>> host: judith flanders now joins us. judith flanders writes about the victorian era in of her books. ms. flanders, what is the victorian era when we talk about that? >> guest: well, the victorian era is technically in which the

period queen victoria reigned, 1837-1901. i'm not very technical, i cheat a lot, so my books cover what we politely cover the long 19th century which sometimes starts in the 18th century, so sometimes i discuss things that happened in the runup to queen victoria and often it goes to the beginning of world war i in 1914 which is, actually, a much more logical break when things changed very radically again. >> host: was it known as the victorian era at that time? >> guest: um, a little bit. not the way we know it, no. because apart from anything else, of course, it's much easier to call something an era once you know when it's going to end, and they department, and they didn't -- they didn't, and they didn't know it was going to be one of the longest reigns in british history and cover, really, the greater part of a century. you couldn't imagine that would happen.

>> host: why was it one of the greatest periods -- >> guest: no, just the longest. >> host: longest periods. >> guest: i like the victorians, but not everybody does. >> host: if you had to describe that era in british history, though, how would you describe it? >> guest: i think of it as a time of possibility. what i -- i mean, yes, there was dreadful stuff if you read dickens, if you read lots of 19th century novelists, there's all this terrible factory system that comes from the industrial revolution, there's tremendous poverty. there are, undoubtedly, dreadful things that went on in the 19th century. but it was an era of hope, and the idea that the future was going to be better. and we've got very cynical. and it often -- and fearful. we think the future's bound to be worse. i like the idea that things could get better, and if we work for a better society, we can produce a better society. and even saying those words today sounds so goody goody. but in the 19th century they

really believed it, and that's rather moving, i find. >> host: was there a big class division during that time? >> guest: enormous. in many ways. for a victorian historian now, it's not a happy time to live because i see a lot of the worst of the 19th century happening again, the very large division between the very richest and the very poorest happening again. the whole thing of even people in work -- often good work -- unable to live decently, in decent housing, feed and clothe tear children adequately -- their children adequately. you see it, you saw it now as well as then. so a lot of what we're seeing. as a historian, you want to coffer your eyes and say don't do that, don't do that, we did it, it was terrible. don't do it again. >> host: your book, "a circle of sisters," who is that about?

>> guest: well, the book, when i explain it to americans, it's very funny because i say these were four women who were married to or the children of or had -- or, sorry, married to or the parents of very famous people who you in america have never heard of. so it's less exciting, perhaps. but basically, one was married to the painter edward burn jones, one was the mother of rod yard kipling who in america you have -- rudyard kipling who in america you have heard of, one was the mother of stephen baldwin, so kipling and baldwin were first cousins, and one was married to a then-very famous painter, now very little known and if you've seen the pictures, there's a reason he's not very well known. but he helped set up the tate gallery, so he was in administrative art terms very important.

>> host: and these were sisters? >> guest: they were four sisters. they were the children of a not-very-prosperous methodist minister in the north, and they just happened somehow. >> host: and how did they come from the north, daughters of a vicar, and become well known women? >> guest: happenstance really. the mother of kipling married a not-very-successful artist who became an arts administrator in india, so that's chance. the wife of burn jones married a then-not at all successful painter who happened to have gone to school with her brother, so that was happenstance. the only one who actually married well was the one who married baldwin. they were a very prosperous family. they were what were known as iron founders which means that

they had the equivalent of steel mills today. and they were very wealthy. but, and she knew him through the methodist church. but otherwise, just happened. >> host: where did you find their a story, and why did you find them compelling? >> guest: i found the story, i was reading a biography of kipling, and i saw something that said, you know, his first cousin, stanley baldwin -- i thought how on earth was kip lipping's first cousin stanley baldwin? and then it said something about going to stay with his aunt and uncle, the burns jones. and i thought how did that happen? so i did a little research, and i found there was this extraordinary group, and i did what we all do which is i thought, hmm, one day i should do something about that. and then i went on with my life for 15 years. i was a publisher, and i was perfectly happy being a publisher. i had no plans to write a book.

