson wrote the new book called the end is near and it is going to be awesome, how going rogue will leave america richer, happier and more secure. one reason this book is the last one is the fiscal cliff earlier in 2013 was a big story we covered but later this year we are going to have the debt limit be the story that consumes congress and can williams and looks at the debt from a political perspective, historical perspective, consequences of the desk powered has taken a lot of congress's time, could potentially ruinous country, make the country go broke and does it with somewhat, some fun and i think the end is near is a great book by kevin williams and. and as a journalist in

washington, there's always gossip and talk about what is happening behind the scenes, how stories get written, who is leading to, power struggles not only within politics but the media. cellmark has the ear of the beltway crowd coming up with a book, it is about the inside seen in washington, in dupont circle and the georgetown salon. that book gives us a story and the color of washington and the political media establishment is all about and for fun, a book i am looking forward to reading is called mickey and willie, the mantle in may, parallel lives of baseball's golden age, one of my favorite sports writers. i was in spring training in arizona watching my cleveland indians, chicago cubs play baseball and ran into willie mays who is getting up there age but this is great because it looks at two men, mickey mantle and willie mays came of age at the same time, became stars at the same time and form a lifelong friendship, something i never knew. that is a great book, a big book

for baseball fans, that is my list, looking forward to reading them all. >> let us know what you are reading this summer, tweet us at booktv. post it on our facebook page or send us an e-mail at booktv@c-span.org. >> an end of working day, 2:00 a.m. the prime minister would say soup out loud very loudly, that was the signal the working day was over. the secretaries could leave to begin typing up the day's memos and he would have what he always ate before going to bed. churchill loved all games, especially deuce and he raised these on his farm at treadmill. at one dinner, the goose was made in front of him at the table, he said, quote, you carved, this deuce was a friend of mine. in all my research into churchill's life i never found a

mention of a vegetable. he made fun of vegetarians who recalls nick peters. at a meeting he quipped to two net peters, if you are finished toying with your be route we will get on with more important matters. another tease, all the net eaters and food faddists i have known died early after a long period of senile decay. another chill favorite food is irish stew. with plenty of onions and surprisingly sometimes pineapple. this is the meal churchill's served to general eisenhower when a plant the invasion of europe. and caviar. he was thrilled when stalin sent him some caviar when hopkins brought caviar back as gift from the soviet union.

churchill wade small portions when traveling, had his meals served on his, quote, funny time, not on the clock. churchill loved picnics. whatever the place or the weather, even in wartime there's a wonderful photo showing churchill and a three piece suit in join the picnic t sitting on a rock by the side of the road. tp connect with roosevelt in hyde park, a picnic on the banks of the rhine with his generals and in the north african desert with friends. he established his own picnic rituals, enthusiastically seeing the old indian army tests and calling for versus that the only be recited at picnics. much has been said about churchill and alcohol, some of it true, most not, some exaggerated. i go into detail about churchill's drinking habits. churchill had been told --

roosevelt had been told churchill was a drunk, charged one or two of his critics repeated. churchill did consume more alcohol than we are used to today but not a great deal by the standards of his contemporaries and drink did not affect him or his work. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. .. [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] we would like that give a special thank you to our sponsors who helped make today a success. today's program will be broadcast live on c-span two booktv. and if there's time at the end of the session for q & a we ask that you use the mirk phone in the middle of the room so our audience at home is able to hear your question. if you would like to watch the program, again please note that coverage will reair at 11:00 p.m. central time saturday.

please keep the spirit going all year with a subscription to printer's row. fiction series, and membership program. visit the welcome center for special a lit fest subscription rate and perk including a lit festet to bag and poster. finally, the author's weaks -- books will be on sale in this university center. i'm sure you saw when you came in. they'll be signing books in the art room which is to the left i should say. my right. your left. i ask that you would please turn off your cell phone and electronic devices now and without further adow. i would like to welcome and introdoes our moderator of the "chicago tribune." [applause] >> thank you. thank you all for coming out on a beautiful day here we are. we don't gate lot of those

here. i'm phil rosin that with the "chicago tribune." i'm with ken cull less than, -- cull less than and shelley murphy who are here not to do scouting on the chicago black hawks. [laughter] but talk about their new book on whitey bulger. the boston mobster caught on the lam after sixteen years. and first of all,let get the -- you have boston journalists for a long time. >> between us it's probably like what? sixty years? [laughter] we've been chasing him combined total fifty years each. >> wow. at this point in journalism, having a job is its own reward. you have an armful of to if i. a pulitzer prize, it's an

impressive list. you know, it's a wonderful book. the thing that i was reminded of at the beginning, something when i was a kid my father was taking friend of mine to see butch cass did i did. he said whatever the movie makes of them, they are the bad guys. and the ore thing that reminded of is the old line from mel brookeson, the 2,000-year-old man asked about robin hood and he said, what about robin hood? he stole from the rich and gave to the poor. it's nonsense. he stole everything and kept everything. how did it happen? he said, well, he had a guy named marty. marty would tell everyone he gave from the knew. who knew.

he hit you so hard you didn't know. i of thinking about that about bulger. there is a myth and i don't know that we want to believe the myth or whether they want us to believe the myth. they all seem to have myths. tell us about the myth of whitey bulger and it come apart when flushed against reality. >> when we sat down do the book, several narrative art. one is myth making of whitey bulger. from a very early age when he was a young teen criminal he lived in a housing project, the first built new england. and he had a car when no one else had a car. when he wasn't driving around with his girlfriend, he would be scouting and he wasn't scouting for criminal opportunity. hef looking for old ladieses. he would see the oldly i did, pull over, jump out.

take the groceries and drive them home. it was a very conscious decision. they call it stoop talking. every once awhile that jimmy is a hoodlum. all the old ladies. he's a lovely young man. he gave me a ride home from the market the other day. he was so conscious of doing that. he did it through. he was the one -- the difference about bulger and it wasn't just his narrative that he was pushing out there, he had very influential family and particularly his younger brother became hid advocate and bill was prop all gaiting the myth. he said to my face, my brother would never touch drugs. and jimmy -- whitey is good at -- he'll tell you he was never

an informant. he never testified against anybody and put them prison. we found the file of 700 pages. he was very much an informant. he would tell you as a criminal that he had all the scruples and never touched drugs. in fact we have a scene he's in in the car with drugs. the reality, he made millions and millions of dollars by shaking down drug dealers and letting them go through the neighborhood of south boston. i lived there in the '80s there was more there than any neighborhood in the city. whitey has that on his hands. >> you mentioned his younger brother, and billy end up becoming president of the montana senate, president of the university of montana, even when he was in the state house he would succeeded by the future mayor of boston. we're not talking a quiet power broker. this was a guy out there.

they both came out of the family. the father had been injured. but more importantly where that those projects were south boston. tell us a little bit. >> south boston is a name hood where there was an irish even to there were many different ethnic groups that live there had. the name identified as as the irish. even in the public schools, the al banon kids were forced to sing irish songs. it's a neighborhood where loyalty meant everybody. it's interesting billy, as you said, would was probably the most politician if in the senate for many years. he describes growing up in south boston in aid listic term about how close knit it was. and nobody had very much and they were feeling poor they were, you know, the kids hanging

together outside playing games, kick the can, football, whatever. there was a lot of, you know, of it sort of not unusual for one family to have someone who would be a priest or a politician or a police officer. and another who would be a gangster. it was not all that unusual in that city at that time. and one of whitey's closest associates also grew up in the project, and two of his brothers went to harvard university. and yet kevin could have gone. he was so brilliant. his father was prouder of kevin for working his way to the top enforcer than the two that went to harvard. there was a culture about the place. and loyalty did mean erg. that takes us to how the story starts with whitey being cultivated an fbi informant. it's an fbi agent that grew up in the projects who recruit him to be an fbi informant.

>> that agent john connelly. the thing that was interested, and there are so many interesting aspect about the bulger story even the stuff where he's part of the cia research project with when he's in police and, you know, who knows what the lasting effect of giving him lsd was. you'll hear it during his trial. but the really striking thing is this intertwined corruption of the mob and the fbi. if and so they thought -- first of all, did they think they were making an informant out of him? was it simply, you know, a bad idea corrupted at the core? >> one of the things we talked about this while we were planning the book out. could it have happened in any other city. my belief is no. there's no other city whether

talk about new york, chicago, philadelphia, cleveland, l.a., atlanta, there's no city where you have these two strands of organized crime. one is irish, one is eye tal yab. in all those other cities the mafia is more powerful, lucrative. in boston it wasn't that way. one of the things we try to show it went square or all went pear shaped in the '60s bobby kennedy went to hoover and said you neat to get -- hoover didn't accept there was an mafia. hef awarded you have to develop a trait gi. it didn't pick up until the '70s. that's a national policy. the problem with national policy that they don't take in it account regional differences inspect. boston the model didn't fit. you have the fbi agents were told do whatever you have to do to make our policy work. so in the 1906s they decided who

would be killed in the irish gang in the sixties. whitey was lucky. he was locked up at the time. statistically it would have been a high change he would have been a perpetrator or victim. instead he comes to a decimated landscape, it's wide open for anybody with opportunity and smart and vishnd and he had all of those things. he goes in and connelly is cynical. he's from the hood and he's saying the -- the other thing about the fbi. you get big salary raises based on your ability to make cases but tush informant. you want to have as inincredible. when john connelly recruits white you bull taber, he gets to say this guy is the leading member of the mob in south boston. it looks good for the fbi. the idea he was going give them

anything on the match too -- the italians woptd have told whitey if his pans were on fire. his associate knew a lot about the mafia had been recruited several times. always turned them down saying i want to stay on my own. and he does it for two,s. it looks good for him. there's an ult tier your mode m going back to the hood. that was protect the family. this is going to look great for me. make sure i'm okay. i'll keep talking to them. i can cover my tracks.

anything i can use this -- i can send them off on people i want to get out of my way. >> that's absolutely right. right around the time that whitey becomes an inform mantd, he actually charged with 19 murders. he's charged with killing nineteen people. one of the people is a guy who had been kind of a rivel gang, and eventually basically sort of there was some mediation and worked together. he still had it in his mind he wanted to wipe out the guys he never liked from the rival gang. after he becomes an informant. he's charged with take the guy tommy king. killing him. he has a bulletproof vest on and get in the car. they hand out guns. tommy get blanks in his gun. and they kill him.

and they bury him in a secret grave. and right the same time they decide to kill his friend, a guy named buddy. they kill him. so now the meeting meeting that whitey has with the fbi handler he said, john, tommy king just killed hum and he's gone in to hiding. he's in a discredit grave. he's dead. heyed in the fbi file whitey told him that, you know, tommy king killed leonard. and this disseminated to boston police. they are looking for tommy king. now he goes back a couple of week later. he's like they have to be wondering where tommy went. he updates the fbi and said, well, you know, they told tommy you better get out of town. you're going get killed. >> he didn't want the cop -- he

wait and said tommy king is dead. they killed him. now you'll never find him. this is how he's manipulating the fbi. over the course of the years and actually gets much worse and sinister than that. the allegations are that when people went to the fbi to cooperate against whitey, they would leak it to whitey. hey. and he would kill them. >> they didn't see the pattern. and they -- [inaudible] they didn't care about it. the number in the victims in the case are fbi informant. at some point, you know, as he's more woven he can get away with anything. now later on we see, you know, business american legitimate businessmen who shaking them down and not killing them. summoning them meetings and give them a chance to buy your life. you pay me $400 ,000, and i'll let you live. don't go to the fbi, because if you do i'll know in five

minutes. >> one thing we wanted to -- one of many things we wanted to do is show that the justice department narrative offing this be the creation of one -- was too close to the home boy is maloney. and that was . >> thank you for saying that. >> he doesn't usually say that. he doesn't think about -- the fbi and the justice department is absolutely determined not to make this a big scandal. so they didn't indict other fbi agents. by my count at least a half dozen fbi agents could have been indicted including ones that called me in 1988 and said if i put in the paper that whitey bulger was an informant would be murder. that agent was allowed to testify. -- retire. and in 1998, i testified to that about him calling me and saying

if you do this, you will be killed. now, the government had -- . rebut my testimony. >> he said, you know, -- like that. he claimed that a gangster called and wanted to pass over. the gangster didn't know me from a whole in the wall. there's no way a gangster is going say i'm worried about kevin. it doesn't matter what happened. what happened is a series of hearings. i testify for three and a half hours. and tell my story. i have a note i was ordered to write after the phone call by the investigator. and the judge kept asking, are you going put the agent on the stand? they wouldn't put him up there. he would have perjuried himself or taken the fifth. they would have had to do something. they would had to do something to tom.

no. the judge said i accept mr. connelly's testimony especially given you were not rebutted and the agent retires with a nice full fat pension. that's the thing about this. we were talking about how we game out whitey is one thing. it's what this says about the justice department. it's the fbi. >> i agree. the institution, corruption that source. is it -- you think it's lunchtime now? >> now i think it will be interesting to whitey on the run for sixteen years, he's finally caught living in a rent controlled apartment in santa monica california where he was living for fifteen years. it's a crazy story how he's caught. it's actually, you know, an former neighbor who lives in, you know, a former misiceland

who lives in santa monica several month after year and back home, she's watching a cnn n report on the latest combine to find whitey. she recognizes the wanted posters on the, you know, of him and his girlfriend. he knows them because kathy, his girlfriend, by all the accounts a lovely woman. a complete, you know, it's whitey years old never have done the horrible thing. he loved animal, and she was feeding stray cats in the neighborhood. and this anna thought how wonderful. a what nice lady. she's kind to the cat. and she thought her husband is a little cranky. but she recognized them. called the fbi and how they caught them. we have received for the book a friend of whitey's who has been writing to him since his capture shared some of of the letter with us. i might add, it gives you a

great instieght whitey. he may have a lot of problems. but self-est teem isn't one of them. in one of the writes a cat got me captured. >> they grewed up in the subtitle. see the tub subtitle. it should say how a cat caught most wanted character. >> he's a fan of reading about himself. >> he absolutely. is. >> he likes to read in general. he's fond of the "boston globe." he shot up the officer because the way they -- the boston globe is a good company. he also, you know, took part of his social scrowt reach campaign, went after john f kennedy. because he was angry at the kennedys in general because the

biggest is that a judge named -- [inaudible] a federal judge. bobby kennedy promoted him through the justice department. and then teddy kennedy became his not only his prime to push him for federal judgeship. when gary issued the ruling which is controversial. and in the city in particularly we see they were poisoning the social experiment. and it was wouldn't assent all the rich white suburbs. they hated the kennedy and they were hated teddy. he fire bombs jack kennedy's bitter place and spray painted bust teddy. >> a swell guy. >> meanwhile his brother is also fighting against the -- and --

and . >> well, in rerning the book i traveled to california because whitey spent federal years for bank robbery. and he was sent to alcatraz which was the first maximum federal security prison in the country. he looked at alcatraz fondly like where we look at our alma mater. it gave heath him a lot he went to al can raise. we have a chapter in the book called university of can trays. >> anybody can step through harvard. but in the boston area but when you can go to alcatraz. that's right. he was a high school dropout who earned his ged while he was in the air force. where he educate himself was in

l can trays. he boasted he read a book a day. became well read. read military history. mack when they hear the -- i think he's in the cleveland crew. [laughter] he knew who he was. took the lesson well. one of the interesting things you could ask about the family dynamic. he's in prison. his brother, billy, at the time is boston college of rule. law school. he's five years younger and determined to help him go straight. host lobbying while at law school to get whitey moved closer to home. get him early parole. and he enlists the dean of the boston college of law school, the to become whitey's prison pen pal. he's writing to whitey. it looks good for whitey. it look like he's trying to turn

his life around. so you see this priest who is writing to help him. even within the prison system to do well, he also gets at the time the speak much u.s. house to lobby also from south boston to lobby the prison, the bureau of prisons to get whitey special treatment. can you watch out for the guy. he comes from a wonderful family. he did. can you get him moved closer to home? whitey gets caught up in a prison escape attempt he ends up at alcatraz. the house speaker gets the head of the director of bureau of prison in washington to fly to san francisco, take the boat to alcatraz and pay a little visit to whitey bulger. and he how are they treating you? how are you doing here? how many -- bank robberies got

whitey is seeing how political connections can pay off. >> when he got out he came brother is his protecter when he was in the can. when he got out, he finally got very involved. anybody he perceived as a political faux of had his brother that would include the newspaper we worked for was an enemy. whitey would go after them. there was a guy named alan who was a state senator who suggest it on the floor of the massachusetts senate that billy bulger controlled the legitimate and his brother the gangster controls the ill legitimate. he was in the midst of a mental break down. no truer words have been ever been spoke. kevin told huhs he called and said this unanimously said i'm going kill you.