and then things changed, and i thought one day, hmm, i am going to do something about that. >> host: were they -- did they live during the victorian era? >> guest: they did, almost precisely. i wrote the book 15 years ago, so if you're going to check on the dates now, that's going to be interesting. one of them was born in 1820, i do remember that. she was one of the younger ones. so, yes, i mean, they all lived from the early part of 19th century. i think one ultimately died in about 1910, '20. she was the last. so one of the things that attracted me was, apart from the fact that you had a politician, you had two painters, you had a writer which meant you could cover british cultural can life at least and some political life through these lives, it also meant that i could cover almost a century and see how things had changed there. >> host: judith flanders, you

mentioned that you were a publisher. >> guest: i was. >> host: where? >> guest: ooh, lots of places. i worked, i worked for penguin, i worked for tennyson hudson who published art books, i worked for a publisher named widenfeld and nicholson, i even briefly worked in the publications department of a museum. and then i fled. >> host: why? >> guest: because i had a nervous breakdown. publishing great stuff. [laughter] the things got difficult, and so i thought time for a change. >> host: and you started becoming an author. >> guest: yeah. i took three weeks' holiday which in england we get, and i went to the library, and i did research on these women, and i wrote a proposal, and i called a couple of agents i knew. of course; i was in an enormously privileged position in that i could just call up agents because i knew them. and said you may want to think

with horror at the idea, but i've written this proposal, do you want to look at it? and one of the agents said he wanted to take me on, and he said the best advice anyone ever gives an author, don't give up the day job. [laughter] so i gave up the day job, and here i am. >> host: we've heard that from a couple of the authors here in london that we've interviewed, that it's hard to be in england a writer solely. you have to be a writer and x. >> guest: yeah. it's very difficult. you have to remember apart from anything else about the changing economic climate, the changing reading habits just the sheer population difference in our two countries and, therefore, the sheer number of people who will buy books even if you do well. 300 million in the states? >> host: plus. >> guest: 60 million here. so if you have the same number of people who buy books, it's an awful lot less.

>> host: judith flanders, your most recent book, "the invention of murder," what's it aboutsome. >> guest: it's not my most recent book, but i'm delighted to talk about it. did people lie to you again? >> host: they did. >> guest: i've written a book called "the victorian city" which is subtitle. subtitled "everyday life in dickens' london." and my second book was called "the victorian house." and i walked through a standard rowhouse in middle class rowhouse as they existed in the 19th century, and i looked at how people lived in the houses, what they did all day. so many people in england still live in these houses, and yet we use them so differently. so i thought it'd be really interesting to see actually how the victorians used it. so for the victorian city i decided i'd tone the house, now it was -- i'd done the house, now it was time to go outside. what happened on the street, how

did the streets get used, who was there, who was passing through, what did they look like. really wonderful stuff like discovering that pavements were a very -- sidewalks were a very late development. previously, everything had been mixed up together. so you took your life in your hands every time you walked down the street. really great stuff. street sellers, how you could -- how the relatively new thing in england of having street food, you know, these carts that sell quite nice food. how they existed in the 19th century, and you could eat solidly wall to wall as you walked down the streets. and it was all linked up because, as everybody knows, last year was the 200th anniversary of dickens' birth. and so i used dickens, particularly his journalism -- because he was an enormous streetwalker. sorry, that sounds very rude.

it wasn't meant to sound rude. he wasn't really a streetwalker. he walked the streets. he had very bad insomnia, so he used to walk a lot at night, and he would describe what he saw in his journalism. and i realized that a lot of what we had taken in his novels for wonderful, imaginative writing actually was stuff he'd seen. and that that was really interesting. >> host: how well known was charles dickens during his time, and why did you use him in your subtitle of that book? >> guest: dickens was enormously well known. dickens was a rock star. dickens was the mick jagger of his day. everybody knew him. and be, actually, what was really interesting is i found through his life -- and he died very young, he was only 58 when he died. >> host: what did he die of? >> guest: hard work. he just sort of wore out. i think probably a stroke, but, you know, he was worn out. through his life i found

descriptions of him, people who had just seen him in the streets and knew who he was. and so sort of wrote in their diaries, saw charles dickens in the street today, this is what he looks like. and you could follow their descriptions, which was great. i used him partly because it was the 200th anniversary and my publisher thought it would be a good idea. but that was a little part. what he actually said to me was all your books are a disguised love letter to dickens, why don't you just let your head go and really use him. so i did. >> host: was he right? >> guest: he was right. >> host: why? >> guest: i think dickens was one of the greatest writers ever. horrible man. horrible man. but one of the greatest writers ever. i reread his books more than almost anything. >> host: the is there a typical -- is there a typical, for that book, is there a

typical life that you can describe, a victorian life? >> guest: um, i think that the typical lives, if you want, are the lives of what in those days would have either been called the working poor or the lower middle classes. one of the things that was so remarkable to me and actually taught me a good lesson about living in london, was how everybody walked. and there are these amazing descriptions of early morning and late evening of all the clarks in american clerks walking in to work. and they describe just these lines of black, these black-coated workers walking in. and i found a description one

man who did this every day -- and they would walk 2, 3, 4, 5 miles in each direction. and one man said the route was so caused with these -- crowded with these men, and it was so regimented that he would buy a newspaper as he set off in the morning, and he would read it all the way because you just had to keep going. i mean, there was -- and what would happen as they went in, the roads were sometimes paved, sometimes not. and hundreds of thousands of horses. so you can imagine what was on the roads. and so what you had were, first of all, you had crossing sweepers who were usually very poor boys who stood at intervals and swept the path clear in front of you, and you gave them

a hay penny, half a penny or something as you passed. and they did this every day. and then also as you went in there were shoe blacks, because the roads were so disgusting that you couldn't arrive at the office clean. and so these, again, were poor boys with no other form of income. and they would stand by the side of the street, and as you got close to your office and you were prepared to turn off, you would get your shoes polished and the bottoms of your trousers brushed. again, for half a penny. and then you would go into your office, you would with expected to be -- you would be expected to be there by about eight in the morning. you would work all day. you might have lunch break, but most likely not. i read one extraordinary thing which that the post office which, of course, was an enormous governmental employer, they finally gave the workers 15 minutes for lunch because the postpastor general, the man at

the -- postmaster general, the man at the very top, got tired of seeing these trays coming in and out from local taverns where people were ordering their lunch. so they got a whole 15 minutes to nip out and get something. and it depended, obviously, what time your office closed depended hugely on what you did. but they had something that were called foreign postnights which was the night that the mail went out to catch the ships and, you know, so say it was tuesday and thursday for the states and wednesday and friday for india. and so on foreign post nights you had to stay later to get the last post out so that it could go and get the ship. so you might be working from eight in the morning until eleven at night and then walk your five miles home again. so victorian life was

unbelievably hard. >> host: what was life like for the upper class, for queen victoria, for the royal family? >> guest: i know much less about the upper classes, because i'm not very interested in them. woman confesses, she's not interested in rich. shock. i think it was very dull. i think it was very comfortable and very dull. technology had made life a lot more comfortable. you had better lighting because the arrival of gaslighting had come. the arrival of better individual lighting like kerosene parafin had arrived. but you traveled -- travel was easier. you had trains now. and first class was extremely comfortable on the trains. harriet beecher stowe said when she came to visit, that it was

beyond compare. and also, she added, beyond price. it was very expensive. but it was very luxurious. so probably like today. if if you had a lot of money, life was really rather pleasant. i think it must have been ghastly if you were a woman. >> host: why? >> guest: because you weren't allowed to do anything. >> host: did women of the lower classes work? >> guest: they worked. the two main employers of women in the 19th century, one was service, being a maid, and the other was the textile industry. and they saw the employment of most women. but, you know, you could be a green grocer's wife, and you worked in a shop. or you could be what was called a coster monger which meant you sold fruits and vegetables from a cart. you know, if you were poor, you did anything to survive.

but if you were middle class, the whole way of proving you were middle class was that you didn't have to work, and and it sounds unbelievably boring. all of these hobbies we read about, all of these sort of demented women's hobbies such as embroidery and 74 kinds of knitting and making shell boxes and decorating picture frames and scrap -- it's just a a way of trying to fill time. >> host: judith flanders, london today a very clean city, seems very clean. the air's clean, the streets are very clean. would charles dickens recognize -- >> guest: oh, no. >> host: -- money of london? -- much of london? >> guest: oh, no. the dirt in london was a biword because london was, in the 19th century, the largest city the world had ever seen. and it had taken this huge population increase but was still mostly either an 18th

century city or it was a building site. it was expanding hugely. i mean, as the railways were coming in, that was being built, the bridges were being built, everything was being built. so i think most of the time it just looked like a bomb site. but also there were the amazing problems that no one had ever had to deal with of what to do with animal waste, what to do with human waste. at the time it was all dumped in the river. and so london was also, because it was of the first in so many things, it also had to work out the first solutions. and in 1858 they had the second of two very hot summers. hot in england, probably meaning 70. but anyway, it was hot. and the thames then was a tidal