that's the stuff that whitey did to anybody perceived as a threat to his brother. >> we're not amateur when it comes to families and politics and corruption. chij, -- chicago, illinois. i have a sense that if you were a brother of well known mobster, you might run to a few -- you know, stumble along the way. it might be a problem. how did his rise continue while it was also going on? that's one of the things that i think would puzzle far from the story. >> the fbi protected him. we know that. >> yes. >> the legitimate why billy signed a lot of things. he a huge machine. i had cousins that got jobs that would have to have been approved by the bulger office. it's the way it went. they were interested in enormous

intimidation factor. you weren't supposed to be sitting around a barroom talking about him. there was a sen if you stepped over a line -- the funny thing what we know now the bulger organization was purposefully very small. criminal organization. i think the perception when i lived there it was huge. and there have a big brother was everywhere. and everybody was intimidated. the other thing, like i said, there were legitimate police officering trying to take out. there were few her res in the weak -- heroes in the book. there were three boston cop that tried to take him out. they were getting screwed at every point. they investigation being comprised. and one case it was a corrupt fbi state police officer who

thwarted an investigation. everybody assumed it was the fbi. i that wasn't just me thinking it up. i was hearing it from the people. they were frustrated at this point they could not take him down legitimately. in one case after bobby long and the state cops went after him it killed the salary for the state police commanders. no one ever figured how how it happened. it happened in senate. i wonder who could have done that. [laughter] the idea of family comes up in at love ways in this story. not all the conventional ways of a mob story. one is that he had so many.

he was very complex and had lot of -- he's an fbi informant even though he denies that. he's liaison. but, you know, he's an fbi informant. at the same time he's the head of the underworld. he is also juggling lot of different women. one of the most interesting story he had the two of the women were his longest relationship. he young woman named teresa who he met when she was a single mother with four children under seven years old. he meet her shortly after she get out of prison in the '60s. he never marries. he basically treats her children as his own. he buys her a house. he moves her out of the project. and insists on sit down family dinners every night around 6:00. no interruptions.

no tv. no phone calms. and he lectured the kids on the important of staying away from bad influences. he -- there are kids they were hanging out with. stay away from that. and he physically sit, study study hard. he could go off in the night and shock down drug dealers and bookmakers and legitimate businessmen. >> he has to earn an occasional murder. it was like a scene out of "father knows best" he would go off around 1:00 or 2:00 when the boors closed down he would head to his other girlfriend's house. she was ten years younger. the thirty years he's juggling another relationship nineteen years. kathy greg who ended up on the run with him. very interesting story. she was voted the prettiest girl in her high school class. she never thought that was good

enough for whitey. she had cosmetic. he yachted from college. kathy knew about teresa. as the clock is ticking and whitey is under investigation. he's likely to be indicted, and the p. he was as paive person. you know, okay. so kathy picking her upbringing

her to her house. for the last nineteen years. he's been with me for the nineteen. it was dramatic scene. whitey walks in upon it. kathy is yelling . >> what could possibly go wrong there? [laughter] >> according to both teresa and one of whitey's friends. kathy is screaming i'm tired of being the other woman. and whitey is strangling her on the ground and his friends pull her off. the way it resolve himself. all right. it's over. i choose you. lucky teresa. she was a . he take her on the trip to europe but teresa thinks it's a vacation. he's stop, in, you know, london and dublin and paris and hitting up safety deposit boxes where he stashed money and fake id. he's planning on a life on the

run. he get the head up from john connelly. you better take off. off he goes with her. after a month on the run he said, you know, after the way he raised my kids and took care of them and paid, you know, walked her daughter down the aisle and, you know, she said i would have felt obligating to stay with him. he drop her off south of boston. picking up kathy. and off they go. and it's an amazing story and how they lived on the run. because she's grateful to finally be the only woman. and he describes her as like his wife. they are like a married couple. she spend the . >> brings a tear to your eye. >> and the funny thing in the letters we obtain so they are captured and serving eight years in prison because she refused too cooperate again him. but he's writing letters to his

friends saying those sixteen years were the happiest years of his life. it was like a sixteen year hon my moon. how dare the government sentenced her. they should have given a medal. she kept me crime free for sixteen years. >> he doesn't count the thirty guns in the wall of the apartment. >> yeah. not that we need background checks or anything. >> it's a love story. >> it is. he's working hard to keep her. he's saying, you know, do what you must with me, how can you . >> that brings us full circle to the myth making. we have the letter when she said she offered himself for engs cushion. if only they let the woman i love go free. that sound very nice. t baloney. why. >> why? >> if he cared about kathy. all he had to do is go tow her lawyer, have his lawyer talk

cohim. give me up. i'm going to die in prison. tell the fed whatever you want. the feds would have severely reduced the sentence and maybe not sentence her to any time in prison if he cooperated. she wanted to be the culty girl. it's -- we talk about whitey being the myth making. the bad guy giving ride home to the nice laity and carry the gauche i are full circle to whitey the 8:00-year-old gang. down 155 pushup. it was meant to you to believe he's a good bad guy. >> there are two other points to the reputation is everything to hill what we no from the letters he's written. he's sort of resigned himself to the fact that the chances he'll get acquitted if the trial not next week but opening probably

run through september. he said i'm going to spend the rest of i my life behind bar. >> 83. he thinks? >> he does. there's two things he wants to achieve at the trial. i was never an fbi informant. i department kill the two women. two of the nineteen victims young 26-year-old women accused of strangling. let's face it good bad guys, gangsters with scruple. they don't rat on their friends and strangle women. >> you got word yesterday that you're going to be allowed to cover the. he put us on the witness list. >> we would be such good witnesses. >> i would be terrific defense witness for whitey. i fired back before the judge actually sided with us our lawyers made a first amendment argument saying our first

amendment rights trump his sixth amendment right. we i actually wrote a column. i'm sure he was not fond of. he fired a motion back saying which i talk about the myth making and whitey wants you to believe. whitey has -- i guess what the psychologist would call fit of grands grandiosity. he talks about what he has to prove in court is -- i feel like philip nolan. it's the protagonist in the short story "man without a country" it's about a noble character who peoples like he's being persecuted by his government. i ended up saying he's no nolan. history chip it was the protagonist in the great short story called "informer" he sold out his friends for money.

i have to tell you, this is a greelt story. >> whitey would not have like the way jack nicholson portrayed him. he was unkept, a little overweight. and whitey is more disciplined and his soishts told us he would never be that disorganized. whitey is not happy? he doesn't want people like us to defining him. that was, you know, in term of putting us on the witness list if you are on the witness list you are sequestered. we could not cover the trial. he's determined to tell it his way. how dare they write my story. he called me something i can't repeat on tv. [laughter] and called kevin another low life. >> just proves he did -- whitey

is not happy. that's okay. white why with the book is "whitey bulger: "america's most wanted" gangster. "we have a few minutes for questions. we have to use the mic. >> was whitey and his brother fans of -- hicks. since he was a reader did he read the book about his the that covered boston during the heyday? common ground? did he express and opinion? >> i believe he did. and yes, they were big fans of hicks. and there was a book when he went on the -- run the fbi seized belongings. a teacher had written. i'm not sure -- i don't think common ground was among those. he read all of those and wrote about how much he hated -- it

was interesting in the book she mentions the bombing of the jfk birthplace. they found whitey's copy of the book. next to the section he writes in the margin of the book, too bad ted wasn't in the house mary joe would have been happy. you know. >> nice guy. >> he would make a great -- [inaudible] >> your book shows us truth is stranger than fiction. i think the soprano is nothing unwhat this could be if we were watching it. i want you to ask you step away from the role of author and how close you are to it case but journalists, if you were reading this account and just how the fbi and people we look to as citizeny to protect our rights, protect us. how that comprised your livelihood. what you're supposed to. the role of journalist.

and if you comment on that a little bit. professionally. what you uncovered and you you feel about that. i expect criminals to be like that. i don't expect my government to act the way they do in the book. one thing we wanted to show is that the individual crouping of connelly was -- investigating the mother and threw them off the trail. rather than turn him over to law enforcement agencies. the other thing i deeply resent is the way that the government has tried to suggest -- he was

only killing gangster. my government doesn't get to pick who lives and dies. the reality is that he killed a number of innocent people. davis was not a criminal. debra was not a criminal. michael was a no a criminal. roger wheeler was no a criminal. the other thing we did try to show is where the john connelly taking money and protecting this guy is like corruption. you understand corruption. the justice department did teferg could. would not acknowledge the hurt. they never app fiesed. they gone out their way -- seeking compensation had been thrown out. and the way the justice department it is cynical. on the criminal side -- got people killed.

send the civil thriewr a different courtroom and say they have to be thrown out. you can't believe a word of the gangster. that's to me is corruption. that our government could that to the people. >> i thought just quickly that is one of the thing i found most startling. we covered the story since the '0u. after there were revelation in court about the fbi's current relationship with bull gear it thread a number of -- when the families filed the wrongful death suit alleging the government liable because of the handle of the two informant, they managed the to get most of the suit dismissed on technical grounds. you should known. you should have been watching tv

and reading the paper more closely. you should known a couple of years ago that the fbi was to blame and you waited too long to sue. you have to state your claim within two years of knowing so you a claim. so they were dismissed on the grounds. to me that's just funny. >> proud moment. time for one last question. i think you started to answer my question. it seems like what you said bulger was a "perfect storm" in term where he happened to be. are there other whitey bulgers? do you see that happening again? >> i don't believe the culture of the fbi has changed much. and last year i did a series of columns based on reporting that slelly, i, and another reporter have a lins ya did we found a guy named marc. i remember getting the first phone call about the story.

accused of suspected and at least six . >> he's a mafia guy. they rolled him. the state police decided to target him. he was a well known heroin dealer. he was not a nice guy. and so they thought he was an fbi informant. they called the fbi. it was two years ago. called the fbi and think it's your guy. we're going move on. no. no. t not your guy. as soon as we get the wire on -- they wifes on subpoena they get a court order to go on to the gangsters cell phone. the first very first conversation they report is him talk together fbi. >> i think the state police are coming after me. >> he was right. when they took them down. the same fbi sprucesser said -- call the state cop commander and said that was a great one.

want to roll them together? the state cop looked him and said roll them? put them in prison. he said what are you crazy? he's a killer. he's killed at least six people and the response was we know only one. he was the guy that killed one person is acceptable. so you ask me has it changed? i don't believe it's changed. i think fbi needs an enema. i'll go back to had. i walked by shelly and were in washington last week. i walked by the hoover building and thought what a disgrace that the name is up there. what with know about the guy he was one of the most corrupt government officials in the history of the republican. and his name is still on the building. his etho is still in the building. that's why all we talk about whitey gull we are bsh bulger. >> on that cheery note. [laughter] i would like to thank you for

coming out. i would like to thank shelley murphy, kevin. the book is whitey bulger. i don't know how many of you have time to come over. i have a section coming up in an hour. the book is a revolution was televised. but thank you for this one. the books for for sale in the lobby area. they are signing them in the art room to the west. thank you. we ask you clear out the room. we are expecting a full house for the next session. we need everyone to clear the room to make sure that everyone is able to get a seat. [inaudible conversations] our live coverage of the printer's row lit fest continues in a few minutes.

[inaudible conversations] what are you reading this summer? >> it's called the "victory lab."

my third book is "lean in." i can't go a summer without -- reading a baseball book. it's a novel. i'm reading a novel might as well have bash stories inside of it. and the fifth book is sort of guilty pleasure reading i haven't done yet and put off. "game of the throne" very popular tv series. my big fear once you start reading the books you have to read all of them. i may true to tackle the first this summer. let us know what you're reading this summer. what you helped my with

there have a disconnect. the world that i have been working in for twenty five years tv. everything is exaggerated. you have to be much thinner than the normal person. so you think. you have to be a certain way. you have to look a certain way. your hair -- we have broken all of those rules on our show. but twenty five years of local news and networking news took the toll on my image of myself. and i tell stories in the book about how dress a certain way and everything has to be really tight. i was told by a executive they wanted to hire me. i need to lose weight. and come back in six months and try again. i did and came back in six months and got a job. the messages were clear. symptom of them were subliminal. if you already have a certain obsession or comp pulsativeness, or i claim even addiction to some of these foods we are surrounded with in our

environment, i think it's a bad mix. and i tell the story because i discovered after a very, very uncomfortable tough conversation with an extremely close friend who was actually obese that even though she had a very different physical result, we both had gotten to the point that we had gotten to the same way. and driven by food obsession. >>let set that up in one second. let people know how the obsession continues. on the "today" show yesterday. she's talking about being obsessed and working her way toward healthy. >> you were a size 2. >> 118 pounds and size 2. >> since you have done the book you have actually started eating. and you weigh how much do you weigh now? >> 133. size six. >> okay. >> and it look good. [applause] we are celebrating this and she's saying i look good.

she's convincing herself. yeah. >> but obsessed demon inside of you. i call you on the "today" show and say it was great. you kicked their -- it was amazing. i looked fat didn't i? i looked fat. i was like, god, you're still obsessed. but it's -- you're obsessed, diane, your friend even though she weighed 250 pounds, she carried the same obsession around with her all the time. and talk about how this book started on a boat . >> two years ago. >> almost -- . >> by the way, an addiction is not something you ever get rid of it. we'll go there in a second. two years ago i'm on the boat with one of my closest friends. our families are there. and, you know, i'm known for her a long time. we have shared so much together. >> you had a baby together. >> we had a baby together.

my husband was out of town for the bitter bit of her second child. he came to the hospital with me. in the middle of intense labor, carly was taking long time to arrive. the doctor went to order a pizza. diane caught my baby. literally there's sides of me i wish she hasn't seen. i'll tell you that it was amazing to me that about two years ago we have known each other so long. shared so much. we haven't talked about this one thing that really needed to to be addressed and divided us. i was really skinny. probably too skinny. yes, i was too skinny. diane had become obese. he caned 200 pounds. i told her on that boat ride, you imagine how thin i was and how she must have felt. i told her that i was worried about her.