river, so low and high tide. and when the tide went out, there was so much sewage on the banks and particularly as it got hotter and hotter and hotter that it actually fermented. and, of course, you have a very pretty little picture right there. the houses of parliament are on the river. now, as we know, nothing makes money more easily available than the great and good being inconvenienced. and the parliament couldn't sit. the smell was so disgusting, they actually d originally they hung sheets dipped in chloride of lime all along the river frontage to try and keep the smell out. that didn't work and, actually, there was a report i found of one cabinet meeting being broken up with gladstone and disraeli and everybody rushing out with handkerchiefs over their mouths and gagging. the money was found. i know this will come as a surprise. and so they put into action this

huge sewer-building project. and what they did was they built out into the thames what now now londoners think of as the embankment, and underneath are these enormous sewer pipes which take everything out to be treated, sort of out of london. and, i mean, this was so important that, actually, when the big treatment plant outside london was finally opened, the prince of wales was the official opener of it. i mean, they knew what it was like without, and i actually went a few weeks ago. it was unbelievably thrilling. i went down the sewers. >> host: why? >> guest: oh, to see. i mean, to see this 19th century cathedral down there. it is a cathedral. it's amazing. it's an all-in-one thing and

flusherman's boots, and it was unimaginable. i mean, you see big metal what look like big metal plaques, must be 15x15 feet. ask is you realize -- and you realize they're panels, and they swing out, and that's where all the water rushes through. and the guys were going, oh, yes, well, it rained last night, so you see that mark up there? that's where the sewage got to. being a historian, it's just all fun. >> host: are you, are you writing about london underground, in a sense? >> >> guest: well, in the victorian city i did write a bit about sewers because the city is built on them. you can't have a big city without having proper sewers. and one of the things, of course, was the 19th century was a century of epidemics, precisely because of lack of sewage and overcrowding.

and one of the things you can see is as the sewers arrive across the city, the epidemics disappear. and the final cholera epidemic in europe, in england was in 1862 when the last big tranche of the sewers opened. in germany it wasn't until nearly 1890 precisely because today didn't have the sewers. they didn't have the sewers. so you have to start with underground. can't have a city without it. >> host: have you read stephen johnson's work on the london underground? >> guest: no -- oh, oh, on the underground. >> host: right. >> guest: yes. well, also i tried very hard to finagle a trip. they had a 150th anniversary of the underground, of the tube. and id i they had a teem -- stem train, and i tried to finagle, but that didn't work.

>> host: what was the importance of the underground system opening? >> guest: the underground was important. it wasn't -- it was part of a whole. the adopt of the idea of public -- the development of the idea of public transport not as a means of profit, but as a way of an entire city profiting, that public transport makes life possible for even. for everybody. there was an expression in the 19th century that for the poor you had to live near your bread which meant live near where you worked. and, of course, what public transport does is it means that isn't the case any longer, and it's a way of cleaning out the slums. you don't have to live centrally anymore. you can afford to live in a nicer area because you can afford to commute. so the 19th century saw a range of these things happening. the first was the invention of the bus which, of course, is

short for omnibus which arrived in england in 1833. then a decade later you've got the arrival of the trains, and particularly important was the government passed a regulation saying all train companies had to run what were called working men's trains which were incred my cheap and ran at sort of 6:00 in the morning, 5:00 in the morning. and so that got the workers in and out of london and meant that they no longer had to live near their bread. so the tube was really just an extension of that, the first tube opened in 1863. and when americans come to london and say why don't you have air-conditioning on your tubes, why don't you have wi-fi, why don't -- how come they're all upstairs? i mean, i'm old, i can't do stairs. the answers are because they were built in 1863. >> host: is it only the americans who make those complaints? >> guest: the stairs, everyone

complains about. wi-fi, no, the french complain about the wi-fi, too, but i think only the americans complain about the air-conditioning, yes. [laughter] >> host: and we're talking with author judith flanders about some of her books. she has written a book called "the invention of murder." >> guest: she has. >> host: that came out in 2011. >> guest: yes. >> host: and what is that book about? >> guest: one of the things i became fascinated by as i was doing a completely different book was how the victorians took real-life murder cases and turned them into popular entertainment. i'd known about a few of them, for instance, in dickens' bleak house. there is a murder, and i knew that the mudderess -- murderess was based on a real-life murder, the real-life woman was a woman named mariah manning, and she and her lover murdered her