and that she was fat. and i used the word obese, and i found my heart beating and sweat beginning to run down my back. i could tell the conversation could get really bad. >> i don't usually call my friend fat. but you decided to do this, you decided to do it because you loved her and you knew that she was literally killing herself as much as somebody that smoked a couple of packs of cigarettes. >> here is the question i have. if you are -- and women claim to be able to tell their intimate their friendship, they tell each other everything. do we? if you have a friend who is so clearly obese and struggling and can't even get to a boat. if your friend had cancer wouldn't you support her and talk to her about it and helper her if she had a illness or condition. wouldn't grow through and walk her through it. if a friend is obese we subconsciously judge them. the data shows we don't hire

them. we think they are slobs. we think they are undisciplined. we don't think they're as good as us. >> you can watch this and overprograms online. booktv.org.

what are are you reading this summer? booktv want to know. >> the book i read the first chapter is -- [inaudible] "eating animals "my daughter read it. she's an environment studies major and interested in the food movement and fighting against factory food. and i'm interested, i mean, i eat meat, chicken, seafood. i may come away from the book not wanting to eat any of that or be more selective about how i eat it. i know, that it's a compelling writer and i'm looking forward to that. next on my list is a tribute to

my son. this is the new biography of david foster. it's called "every love story is a ghost story ." i've heard it's well researched. david foster wallace, the professor of college where my son graduated. my son is a big fan of wallace. he read -- wallace was regarded by many to be one of the most interesting and creative writers of his era tragically killed himself a few years ago. and i'm interested in sort of what happened with his life. i know he had many struggles, and i love biography. that's my biography for the summer. next is a book by the friend of mine. it's called "our commonwealth." he sadly passed away two years ago without having finished this book with so friends came together and pulled together his

essays, all about the commons, which is basically anything that belongs to humanity, the air is the water, it public spaces, the internet, and what is his drive in life was to protect the commons and make sure that everything doesn't get taken over by private enterprise. that's very much on my list to read. i've heard it's interesting. last is fiction the new book by colin called "and the mountains echo ." i read his first two books to afghanistan and this is my way of going there without getting on a plane. it's a family story intergenerational family. and i think he's a wonderful writer, i plan to cry, and just enjoy every minute of it. thank you.

we're back with more from chicago. douglas foster talk about post apart south africa. live from the printer's row lit fest. [inaudible conversations] >> good afternoon. we would like to give a special thank you to our sponsors. today's program will be broadcast live on c-span2 booktv. if there's time at the end of the session for q & a, we ask that you use the microphone in the center of the room so our home audience is able to hear your question.

.. >> i would like to welcome the moderator, the author, thank

you. [applause] >> well, thank you. this is a real treat to be here today with doug. doug and i are old friends. for those of you not familiar with doug's work, doug was formally the editor of mother jones. his work appeared in places like the new york times magazine, at lain -- atlantic, washington post, l.a. time, and we are colleagues in the school of journalism. it's a thrill to be here to talk about his recent book, "after mandela," which i think is a beautifully rendered and beautifully written account of contemporary south africa and profoundly important book. we can talk about that. it's profoundly important because not only does it help us understand what's taking place in south africa, but there's many less --

lessons for us in the u.s. and countries elsewhere as countries emerge from years of tyrannical regimes and trying to find their way into a democratic government, a democratic system. i thought we'd begin talking about mandela. as you know, he's in the hospital now. it's fair to say to say he's, you know, near death, and i always found it interesting that to doug that he titled the book after mandela, not after a partide. a couple days ago, an activist in south africa asked the question, would we have been much better off if he served a second term? >> right. so we would have been better off if he had had a second term because, quote, because he was a committed democratic, unquote, and i think it raises all kinds

of interesting questions about the history because, of course, mandela was old by the time he was released from prison. he had been in prison for 27 years, and that kind of delay in a transfer of power to a new in a nonliberated liberal south africa meant he was in a position he only wanted to serve for five years. the question about the legacy is raised and an assumption that everything since mandela stepped aside from power in 1999 has been a devra devra -- and it's o that, the book, and it says, yes, a lot was lost, both by the fact that there was depression

led to cop straint on what south africa could become, but it's a more complicated story than that, and there's a new generation emerging that will shape the country opposed to par tide post transition. >> i'm curious, you know, i mean, in reading the book, it's clear that they have had very troubled government of the aid epidemic and poverty and crime, and what's interesting to me is the difficulty people have in one point being the opposition and next being in charge. and we think about southern georgia, a book about the civil

rights movement coming late to the county, and those who sort of really were in opposition took power, what difficulty they had once they had any kind of power, and so i guess i wonder why, what happened? >> well, i mean, it's the big question in a place like this. obviously, people came back from 30 years in exile. in the case of the successor to nelson mandela in 1999, and mostly leaving a country he didn't know as 19, coming back, and representing a place that went bankrupt. he describes former president describing walking into the office in union buildings after being sworn in and finding nothing, no computers, no

pencils, no pens, no paper. in which to manage the developing country, and so i think part of it is that that generation came back from exile to run a country they didn't know, and now the presidency is in the hands of hands who is skilled, where largely shaped by having been part of the gorilla army, the formation, the armed wing, and being chief of intelligence, and there's a succession of people from different parts of the liberation movement taking over, and who have been out of the country for long periods of time, and to a certain extent that shaped some mistakes made in the last -- >> do they talk about what surprised him when he came back after all those years? exile? >> what you quickly learn if you

interview people who are politicians and in political power is nothing surprised them. [laughter] the main thing that upset jacob every time they interviewed him is i would, you know, that's the typical journalist question; right? what surprised you? what's up usual, what jumped out at you? every time i said that, he would lean back from the table and look at me as a lizard-like look when you know you irritated him, and that would come. no, my brother, never surprised. you know, never admit you were surprised. i think the things that surprised the second president of the liberated south africa was the extent to which division of people in rural areas and those people who had migrated and were part of a hybridizing, modernizing, urban experience that divide, had if anything, grown deeper while he had been

away for 30 years, the differences between the so-called kaba, people from rural areas who have indigenous beliefs and the cull pa, people who were more westernized and christianized, that that kind of dividing line really posed huge challenges in the coming a governing of a liberated country that had a goal announced in 1994 of becoming a nonracial, nonsexist, nonhomophobic society of the southeastern tip of africa, big dreams for a very troubled place. >> and so just to be clear, why was it that they didn't like the idea that they could have been surprised by what they saw? >> well, because if you come up in markist, len nonnist thought and did the correct study about the objective conditions that

are, you know, shaping history, then the last thing you would ever want to admit is something caught you by surprise. >> you know, you got this wonderful line early op in the book, and i'm going to just read it in which you right you were intrigued by how a society stitches itself together in the wake of horrific traumas, and for me, it's resident. i think a lot about the violence in this country. i think about the western and south sides how individuals and communities win their way after experienced such trauma, and i want your thoughts on what that's meant for south africa coming out of what was really an incredibly violence period. >> you know, i came to the story after maybe 25 years of covering stories like it in my native california and in latin america, particularly in central america, and peru, argentina.

other people, i think, are much better at being war correspondents and being under fire. i tend to be the keep of person who comes in after story's been forgotten for a while or -- and the thing that intrigued me is just this point. what is it that takes the -- that it takes for people to figure out after horrific trauma in which up believable things have been done, and find the social pace, economic and social justice space in order to gain traction to make something better? that's what i was interested in looking at here. think back to friends of mine who were correspondent in 1994 in south africa sent to cover the election who went fully expecting they would cover.

i don't know how many people in the room remember what the runup to the election was like. there were 12,000 people who were killed in violence between the ifp and the anc, and the full expectation was that there was going to be huge amount of violence, and that it was going to be a disaster, and, largely, the election came off largely non-violencely, peacefully, and i think that moment is one of the things that sets the tone in addition to the truth and recop -- reconciliation commission and those places in south south africa life since then where people really expected explosions and huge amounts of violence, and they didn't have it. i think every time there's an expectation of the cat tas trough fee which media is really good at predicting and covering when it happens.

we're not quite as good as getting into the inner systems of what make people turn away to create a new way of being. >> talked about the place of truth and reconciliation commission. it's the part was the most exciting and exhilarating and most difficult to understand. >> yeah, you know, the truth in recop -- reconciliation commission got a lot of attention from around the world and got oprah-like treatment of what was going on in south africa. contrast that with the way people in the township talk to you if you asked them about the truth in reconciliation commission. they might say we got the truth, but not justice. we got truth and not necessarily

reconciliation, there was the protection from criminal charges of people who committed or risk crimes, and so i think it is -- that is a contested part of history. it is true, though, that if you travel around the country, you'll meet people, you'll meet family members of people who disappeared who said i was able to talk to the arch bishop and others on the commission, and i found out where my son was, where my son's body was, so there are -- you know, it's a difficult, complicated history and hard to sum up in a line or two. >> but when you talk about wanting justice, i mean, part of the whole conceit is that, in fact, it was not until after justice; right? in some ways, people have taken issue with just the notion of the truth in reconciliation

commission, and it was not how it operated or functioned, but the notion of having this idea of forgiveness, ultimately, what it was about. >> right, but there was a provision for compensation, and they are the condition that largely failed, and so there -- i think there was an expectation, still is an expectation on the part of lots of people who are involved in the struggle that those who were part of the former regime and whites who benefited, would at some point express some kind of grief over what took place, and i think that quite has not quite happened, so the process of the truth in reconciliation commission is people came and spoke their pain and discovered a lot of information because police officers, those part of

the army unites who killed people came forward and gave details, but there's a certain kind of undi jeesedded quality of it, but maybe because because it's under justice. >> the notion of truth in reconciliation is a difficult concept. it's about ultimately about forgiveness, and forgiveness, as you say, there's something oprah-like about it, facile, and yet it's difficult, and i'm not -- it's something i grapple with a lot in my work as well. i want to talk about the main character in the book, one of the favorite characters, and that's john, a young -- he's 16 when you meet him? >> 15. >> yeah, he's 15 years old, and what's interesting is 40% of the population is under 18 which has a number of implications, but one of which is obviously that notion of nation's history is

very compact and do not experience the struggle, and the other part, of course, in south africa, like so many other countries has been hit by the globalization of their economy and so it's led to, as it has here, this incredible divide between those who have and those who don't, and those who don't tend to be the young people, and john is this young boy who when you meet him is essentially homeless. >> yeah. he's living on the street, sleeping in an alley when i first meet him, having run away from a township nope as atlantis, not the mere rack cue louse place, but a real place part of the formal process of appartide, removing people, eliminating the black spots from places like cape town, and people were pushed out, in this

case, about 40 miles away from cape town, concentrated in areas where there was no industry and the rest of it, so we understand what it looks like, and the separation was imposed by law, and as a result, the drug economy, which john came up in his step dad was a big dealer, and he ran to the streets, so he becomes, in a way, the story intended to explain to people why south africa's still such a violence place, and what it is the logic that takes somebody who is a decent kid with a big struggle with his moral conscious about what he will do and won't do, but we see him go from being a run away, homeless run away, to becoming a beggar

to becoming a chief and then an armed thief and worse. he becomes our window in to how that happens for so many young south africans. >> and i'm curious, i mean, how are you able to win his trust the way you were? he talks about things that could get him in great trowel. >> yeah, you know, i had the -- i know you've had this experience too where you go and see somebody and you wonder how much of what they told you is true and weather you'll see them again. with each of the main six young people who stitched the narrative together for me, i probably had ten who i was thinking about playing a certain role, and john from the beginning, since i gotten to know street kids in johannesburg and capetown was one of those

kids whose story kept taunting me because of where he came from and the way in which he talked about the choices ahead for him, and it really probably was the fourth or fifth time i went and just hung out with him, which is always a challenging thing. you know, you're an older white guy from america hanging out with colored street kids, and as a result of that, you probably have to spend more time doing it until you fall into the background. with him i think he told me the whole story because i kept coming back and because i asked, because i kept asking. i remembered what he said the last time, and when he lied, i caught him out because i knew enough of his friends that i could say, you know, but that's not what colin says. i caught him out enough times,

and i checked up on his story enough times, and i think he was, you know, at a certain point astoppedded -- astownted -- astounded i was patient enough to come back, and he knew i cared about him. he knew that i had some respect for what he was facing, even as he also knew that i had deep concern and judgment about what he was deciding to do and the bad things that he was doing. >> i remember the part in the book where he talks about holding people up, and held up in cape town; right? by gun point, saying it could have. me, and he reflects on it more a moment, and, yet, still continues to justify what he's doing. it always astonishes me, i think, when you spend time with somebody like john that the natural reluctance and distrust people have, but i think in the end not a willingness, but no

one asked them anything about themselves, and so for the first time, they are forced to reflect on their own lives, and i sense that with john. >> yeah, and just as you were talking, i'ming this point when i went to see him, and there was the long, what i would do, always 15 -- i'm quite a bit older -- >> not much. >> i go to the dormitory, and i don't know what experience you've had talking to teenagers, but you don't sit across like i'm facing you. you sit sideways like alex and i, and probably i would be mostly looking at the ceiling asking him questions because that is the way i get the most interesting information, and that was the day he told me that we he killed people, and that he killed people for hire, and i

had a choice, you know, of either responding the way i was feeling, which is to be freakedded out, and i think there were, you know, in my relationship with him over time, there's been all kind of ethical questions that came up that i don't have bright line answers for. you know, one of the things that's a big challenge about doing this kind of story and this book is it plunges you in nuance difficult ethical questions that are not easy to answer, and the only way you escape them is by being deft to them or by pretending that they don't exist or by never including somebody like john in your narrative. >> right. no, it's interesting. i mean, both of us teach, and it's when you teach ethics,

clear ethics, but you are right in dealing with john. you are faced with conundrums and questions that you would never have considered. a couple questions, and we'll take them from you guys, but i'm curious what the reception of the book's been like in south africa. >> i expected that i would really get slammed in the reviews because, you know, there's a pattern of people coming from outside south africa to tell the south african story, and either to do the miracle story, you know, nelson mandela, the miracle leader of the exceptional place, the rainbow nation, ect.. you know, we tell the story and sing, do a little dance. one version, and the other version is it's all crap; right? it was all soiled and terrible tricks that the nc played, and

so i kind of figured that i would get pegged as one of the other, milan said i was immune to pessimism. that was criticism. i take that as a point of pride, kind of pessimism, but not soft headed or soft hearted about what i see. that's the kind of trip that i tried to make so the reviews had been quite good, seems to be selling, and sort of bracing for that first really brutal review. it has not happened yet. >> have you heard from zuma? >> indirectly from president zuma who gave he a lot of time, eight interviews, more time than anybody else ever had from him, and i expected, i don't know, actually what i expected.

he's still trying to absorb what he thinks of the -- it's the best way to put it. >> and my final question is, as i read the book, i couldn't help but think of the arab spring and sort of what it means to come out of the, you know, very difficult period as a nation and try to find your way to some kind of democratic rule, and i guess given your experience in south africa, what are the lessons that you see for a country like egypt, for instance? >> yeah, i think there's a whole bunch as we think about parts of the world where particularly there's a generational cleanse, a big generational agreement on cultural grounds, economic grounds, and the rest. one is that it's not -- revolt is not necessarily driven by economic hardship. the unemployment rate in egypt,

among young egyptians was much better than the unemployment rate among young blacks in south africa that the likelihood of an explows eve reaction is based on any expectation that there's some traction and that people are going to be able to get somewhere without a massive revolt. that's aless sop. the second lesson is is this generational question. is there a place for a generational voice and people to be allowed to shape their future without being dragged back into debates of the past? we see things developing in a sustained way in south africa partly because it occurred largely peacefully.

>> right. it's interesting, the rebel yon in south africa was not -- it was not necessarily driven by youth, up like in egypt or now as we see in turkey or syria -- >> but led by an older generation that was once young. >> all were once young. >> when you think about the uprising, that was 1976, so forced goo a guerrilla war, so you hope it doesn't take three decades for the airplane spring to yield more sustainable steps towards a fully democratic society. >> are there lessons you take from your time in south africa for here? >> absolutely. i think the biggest is 11 official languages.

and over the battles, the idea that we should be dealing with each other in two languages, well, i've just been bending a ton of time in a place where i only speak one of 11 official languages; right? you go to a place that's a wonderful place in newtown in johannesburg that represents a modernizing cultural place, a kind of african place, a place called cafe, and they do spoken word, and except in five or six or seven languages, and they'll walk in there and somebody begins a poem and then lapse into english, have a little

zulu, go into africon, and somehow that entire group of 300 people gets enough of the just what's going on to have the experience of that kind of cross cultural exchange that means people who come from -- who grew up speaking 11 different languages are in the room together and having one conversation so i think there's a ton that we have to learn about that. i think even though it will sound odd to say, i think we have a top to learn about how to talk about race from south africans, even though they are much more recently out of politics defined by an extreme, strange form of racial segregation. there's much more open conversation about race in

johannesburg or cape town or durbin or if you're in a township outs johannesburg than we have. we have two conversations going on. one in our head and then what's actually being said, and there's a big gap in that conversation. i don't think that's so true, at least in the circles that young people that i've been traveling in in south africa. i think those two things are big, and then the third thing that's important to say is that memorialized in the south african constitution is a commitment to social and economic justice to nonracialism, to nonsexism to making sexual orientation as protected as any other category and to social justice, and so there's a way in which at least the goals in the country and

party certainly falls short of the goals, but the goals are codified and understood as the core values of the country. >> i think we like to think that those are the core values here, but as you say, they are not often articulated in any real way. with that, opening it up to questions from the audience about what doug talked about, about the book, about south africa. meze. >> hi. >> hi. >> i'll go first. it's been said that the reason for the transition of power, the republican it was peaceful is because it didn't bring about any real economic reform, that ab sent, like, real lap redistribution, the unequalities were doomed to continue, and the poverty in the violence, could you comment on that? >> sure. thanks for the question.

the big accommodation that was made by the anc and the negotiations that led to the first election as you know were to keep the terms, private property rights, and the basic struts of the economy protected. that was the tradeoff. the crude way of putting it is the vote and the right to have an effect in politics in exchange for a no radical change in the economic structure, no radical redistribution of wealth so 80% of land, 80% of wealth is still held by whites, minorities of about 9%, and that entwining of race and class constrained the eight to feel political liberation followedded by economic liberation, and that's the biggest challenge for the government and for the society

of figuring out legal ways in which to alter dynamics, and, now, at the same time, in the last 19 years, 2 million black people have moved into middle income stratus. we want to be careful in terms of evaluating what's going on there, but certainly, that -- the entire thrust of the liberation movement was to disentwine these two things, race and class entwined for so long by law, and that that disentwining is a work in progress, and after 19 years responsible for, of course, the resentment among people who have a right to expect better and more progress.

>> hi, doug and alex. for those of us not following south africa that closely, we saw the photograph in the newspaper of mandela and zuma and mandela looked like he wanted to hit him over the head with a two-by-four, and i want to know what's behind that. is it that mandela doesn't like zuma? is it that he is disgusted or disapproves of the way he's governing in the direction of the south africa, or is he just a cranky guy who wants to be left alone. does anybody know what he thinks at this point about the direction of south africa, and does that photograph tell you anything? >> wow. [laughter] i guess i should say thank you for that question. [laughter] i think the people who i rely on

to tell me what he's doing is one of the informanets, and as a result of that, has given me good access into his thinking and what's happening in the family. the truth is he's a 9 had 4 -- 94-year-old man about to turn 95, and to a certain extent -- and very ill for the last couple years -- the last time i saw him in 2010, he said as my sop and i came into the room, it's nice that young people still come to see an old man who has nothing new to say. he's been trying hard for a long time to retire. he retired, retired from

retirement, retired from the private retirement trying to send the message both to south africans and the rest of us that he was done. he staged that event in which the leadership of the party was, you know, allowed to be photographed with him tells you how in secure some of the leaders are about whether they are seen as caring the man tell of mandela. there's a big struggle going on in south african politics to latch on to the legacy of mendel la, the spirit, about by the opposition, democratic alliance, and by the anc, and i think the reaction they got to that, those kind of staged photographs means that luckily for mandela and the rest of us, it won't happen

again. >> talk about the reaction because it was a controversial photograph. >> yeah, no, i mean, the video is just painful, you know, it's painful. it's the video of leaders including president zuma keep of trying to get his attention, trying to get him to smile, you know. that's the money shot. that's the shot they wanted, and i suspect he had the same kind of feeling towards them that he had to other visitors which it's amazing that younger people keep coming to see an old man who has nothing new to say, so i think that the public reaction, if you follow the blogs and the online reactions and also just listen to the chat shows which i do, you get up early, and you listen because it's seven hours ahead, there was a revulsion against the political class for this

crude, raising the banner of mandela, trying to use it to anoint themselves. you know, mandela was a disciplined member of the african national congress his entire life giving his whole life to the party and struggle. i'm sure when they toll him that morning what was going to happen, he agreed to it, but the point when somebody's 9 had 4 and 95 is people should know not to ask. >> when you talk to young people in disstress like john, what, if any programs were institutions do you hear that are doing them some good, whether it's government or faith based or other? >> i would say all of the above, and john, himself, has been reached by a small ngo in cape town working with homeless

street kids. i think during the points where he's in a struggle with the morm conference and getting off the street and not doing robberies, it's because of the amazing group of outreach workers. some of them are faith based, some simply, other young people who banded together and got funding, there's many, many great programs involving building. this particular ngo trains young men to be bakers, and he has succeeded in educating and placing in decent jobs dozens of people in similar situations like john. john's a limit difficult in that he doesn't want to be under anybody's thumb so it's hard for him as he goes to work at eight in the morning and some boss is telling him what to do.

i think there's -- in a way, it's a stand-in for some of the difficulty in the country in moving on. there was a, you know, an understandable call by the liberation movement to make the country ungovernable, to create a generation of people who were so rebellious that the old system could no longer survive, and what we are seeing partly in the maturation of things in south south africa is the new generation coming along for which rebellion is not enough, knowing when to rebel and when to build skills in order to construct a new country becomes more, a bigger part of the agenda. >> thank you, doug, and thank you, alex, and, you know, you

were talking a little about the -- what's -- the young people in south africa might have to say to the chern growing up in the arab spring. you know, i'm wondering if you have any comments for those palestine yaps growing up in a system which many identify as very similar to south africa, looking forward to what strengths can they find and draw of what's going on as young people mature, you know, are able to find in growing up. what words would you have to say to the young palestinians growing up now? >> yeah, i mean, there's a deep identification in south africa with the palestinian struggle. partly because during the years when the nc was deemed a terrorist organization in the

u.s., the plo was one of the biggest supporter of the dnc so because of the history and also because of the way the conflict is reported in south africa, there's a kind of deep identification, and i think to the extent that the interview subjects i had talked about it is a kind of identification around the possibilities of seemingly ire recon siebl differences potentially being bridged because you'll be in townships or parts of johannesburg where people are suddenly in school with an afr africon speaking white person whose parent probably supported a division, and people are in schools, socials situations,

networks together, and i think to the extent that they are thinking about the middle east opposed to what's happening down the treat, the mdges is message is sometimes it's reconcilable where they can peacefully tolerate one another. >> thank you. >> time for one last question. anybody who? >> well, doug, thank you very much. [applause] >> as mentioned previously, doug's book can be found in the lobby of the university center so right where you walked innings and they will sign copies of the book in the art room which is right to your left. thank you. [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] >> we'll be right back with more from chicago in a couple of minutes.

>> i got five books on the reading wish list. three of these i consider a success. i'm trying to finish "ten letters," written a year and a half ago, and it's a look back at some of the people who write letters to president obama. he leads ten letters every day from everyday americans, and so eli went back and found temperature of them who wrote to

the president with real stories of woah, especially in the midst of the economic recession. it's a neat look back and deep dive into some of the interactions people have with the president, and it's not so much about him, but the people who reached out. it's a good read. almost done with that. when that's done, moving on to "act of congress," from another guy at the washington post looking at how congress dealt with regulatory reform years ago and used it to explain why it is the congress is broken these days. bob covered congress back in the 1970s, and he says it's a big difference between then and now. clearly, it's obvious to most, but there's real dysfunction in a few different ways, and it's supposed to be a good read. after that, another book by a guy who works for the washington post. it's not on purpose. these guys just write good stuff. "collision 2012", a look back at the 2012 campaign, did a similar book in the 2008 campaign, and so this is his look at the obama versus romney race, talked to all the guys

involved, and that's coming out in august. that's later on in the year. the other is the "perilous fight," also from the washington post, took a two-yearbook leave to work on the book, it's a neat look back at the six weeks during the war of 1812 and when washington was urn siege and look at what the city went through and how it changed, supposed to be a good read. we hope to get into that later this summer as well. if i get through two or three of the books, i'll be proud. the only other one is "great gatsdby" because i never read it in high school. hope to finish that as well. >> tweet us @booktv, post on our facebook page, or e-mail us at booktv@c-span.org. here's a look at books published this week:

>> host: you spend time in the book on israel, iraq, and islam, and you talk about islamism. the real reason the islamists have declare war on the west, that it embodies the freedom of the individual and negation of thee karattic authority. in a globalized world, this freedom is viewed as a con they onthat threatened islam

everywhere. >> guest: yes, well, this is, you know, in preoccupied me for simple years and more of us more and more, and i do think, as i said, there's a problem here with the islamic world, and with the religion at the root of that islamic world, and it's very, very important to understand, i think, in all of this, that when one talks about the concerns, one is not talking about all muslim. on the contrary. there are, i mean, just speaking from the point of view of britain, there's many muslims who came as imgrants to brit lap because they wanted to sign up to british and western values, freedom, wanted to prosper and have good jobs, but wanted freedom because freedom is important to them. the women wanted to be treated as equals, and they wanted all the things that we all want,

freedom, peace, security, prosperity. you know, they are not hung up on these religious precepts causing us in the western world trouble. the problem is in the islamic world, those preceptings have been interpreted in a way in which comes out of the religion and which is dominant which is to say that the view of the world which says that the world has to be remade according to islamic, that, of course, there's that, you know, enjoying freedom, and that has to be pulled back to cop form to a very, very narrow, authoritarian conservatism interpretation of islam. that view is now dominant. the view that the west must be brought to heal this is

islamism, and others say, what you mean is islam, and i understand what they mean is islamism is a made up word, but i use it for a particular reason because there -- it is in order to allow for the fact there are muslims not extreme who do want to want western values, and those muslims who don't. those who don't i call and others call islamists because they are trying to impose the doctrine on people who are not muslim, and they are trying to impose the most high bound antifreedom interpretation of the religion at its most narrow on muslims, and so i call those people islamists. they are a threat to us. they say the whole time what their intention is to recreate the old islamic state, the old muslim empire to go beyond that

and to conquer, you know, britain, to conquer america, they are explicit, and to impose sharia, the rule of islamic law upon anywhere that muslims live. those are islamists, and some of them are violent, equipped themselves with weapons of war and terrorism, and some of them are not violent, but believe they conquer the west through a kind of cultural creep if you like, a keep of culture takeoverment we should also be extremely worried by them. they are all islamist, some violence, others not. on the other hand, there's a lot of muslims who are not islamists, and we have to keep both in our minds. there is a difference between those who interpret religion in a way that threatens us, and those who belong and strive to islam who are muslims who are, themselves threatened by these islamists, and we must keep those two things, i think, in

our minds at the same time, and that's what i tried to do when i wrote the book, that was about what i say the case to which my great horror and fear the british ruling class was giving in to islamism, to the attempt to take over, to the attempt to undermine britain and the end crochement of islamic values in britain, and the class said let's go along with this. that's why i wrote the book, but in the book, i was extremely careful, and i think we must be to acknowledge them, there many, many muslims who find this equally frightening and worrying and have nothing to do with it. ..

the reviews have been compelling, and i think that's going to be an interesting case study. when you're reading a book and you know the characters, barney frank and senator dodd and the legislators, it's interesting to get the perspective, and some of the staffers'. and then there's a book i just ordered on james burns, legendary south carolina in politics -- john martin said

you'll love this book. a guy who very nearly was vice president instead of truman in '44 and continued to play an extraordinary role in politics and became one of the architects of nixon's success in the south, and it was interesting enough, popped up working with harry hopkins, and the third term of fdr. so, i like to read about the process and i like to study history and i ought to read more policy and less hoyt -- history but i learn better in history.

now from marvin kalb preempts his book "the road to war: presidential commitments honored and betrayed." [inaudible conversations]

>> hello, and welcome to the 29th annual chicago tribune printer's row lit fest. we want to give a thank you to the sponsors. today's program will be broadcast on c-span2's booktv. if there's time at the end of the session for audience questions, we ask you use the microphone in the center of the room so our home audience is able to hear you. this will rebroadcast tonight at 11:00 p.m. central time, and then alsod a midnight on sunday. please keep the spirit of litfest going all year with a subsubscription to printer0s -- printers row. and visit the web site for rates and posters.

the author's book will be sold on the second floor of the university center where we are. and he wanted me to make a special hemmings he will be signing said pack or books that you have in the art room following this session. i now ask you turn off your cell phones and all electronic devices, and i would like to welcome our moderator, mr. bruce dole of the chicago tribune. applause. >> thank you very much. one of the legends of television news in the united states, exactly hired by edward r. murrow. a veteran -- [laughter] >> that was so good i'll say it again. he was actually hired by edward r. murrow. a von of cbs, veteran of nbc, and a veteran of the nixon

enemy's list. [applause] >> host: is -- it only gets better. and the awe or the "road to war" about presidential decisionmaking and how at it taken us to war. on -- you would use the word the whims of presidents. we're going to cover all of that in the book. i want to ask you about presidential decision moch making. that's a guy from chicago went to the white house. you look at what we've learned in the last few weeks on nsa mega data gathering, on the irs going after tea party groups, the department of justice going after fox news, who you have an affiliation with now, and the "associated press." is this the guy -- is this the presidency you expected to see when obama was elected? >> the answer to that is very simply, no. i would never have expected the

president to yield to the kind of pressures he has over the last couple of years. he explained the other day that what he is trying to do is in the best interests of the american people, and by that i think he meant that he was seeking the best way of fighting terrorism, and this is a challenge for any president, not only barack obama and what we have learned in the past week is not all new. that has been kicking around, but with in angle inside the past week. there's a bottom line issue here and that is, how much of your personal freedom, how much of your personal privacy, can you give away in the greater interests of saving the nation from a terrorist attack. my question on this is that i fear every now and then i literally fear the power of government.