husband and buried him under the kitchen floor the way you do. and i knew dickens had taken this and turned it into fiction. and in willkie collins' "the moonstone," i knew there was a case -- i sort of had it in the back of my mind without knowing much about it -- that he had used the basis for what is known as the first-ever detective story. so i became very interested in this idea. and what i realized was that, of course, if you look at it soberly, it's no different than we do. it's just that we put them on television and in the movies, you know? we take the boston strangler or whatever and make a television program. they would make fiction, they would make novels or plays or, i discovered, puppet shows. there was one famous case, a woman named mariah martin was murdered by her lover and buried

under the floor in a barn in a place in suffolk which traditionally the barns are all painted red. so the case is known as mariah martin and the red barn. and there's a puppet show about it that was so successful, it lasted, oh, i tracked it through the 1890s, and she died in 1823, i think. and the most amazing thing i discovered was that they named racehorses for murderers. and there were, i think, at least two to or three racehorses named jack the ripper that were running while the murders were still going on. can you imagine going to the race course? and jack the ripper's coming up on the outside. but they did it. >> host: judith flanders, you've referred to charles dickens as a streetwalker earlier --

[laughter] but speaking of streetwalkers, what's your book "sharp practice" about? >> guest: it isn't, because it doesn't exist. your researcher dug up a dead book. [laughter] it was a book i was going to write but then didn't. >> host: about margaret caroline rudd? >> guest: about mrs. rudd. i long to write about mrs. rudd, but i had just started to do some research, and i was having a wonderful time. mrs. rudd was an 18th century forger. and the mail arrived one day, and so i opened it up, and i get a lot of books sent to me by publishers because i review as well. and out popped this book about mrs. rudd. and it was so weird. i looked at it and thought, is this a joke? is my agent playing a joke on me? has he, you know, with his computer mocked something up? and i realized that somebody else had done it. and we talked, my publisher, we

decided there just wasn't space in the world for two books about an unknown 18th century forger within two or three years. so i had to drop it. but i'd like to do it. i'd like to do it again one day. she, she had balls. i liked her. [laughter] just judith flanders, where are you from? >> guest: i'm from montreal. >> host: why do you live in london? >> guest: i'm not really sure. i ended up here, i think is the answer. i was born here. my mother is english. so when i finished university, i went to skidmore in upstate new york. i came here to see what would happen. i had family here. and i seem to have forgotten to leave. >> host: you spent a year in israel? >> guest: i spent a year in israel. my parents were there for a while, so i went, but that didn't really work out for we. but a good researcher.

>> host: what are you working on currently? >> guest: i'm working on a book about the idea of home. english is one of the very few languages in the world that has two separate words, one for house and one for home. so we don't think having an idea of home, sort of a nostalgic, warm idea about what that word means is odd, but it is historically very odd. it's an entirely post-16th, 17th century idea. the whole emotional involvement with the place we live. it comes from a very, very small part of the world. it comes from that northwest crescent of europe, sort of from germany, scandinavian countries down to the netherlands and across to us. of course, you inherited it.

with the puritans. but we all know exactly what we mean by home. it's never occurred to us that people in the 10th or 12th centuries might not. but if you look specifically at european languages, only that northwest european crescent have two words. everyone else just has one. yeah, the french don't know how to say home. so i'm trying to work out why we think differently about that. >> host: you write regular reviews as well. >> guest: i do. >> host: what do you review, where do you write it? >> guest: um, i review books for several of the dailies or sunday papers here, and i review for "the wall street journal" in the states.

i do, i review contemporary art and dance for the times literary supplement. and basically anyone else who asks me. [laughter] not proud. >> host: and this is booktv on c-span2. we've been talking with judith flanders. "circle of sisters" is one of her books. "the invention of murder" is another. and then a couple about victorian life, the names of those books? >> guest: well, "the invention of murder" is going to be published in the states in june, i think, maybe july. i'm not quite sure. >> host: of 2013? >> guest: of 2013. what in britain is called "the vick victorians house," is in america called inside the victorians home. and the victorian city will be

published probably a year after murder. >> host: in the states. >> guest: in the states. it's been published here. >> host: judith flanders.co.uk is the web site. this is booktv on c-span2. >> for more information on these and other interviews from london, visit booktv.org and watch booktv every sunday at 6 p.m. over the next several weeks for more. >> we've got more coverage of nonfiction books and the book industry every weekend on booktv including today at 6 p.m. eastern. a 1997 book notes interview with the late katherine graham. c-span: what year did your father buy the post? >> guest: in 1933. he had just gotten out of the government and been out about three weeks. he'd been on the federal reserve board, and he had started the reconstruction finance corporation under hoover, and he stayed as federal reserve