and every now and then i fear also in the deepest sense that the government, even run by the best people, can do dreadful things, and there is would way that an accumulation of power, in the hands of a president, is simply not a good thing. >> host: what do you think happened with obama? much of the book is about presidents who looked at a war situation, knew it was probably unwinnable, and yet kept getting us in. is there a parallel to how obama may have approached the war or terror? >> guest: there's a great similarity. i don't think obama when he came into office believed he would be in a position on his own, up checked by congress, uncriticized in many ways by the media, on his own to start a war if he felt like doing that. for example, i would not be at all surprised if tomorrow morning there were headline that the united states has opened a different kind of -- or maybe an

old fashioned kind of military operation in syria. now, the administration has been on the edge of a military involvement in syria now for about a year. but it's very close at this point, and if the president would decide to do that, he can do it on his own. he doesn't have to go anywhere to check with anybody, and that, to me, is the reason why i did "the road to warmth" this book has been on my mind nor years, ever since i covered the vietnam war, and in the middle of that war, when it suddenly occurred to me, there were 548,000 american troops in the small country of south vietnam. and i asked myself, how did we get into this war? how did it start? where did it begin? did the congress actually declare war? which, by the way, is what the

constitution of the united states says it is supposed to do, to declare war. that is its responsibility. but we know that, in american history, the congress has declared war only five times. the war of 1812, this mexican war of 1846. spanish american war in, world war i, world war ii. since that time anybody is aware of the fact the u.s. has been in am an almost nobody stop war, korea, panama, you name it, and now afghanistan, and we got out of iraq. we got out but we may get in but that's a separate end paren. during all of those wars was there ever a time when somebody said to a president, you can't do this? you simply can't do it. you are not a king. you are not the modern monarch of our time. you are a president.

you were elected. you might have gotten 49 or 51 or 52% of the vote but that not the whole country, and let's moderate the excessive use of presidential power. but in going to war, it is the president who has that power, the congress has literally become irrelevant. former senator jim webb did a marvelous article in which he begins by saying the congress of the ute has become irrelevant. and that's his word, and that's all power now vests in the president, and it seems to me that in a democracy that's not the way it is supposed to work. >> host: you make the point, even when the congress stepped, in, say the gulf of tonkin, and few cases where congress put a brake on it, and the same thing with iraq. >> guest: there was that one time in 1973 when the congress

passed the war powers act. the war powers act was an act of utter frustration on the part of the congress. the vietnam war had been going on and on and there was no end in sight. and so the congress truly fed up, and also fed up with right-hand nixon at that time. parenthesis, which a number of us were, close parenthesis. but at that time the congress passed the war powers act. the most idiotic piece of legislation you can imagine. seriously. what this legislation says is that if the president wants to go to war, within 48 hours he has to inform the congress. inform. not consult. inform. then he has 60 days to accomplish the military mission. if he hasn't accomplished it in 60 days, he has to go back to the congress, where there is some kind of debate, and the congress will fifth it approval

for another 30 days of war. but at the end of 90 days, that's the end of it. wars don't begin and end on a time schedule. and it is so absurd, i sometimes wonder, what are these peopling too on capitol hill that they could come up with a piece of legislation like that? and by the way, when obama decided that he would commit the american air force to the war in libya, he did not even inform the congress. >> host: what goes through a president's mind? you make the argument that nixon knew when -- when he took office, knew we were not going to win in vietnam. when kennedy took office he was skeptical, and yet they did carry us in. is it a fear of being -- looking weak as a leader if you don't carry out -- execute what your predecessor started? >> guest: it really depends

on -- if i may discuss for one moment the vietnam experience, which as i look around this room, many of you do remember. but in that experience, it started, believe it or not, with harry truman in the late 1940s. when harry truman looked at france, which was reimposing its colonial rule in indo-china, the u.s., franklin roosevelt was against that. truman was again that. what was happening was that joseph stalin in the soviet union was movings hi armies westward. truman got frightened. this was the beginning of the cold war, the start of the nuclear age. and truman was concerned that communism would simply take over in western europe. so, truman did whatever he could to win over the french. and he said, what can i do to help? and the french said, you don't make a thing of our re-imposing

colonialism in indo-china. we need your weapons and we need your money. so truman began early on, 1947, put in i believe the figure was $137 million at the beginning. by the time he left it was triple that. now, did truman have in mind that we're going to get into a big war in vietnam? not at all. what he was concerned about was the in the middle of a budding cold war, that he not be the president who yields territory, more territory, to the expansionist communist empire. so the next guy comes in, dwight eisenhower. eisenhower likewise did not want to get the u.s. involved in the french war, in indo-china. but what did he do? in 1954, he in effect christened the arrival of the country of south vietnam as a result of the

geneva convention at that time. he didn't want to do it. but you're in the middle of a cold war. he didn't want to give the communists a leg up so he agreed to the television of indough champion into two parts. communists have the north and we have the south. we have the south. we, the united states, began to inherit the south. then in 1959, eisenhower said in a speech at gettysburg college, this is close to an accurate quote -- the continued existence of a free, noncommunist, independent, south vietnam is in the direct national security interest of the united states. big, big phrase. so, when john kennedy comes into office, the kid, the new kid on the block, he is not going to be

criticizing this world war ii hero who had just finish who'd terms in office. so, if he says south vietnam is in the direct national interests of the u.s., yes, it is, and at the beginning of the kennedy administration, we had 800 military advisers in south vietnam. by the time he was killed november 22, 1963, we had 18,000. lyndon johnson comes in. he doesn't want a war in vietnam. what are the first three words out of his mouth as the new president? let us continue. and that was to continue the kennedy policy on south vietnam. which was the eisenhower policy, which was the truman policy. and johnson was a brilliant politician but cursed by a deep insecurity, and he simply did not want to be the first

president to lose a war. and when it was clear to his military advisers we were losing, he then put the 540,000 troops in so we could not lose. what do you think happened when richmond nixon, the next guy came in? we lost it. in april of 1975 we were kicked out of south vietnam. it was a humiliating defeat, and many of you will remember the americans going from the roof of the american helicopter, 'rope ladders to helicopters hovering up above, and taken to aircraft carriers in the south china sea. we lost that war. what is the message here? and really the reason for the road to war? the message for me is that presidents, no matter how wonderful they are, how brilliant they are, the

experience they had in war, it should not be to them alone that we vest the responsibility to take us into war. there are other people in this democracy who also ought to have a voice, including, i think, the biggest abdicators of responsibility here, are the congress. the people in the congress. i also tend to blame the media, because i don't want to sound like, in our day it was much better and blah blah blah. but it was. [laughter] >> host: i think people know that -- john f. kennedy. the press protected him. there were things a president could not get away with today. when did that change? did the press turn on the presidency as we lost the war or

the press figure out what was going on? what changed between john f. kennedy and tougher reporting later. >> guest: one, i think the whole financial underpinning of the media underwent a revolution, and in the old days at cbs, for example, i knew, literally knew, the man who owned the company. bill paley opened the company and revved to us as the jewels in my crown. he loved the idea of news, and he knew that we lost money. we always were a loss leader. but he would say to us, you guys cover the news. i have jack benny to make funny for me. so that if jack benny brought to 100 bucks and he knew that news always costs 20 bucks and we're going to lose that, he could make it up very easily with all

of the other money coming into cbs. but now we have faceless corporations that own the media. they really do not look upon the media as a public trust. they look upon the media as a place to make money. as a profit center. and that whole structure of money and all just changed the business. >> host: but that doesn't explain why the press protected john f. kennedy. >> guest: because in those years we did not cover the private lives of public officials. it's that simple. i remember once seeing a beautiful blonde with stunning legs being escorted into the elevator to go up to where the kennedy suite was located. if i had gone in to walter cronkite and said, what a pair of leg is saw going into the elevator of the president's suite, he probably would have kicked me out of the studio.

we didn't do that. we did not probe personal life. by the time clinton -- >> host: did that carry over to foreign policy? was the press tough as kennedy was getting more involved in vietnam? was the press paying attention? >> guest: i don't think so. there were two or three or five reporters who were superb on the coverage, but they were not dominant figures in the numbers they were good journalists but not dominant. the thing is, you know because you're in it every day, we have superb journalists working today. it's their working in an environment which is so very different from where i was and people of my generation were. the technology today has transformed the industry. i mean, think about it. years ago, we used to sit down

when we watched something terribly important, before we went on the air we would said down and have to write what it is we had just learned, and then there were producers and there were editors and people who checked on what it is you were saying. today, 98% of what you all hear and see on radio and television is live. why? because the technology allows you to speak from location anywhere in the world, and be seen live. and those two issues, the change in the money and the change of the technology, have totally transformed the media. >> host: let's talk about your friend nixon. [laughter] >> host: the irs comes after you, year after year. you foreign is tapped. i think there's stories they were tailing you at the paris peace talks. >> guest: they tried to. >> host: what did you do to get on his bad side?

>> guest: i don't have a clue. i really don't know. i think, what i've been told, is that nix wonas the sort of guy who did not like any kind of pit -- criticism. but during the vietnam were there were so many thing that were obviously wrong, that if you didn't report them you were not doing your job. and every now and then nixon would hype the news and twist it so that it wasn't accurate, and on one occasion, said that ho chi minh, the leader of north vietnam, had totally ejected my efforts at peace. when we were told about it, it was 4:00 in the afternoon of the day he was to speak. and why did they tell us this at 4:00? they wanted to fill our minds with their point of view. but there were a couple of us who would then check what they

had given us with people around the government. and when i checked i was told that simply is inaccurate. that ho chi minh actually had opened the door an inch, to possible negotiations, and so i said that. and so he blew his stack. and all i can tell you is that i've been yelled at by lyndon johnson and ignored by nixon, whatever. it doesn't really matter all that much. if in your gut you know that you're doing the right thing, you know that you're honest and you're trying to report the news, and you're doing it as well as you can, that's the best you can do. >> host: how did you learn you were on the list and how intimidating to find all the powers of the government were coming down on you? >> guest: they began to come down on me in the tail end of 1969, but i did not know about

it until 1973. and one of the reasoned i didn't know about it is that the wonderful boss that i had at cbs, bill small in washington, bill knew some of this but he never told me, and he never told me because, he said, it's none of your business. he said you just cover the news. i'll look after relations with the administration. and when i found out about all of the things you mentioned, i was hurt first, i think. hurt because i had spent five years of my life covering the soviet union. i covered a communist country. i knew they were bad guys, but i never assumed my own government would do anything bad to me, and there would be no reason to do that in any case. so i was hurt at the beginning. and then i also felt very sorry

for the government because they had spent so much money looking after me. so many people were tailing. so many people listening in to my telephone calls, my wife's calls at home, my children's calls. i mean, why did they have to waste so much time? but they did, and it was very bad, but at the end of the day, nixon moved on and we had new people. that's why, by the way, it's sort of sad now to watch what is happening with all of this listening going on right now and the deep probes into your personal life. the president says that is not the case and i hope he is right. but governments have a way of tripping over themselves. and every now and then, with the best of intentions, doing bad things. and when the par of -- power of the government the power of the president is so great that a

president can go into war without a check, that the entire government at his order can begin to fiddle around with your phones and all of that? that's just not good. it doesn't sound like america. and i would hope that it would quickly turn around. >> host: there's a great sweep to the road to war through five administrations and also a lot of interesting stories you wonder, you fear, could get lost to history. one is president kennedy's complicity in the coup against the president of south vietnam, just a month before his own assassination. what was he thinking? >> what he was thinking, things were going south in south vietnam. and the government led by a man named diem, he was not the greatest guy in the world, not running the most effective government.

he was absolutely corrupt. and hooked in with all kinds of bad guys. an asian mafia operation, and kennedy wanted to change that. and so he put the word out that if the south vietnamese generals, a number of them, got together and sort of eased him out of the way, and moved better generals in, who would do our bidding but in effect a more effective job fighting the communists, that would be a good thing. so kennedy did not go into it with the intent of killing diem. but kent was amazingly naive in believing that once you open up the floodgate of a military coup, you can't at the last minute cut it off if you don't like the way it's going. that was terribly naive judgment on what it is he had unleashed. but he did it. and when he found out on that

day that diem had been killed and his brother had been killed and stabbed 20 times, he left the meeting when this was pointed out -- he left the meeting almost in tears and in a state of shock. and that -- again, these presidents are human. they are human beings. and they have theories in their minds about the way things ought to go. but then there's reality that sets in, and it doesn't go that way all the time. and i find it in researching this book, the opportunity that i had to delve into the policies, the minds, the records of a succession of presidents is so illuminating, on so many different fronts, on korea, which is the beginning of the book. vietnam, the middle of the book. israel, the tail end of the

book. presidents deal with, say, korea, by providing a mutual defense treaty, and that is a pretty good way of doing things, and we also have 28,000 troops there. as a trip wire against the possibility of the north sending troops into the south. that's not a bad way of doing things. in vietnam, another case study, in vietnam we just screwed it up totally. it was presidential action, mindlessly pursuing a policy that was clearly failing as you looked at it, but you could not accept the responsibility for the ultimate failure or loss. >> host: you write about one war korea fought to a stale mate. another war, vietnam, that we lost. how close do you think any of the presidents involved if came -- we lost all those warses without using the ultimate weapon how close were we to using nuclear weapons to try to resolve one of those wars?

>> guest: well, in vietnam, richard nixon, vice president, and admiral raft, the chairman of the joint chiefs, recommended the use of three nuclear weapons again communist forces in a battle, and eisenhower, god bless him said, are you guys nuts? we just used two weapons less than ten years ago, against the japanese. you cannot do that in asia. white man -- you can't do that. and so he stopped it. johnson never, to the best of my only, never thought about the use of nuclear weapons. nixon thought about it, but killed the idea very quickly. because he knew the war, as he put it, was up winnable so why in an unwinnable situation use nuclear weapons and destroy whatever goodness the united states still maintained around the world. >> host: there is a microphone

in the center of the room if folks would like to come up. if you have a question we'll take them right from there, and i ask you to keep the questions pointed and not be speeches. >> i have had conversations with some of your colleagues and had the sense that in the coverage of vietnam there were two generations of correspondents that were at war. many of them, cronkite, diggers, these were men who had been basically formed by world war ii, and in being formed by world war ii, that, my sense is, colored their ability to perceive vietnam, whereas the younger generation of reporters, yourself, morely safer, others, seemed to see it more clearly for what it was. in validity of that? >> guest: i don't think it was a matter of generations. i think it was individual

reporters either having better sources or better insight or clarity in their minds, more of a determination to stay away from official briefings, and to report what it is they saw. there's -- in saigon there were the 5:00 follies and the reporters would come back -- the colonel of the army would tell them the great victories the united states had. when these guys had actually seen what happened in the field. and that became the so-called credibility gap. but essentially it goes back to the way in which a president wants a war to be pursued, wants a war to be started, and it raises again the fundamental question about the trust that we can have in a president, in an issue as important as war to do it all on his own.

>> in your presentation you did a really great job of presenting on the one side a more modern free willing media that, as you said, tells a lot of lies and you get down to, where do you go for accurate information. then before that you presented unchecked presidential power almost as a trend or something that is going health were those two opposing problems in our society, and when you fill in the fact that a good part of the planet is in a constant state of conflict, war, including the united states -- probably involved in at least 120 countries in one way, shape or form, and the trend looking forward looks like war is just going to happen even more, whether you name syria, the horn of africa, or the militarization by the chinese in the pacific, however you look at it, war looks to be with us for the foreseeable future. challenge that premise or not. my question to you would be, in that context, how are you going to mediate or fix the free

wheeling media so it becomes more like it was in the old days, and how will you put a brake on unchecked presidential power? >> guest: as far as the media is concerned, we have passed that bridge. we're not going home again. we are in a new world, and there is a new media. and we are all going to be informed by that media. period. and it becomes the responsibility of each individual to look at what it is they're reading or seeing, and say, am i really being given all of the information i need? and the answer is, no, 90% of the time, but that requires people to go out and read more and think about issues more, and not simply accept, forgive me in a lazy way, what it is they hear on see. it's not good enough anymore in the world in which we live.

>> you opened your discussion with a statement about the constitution and what needs to be done within the constitution in order to declare war, yet we have all these other wars that are going on that have never been declared. my question really has to do with the supreme court in the polarization of congress and the polarization of media, and why hasn't anyone challenged the presidential authority within the constitution before the supreme court, to declare war or not? >> guest: one of the answers -- that's a very good question. i thank you for it. one of the ways in which you see it -- i mean in a simple way, we have three branches of government. i'm saying that in the executive

branch of government now in the presidency, is an almost unnatural accumulation of power. so somebody has to check that. according to the constitution, it is the congress. that checks it. the supreme court will tell you whether the law is unconstitutional. that's slightly separate issue. but the congress, according to the constitution, has two principle responsibilities. one is to declare war, and the other is the power of the purse. i mentioned earlier that only in 1973 has the power of the purse power ever been exercised by congress since world war ii. just hasn't happened. and you could ask yourself why is that the case? and one explanation -- it's too quick and easy but it's so much to the heart -- 40 to 70% of every congressman's and

senator's time today is spent raising money. when you have to spend half of your day raising money, when do you have the time to come up with thoughtful legislation? because you don't have the time, everything ends up being sort of blown to the extreme corners of the dialogue. and you have an acute polarization which does not allow for compromise, does not allow even for enter taping the idea that the opposing guy might have an interesting idea. you just reject it. and you have to rush to the phone to find out where mr. smith is and how much money he is going to give me, which gets also to the power of television to determine the very nature of our politics today, and the internet. and that is this communications

revolution that has tran formed the media and transformed our politics some so many fundamental ways. >> said we lost in vietnam. i'm a pacifist. we don't engage in wars so we neither win them nor lose them. i don't identify with the state. marvin kalb says that nixon did not consider using the atomic bomb in vietnam. my question is, are you aware of the film "hearts and mines"? that film shows nixon trying to get the french to use the atomic bomb -- who acomic bombs in vietnam. to arm the two bombs on the hornet. >> guest: i don't know the specific that you're referring to. i do know that at a number of national security meetings, in

1954, admiral radford, spurted by the vice president of the united states, recommended the use of three atomic bombs in the battle of phu. the middle group thought that was a terrific idea. they raised it with the president, who unceremonyoutly killed and it killed them idiots. >> nixon was involved in wanting to use the atomic bomb in vietnam. that's my point. >> guest: i just said that. >> oh. >> host: one of the key issues you raise in the book is a long-standing relationship of the u.s. and israel. you argue that would be better served on all sides with a formal understanding of defense rather than relying on the whims or beliefs of the current president. i read that section and wonder, would the u.s. really be well-served by that, especially

in such a volatile region where, in korea, yes, there was deter rent for -- has been a deterrent for decades-same thing with nato in the mideast you're dealing with. terrorist organizations, militant groups. wouldn't the u.s., if it was required by treaty, wind up playing traffic cop in the middle east? >> guest: well, possibly, yeah. and i think that any new idea relating to the middle east is going to kick up a storm. and it could very well be that the idea that i'm laying out will kick up a storm or perhaps should, but let me be clear about what i'm saying. what i am recommending is that since the united states has mutual defense treaties with countries all over the world, with korea, with australia, new

zealand, japan, the philippines, nato, all over the world, that since this is not a new thing, that it also be applied to israel for the following reasons. that whether we like it or not, in the middle east today -- and i've covered this story now really on a semi embarrassed to say more than 50 years. the united states is regarded by the arab side of the equation as locked in with the israelis, whether we have a treaty or not. that is simply a conspiratorial vision that exists and there's nothing we can do about that. what i am suggesting is that following up on an idea that senator fulbright -- i don't know how many of you remember senator fulbright of arkansas. senator came up in august of 1970.

not because he loved israel, by the way himself affection for israel could have been put in a thimble. but he did believe this was the best way of avoiding a possible exchange with the soviet union. that was his concern. and that if we had a mutual defense treaty with israel, the russians would do what they wanted to do on the arab side but it would be balanced and we wouldn't, by miscalculation, get into a war. the israel leaders, starting with perez in 1996, netanyahu in 1998, and barak in 2000, all of them raised with president clinton the -- this is the exclusive part of the book, chapter nine -- they all raise with clinton the idea of a mutual defense treaty, and clinton said, yes, if, if, if the israelis were close to deal with the palestinians -- in

other words they didn't have the deal but were getting closer and closer -- then the idea of a mutual defense threaty between the u.s. and israel made sense. then that treaty would lock in the deal, because from the virgining of the middle east, what are we dooling with here? you have the israelis and the palestinians. the palestinians want their state. they have every right to have that state. the israelis want security. they have every right to want security and have it. the difficulty is bringing these two perfectly legitimate interests together. we're in it whether we like it or not. so what i'm suggesting is, do with israel what we have done with countries all over the world, arrange that at the end, sort of as a carrot at the end of the stick you guys reach this deal with the palestinians,

bingo, we'll make it clear to the entire world that you can't destroy the jewish state. now, that's a huge responsibility. but we have undertaken that responsibility without the treaty. and i'm only saying that with the treaty you have rules of the road as to how both sides should separate. it would be so much easier, for example, right now, with syria and right now with iran. there are a lot of people in washington, and jerusalem and all over the world that believe the iranians are really out to get a nuclear bomb. if we have evidence that they're going to build a bomb, the president is already on record assaying, we will not allow that to happen. in other words, he is saying when we have the evidence they're going to build a bomb -- >> host: has also drawn a red line -- >> guest: the redline in syria.

he has red lines all over the place. >> host: do you think he has committed us eventually to some kind of military action in either states? >> guest: well, yes, he has committed us, except who will trust him to do that? in other words, if you ask people -- it's interesting. people in the middle east, many of them simply do not believe that this president is going to go to war, another war, after afghanistan, after iraq, will go to another war with iran, and so the iranians believe the same thing. as far as the israelis are concerned, if you say, will the israelis do x, y, and z? will they attack iran on their own? we may not want that. but if they do, everyone is going to believe that we're in bed with them anyway. so, the better formula, it seems to me, is if there is this kind of treaty which is sort of major

between nations. you have a deal. you have a contract. it doesn't mean you live up to every word but it does move you in a certain direction toward a mutual accommodation, and israeli prime minister once told me that we live with the presumption of 100% agreement. i love the word, we live with the presumption. doesn't mean it's a fact. you presume certain things. and i think that we do, but i would like it -- i would like it -- who is asking me -- but i think it's a good idea for people to consider the -- a mutual defense treaty between the u.s. and israel as a concluding element in a deal between israel and the palestinians. >> host: last question for you. when you look at iraq today, do you see similarities to vietnam

and the eventual fall after we have departed? >> guest: iraq or afghanistan. >> host: you pick. >> guest: we know when at the left iraq in the end of 2011, the country began to fall apart and continues to fall apart and it's not an accident in any way that every single day we'll see a headline, another 40 people killed in a bombing hough deep that decay will go, who knows? but if we were there, it would be unlikely that it would have happened. on afghanistan, we are at a point now where the president is holding off on a final decision about how many troops to leave in afghanistan. what i hear is that it may go as high as 18,000. if we leave 18,000 there, they're going to be the cream of the crop, very very best. for two reasons. one to prevent afghanistan from

going down at the train -- down the drain completely. more important, there are about 130 acomic bombs in pakistan, right next door, in the northern part of pakistan, and if the bad guys get their hands on those weapons, that is when the u.s. will go in immediately, into northern pakistan. that's already understood. so with this particular point we are on the edges, one gentleman said, of so many continuous wars that the question must again be asked of -- i tried very hard in this book to do -- why is that the case? who has the authority? and should it all be vested in one man? and my answer is, no. >> host: the book is "the road to war." and marvin will be here signing copies later. thank you very much. [applause] >> excellent, thank you. the authors' book is for sale in

the lobby and he will be signing net the arts room to the left. we ask you clear the even if you have tickets for the next session. it's very important. so the and have a good afternoon. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> we'll be back in a couple of minutes for the final panel of the printers row litfest.

>> representative greg walled, what's on your summer reading list? i just finished the victory lab. i threw a little political stuff on the side. that talks' persuasion and how the world of campaigns has changed. i'm hoping this summer to get to the biography on jefferson, which i have on my pile. and then i have a new one on roosevelt, teddy roosevelt. i'm a big fan theodore roosevelt and his energy and stale, style, and one that deal with his anytime south america so should be interesting. >> the book is called, if you knew me, you would care, and as you said, when it comes to women in war, everyone thinks of them

as victims, but i really did not actually -- none of us wanted to convey the victim's story because though there is a victim in the story, their story is so far more than just a victim story. they are not defined by the actual story. what they're defined is by what they make out of the story. claudeine, for example, is a woman who wanted to be a doctor when she was a kid. she wanted to have -- had an aspiration and everything is good and her father died when she was 13 and he had to leave school so she can work and help her mother support her. with claudine, i can tellout what she went through, but when she was 16 she fell in love with a young man. sew saw -- she saw him on her way to church and they would glance at each other and had crush on each other, and until -- she talks about how she fell in love, and they got

married when they were 18, for those who are young in here. they got married when -- later on and they had a happy marriage, and they had kids and they had a house and it was a happy marriage. until the war one day broke out. and when the war broke out it took everybody away from him and he started drinking and became alcoholic and then he start beating her up. and one day he beat her up so badly that the hospital refuse to treat her unless she tells who did this to her, and that's how her new journey started. they told the hospital, they took him to prison, and when he left prison he divorce his life, but, yes, she was raped two year ago by a soldier she did not know who he is, but not only claudine, claudine made her hair in this style, see how cool it is. claudine is a woman who is in

love. claudine is a woman who was beaten, who survived, who has a farm right now. it's the story -- the story is never a simple story of those others in other parts of the world, and in this case in congo. i met -- i started the journey of women for women thinking i am embarking on a journey to save the world. i learned that the world is saving me and the very woman i end up thinking i'm helping-end up helping me. i asked her what does peace mean for her, ask every woman, what does see men for piece, bus part of the goal is to understand war and peace from a women's perspective. when i asked what does she mean by peace, she says peace is inside my heart. no one can take it away from me. no one can give it to me. now, i go to yoga every single day. at least i try, and i spend so much money on yoga studios and meditation and all kinds of things just so i can understand

the peace claudine is talking about. peace is inside my heart. no one can take it away from me. no one can give it to me. if i tell you she was locked in a room for three months and raped day in and day out by one military commander, and the day she was supposed to be killed he said i cannot see you to be killed so he gives her his military uniform and pretends it's a machine gun, he steals one0s motorcycle 0 he can give hear ride to her home village, and she says the child i had out of rape is my profit. she teaches me how to love, and that is if you knew me, you would care, you would care that you would understand the intimate stories not only of the horrible stories. this woman said, do not look at me as a poor woman. i was a rich woman once. she had her cows and chicken and

goat and the war came and they just stole it a. from her. and we have to connect what i learned in the journey, it's not only what the victim's story. this woman was not smiling because she has a gap in her teeth, and like many of us appreciate beauty and want to be beautiful and was embarrassed just to smile to show the gap in 2007 her -- the in between her teeth and if we connect on the beautiful story and connect on the love store and the story this woman's husband cheated on her and got her h.i.v. and they're not all bad stories. it is stories i learned from this woman who is beautician. i learned how to pay attention to my upperly and my eyebrows and she helped me clean it up afterwards because in afghanistan there is a beauty that every woman appreciate and

by far we see them only as the burka, this woman has a beauty parlor, she actually makes sure that -- she does all the weddings. she was talking about makeup and all of that. but the woman was married to a man who is 40 years older than her, and her parents did not want thor marry this man but they were so worried about her, they gave up. the were so worried he would kidnap her anyway. she is struggling day in and day out so she can send her four daughters to school. she has been victimized, but she is not defined by heir victim story. and if we cannot see her beyond the victim story, then it is shame on us. the dalai lama said if you cannot respect those you serve, then better not serve them. because they would feel if you do not respect them.

>> one of the interesting aspects of this building's history is the fact it exists at all. and really, much of the reason this building is still here is due to our governor at the time, governor vance. when the civil war started to come to a close and union troops were camped outside raleigh, he was very concerned about the fate of the people of raleigh and of its buildings. he knew what had happened in many of the other southern cities when troops came through, and so he crafted a peaceful surrender of the city of raleigh. he agreed to leave the city of raleigh and have the confederate troops leave the city of raleigh peacefully, and if the union

troops would also take charge of the city of raleigh peacefully, and specifically if they would spare the state capitol with its museum and library. we do have three representations of george washington here at the state capitol. one outside and two inside. and the statue downstairs is actually a copy of the original statue within the state house that burned and that was destroyed. that statue was made by an italian sculptor. he represented george washington in a way that he felt matched his reputation, as military leader, as a political leader. and so he made him in a very classical way. looked like a roman general. and that was not entirely a popular decision with the people of north carolina. and probably the thing that shocked people the most is his legs and feet are completely bare. many people thought that was disrespectful to show a president with his legs and his

toes showing. >> more from the north carolina state capitol next weekend as booktv and american history tv book at history and literary life in raleigh, north carolina. on c-span2 and 3. what are you reading this summer? booktv wants to know. >> three books. the first is, community project. and about a -- [inaudible] another book on my list is gulf, adventures of -- a book about how we eat. [inaudible] and the last book on my list is

called -- on life's meaning in math, and -- [inaudible] >> let us know what you're reading this summer. tweet us at booktv, pose it on our facebook page or send us an e-mail.