chairman for a little while under roosevelt, and then he resigned because he didn't like roosevelt's monetary policies. the post came up three weeks later for auction on the steps of the building, and he bought it anonymously. c-span: what'd he pay for it? >> guest: $825,000. c-span: how many newspapers were there in washington then? >> guest: there were five, and the post was fifth in a field of five. and so it had about circulation of 50,000 in a pretty broken down building. and so he started in, and he thought -- he was a businessman, and he thought he knew how to turn around businesses, but he really never had had any newspaper experience. and he encountered the most horrendous difficulties in fighting his way up. but he really did a terrific job starting with nothing. >> along with our schedule, you can also see our programs anytime at booktv.org and get the latest updates throughout

the week. follow us on facebook and twitter. what are you reading this summer? booktv wants to know. >> well, i have several books. one, one that i have that i'm currently reading is "genius in the design," it's about the rivalry between bev -- [inaudible] and bo who were two architects, artists who built, basically, or designed and rebuilt, etc., the st. peters. and the reason is that my niece just had her confirmation this year, and i was her sponsor, and i promised her a trip to the vatican. so we are going to go. the second book is "rome," of course, by robert hughes. so those are the two that i hope i get done in the next two weeks. and then if i have time, i want to read the nat silver book, the

one about predictions, and i think i'm looking at my ipad because i've got them all downloaded here, i think it's called "the signal and the noise." of course, nate silver was the one that did the baseball, you know, decided the players and helped to get on them based on probability of hits, etc. and he's now applied that science of probability to politics. and so he -- so i'm interested to hear what he has to say about probability and predictions. there are several other books that i have, but one of them is -- i'm reading it right here, is on my ipad is, roger statutens "beauty," and it's really about the philosophy of beauty in our lives and what type of an impact it has and whether it's really important. so i'm interested to read that.

and also have a steven stephen hawking's book, theory of everything, that i've wanted to read for a while. that's been on my reading list for a bit, and i still haven't gotten to it. so three or four books if i'm lucky in the next month, i'll get to finish them up and read them. >> let us know what you're reading the this summer: tweet us @booktv, post it on our facebook page or send us an e-mail at booktv@ c-span.org. >> tell the story, it's a very sad story, of how you discovered the famine and how it affected your family. [speaking in native tongue] >> translator: i was in the second year at my senior high school. it was the spring of 1959.

[speaking in native tongue] diswhrt so my high school -- >> translator: so my high school, which was the only school in the county, was 10 kilometers away from my village. a childhood friend came to my school and told me that my father was dying and asked me to take some rice back home to visit my father. [speaking chinese] >> translator: so i went to the student cafeteria asking them to stop my ration of food for three days so i could take 1.5 kilos of rice back to my dad.

[speaking chinese] >> translator: so for students at public school, we were guaranteed some food. [speaking chinese] >> translator: so after i gave my father the rice, my father urged me to leave. [speaking chinese] >> translator: so i went out to the fields and dug out some wild vegetables and gave him those wild vegetables, then i left. [speaking chinese] >> translator: um, i did not realize my father was in such a serious condition he could not eat the rice at all, and he knew

he was dying, so he urged me to leave, and then he told his neighbors that don't tell yang the fuse -- the news of my death, of his death until he passes away. [speaking chinese] >> translator: i didn't return home again until a few days later when my childhood friend came with the bad news. i went back, and my father was already dead. >> but you did not realize at the time that this was a wider problem. [speaking chinese] >> translator: i blamed myself.

i thought my father's death was an individual case, and i thought it was because i was in my school in the county away from home, so i was not around to dig out wild veggies to feed. >> when did you realize that this was a big problem and not just a problem in your village? [speaking chinese] >> translator: took me a long time. [speaking chinese] >> translator: not until in the middle of the cultural revolution. [speaking chinese] >> translator: so in the middle of the cultural revolution, the

above of my province was criticizing the party secretary of the province, blaming him, and that was the time when it disclosed -- [speaking chinese] >> translator: disclosed the figure that 300,000 had died of starvation in that province alone. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. from the 20th annual eagle form summit, greg autrey discusses his book, "death by china: confronting the dragon, a global call to action," next on booktv. >> well, let's move across the pacific ocean and talk about china for a bit. greg autrey is a entrepreneur, writer and educator who