>> watch for the authors in the near future on booktv and on

booktv.org. >> and now here's edward ball and john glassie, live from chicago. >> printers row lit fest. we would like to give a special thank you to all of our sponsors who have helped make lit fest such a huge success. today's program will be broadcast live on c-span2's booktv. if there's time at the end for q&a, please use the microphone at the center of the room so that the home audience will be able to hear the question. going along with that, after this if you would like to see your question on air or just

catch anything you may have missed, this will be rebroadcasting at 11 p.m. central time on saturday and midnight central time on sunday. please keep the spirit of lit fest going all year with a subscription to printers row, the tribune premium book section fiction series and membership program. visit harrison and dearborn. there you will find special perks for subscriptions and rates including lit fest totes and posters. finally, the authors' books will be sold on the second floor of this center where we are, so you saw them in the lobby. book signing will take place immediately following this session in the arts room to your left. at this time i would ask that you turn off your cell phones and all electronic devices. and without any further ado, i would like to welcome our moderator, eric blanks. [applause]

>> thank you. and thank you for coming today. this'll be a very interesting panel between, with two authors who have written books that may on the surface look quite unalike but, i think, share very interesting affinities. i think that the woman who just gave us the fine introduction may have mentioned that you should turn off your cell phones. if you still have them on, if you would, please, do that. what we'll try and do today is we'll have a little bit of a conversation about the two titles, and then at the, for the last 15 minutes or so if you have questions, we'll take them, and you can address our two panelists during that part of the conversation. um, i'd like to well cardiology to the -- welcome to the stage right now our two authors,

edward ball and john glassie. [applause] edward ball's new book entitled "the inventor and the tycoon: a gilded age murder and the birth of moving pictures," and edward ball is the author of four works of nonfiction including "slaves in the family" which won the national book award. he lives in connecticut and teaches at yale university. and to my right is john dallas si who has written the new book "a man of misconceptions: the life of an eccentric in an age of change," which he does not include the name of the subject that the biography concerns, so i will give it right now -- i'm going to say kercher, although we've already had a discussion about the way to pronounce this man's correctly. john is a former contributor editor to the new york times magazine. helys in brooklyn and is -- he lives in brooklyn and has

contribute today a number of terrific publications as well, so i want to welcome both of them. [applause] now, as i said, the two subjects of these and in the case of edward ball's book really his two summits as well -- subjects as well -- so we'll say three subjects, are very much money of a particular time. one flourish inside the jesuit culture of knowledge in the 17th century. the author of seven million words all in latin and who already by the end of his life was considered something of a, by many people, a charlatan, a crank and bit of a mad genius. the other was a photographer who was transplanted west, took himself west, already well into his adult life having gone through three professions leading to that.

changed his name six or seven times? i may have lost count of the exact number of names that edward moybridge underwent in the course of his career before he found his calling as a photographer and went on to incredible fame as someone who can conceivably lay credit to the birth of the moving picture. and along the way he also murdered a man which plays a very interesting and complex part in edward ball's book. his life intersected with that of leland stanford, one of the great robber-barons of the 19th century, fabulously wealthy, was the owner of the central pacific railroad and also had an incredible love of horses. and that gives us a little bit of a way to talk about the story and to get into both books. i'll start with john. you wrote very early on in your

book, you say: kercher was so prolific and so ingenius that he might have been remembered as a 17th century leonardo. the problem was he got so many things wrong, and this is where the terrifying part comes in. a somewhat untrustworthy priest, egomaniac, quote: his works in number, bulk and uselessness are not surpassed in the whole field of learning. so just to begin, i'd like to ask you why then did you write his biography, and what were you thinking? >> very good question. i can say, first of all, i told my family and friends i had a book coming out called "a man of misconceptions," they all thought it was my memoir. [laughter] i had to correct them, no, indeed, this is the story of a 17th century jesuit who was an author and inventer.

very famous in his time, to hobnobbed with popes and influenced some of the great minds of the time. but he was fairly quickly forgotten after his death. and, of course, the question, well with, why write about somebody like that? he's a fascinating figure to me. as i say, he was an author who wrote 30-plus books depending on how you count them. many of them were a thousand pages long. they were beautifully-illustrated books, and they were sort of the come pend ya of knowledge on whatever the topic was of the time. magnetism, optics, music, astronomy, kind of goes on and on. and, you know, as i say, many of the sort of finest minds, people we know who are now household names unlike my friend,

descartes and newton had to contend with his ideas. he also ran this fantastic museum sort of cabin of curiosities in rome where he exhibited the tailbones of a mermaid and a brick from the tower of babel and other curiosities. a lot of, lot of vomiting actually. [laughter] there's some baroque fascination with vomiting. >> gulling things. >> yes, gurgling things, regurgitation, which i have not bothered to look into too deeply. so, but the problem was just as you suggested he was sort of steeped in sort of the magic and mysticism of what we think of the prescientific period. he believed that nag metism was

this -- magnetism was this sort of define energy. he believed in what they called natural magic and certain things we'd now say were occult. and he also happened to believe that mountains were hollow and sort of on and on. and so a lot of these notions were not going to sort of stand the test of time or the experimental method as science kind of began to develop. and i guess i was interested in him because he provides -- i wanted to sort of trace the life of this person against the backdrop of this period which is a very important period. a lot of progress in science, technology. as i say, it's the time of gal lay -- galileo, descartes, newton. i thought it would be an interesting way to open up this

two-word phrase we have now for this period, at least in terms of the sciences and technology. you know, we call it the scientific revolution. and, you know, i guess my feeling was or my suspicion was that it was a lot more complicated than that label could sort of suggest. so i thought it would be an interesting way to take a peek at how these kinds of transformations take place and also to see how human beings who were sort of in the middle of them contend with them and deal with them. so that was, i think, the main sort of motivation. >> yeah. and moybridge occupies a kind of similar place in terms of his historical position. he, you know, is someone who we were talking about a little bit earlier is really on the cusp of, well, certainly of a new way of thinking about the world and being able to see the world, a new visual regime if you want to use the sort of theory

expression. but, you know, i think he's also someone who combines being very much a showman with being very much of an artist and considering himself a scientist as well. is that really what drew you into an interest in writing this magnificent biography or joint biography of stanford and moy bridge? >> well, there might have been several things. i was drawn to it partly by looking around at our own situation today in which we are bathed in moving pictures. we consume six or seven hours of motion pictures a day in our television watching, in our telephone viewing and our computer screen surfing. and there's, there is one characteristic that holds all of these disparate media together,

and that is whereas cinema is something that you go to see in a film theater and a computer screen might seem somewhat different, but in the presence of pictures in motion we fall into a kind of mess herric state, a kind of of -- and i wanted to see what might have been the origin of such a common thing, our fascination with things in motion. and it was nearly accidental that the investigation took me back to 19th century america to california during the frontier days when these two quite unlikely and quite incompatible

men -- a preposterously rich robber-baron controlling a railroad and a kind of disheveled photographer who was interested in photographing nature -- came together to try to create a kind of stop motion photography that could then be animated. and it was quite by accident that it led me there. but you're right, eric, that the collaboration between these two men did create a kind of new visual regime. which before the 1870s there were no such things as moving pictures. and since then that has been the entire direction of the culture to this day and will continue to be, i think. >> i think one of the things that that's really foresting

about your -- interesting about your book is the single technical breakthrough he's able to make and this is before the murder trial when he is able to, basically, reduce the time of exposure that it takes to create an image, photographic image, then leads itself to so many of his other developments whether it's the -- [inaudible] scope which he called it which you might define for us, but ultimately to the creation of the illusion of movement as he, um, you know, is able to transfer the single images that he took to -- [inaudible] and to develop the technical mean toss project them. -- means to project them. that, to me, is -- the story of exactly how he's able to work with, you know, a tremendous amount of capital behind him is finally producing the sort of breakthrough studies of i think it's 1877 is the year that those photographs are made which

involve engineers from stanford be's own company, that involve technicians from all around san francisco. but it comes from this one sort of technical achievement which i think is fascinating. and it's almost like a cascade of other possibilities that come out of that. it makes me think about, um, you know, we talked earlier about it's hard to pinpoint or it's impossible to pinpoint a single moment of, you know, technical change. but that's one thing where you start to feel this kind of seed is planted and makes possible all these other kind of, you know, changes that we finally start to see when cinema becomes a common experience for people, you know, all over the world. >> yeah. the story in a nutshell was that there was an english-born

photographer, edward moy bridge, who came to america in 1850 to new york as a bookseller, went to california during the gold rush and made a marginal living in the booming city of san francisco for the next 15 or 18 years. and in his late 30s he became a photographer. and made some of the first images of yosemite valley, that 7-mile gash in the california landscape with its waterfalls and sheer rock faces which became the images of the expanding american west. and then he met this guy living more or less out of a suitcase, he met the most powerful and rich man west of the mississippi, leland stanford, who recruited him to take photographs of his, stanford's

horses. stanford was a horse connoisseur who owned about a hundred thoroughbreds and stabled them at his country house which was in a state he called palo alto. -- an estate he called palo alto. [laughter] stanford university is built on the site of the former stanford horse farm at palo alto. and he recruited moybridge to photograph his horses with this question he wanted answered was do the hooves of a horse ever leave the ground in a gallup? for a horseman of that time, it was something of interest. and so moybridge set up 12 cameras along the side of a horse track. the horses would gallup past the camera and trigger the exposure as they galluped past -- galloped past. and eventually he was able to

arrest the motion of a horse in mid gallop and determine that, yes, the hooves of the horse leave the ground at a certain moment. then he, as eric made allusion to, he created the first motion picture projector, an apparatus that he calls -- moybridge was very funny with names. he changed his name many times, and every time he invented a new device, he gave it an awful name. >> every time his name was changed, it also became -- >> more and more awful, that's right. [laughter] he invented a projector which he called a zoopraxiscope. [laughter] and by arraying the horses on this disc, spinning the disc and projecting the light through the perimeter, he could animate these images on a scream. and that was, if you -- on a screen. and that was, if you like, a point of origin for moving

pictures. >> uh-huh. the, the -- one thing that we also talked about a little bit earlier was that when we were thinking about all the different ways that these men, you know, they certainly share a long history of eccentricity. but one of the things they also share in common is a particular kind of patronage and working a certain kind of patronage system that was very much also part of their intrigue. kercher had a genius for attaching himself to very powerful figures in the church but also to, i think ferdinand iii. and he often found a way to kind of put his foot in the door i think through projects that he never quite got around to completing. this is quite different from moybridge who in a lot of ways, i think, he's a genius at certain things, and i think you

make a very strong case also for what a remarkable photographer he was before the motion studies project. but in a weird sense, there's a way that stanford kind of discovers him. moybridge was very talented on his own. kercher was, of course, very talented as well, but he also had a great talent, i think, for selling himself and selling his projects. you might talk about that in connection to the long project of translation which is never quite completed or -- >> right. >> -- it was to a certain degree, but -- >> right. i mean, with kercher i happen to say -- >> yeah. >> we won't call the whole things off, we'll just continue. it, actually, with kercher it goes all the way back to his days as a, when he was studying to be a jesuit priest. he would get reassigned to different towns, all of a sudden

he would be putting on firework shows for everyone or be assigned to perform natural magic. he made flying dragons. they were really just illuminated kites and so forth. but he had the gift of showmanship, and that got him the anticipation, for example, when he was quite -- the attention, for example, when he was quite young of the prince elector of mimes who happened to be sort of the highest ranking official in the catholic church within what's now germany, you know? it was the holy roman empire of the german nation they called it, although as voltaire famously said it was neither holy, nor roman, nor an empire. it was a conglomeration of principalities, city-states and other intis -- entities. so he went to work as a 22-year-old jesuit priest, and, you know, would perform sort of magic tricks for him.

that's where this device, this sunflower seed clock first came, well, it first appears in my book anyway, and it was really just a parlor trick, but it was something that went along. he wrote about it later, and descartes even tried it out himself to see if he could make a clock work. this was a clock that -- he believed that the sunflower -- or he sold the idea that the sunflower seed -- >> yeah, he told the idea that the sunflower seed, and this was connected to sort of his larger sort of understanding of the world, this is how he wanted the universe to operate, that in the same way that -- i know we're getting off the track off of patronage, but in the same way that the sunflower itself follows, you know, the turns and follows the suns in the course of the day, the notion was that the sun had this mysterious

attractive power, kind of a mystical magnetic power and that the seed had this inherent sort of receptivity to this power. and it became -- it was very interesting to folks at the time, actually, because, you know, after all, galileo was just around that time, you know, talking -- making, becoming the proponent of a system where the sun had some type of ability to send the planets, you know, revolving around itself. so there were a lot of folks who were very interested in this notion if, indeed, there could be this inherent power in the sunflower seed. this might help galileo's case. you know, this stuff works in sort of strange ways. anyway, he was performing these kinds of parlor tricks and so on, and he was a very good, you

know, sort of courtier. he ended up in rome with in 1633 just several months after the galileo trial because he had convinced a french nobleman who in turn convinced cardinal bash runny who was the -- barberini who was the nephew of the pope that he had a manuscript written by an ancient arab rabbi that contained sort of the secrets that would enable him to unlock, to crack the code to have egyptian hieroglyphics which was something that everyone wanted to -- >> because that was thought to contain the secret knowledge. >> it was thought to contain secret wisdom that went all the way back to the time of adam. this was the common belief that the ancient egyptians had somehow gotten this strain of

ancient wisdom and then encoded it using the hieroglyphics and encoded it on obelisks and so forth. and to be very honest, the pope and cardinal barberini, they were very interested in this kind of thing as well. and so he got himself set up nicely with access to all the libraries of rome. the cardinal set him up, and then he sort of failed to produce that, the work that he was hired to do. and pretty soon he was off a, you know, writing books on magnetism and pursuing, you know, doing -- we talked about magic lantern shows. he was experimenting with optics and projection and so forth. so he got, he was a very, very curious person. he had a genuine set of passion for knowledge and so forth. he kind of got himself in the

door in many cases with these sort of -- with his charm after, you know, for one thing and these stories, and, you know, he wasn't above embellishing the truth a little bit when it suited him. and then that would allow him to just sort of indulge his curiosity and produce more books and sell 'em. >> uh-huh. and he was an extremely, one of the most famous men in europe i think at the time. i mean, certainly in the republic of letters -- >> yes. >> -- he was extremely well known. moybridge's fame came in a slightly different way, through the murder trial which did make him well known not just in the united states, but in europe. that didn't, strangely, i think it seems from the sense that i get from the biography it actually turned him somehow into a sympathetic character. >> yes, paradoxically. moybridge, at age 42 in san

francisco -- this would have been the year 1874 -- had from what records i could discover very few previous relationships with women. but at age 42 he's a quite successful landscape photographer, and he meets and marries a woman who works in the gallery where he sells his photographs, a woman called flora downs who is half his age, 21. and they settle in a comfortable house in san francisco. but moybridge goes traveling continuously and comes home to find that his wife is having an affair with a guy called harry larkins who is a drama critic, a quite handsome -- [laughter] handsome young man, handsome swain on the stinking streets of

san francisco. and one night moybridge takes his gun. in those days in frontier, california, practically every man owned a gun. and he goes to larkins' house, knocks on the door, and when larkins answers the door, he says my name is edward moybridge, i have a message about my wife, and he shoots him dead. now, there are about eight witnesses to this crime, and moybridge actually admitted it. he goes on trial for murder in 1874. he and his wife are alienated by this event. [laughter] and the jury, all-male jury, all married men, are sympathetic to moybridge because at the time it was not uncommon for men to get away with assaulting or even killing their sexual rivals.

and he was acquitted on the basis of something referred to as justifiable homicide. which was also known in another, by ool legalism which is to say the provocation defense. the provocation being that my wife is sleeping with this man, so aroused is my ire that i can kill him. and he's acquitted, as many men were at that time. in the any case -- in any case, this has the perverse effect of making him more well known and also a somewhat sympathetic figure. his wife, his ex-wife, by the way, has a sad end. she contracts influenza and dies within a matter of two years. and after this murder, which is reported in all the newspapers in the country, there's a telegraph system around america

by this time, and so if something happens of interest in california, it is read in the pape pers in washington -- papers in washington, new york, atlanta, new orleans be and chicago. >> and it should also be pointed out, the telegraph grew with the railroad system that leland stanford was responsible for in the west. >> so after this point wherever moybridge goes, he's known as the murderer who invented this incredible technology. his reputation remains that right to the end of husband life. -- his life. so after this crime and the acquittal, he goes back to work for mr. stanford and makes the photographs that make him famous. now, you might have in your memory bank of old 19th century imma'ams pictures -- images pictures of horses galloping in

motion, the um imagines of horses galloping left to right in stomp motion. and these pictures, which were published in 1877, '78, they were publish inside europe, they were published all over the u.s. gave him a kind of second career as a showman. he would go from town to town and set up in a lecture hall or a vaudeville theater and give talks as moybridge the inventer, professor moy have been bridge he then referred to himself. and, in fact, at the 8973 -- 1893 chicago world's fair on the midway he had his own pavilion which, where he did these performances of his moving picture apparatus.

anyway -- >> what we might call the first cinema. >> yeah. people paid to go see professor moyprivilege and his device, yeah. >> uh-huh. it's a fascinating story. but his -- the murder didn't, the murder trial and the fact that he was guilty even though he was acquitted, it didn't have much of an effect on his relationship with stanford. >> no, it didn't. it appears that mr. stanford who was his patron got him a lawyer who defended him at the trial and continued to, you know, conduct evening performances at his 50-room mansion on nob hill in san francisco with mr. moybridge as the featured performer. and they remained friends for a long period of time. >> although they eventually

drifted apart x stanford publishes the book of photographs of his trotter. can't remember which trotter it was. captured in motion basically without moy judge bridge's name attached to the volume at all. >> yeah. this part of the story is about an alliance or a partnership or a friendship that produces remarkable things and then sours like a love affair. and stanford was jealous of moybridge's fame and took moybridge's photographs and published them in an expensive volume without moybridge's credit. mr. moybridge becomes enraged and sues his former friend. stanford loses the lawsuit, and they become alienated from one another, and they no longer see each other. this happens some 20 years after their first meeting, yeah.

>> what was the ultimate -- or what do we think about kercher today? are there any sort of remnants of his, you know, great fame of the 17th century? what kind of effect does he have? you know that his work on egypttology is not taken very seriously today, and certainly his work on signnology is not be remembered. >> that's right. we think that his work on -- well, most areas is not -- [laughter] not well remembered. but they were, as i say, you know, the books were really, they did contain almost everything that could be known about a given topic at the time. for instance, when the royal society in london was founded, very famous members included, of course, robert boyle, robert hook, christopher wren and realitier, of course, isaac newton and others, edmund holly. when they first started gathering, they said, okay,

let's figure out what we know. what's the state of engine? knowledge? and they went to kercher's weeks to do it -- books to do it. i love the way kercher sort of illustrates how you can be a genius and a crackpot. maybe most geniuses are crackpots, i don't know. maybe that ties into edward -- moybridge's story as well. he, his legacy is very interesting, you know? he was a progressive in certain ways. he was one of the first people to describe what could be seen through a microscope. this was in his book on optics in 1646, and he was perhaps the first person to study human blood with a microscope. it's an ongoing debate. i won't say how active it is about whether to give him credit for the germ theory of disease because he looked at the blood of plague victims.

the plague came through rome in 1656, and he -- it's not clear what he saw, it's not clear exactly, you know, how sophisticated this microscope was. but he looked, and he saw what we he called a multitude of invisible little worms. and he then took the step of proclaiming that disease must be, therefore, be a living thing, that these worms were the propagators of the plague. and as they say, you know, people sort of debate whether, you know, you should be given credit for this thing. actually earlier before we came on stage and we were talking about this notion of priority and, you know, it's sort of common to talk about who was the inventer -- we were thinking about, for example, the magic lantern. kercher had actually been given credit for being the inventer of

the magic lantern for something like 300 years. he's not. and, you know, there are many people -- >> but he probably would have been happy to take credit for it. >> he would have loved to take credit for it. but he also got in a controversy with an englishman, and the truth is they have been using those kinds of horns, kercher admitted, you know, even alexander was nobody to use these great, giant horns. so the notion that sometimes is these questions about when something was invented, who invented it, you know, they don't -- it's very difficult to provide a clear answer. and i think that is reflective of the way that actually progress happens and the way that things really get done, you know? so that's something that in my book i really was quite interested in. i think the way we tend to think, well, there's a great mind, and he invents something,

and we all benefit from it, and we move on. but things move in sort of strange ways, and you can't always tell what's going to end up being ridiculous or what's going to end up being right or what's going to be misinterpreted by someone -- >> or how those things get handed out. >> exactly. because he invented so many things that were remarkably useless even in their own time. and i can't go any further without asking you the talk about the -- to talk about the cat piano. >> well, i'd be happy to. apologies to all cat loves. kercher only aledly invented the -- allegedly invented the pet piano. i wanted to make that clear, and, each, i'm not sure anyone needs to build it, the it's more a conceptual joke. you can tell people about it. the notion was that kim cher invented this thing to dispel the melancholy of a prince.

maybe this prince was the prince elector of times that i just finished a few minutes ago. so you would gatter a number of cats and arrange them to what we called tonal magnified. and then you'd string their tails, bus them in coaches that were attacked to a keyboard and thing through channels -- >> i really apologize for -- [inaudible] [inaudible] >> there's a great illustration in the book that'd be worth checking out. and in place of regular piano mallets there would be be sort of pricks or tacks. and when you played a key, the pricker would tyke on the trail of -- strike on the tail of a cat x it would howl. and, you know, you would play a tune that way. as the description goes, you know, when it was finally

played, it supplied the kind of arm thatny as the voices -- harmony as the voices of cats are -- >> chopsticks jokes probably probe live rated -- >> exactly. no, you know, it's still, as i say, it's a great con conceptual joke. as i say, you tonight necessarily even need to invent, need to build these things. a lot of it is about the imagination, the imagination and ideas, you know? and he was sort of a master with that. he really was. >> yeah. that's one of the points that was very surprising about moybridge. he might tell him a little bit about that. but it actually made a rest interesting segway into his work as a photographer. >> yes. the ec sentries tees of add chen you ares are -- the cat piano if

we regard it as a wage wager, im going to try to raise the ante a little bit. mr. moybridge was well known in his personal life for bunk unkempt. he had long white hair and a white beard down to the middle of his chest, and he had clothes in oiz his holing. he had one eccentricity of diet that followed him around, and that was that he liked those little bugs that grow on old cheese. he referred to them as cheese maggots. and he would go out of his way to collect the old cheese from friends' cupboards in order to harvest the maggots and put them in little bags. he would carry these around from them and occasionally snack on a

cheese mag netted while he was in the midst of an important piece of photographly. [laughter] >> note tock it until you've tried it, it's the only thing i can say. >> from age 35 moves from his home in california to london and tries no make it as an inventer. he invent as couple of unworkable machine. one is kind of a washing machine, a table-top barrel with two hand-hike appendages on the end of sticks. you were to fill it with water, and open/close, pound the close from the outside by moving these sticks. and he couldn't to anyone to buy it. and he mention add coup of other things.

and it was only several words of yale your: that's not an interesting -- it's a kind of failure that drives people to obsession. so he becomes interesting as an insolenter, as a creator and artist after age 40. after many episodes of failing in other professions. and that's the case also in ways with stanford. it's not really late in life that he begins to succeed, but he was a grocer in sacramento that made his way from albany, had delivers in wisconsin as a hour and, basically, you know, it's not terribly late in high that he becomes the that zillion their who runs roast coast politics. >> i huh, yeah. >> i think in both books you have a very strong sense of the contingency of our knowledge and

the way that we understand the world, and i think that's actually one of the most impressive achievements of both book oohs. both are fascinating. we are running really low on time, and i do want to open it up for questions. so, honest sanaa. >> hi. >> oh, may i ask you to go to the microphone since it's being recorded? >> i feel as though we're being tantalized about moybridge's other names which are terrible, but you can't revealed them. >> oh, sure. all right. he was born edward mugger age in a town southwest of loan deny. he came to america and changed his name to edward moy judge -- moygovernment's exhibit ridge with a g. he moves to san francisco and changes his name. he becomes a photographer, and he throws his his name and repaptizes himself as heel owes,

the odd of the sun. [laughter] and that's how he signs his work, heel owes. and then at age 50 he changes his first name to the medieval spelling of the name edward, eadward. and that's the name that he dies with. >> he goes from sounding like a character in guessing to a character in ma newt hamilton. which is interesting. are there any other questions? did you have a question? >> did i have -- >> yes. could you go to the mic if you do? >> you both spoke in a general way about the i didn't prayingses for the booms, but i

would just like to know more specifically if you could talk about did you stumble across these stories, was it a contingency or did it bring out of some other work that you were doing? i guess i would like to know a little bit about that. >> sure. i probably first read about kim cher, we were speaking earlier in lawrence wechsler's book "mr. wilson's cabin," which i recommend. it's about curiosity, museums and truths and knowledge, it's a wonderful little sol unit he was mentioned in there because of his role as the curator of this museum, this cabin of curiosities. then in 2005, i think, i with us asked by the editor of a now-defunct annual publication called "the god's pell," not exactly something you'd find at the newsstand at, you know, the

airport to wry a let's cay about kim kerr. as i mentioned, his books were filled with these tan tsaic engraving n. for many years, but

in all of the scholar she stuff that i had read about him, there was no mention of the murder. that he committed. and i thought it might be interesting to tell the story of an inventer who committed a murder and who changed the course of media history in the process. so it was like going back to an idea that had been simmering for a long time. >> they're both figures that i think there's, especially in the last decade there's been a lot of interest in. but i think your books are both outstanding and add very much to our sense of both men or all three men. and so eu8 say thank you. >> thank you. >> thank you, john, thank you,

edward. [applause] and i should mention both books are on sale outside, so if you haven't purchased a copy, you should certainly do so. >> excellent, thank you. thank you for attending this program. they will be signing books in the arts room to your left, and enjoy the rest of your evening here. [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] >> that concludes today's live coverage of the printers row lit fest in chicago. our coverage will continue tomorrow at 11 a.m. eastern. you can watch a reair of today's programs at midnight and also online at booktv.org. [inaudible conversations] >> you're watching booktv on c-span2. here's a look at our prime time lineup for tonight. starting at 7 even, roger -- [inaudible] talked about the life of the former u.n. secretary-general and nobel peace prize winner. and then at 8 george shlts

presents his book "issues on my mind." at 9 p.m. eastern, it's a look at alice walker's collection of essays, letters and poems. at 10 p.m. eastern, sally patel joins us on "after words" to discuss "brainwashed." and we wrap up tonight's prime time p programming at 31 eastern with matthew hancock. his book is masters of nothing, human nature, big finance and the fight for the soul of capitalism. visit booktv.org for more on this weekend's television scheduled to. what are you reading this summer? booktv wants the know. wants to know.

♪ ♪ >> let us know what you're reading this summer. tweet us @booktv, post it on our facebook page or send us an e-mail at booktv@c-span.org. >> i was curious what, also, you

think the role of ceos in talking about capitalism and defending capitalism is. do they have a role? could you talk about government, the role of government sometimes and how it works against business? do ceos have a role in talking about and defending capitalism and explaining it to people, or is it something you purely do by example? >> i think that we do. i mean, one of the most disturbing statistics for me is that for the longest period of time -- you have to understand the history of the united states. we started out really poor here. we were back water here in the united states. and really as we embrace captain limp in the united states -- capitalism in the united states, we had tens of millions of immigrants come over here to create a better life for themselves because they had more freedom. they had the freedom to enterprise. they had the freedom to start businesses.

and for the longest period of time, i mean, well over a hundred years in the united states was the freest nation in the world in terms of economic freedom. it was the most capitalistic nation in the world without exception. and a short a period of time ago as just the year 2000, for example, the united states still ranked number three on the economic freedom index behind hong kong and singapore. so we weren't number one anymore, but we were still number three against pretty dynamic economies in hong kong and singapore. in but over the last 13 years, we've now dropped down to number 18. when people ask, you know, what's wrong with the economy, why do we have such high unemployment, why has disposable income on a per capita basis, why is that declining and has other the last ten years, the answer to me is right there. we are less economically free today than we were 13 years ago. and as our economic freedom

declines, as government regulations increase, as taxes increase, the engine that's the basis for our prosperity which is business is lessened, and our prosperity is, therefore, declining as well. as economic freedom goes down, so does prosperity. so if the capitalists, if the business people aren't willing to speak up for free enterprise capitalism, we can expect economic freedom to continue to lessen, and american prosperity will continue to lessen as well. we are far from being in a free enterprise capitalism system anymore. we are really moved towards a crony capitalistic system where we've got big government and big business often times colluding with each other. the great example is the fiscal cliff bill that just passed. and we look at, beneath the kimono there, and what you see is payoffs for politically well-connected organizations such as, well, hollywood,

alternative energy stand out for me. but there are all kinds of special deals being cut, and we're moving away from a system where people think it's fair and that this is a system where you can get ahead through hard work and enterprise to one where people think, well, the way to get ahead is to be politically well connected, and that's a real problem. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> are you interested in being a part of booktv's online book club? our selection this month is sheryl sandberg's book, "lean in: women, work and the will to lead." ms. sandberg, who is the coo of facebook, discusses why it's still difficult for women to achieve leadership roles in the united states. she also talks about her own career choices and experiences. you can watch her talk about "lean in" at booktv.org, and as you read the book this month, post your thoughts on twitter with the hash tag btv book club. and write on our facebook page,

facebook.com/booktv. and then on june 25th at 9 p.m. eastern, join our live, moderated discussion on both social media sites. and if you have an idea for next month, send your suggestion on which books you think we should include in our online book club via titter, facebook or e-mail at booktv@c-span.org. >> one of the interesting aspects of this building's history is the fact that it exists at all. and really much of the reason that this building is still here is due to our governor at the time, governor advance. vance. when the civil war started to come to a close and union troops were camped outside raleigh, he was very concerned about the fate of the people of raleigh and of its buildings. e knew, he knew what had happened in many of the other

southern cities when troops came through, and so he crafted a peaceful surrender of the city of raleigh. he agreed to leave the city of raleigh and have the confederate troops leave the city of raleigh peacefully if the union troops would also take charge of the city of raleigh peacefully and if, specifically, they would spare the state capitol with its museum and library. we do have three representations of george washington here at the state capitol; one outside and and two inside. and the statute downstairs is actually -- the statue downstairs is actually a copy. the original copy was in the statehouse that burned, and that was destroyed. that statue was made by an italian sculptor. he represented george washington in a way that he felt really matched his reputation as a military leader, as a political leader. and so he made him -- in a very classical way -- look like a roman general. and that was not entirely a popular decision with the people